So all this is trying to solve, while introducing a whole lot of other complexities, is the delay caused by trains stopping at intermediary stations? Where individual carriages can part of the main track, allowing others to carry on? And what about railroad crossings? Are most supposed to be dissolved, while centralizing all to fewer that separate rail from passage? Because with all these individual carriages on track, crossings will be occupied a lot more frequently. There’s simply no way to safeguard all of these crossings, and if an event occurs, it disrupts large sections of the network.

For me it’s their ransomware-like business model of: attracting new users with free accounts, incentivizing them to migrate their Gmail inbox to Proton (Easy Switch), encrypting the content (“for security”), and then letting them find out that a paid feature (Bridge) is necessary to integrate the mailbox into a third-party client like Thunderbird (as a decryption layer in between); well, unless you want to manually export the mailbox using their Mail Export Tool. I’m not opposed to paying for a service (I also donate to Disroot), but I dropped them like a hot brick when I found out: thankfully not the hard way (I tested integration before migration).

I’m not going to waste more of my time on this “project”, because it screams AI (just like the linked video). It effectively appears like a GrapheneOS rip-off, with some pre-configured applications bundled. All for a modest $299 for just the software, or a full package for $999… Absolute leeches. And how does one even find a video like this? I doubt I could, even if I tried.

Or certificate providers are ordered to provide a false certificate; or in case of Europe (thanks to the GDPR), the “data protection officer” that larger services operating in the Union (including cloud- and hosting-services: hosting most of the modern internet), are forced to employ and provide with unrestricted access (supposedly “to monitor compliance”), may be ordered to do additional processing (including that for which their “employer” has no legal basis), whilst being gagged by “professional secrecy” (including towards this “employer”); and the NSA also has a program that seeks to weaken TLS standards (at least by pushing standards for post-quantum encryption (PQE) only, instead of AES + PQE).

On devices I use personally I haven’t encountered such examples for years, because the first thing I do is substitute first-party apps with FOSS alternatives. My mom does however, and her Samsung’s camera app for example, won’t function unless you give it permission to scan for nearby devices; among others, which I can’t fully remember. So the stock Android experience seems similar to what you’re describing for iOS.

Last time I removed malware from my grandma’s smartphone, I made sure to install Signal to it. Sometimes you just got to demonstrate to them how low impact a change is. Many elderly are frightened by the idea that their experience changes, on a device they depend on but hardly understand. So demonstrate, rather than trying to convince them of something they fail to understand. The worst that can happen is that they tell you to remove it again, but in case of my grandma, she comfortably uses Signal. Just make sure you send some example messages back and forth, so they understand how similar the workflow is.

I never give apps I distrust permission to my photos, I instead select the photos in my gallery app and share them with the app. And as a side note, many users have cloud backups enabled, whether intentionally or accidentally (having clicked “accept” once, instead of “ask me later”); so big-tech likely stores a copy of the actual pictures, and depending on how lackluster the defaults are regarding privacy, have full access to it.

Western governments should look in the mirror, instead of solely putting the blame at information-campaigns from foreign actors. The whole reason why these theories seem plausible to your own citizens, is because they have no faith in you; because you have a track record of acting against their best interests. An increasing number of people are sick of hearing one-sided, fearmongering, and escalating narratives, where anything that challenges that, be it truthful or not, may resonate with this group. And good luck discerning disinformation from misinformation, where the only difference is intent; which will be challenging to substantiate.

So for RSA without padding, a threat actor could request lots of tokens (without getting rate-limited?), and use that as information to more precisely focus efforts to brute-force the key, and thereby reducing the number of operations required to do so? Or am I misunderstanding it?

