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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6480 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Completely incidental to the tragedy and it feels morbid to get something else entirely out of it when this is how it came to my attention, like a moral fruit of the poisonous tree situation I'm babby's-first conflicted over, but...

The passengers in the horrific Learjet crash in Palm Beach yesterday were the founder and his family of a wildly evil startup I was previously unaware of called RB2B (do not click that link without reading the following):

Identify 70-80% of your website visitors with RB2B. Get names, LinkedIn profiles and business emails of anonymous visitors

Beware that this exists and is apparently already in broad use. It obviously always could have and you would be foolish to not have it in the back of your mind, but I would have thought something so straightforwardly this would be restricted to (and require!) the darker corners of things and be somehow illegal. No:

Over 100,000+ websites use RB2B to identify the actual people visiting their site

Do I have to point out the obvious weirdness of the CEO of a surveillance company dying in a suspicious plane crash three days before the election?

Looks like the timeline is fairly well-understood though and it'd be pretty hard to get those pilots on board with intentionally making major mistakes and dying for it.

While I think the world gets a bit better every time a founder of some evil tech company goes up in a fireball, karmaic retribution is simply not reliable or selective enough to rely upon, and we should instead use well-scaling social tech (e.g. legislative and judicial) to align corporations.

Try amiunique.org. I tried on two browsers and both said I was unique. I didn't even link the URL because (unless @ZorbaTHut configured it) clicking a link tells the destination the domain you came from (HTTP referer), which makes you even easier to identify.

But, just because you're unique doesn't mean the nefarious they can track you across websites, if your fingerprint changes. If you want to check this, you can install a browser extension from amiunique.org/timeline.

do not click that link without reading the following

Archive.org link, for the cautious.

Good chance that the product isn't nearly as effective as advertised like most B2B SAAS, but yeah feels plausible. I haven't worked in retargeting in a while but there was a ton of stuff available even circa 2018

This is the price that we pay for freedom. Nothing like this would be possible in Europe under the GDPR.

Small aircraft incidents are a surprisingly common cause of death for rich people. Commercial airlines are signifigantly safer per passenger-mile than driving. Private jets are not. It's not no-big-deal to jump in a Gulfstream or helicopter every weekend. Don't be like Kobe.

This is the price that we pay for freedom. Nothing like this would be possible in Europe under the GDPR.

As a German, I am happy to give up my god-given right to collect any data of my neighbor if in turn it constrains others (realistically big tech) from tracking me.

(My real pet peeve with the GDPR is that unsolicited consent requests are terrible UX, and the sane default would be to tell websites that they have to use HTTP headers instead which the user can once configure in their browser. Oh, and IP addresses being personal data is also a bit silly. A sane compromise would be that you can keep your logfiles, but are not allowed to do data mining based on IP addresses.)

Generally, I am fine with conceptions of rights evolving alongside with tech, and privacy/data protection is one such right. I guess the US conception of rights is that because the founding fathers did not envision the tech to send messages into peoples brains, if the tech gets developed everyone has the natural right to spam other people with ads in their sleep. But at least you don't have to house soldiers!

Oh, and IP addresses being personal data is also a bit silly. A sane compromise would be that you can keep your logfiles, but are not allowed to do data mining based on IP addresses.

I'm pretty sure this is how GDPR legally works already. Security enforcement and such is considered a legitimate use.

But how does the government (or anyone) prevent you from spying on your neighbor, without spying on you?

Disclaimer: My opinion is tainted from having worked in this industry.

I'm not bothered at all by this tracking. The decision to display an ad is independent from which ad to display. Why wouldn't I want the ad to be something I might actually like?

Poor ad targeting is far more annoying. In many instances I think the advertiser is choosing to simply target all men and that's how I get served up ads for boner pills. About every ad on X for the past week has been Megan Fox advertising erectile dysfunction meds, and hitting the 'I'm not interested' button doesn't make it stop.

Why wouldn't I want the ad to be something I might actually like?

I would expect the ads at best to increase chance of conversion, not to actually be selling me something that solves a problem I have and/or makes my life better.

Stop buying things that don't make your life better, and the problem solves itself.

They build up a profile of you which can be used in many ways, not just to serve you ads. The data can be sold on to third parties. It's also not just websites that track you. E.g. car manufacturers have been caught collecting driving data and selling it to insurers. Web stores (even places like Amazon) have been caught adjusting prices on the fly depending on what they think they can get away with charging the kind of person they think you are. More and more we're living in a panopticon.

