What, some weird fanfic of You’ve Got Mail?

Eh, I think it’s more that Trump wants attention. The CHIPS act is bad because Biden gets credit for it, not Trump. Tariffs are good because Trump gets to force other countries to come to the US to negotiate with him. Whether the deal at the end is good or bad is irrelevant, what matters is that Trump’s name is in the news and attached to those deals.

Trump isn’t going to jail, so I highly doubt he cares much about avoiding it. He mostly cares about people talking about him, and it’s working.

I think Musk is the same way, but he does seem to care about the tech his name is attached to as well. So that’s likely to cause huge issues soon as Musk and Trump butt heads more and more.

Understanding Trump is simple: he’s a narcissist. For example, if the CHIPS act succeeds, Biden gets credit, so it’s bad. It’s really quite simple.

Ah, ok. I would’ve expected AI to hallucinate something more interesting. I just assumed it was just a shoddy job at hiding the simplicity of the formula and making it look more “mathy.”

Never attribute to AI that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

If you dig in to the tariff calculation, it’s simply trade deficit / 2, the other two variables are constants that cancel eachother out. AI would probably do a better job making a complex algorithm, this is just a lazy human adding some flourishes to BS their way through.

I think we’ve had a good discussion and it’s clear we have our own perspectives.

Agreed, and I think the conversation has run its course.

Thanks for the discussion! I’ll certainly give it some thought.

Same. I’m just generally pretty cyber-security curious, and have read a bit on this topic.

I think Signal and Matrix are absolutely fantastic. I use Signal as an SMS replacement and Matrix for group chats, and I whole-heartedly recommend both.

BTW, thanks for providing the CVEs, I hope that answers a few peoples’ questions about it. One thing to note is that a high number of CVEs is indicative of a lot of academic interest, which is a good indicator that a project is interesting to the security community. So seeing a lot of CVEs is a good thing, assuming the more critical ones get close quickly (and Signal does a good job keeping up with updates).

The main issue I know about is in how messages are stored (the top CVE in that list). If a phone is compromised, all chat history could be exfiltrated. That’s incredibly unlikely for a regular citizen, but it’s a lot more likely for an important position like the head of the Department of Defense or something.

NOTE: the vendor disputes the relevance of this finding because the product is not intended to protect against adversaries with this degree of local access.

need for a phone number

I honestly think this is fine, hence why I use Signal. But the rest are not, hence why I use Signal.

that’s a reflection of society

Sure, and people like quick solutions to problems and largely don’t think about long-term consequences. And then they’re all “surprised pikachu” when that thing inevitably morphs into something they don’t like.

The government must have deep surveillance capabilities in such a situation.

Sure… in wartime. Outside of wartime, it’s totally reasonable to have serious limitations on the government’s power here.

the lack of competitive elections beyond two parties. This is on some level the responsibility of US citizens and not a “black box” model of government.

Agreed with the first part.

The second part is a bit sticky though, because even if a majority of citizens support a specific change, if their representatives don’t, their SOL. For example, in my state, a majority of the populace wanted to expand legalization of marijuana, but the legislature shot it down, even after a passed ballot initiative that should have been legally binding. The root of this problem is the two-party system, since people are willing to vote for the “lesser of two evils,” which doesn’t communicate their support for some policies from the other party.

What I do know is that you don’t need an imminent threat of a physical invasion to limit the influence of much larger countries on your political environment.

Sure, but you need something to justify that level of interference. In the US, we have a concept of an “enemy of the state,” which is what we used to justify the TikTok ban. I think that was overreach personally (China isn’t an active threat, and TikTok is far enough removed from China to be less of an issue), but I accept the premise for that. Our “enemies of the state” is a legally defined list, which includes: China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea, and a handful of others.

That was certainly the case for Ukraine, but I’m not so sure about Albania, as they have even less reason to consider China an “enemy” as the US, and I think that’s already shaky at best (why are we doing so much business w/ our enemy? How is an enemy one of our biggest trading partners?).

You don’t want the CCP promoting political movements that they have bribed or see as being more beneficial to their interests.

Sure, but there’s a big difference between censorship and counter-propaganda. The Albanian and US governments could instead correct misinformation instead of banning media orgs they don’t have control over.

Perhaps dealing with an invasion for a decade plus made me a bit paranoid, but I do support the government being able to regulate the ability of foreign social media/services to influence local politics and spread misinformation and propaganda.

You need to be very careful about this, because this is exactly the same strategies taken by authoritarian regimes, like Nazi Germany. Again, to be clear, I’m not calling Ukraine fascist (that’s Russian propaganda, and Russia is absolutely fascist), I’m saying this type of policy is used by fascists.

If you control the media, you control the people and can get away with anything. That’s why I’m so against government censorship. I’d much rather have Russians interfering w/ our media than have my country dictate what speech is acceptable. To quote Rage Against the Machine:

Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?