If you leave them to choose between WhatsApp and Signal, they’ll pick what they already have and what they’re familiar with. I deleted WhatsApp after they introduced MetaAI, and told people close to me, that they could only message me using Signal going forward. Just make sure you support people that have difficulty installing and using the app. When removing malware from my grandma’s smartphone, I also made sure to install Signal, and she now comfortably contacts me through it for minor things. It’s not like you’re inconveniencing them much: it’s just an app installation and basic setup, while the workflow is nearly identical; especially if you allow them to find you through your phone number (which I have disabled).

And how exactly do you plan on curbing addressing through cryptographic hashes, instead of IP addresses directly, where client and server are separated through intermediary nodes? If the site exists on an anonymizing network (like I2P or TOR), it becomes a lot harder to identify the IP address of centralized services, and impossible where decentralized. Well, unless you go fully authoritarian, and only allow weakened encryption standards: exploited by authorities, and others aware of ways to exploit the weaknesses.

But I suppose this further disincentivizes ordinary, less tech-savvy, would-be “pirates”, that need the clear-web for torrent links… Which we should make our responsibility, to enrich the knowledge of said persons, so that they can bypass regulations of governments, that fundamentally act against their best interests. It’s time for people to rediscover torrenting, like many households did in the 2000’s, instead of giving away their freedoms to subscriptions, purely for the sake of short-term convenience.

I’ve found documents, which alongside all the flowery language of protecting the children, states in section 2.3 that providers are obliged to perform age verification upon account creation, relying on “the age verification tool” (which I assume is the EU Digital Identity Wallet).

So if these hypocrites could just pause patting themselves on the back, and for once, explain that the default experience, for at least large online platforms, is one that is also considered “appropriate” for children of all ages; and therefore extremely limiting for adults. Well, unless you just integrate your government issued ID into a wallet, that (at least locally) creates links between it and your accounts (you might want to keep anonymous).

There’s also a lot of decent points that are being made, but which could easily be viewed separate from the identity-gating of the “open” internet. An age-bracket, based on a local, self-reported, password-protected ‘date of birth’ field, would be more than sufficient, but instead the EU chooses to fundamentally distrusts its citizens, while asking for unreasonable levels of trust in return. And similar to Google’s reCAPTCHA, I don’t even have, nor have desires to have, an iOS or Android smartphone that supports the application.

At least for WhatsApp and Signal, it appears the user is required to open the messenger app, navigate to the linking setting, authenticate themselves, and scan the QR code on the device that is to be linked (or one that corresponds to it, but hiding in a malicious e-mail). I can’t find any flow that allows for a QR code to link directly to the authentication mechanism, and provide the authentication code to it, while bypassing user authentication.

So again by linking accounts to a device operated by police or customs in this case. Which for SMS confirmations, I understand can be intercepted and confirmed by authorities, but the QR exploit seems farther fetched (because who in their right mind would open a messenger and scan a random QR?); and of course if you have access to a target’s unlocked device, it becomes trivial.

Once again… Because Chinese models keep forcing US AI companies to prematurely release their backstock of “future” iterations, meant to sustain the hype train: leading to plateauing, decreases in investor confidence, and ultimately the demise of the AI bubble. And are we referring to Sam Altman as “OpenAI boss” now? Because people might otherwise stop reading after: “Sam Altman says…”

I really can’t stand the “Not now”, where “services” (including Google’s backup service) prey on the user accidentally agreeing one day.

I’m not familiar with UK legislation in particular, but considering approaches taken by other legislative bodies, their works effectively require online services to serve “age-appropriate experiences” based on age signals; which includes websites, applications and application stores. So unless an adult is content with just experiences deemed “appropriate” for all users (even children under 10), the user is extremely limited in their access. So I don’t think “bricked” is necessarily an overstatement.

Maybe because now it’s Google Gemini under the hood?

It’s Apple buying goodwill, for both itself and the Trump administration, while only marginally benefiting the average US citizen, if at all.

I’m not saying it isn’t pathetic, but Apple has a track record of gobbling Trump’s marbles for business, so it should be expected they aren’t risking anything over the name of a lake in their mapping service.