It's not a thing you may actually like, it's a thing calculated to deceive you specifically.

Also, the information can be sold to someone else who may use it for non-ad purposes. It would be bad if someone finds out that I believe <insert disfavored political position>.

it's a thing calculated to deceive you specifically

This is one of those rumors I frequently hear but really doubt. There's no way to disprove that advertisers are playing 5D chess, but on the other hand, there are companies that have advertised to me that I'm certain I will never buy from (barring circumstances that have nothing to do with the ad being delivered to me).

I think it's far more likely that companies heavily optimize ads to deliver the most revenue, but most of this comes from whales. Some comes from influencing others (e.g. I had Coke when I was young because it was served at my classmate's birthday party). Ads have a lot in common with scam spam emails, such as, they're cheap enough that it's worth bothering thousands of people who won't buy for one who will.

If the political ads I get are any indication, and it seems clear they've split "ads for fundraising from clear supporters" from "if you're on the fence, you should vote for me", the politicians have no clue how I vote.

Incorrectly determining your political beliefs and selling the information can be as bad or even worse than correctly doing so and selling it. Imagine advertisers incorrectly determining that you're a Nazi (or just that you support Trump) and some employer getting ahold of it.

IIRC private aircraft don't have to deal with any of the TSA bullshit. I'd fly on one if I had the choice for that reason alone.

Business jets in fact are considerably safer than driving per passenger-mile, though considerably less safe than commercial aircraft. Most rich people dying in small aircraft incidents are flying themselves (or passengers of their equally-rich buddies) as a hobby, which is considerably more dangerous... but usually you don't get rich by having an extremely low risk tolerance.

As for helicopters, those rich guys who helicopter-commute to Manhattan must have balls of steel. And the pilots, more like tungsten.

Checking the statistics, road fatalities in the US are 1.2 people per 100 million vehicle-miles, which is slightly less than 1.2 fatal crashes per 100 million vehicle-miles because most fatal crashes only kill one person.

Part 135 (i.e. all commercial flying except scheduled airline service) has about 1 fatal crash per 250,000 flight hours. If we assume an average speed of 200 mph for part 135 flying, that works out at 2 fatal crashes per 100 million flight-miles (and the typical fatal crash is going to kill everyone on the plane) - i.e. worse than driving, but not much. Part 135 helicopters are more dangerous than planes, but the FAA thinks this is because the helicopter accident rate is driven up by specific dangerous missions (like bad-weather search-and-rescue) and the intrinsic safety gap is small.

Scheduled airline service has less than 1 fatal crash per 5 million flight hours, which at airline speeds gives you <0.05 per 100 million flight miles. Very safe.

Bizjets will be safer than the part 135 average, but not as safe as scheduled airlines. So potentially not that much safer than driving.

Incidentally, private flying is about 1 fatal crash per 100,000 flight hours, and speeds are lower, so you are looking at 5-10 fatal crashes per 100 million flight-miles. Which I suppose is safer than a motorbike (about 30 deaths per 100 million miles).

I sometimes hear allegations that business jet (and, to a lesser extent, tourist sightseeing) pilots are occasionally put into awkward incentive positions: when things are marginal but the boss really wants to get there for an important meeting. Or that you're paid by the seats for flights. It might not even be said explicitly.

The big airlines will absolutely delay your flight for marginal weather or maintenance issues (and other less-ideal reasons too, I'm sure). Their leadership has no incentive to risk the PR crisis of losing a whole planeload of passengers in ways that would just end a small operation.

"GetThereItis" is a pretty big driver of incidents across the board:

  • Commercial aviation can end up with five-, six-, or even seven-figure costs because a pilot landed at an alternate airport or delayed a flight too long, infamously part of the cause in Air Ontario 1363, between compensation, hotel rooms, taxis, so on.
  • Charter flights have the time pressure more directly, because there's really no separation from pilot to customer. In theory, any charter operation worth its salt will have explicit 'best-effort' terms, but in practice customer patience varies heavily depending on their own schedule, the cause of the outage, the distance of the flight, and availability of alternatives.
  • Private aviation you can end up in a random 'airport' that's basically a shack (if you're lucky, a shack with a toilet) and a single strip runway, and your best alternative as a rental car shop that won't open again until Monday.