Controlling social media is controlling the present. Rip that out by the roots and put serious controls around anything that looks like it. Transparency is generally the best policy, so work with journalists to expose the propaganda for what it is instead of trying to silence it.

Not sure exactly which part you’re asking about.

For Mozilla, the best source I’ve found is Louis Rossmann’s wiki on Mozilla’s TOS changes (and his breakdown on YT if you don’t want to read).

For articles about which browser to pick, idk, I don’t really follow that. I use Firefox and Firefox derivatives because I believe engine diversity is of utmost importance, and I only use Chromium forks as a backup for sites that don’t work properly on Firefox.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I think this is absolutely an appropriate article for this community, I just think the article is a bit… lacking. There’s also the FUD about Mozilla, which is a bit more complex of a topic than they lead on, so kind of shoddy journalism IMO.

Is there a privacy-centric open source browser that follows web standards and doesn’t come with any unfortunate baggage in the room? It’s time to find out.

…

In the end, I looked for two candidates, one each from the Firefox and Apple/Google orbits. I tried them all, and settled on LibreWolf from the former, and Vivaldi from the latter. LibreWolf because it’s done a fine job of making Firefox without it being Firefox, and Vivaldi because its influence from the early Opera versions gave it a tiny bit of individuality missing in the others. I set up both with my usual Hackaday bookmarks, tabs, and shortcuts, changed the search engine to the EU-based Qwant. I’m ready to go, with a bit more control over how my data is shared with the world once more.

Why Vivaldi though? It’s closed source, which should disqualify it from their initial statement of considering open-source browsers.

Not saying you’re American

I am, just for context and because I’ll reference US policy in my reply.

I know I come off as condescending

And if I do, please know that is not my intention at all either. That said, let’s get into it.

Let’s look at surveillance for a second. Here’s how things unfolded here in the US:

1. surveil enemies of the state only, and only outside the country
2. surveil enemies of the state, even if they’re in our country; collect data for everyone, but only look at it when needed (this is what Snowdon called out)
3. expand surveillance to criminals, like gangs and drug smugglers
4. expand surveillance to those coming in at the border
5. expand surveillance of regular citizens, in case they’re compromised
6. prosecute “thought crimes” and go full big brother

We’re currently somewhere around 4 or 5, but we were at step 1 just 25-ish years ago (expanded to 2 w/ the Patriot Act in response to 9/11), and every few years we took another step with a “renewal” of the Patriot Act (changed names and added/removed some stuff).

If you give the government a new power, they will abuse it, it’s just a matter of time.

Trump is basically using TikTok as a bargaining chip and a threat to other social media orgs to shift public opinion in his favor. That’s absolutely terrible, and that was started by the Biden administration banning TikTok on national security grounds. Banning TikTok opened the floodgates for politicians to coerce social media orgs in new ways, many of which happens behind closed doors (see what happened to TikTok? That could be you if you don’t bend the knee.).

I am not arguing for Chinese-style total control of the internet

My perspective is that you effectively are. Maybe you don’t want that, but the policies you seem to support will eventually become that, because the government perpetually expands the scope of whatever powers we grant it.

I understand the need for certain policy changes during wartime. When Russia started its aggressions (arguably, long before Crimea), I can understand a temporary ban on Russian propaganda, because it’s an active war. Maybe it doesn’t include fighting yet, but it does have a credible threat of devolving into that. So I support temporary restrictions while an imminent, credible threat exists or the country is currently at war.

However, banning TikTok isn’t that. Russia doesn’t control TikTok, and even if we assume China directly controls it (probably closer to reality than not), Albania is not at risk of being invaded by China, so there’s no imminent, credible threat. Likewise for the US, we’re not at risk of being invaded by China, so there’s no imminent, credible threat there. What does exist is political convenience, if you can control what social media services are allowed in your country, you can coerce those social media orgs to filter out stuff you don’t like and promote stuff you do. That’s a massive conflict of interest for the sanctity of free speech.

I strongly disagree.

That said, I think more countries should be releasing research about large social networks and recommending its citizens avoid them. The role of government isn’t to force its people to be better off, but enforce the laws the people want. A social media service should only be banned if it’s violating the laws and unwilling to comply, but otherwise the role of government should remain an advisory one.

19:30

Thank you sir. They play the video clip for a few seconds, and then she tears into him. Worth it.

They absolutely could. What matters is what other countries do in response.

As an American, I’m not happy right now because things are more expensive without a good reason. Tariffs just end up being a hidden sales tax, and that sucks. We don’t need more manufacturing jobs here unless we can do it cheaper or better. Keep good paying jobs here and send the lower paying jobs where they’ll be appreciated.

Something in the 100-200 range, so reasonably sizeable, but not huge. Most are DVDs, but we have a bunch of Bluray as well, and I’ve ripped them all.

TL; DR - Dude likes KDE and Prusa 3D printers.

And many smart TVs can use the Steam Link app, so you may not need any new hardware at all if you just want to connect your PC to your TV.