Sure, but it also solves the second problem, where they just confiscate your phone and don’t return it. Do you want them to take the phone you use to access your entire digital life, or your $50 burner?

The 9/11 funders? Go figure.

You might not be that new Einstein…

That’s so Kevin…

Which is a good argument for regulation. Regulation prevents industry from doing things that may be in their individual best interest but are against public best interests or the best interests of the industry as a whole.

The american market? Nah, for the most part, repair parts also come from Asia.

So yes, the price of repair parts is likely to go up with these tariffs as well, but regardless repair will be the better choice. With a broken screen for example, it used to be a choice between replacing a $400 device or getting a $200 repair, now it will be a choice between an $800 device or a $300 repair. The situation definitely isn’t better for anyone, but making the right choice becomes easier.

Oh yeah, and the whole cuda framework too? No?

Cool.

What about it is clickbait? That title is really upfront about signal’s encryption being fine.

In my experience, as you increase the quality level of a jpeg, the compression level drops significantly, much more than with some other formats, notably PNG. I’d be curious to see comparisons with png and gif. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new jpeg compresses better at some resolutions, but not all, or with only some kind of images.

Again, the argument I’m trying to make is that, by the time one can settle Mars without supplies from Earth

Well, that’s not exactly the goal. No nation is really self-sufficient in modern society. Everyone engages in trade. So the question is really, when will a space colony become profitable or maintainable? And that’s trickier to answer, because it isn’t “not for hundreds of years”, but it also isn’t now, it’s somewhere in between.

Cheaper access to space would change the equation immensely. Being cheaper to resupply would mean the colony wouldn’t have to be as profitable to be sustainable. In-situ resource utilisation (using water found off of earth for drinking, oxygen and fuel) will also make an enormous difference as it would reduce the amount of supplies needed from earth. (This is incidentally one of the main goals of NASA’s Artemis program, to figure out how to utilize water resources on the moon)

It was the same situation when Europeans settled the Americas, at first it was just a money suck. Entire colonies were lost, lots of people died, they weren’t really prepared. But then they started to figure out what crops worked there, how to survive harsh winters, etc. Once they figured out how to make the most of this new land, they thrived. Unfortunately, the way they treated the locals was pretty horrific. Fortunately, we’re pretty certain there aren’t any locals on the moon or Mars.

Truth be told, I think a Mars colony won’t happen for quite some time, but I believe a moon colony will certainly happen before 2100. And if we’re lucky, maybe since orbital colonies. That’s where the future really lies, orbital colonies.

The tech you’d need to make living on Mars independent of Earth, like consciousness uploading, self sufficient friendly AI, extensive human/plant bioengineering, terraforming… Well, they’re better at solving our problems on Earth anyway.

That sounds like an argument for a Mars colony, not against it.

Not that I think continuousness uploading or AI have anything to do with a Mars colony… Even terraforming is totally unnecessary.

Honestly, I don’t think Mars is a great candidate for a space colony, though probably not for the same reasons you’re thinking. But I think it is in fact vital that we start colonizing space soon, and I think the technologies developed in pursuit of that goal will absolutely aid us here on earth.

“Rolling your own” cryptographic system is rarely a good idea. There are countless examples of companies and governments deciding to ignore existing tested and verified standard industry tools on the basis they’re more vulnerable because they’re more well known, but that decision tends to bite them in the end because the solution they come up with has some critical vulnerabilities they didn’t notice in time. These things are easy to miss when there isn’t a whole global community of security professionals looking at the code.

Now I’ll admit that the US government could absolutely create a comparable or even superior solution if they put the right people and enough funding behind the project, no doubt. There is the question of whether or not it’s worth doing, worth the investment. If budgets are tight (because conservatives are so concerned about govt spending 🙄), I’d certainly rather they use signal than they decide to dedicate almost enough funding and develop something that almost works; that could also be disastrous.

Honestly, the best move for the government is probably to make their own app utilizing existing standards. The signal protocol is perfectly open and free, they just need their own clients. Well, that and some identity verification in the account creation process. But yeah, If they had their own app, they could design it to do some useful things, like verify all members in a group have appropriate security clearance. That might have come in handy…

So yeah, I don’t really disagree with you, they should probably be using their own system. But I think it’s easy to think that any bespoke system would inherently be superior, and that very much isn’t the case. And with that in mind I’d say it’s truly not a crazy or negligent choice to use the existing best-of-class systems off the shelf. It’s maybe not the best choice, but it’s not a bad one.

Yeah, this article was truly a fascinating read! The one thing that surprised me from Goldberg though, was that he continually questioned their use of signal. I mean, why wouldn’t they use it?

They could try to develop their own secure messaging app, but what would be the point of that when another already exists and they can verify the code is air tight because it’s open source. And, developing their own app would mean the possibility of relying on software that could contain unknown bugs or vulnerabilities.

The only safe cryptographic systems are open source ones.

It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It’s web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.

So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won’t actually happen without some amount of compensation.

So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don’t have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It’s a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn’t have to convince anyone of that.

To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They’re trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I’m standing I don’t see anyone else even trying…

Correct me if I’m wrong though, i’d love to see other viable models.

I’ve played a lot of post apocalyptic video games, lately those experiences are beginning to feel more relevant than I ever wanted… But across all of them, one constant has always remained true: slavers are kill on sight.

The article says she’s a “legal permanent us resident”. It’s a little weird that she’s been living in the US for 37 years and never got her citizenship. I wonder what that’s about.

Does anyone know what other nations fall into this “sensitive” classification?

Edit: I did some googling myself and here’s the list below. (The short version is: Russia and their allies, China and their allies, and broadly the middle east. Weirdly, also Taiwan)

• Algeria
  

• Armenia
  

• Azerbajan
  

• Belarus
  

• China (PRC)
  

• Cuba
  

• Georgia
  

• Hong Kong
  

• India
  

• Iran
  

• Iraq
  

• Israel
  

• Kazakhstan
  

• Korea (North)
  

• Kyrgyzstan
  

• Libya
  

• Macau
  

• Moldova
  

• Pakistan
  

• Russia
  

• Sudan
  

• Syria
  

• Taiwan
  

• Tajikistan
  

• Turkmenistan
  

• Ukraine
  

• Uzbekistan
  

I realize that’s a long list, I don’t know, should I put that in a or code block or spoiler tag?

Who would take him?

A reason to push through pain? Because you want to get home.

My eight year old complained that his hands were so cold they hurt, so he decided to take his gloves off and lay down in the snow…

I mean, I can’t even… Kids are just fucking stupid.

Anyway, I tried to tell him that the only way to really make his hands warm again, was to get back in the car so we could head home. (Obviously my plea had no effect, he just broke down into tears and accusations, seemingly accepting his imminent demise)

The point is, sometimes the only way out is through. Sometimes you just have to keep moving even if the process hurts.