Most of the fatalities tend to be in private aviation, but the pressures are probably higher for charter. I'd assume it's especially hard if you're a sports fan having to tell Kobe Bryant that visibility is shit today, but even without that, it's the sort of business where reputation for reliability is a major driver in future customers. You can afford to have a plane sit out a single flight or a single day for safety sake pretty easily, since fuel and per-hour maintenance is so much of your running costs. But you can't afford to be the guy who cancels at the last minute, because then you end up with planes that sit for weeks on end.

The other big issue is that smaller charter operations can run with much less experienced pilots in one or both seats. I don't buy the full Colgan Air philosophy, but there definitely have been incidents where a pilot whose background overwhelmingly favored fair-weather flights got thrust into environments where they couldn't make that rule apply, and had no ability to judge bad weather conditions from unsafe ones. And while bigger charter operations will push pilots toward education, smaller ones tend to have hobbyist or semi-pro pilots that don't keep up on it.

I'd be willing to buy that similar decision making dooms people in auto accidents too. "Oh, it's just a couple more hours to our destination" has killed more than a few drivers, be they sleepy or on icy or dangerous roads.

Seems like nothing burger to me. You can probably get my identity by putting it into a LLM and tracing for linguistic patterns.

But IMO 100% never get in a helicopter. At a lesser certainty don’t get in a private plane. Some of the more corporate ones may be fine. If you have a private plane maybe just take IG photos and leave it on the ground. I’m probably going too far saying this but it’s definitely an area where you need to it the right way.

Unless you get into extreme sports, whatever activity you're going to do is pretty much guaranteed to be less dangerous than the drive to get there. Live a little when you get the opportunity to do so. You don't have forever.

Maybe I'm saying this from the viewpoint of someone who lives in the hyper-overregulated EU, but still.

I'm not sure about that.

To start with, a huge chunk of road fatalities are due to alcohol. And 'drive sober and not when the bars are closing' cuts the danger from drunk drivers down by, like, 90 something percent. There's a few other basic steps to minimize road danger- drive a car and not a motorbike, etc- but the median driver already does them. You know that thing where the vast majority of drivers claim to be 'above average'? That's statistically true because the average is dragged down by habitual drunk drivers, text and drivers, etc.

But there's also lots of common recreational activities, at least in the US, that are at least as dangerous as driving. Horseback riding, power sports, and waterskiing, for example, are very popular red tribe activities, which are also fairly dangerous.

Seems like nothing burger to me. You can probably get my identity by putting it into a LLM and tracing for linguistic patterns.

This seems to be completely orthogonal to the tech described here? This one is not about doxxing smut authors, it is about doxxing smut readers. Most website UIs do not feature enough navigation elements using natural language to make IDing individuals based on their language use feasible.

But IMO 100% never get in a helicopter

I thought this was a myth? Obviously less safe than passenger airlines but on the order of cars. When I ask ChatGPT that's what it tells me at least

Normalizing to miles or equivalent trips helps reduce the range and can put them around motorcycle risk, but helicopters as a full class remain a good bit more dangerous than cars. To be fair, that’s heavily driven by training flight and Robinson incidents, so fair-weather flight operations under Part 135 are a lot less concerning, but it’s still a risk-taking behavior.

Normalizing to miles or equivalent trips helps reduce the range and can put them around motorcycle risk, but helicopters as a full class remain a good bit more dangerous than cars. To be fair, that’s heavily driven by training flight and Robinson incidents, so fair-weather flight operations under Part 135 are a lot less concerning, but it’s still a risk-taking behavior.

Part 135 helicopters are only about 2x as dangerous as part 135 aeroplanes and 2-3x as dangerous as cars, and it isn't clear if this is driven by things like search-and-rescue work where you know you are taking a risk. My guess is that fair-weather part 135 helicopters are safer than cars.

But IMO 100% never get in a helicopter.

Yes you might die but the helicopter glacier tour is worth risking your life for. Put it on your bucket list.

I would expect the helicopter glacier tour to be hard on the less dangerous end, because if eg unfavorable weather comes up you just tell the tourists it's cancelled today for weather concerns, raincheck.

Definitely awesome. The tour around Denali in a small plane is pretty good too. And skipping the long bus trip from Queenstown to Milford Sound is worth it. But then, I think the epicureans had it right with their motto -- dum vivimus vivamus, or "while we live, let us LIVE"

Maybe. I might be more risks cautious. One-off vacation flights may be fine. Though personally I think I am fine watching drone footage etc.

