might use gas so seldom

So don’t put gas in it if you don’t need it?

Yeah, that’s only going to protect from drive theft, which I guess makes disposal easier?

Exactly.

I don’t use BitLocker, but I do use FDE on Linux, and I use a password at the bootloader level. Why would I bother with all the downsides of FDE if it isn’t actually secured by a password?

Screw all of that.

Ah, the wrench approach.

Yup, haven’t used Chrome in a long time, aside from random websites that don’t work properly. So I don’t have any extensions.

I’d appreciate a list for Firefox though.

Ditching the Linux kernel is probably a good idea.

It’s certainly not. There are so many actors with opposing agendas that are motivated to keep it secure that its incredibly difficult to slip something through.

If you’re going to attack Linux, you won’t attack the kernel, but instead you’d go for some obscure component that most distros use but is only maintained by one or two people (e.g. xz).

If you abandon Linux, you’re likely going to have more vulnerabilities. Security through obscurity is no security at all.

Will the risk be higher during Trump 2.0

Why would it?

I think you’re paranoid and irrational, and should probably step away from social media and go talk to some actual Trump supporters. That’s not me, but my family largely voted for that clown, so I think I know a thing or two about what his supporters want.

In essence, they want Trump to cut spending, stop drug trafficking, and create jobs. I think it’s far more likely that he cuts the FBI and related law enforcement and potentially merges them than to put them on the attack. He cares more about stopping illegal immigration than spying on residents, so that’s where his attention will be.

FOSS

FOSS + self-hostable is always the right answer. I don’t think who the President is matters all that much because data requests are an agency level thing and not something the President or even the cabinet member is involved in (outside of perhaps very high profile issues).

If it’s not on your machine, you won’t know if the server admin has been forced by the courts to give up the data. I use a VPS, but it doesn’t actually store anything, it just forwards packets to my computer on my network, so if LE wants my data, they have to get it from me directly.

If you’re paranoid about the government spying on you, it doesn’t matter who’s in the Oval Office, what matters is if they can get access to your data without you knowing. So my tier list for this is:

1. Self-hosted, FOSS, E2EE with no data stored on the server (e.g. Simplex)
2. Self-hosted, with data stored on the server (e.g. Matrix) - only if it’s on your LAN
3. FOSS client, E2EE (e.g. Signal)
4. Hosted in a country with strong privacy protections and no agreements with your country for exceptions (e.g. Proton)

Pretty much everything else is unacceptable IMO.

Yeah, I think mine was $80. You can get a consumer router with built-in wireless for about that much, so once you add in the AP ($100-150), it’s more. But you get more flexibility and features.

But yeah, for an enterprise grade router, they’re pretty cheap.

And this is why I use Mikrotik:

• not Chinese
• seem to care about security
• used by big orgs, so a vulnerability would be big news
• more features than I’ll need
• not cheap, but affordable

I have a separate access point as well by Ubiquiti. My reasons:

• can upgrade wireless without touching router config
• no trade-off between router and wireless features, I can choose them independently
• AP and router don’t need to be in the same place (nor should they be)

Don’t buy cheap crap, buy entry level enterprise equipment instead.

Yup. Here’s how I see it:

• American routers - utter crap, and targeted by Chinese hackers
• Chinese routers - utter crap, but not targeted (yet) by Chinese hackers, probably because they already have backdoors

Blocking Chinese routers doesn’t solve the utter crap problem.

Yeah, and just for a few months. TOTP really isn’t that complicated…

That’s a huge part of why I use my brokerage, Fidelity, as my main bank, they support Symantec VIP TOTP. I prefer my regular TOTP solution, but this us miles ahead of literally every other bank I’ve used.

They were probably inspired by the same source material.

Yup, big nothing burger.

And banking. I don’t understand why banking and medicine seem to be the last ones to upgrade security, when they handle perhaps the most sensitive information.

Replace it with rights related to allowed uses of data to be determined by the people who produce the data

That’s essentially what copyright is! It has more to do with who has the legal right to access, modify, and distribute content than it does about copying. You can make as many copies as you want of content you legally have access to, you just can’t share it with anyone you aren’t permitted to share it with.

I think copyright is a good thing in general because it gives producers of content some rights to protect the content they’ve created, which means they have an opportunity to profit from it before competitors can take that content and redistribute it themselves. if there was no copyright protections, the moment you publish something, a competitor will rush to reproduce it and publish it far more broadly, using their much larger distribution network to cut you out of sales.

The problem is that it also restricts modifications, so if someone produces something, you need to be very careful to stay within the constraints of fair use or you could get hit with a lawsuit, and you can be sued even if you’ve done everything properly if the original creator has enough money to tie you up in courts (see Palworld v Nintendo).

people the data is about

This seems incredibly problematic because then you’d have to jump through massive hoops to write a book involving any public figure. Even if you exempt public figures from this, you could still have tons of lawsuits from people trying to take a cut from your profits if anything in the book seems to relate to them.

The main problem, IMO, with copyright is how long it’s in effect for. The original intent was to protect content so the creator could have time to profit from it, but Disney has lobbied in the US to extend that to 95 years from date of publish, or 70 years after the death of the original creator, which is unnecessarily long. Copyright used to only be 14 years, with an optional 14 year extension (subject to approval), and I think that’s much closer to reasonable than the current durations. I’d even go so far as to say it should be more like 5-10 years, with an optional extension that’s only granted if the creator can prove they need more time to recuperate costs (perhaps a max of 20 years?).

100% agreed. I’ll take this a step further and suggest we need a constitutionally recognized right to privacy (to protect people from governments) as well as a statutory protection of individual privacy (to protect people from companies). Opt-out privacy violations would become illegal, which should dramatically cut down the worst of it.

Follow that up with reduced copyright durations and stronger copyright protections, which would increase the amount of legally usable training data, while restricting it from the most recently published data.

I think this could solve a number of cybersecurity-related issues, especially if the law states that companies are explicitly legally liable for protection of any PII they collect, which is in line with their duty to safeguard the privacy of their customers.

Wait, they weren’t already? I guess I already assumed that many (most?) black hats were white hats in the daytime. You gotta get that knowledge from somewhere…

Woo! That reminds me, I need to throw some money at them.