Cumulative risk vs per-exposure risk. Once, vs every day for an entire career. It's fine.

Could, vs have, vs commoditized, everybody's already doing it, always has, and it's a good thing. This seems to me, I guess naively, like it would be a big jump in proliferation from what I'd assumed was the current state of things.

RB2B identifies 70-80% of website traffic when person-level and company-level ID are combined. Customers typically see 30-40% of visitors identified at the person level (US only) and an additional 30-40% at the company level through RB2B's partnership with Demandbase. See how RB2B + Demandbase works.

Partly. RB2B's Person-Level ID is US-only technology with a US-only database, so it will not identify individuals located outside the US (for GDPR and CCPA compliance). Company-Level ID, through RB2B's partnership with Demandbase, is global. Companies based outside the US can use Person-Level ID on their US traffic, and it is compliant. Read the compliance page.

RB2B matches visitors against a fully-permissioned publisher network using a combination of 1st and 3rd party cookies, device IDs and IP addresses, plus Demandbase's proprietary reverse-IP lookup network for company-level ID. Once a visitor is identified, RB2B sends them to your CRM or other tools where you can trigger workflows: add to a lead score, start automated outreach, or alert a rep in Slack.

It's just your residential IP paired with your Google/Microsoft/Meta information that they bought plus a cookie. It only works on the proportion of users you'd expect that to work on. Unless you are on a corporate machine in which case it just identifies your company by the IP.

So it looks evil but the bigger scoop is it's a scam like most other b2b saas. Not at all worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That's the more banal evil that you can get everywhere.

It only works on the proportion of users you'd expect that to work on

Can you expand on this? My expectations may not match yours.

I would expect that with sufficiently low morals, high effort, and no legal restrictions, this could almost always be almost everybody, at least who wasn't making a truly extraordinary effort otherwise.

Corporate users like RB2B is targeting tend to be very easy to track.

At the organization level, most companies above a certain size have their own ASNs, so the IP addresses they use are a matter of public record. A lot of analytics tools can tell you when someone visits your website from Wells Fargo's corporate network using the same trivial database lookup that "what is my IP" websites use to tell you the name of your ISP.

On an individual level, a lot of corporate devices are mandated to use configurations like Chrome with no ad-blocker, or a version of Edge that leaks your email address to any website that asks, that are easy targets. You can just do the most basic ad-tech strategy of getting a bunch of crappy SaaS marketing websites to add your script to Google Tag Manager, setting a third-party cookie, and waiting until you can grab the user's identity from one of the websites. (Or as @dailydogma meat-proxied below, you can contract with a network of crappy ad-tech companies that all do that.)

Privacy-conscious normies usually manage to evade this by using some combination of a browser that blocks third-party cookies, an ad-blocker that blocks Google Tag Manager, and a shared CGNAT or VPN IP address. You can try to work around this, but it has tradeoffs like making your tracking script much harder for businesses to install, or producing weird side effects that power-users and corporate security departments will find suspicious (like briefly activating audio playback or port-scanning their internal network). There are also diminishing returns, since Apple and Mozilla are always trying to reduce the cross-site tracking attack surface. Safari on iPhone is particularly hard to fingerprint since there are millions of identical iPhones.

So even to the extent that it's possible, RB2B probably isn't putting in all the effort required to track everyone.

Something better:

RB2B works by matching hashed emails. Its script asks three identity-data partners whether they already know your browser, gets back an MD5/SHA-256 hash of your email, and sends that hash plus page details to RB2B. RB2B matches the hash to a person (name, LinkedIn profile, work email). If none of the partners knows you, it falls back to looking up your company from your IP address through Demandbase.

How I checked: rb2b.com runs its own tracking script. I downloaded it from ddwl4m2hdecbv.cloudfront.net/b/1VN080HQL06J/1VN080HQL06J.js.gz, which returns 403 unless you send a rb2b.com Referer. The code was obfuscated, so I decoded it with webcrack. Then I called each partner endpoint and loaded the page in a real Chrome to see what it set.

This explains their numbers. Person-level matching only works where partner cookies were linked to your email on some other site, which mostly means Chrome. Safari and Firefox block those cookies, which fits their 30–40% person-level match rate.

Where is your quote from?

Claude Opus 5.5 xhigh.

You might think it's karma but otoh probably most people flying private jets are scumbags

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