In short, people use TOR to avoid being jailed, tortured, and or killed by local authorities for their web browsing habits. There have been fake TOR apps before created and pushed specifically to find undesirables. There's reason to worry about anything unofficial, and the stakes are high.
I doubt this is an NSA effort, as they can break TOR for specific users they target. But it's very easy for an ad display to de-anonymize the user (because it's very hard to stay anonymous on the web - fingerprinting and timing attacks are both pretty easy), and it's the governments who would need that bit of help that pose the most risk to their own citizens.
If this were a year ago, I'd suspect this was some Silk Road guy pushing an app to display his own wares when the app went there, but to judge by the news stories I've seen the FBI has been pretty effective at arresting people who displease the US government on TOR (and it seems they did kill wilileaks as a result, which I suspect was the primary goal of all that), so it's mostly about people in China/Iran/etc. who are benefitting from TOR these days.
Clearly the TOR team is going about this wrong! Stop telling Apple "this app causes your customers to be tortured to death" - Apple cares not. Instead tell Apple "please pull this app, my kid used it to watch porn". Gone in 60 seconds.
Dictators don't care about national interest, but personal interest. Nothing about invading Ukraine helps the average citizen (wait, Putin calls them "subjects") of Russia - it's empire building for the boss.
Sane people don't further their personal interest at the cost of the deaths of thousands or millions.
I've reluctantly accepted that wireless exists, but don't yet trust it.:) None of my PCs have wireless cards, and I do like file transfers at GBE speed.
Oh, sure, if people take the warning seriously and take appropriate preventive measures we're fine! Meanwhile, here in America, after Katrina predictably trashed the levees in Louisiana, we rebuilt them just as before so the next major storm to hit would trash them again. But maybe this will be different, and we'll all act like smart people?
I have surge protection, but it's wimpy on my phone lines - a lighting strike to the phone lines would end in tears. If I were actually worried about this I'd do something to prevent that (if you live in lightning country, a lighting protector at the main breaker box is a wise move in general).
I don't think you'r home electronics are really at risk though. Not enough antenna. You need something with a long cable to pick up the effects of a CME.
The power surges created on those long wires will travel to their endpoints. Anything plugged in may be fried, depending on just how good your surge protection is. How good is your surge protection on your cable and phone lines?
Shall we commit all our military might to protect Ukraine? Domino theory? We're halfway through gutting our military, so it wouldn't be a quick war, and I'm not sure we'd win. Sounds crazy to me.
Russia is a regional power. They will certainly start a war, but it would take insanity on our part that matches or exceeds Putin's to turn it into a world war.
When I had 10 year's experience, I had to struggle to find new work. With 20 years experience, recruiters beat a path to my door. Even without updating my LinkedIn I get a couple of pings a week from company recruiters.
But then, I've kept my skills current, and built a network of former co-workers who think well of me, many of them managers now. Are there companies who won't hire me? I'm sure there are. I don't care. Engineers have never been interchangeable, and your particular skill set including depth of experience limits the work that makes sense for you to attempt.
You can jail leaders, but you can't jail systematic abuse of leadership. There's always a new asshole waiting to step up. It's not the sort of evil that can be fixed by throwing a ring into a volcano.
Better IMO to accept that organizations inevitably become corrupt over time, and put and end to each organization once it's gone to far. You don't have to have the government stop doing that thing, but move the funding to some different or new org.
Depends how "meta" they are. If their careful and question peer review practices and point out common methodology pitfalls, they might do OK. Better still would be to simply do science: science that refutes bogus published results through failure to reproduce the experiment as described. While that's absolutely key for science to work, no one funds it.
The NSA's SIGINT role was vital during the cold war. Now it's just overreach. Foreign SIGINT belongs with the CIA, and DIA on the battlefield. There should be no domestic SIGINT: while valuable, the cost exceeds the benefit.
They need to do more than withhold funding, they need to to put the people violating the law in jail, charge them with treason, and otherwise make their lives miserable.
Jail and torture and mass execution of those involved is trivial to a bureaucracy - but cut their funding and the whole public sector world will take notice, and flee.
Don't forget the existing data: all the hardware should be shredded, and datacenters should be bulldozed "until a no stone stands atop another stone". In short, the NSA is like Beta: it should get the Carthage treatment.
It's damn good for taking notes with a stylus. It's fair for taking notes with a laptop
We use it at work instead of a whiteboard (or PowerPoint) for meetings, most of the time. It comes close to being good enough for that, but doesn't quite make it - the lack of table formatting options really hold it back (or some other way to do "boxes and arrows" more easily). For something other than engineering design meetings, it's probably fine.
It takes more than a well-functioning brain to be an engineer or artist - it takes years of training. OTOH. no one digs a ditch with a shovel any more, so if you meant "backhoe operator", well, all due respect for the apex predator of the internet!
In any case, it's skill that's valuable, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So why then has the EU and CA established even higher restrictions on emissions? Could it be that SULEV, PZEV, or ZEVs actually make a tangible difference?
Don't assume any overlap between politics and reality - you can't reason from "a law was passed about X" to "a law was needed about X".
Air quality has steadily improved in US cities for a couple of decades now. Consumer tailpipe emissions stopped being the dominant factor in air quality some time ago, with 2-strokes taking over (and heavy trucks and other heavy equipment still playing a role).
Old-school diesels are a menace to air quality. You can tell the latest ones in cars in the US are a difference in kind, as the back bumper is no longer stained black around the exhaust. There's really no excuse for particulate emissions with current tech.
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In short, people use TOR to avoid being jailed, tortured, and or killed by local authorities for their web browsing habits. There have been fake TOR apps before created and pushed specifically to find undesirables. There's reason to worry about anything unofficial, and the stakes are high.
I doubt this is an NSA effort, as they can break TOR for specific users they target. But it's very easy for an ad display to de-anonymize the user (because it's very hard to stay anonymous on the web - fingerprinting and timing attacks are both pretty easy), and it's the governments who would need that bit of help that pose the most risk to their own citizens.
If this were a year ago, I'd suspect this was some Silk Road guy pushing an app to display his own wares when the app went there, but to judge by the news stories I've seen the FBI has been pretty effective at arresting people who displease the US government on TOR (and it seems they did kill wilileaks as a result, which I suspect was the primary goal of all that), so it's mostly about people in China/Iran/etc. who are benefitting from TOR these days.
Clearly the TOR team is going about this wrong! Stop telling Apple "this app causes your customers to be tortured to death" - Apple cares not. Instead tell Apple "please pull this app, my kid used it to watch porn". Gone in 60 seconds.
Dictators don't care about national interest, but personal interest. Nothing about invading Ukraine helps the average citizen (wait, Putin calls them "subjects") of Russia - it's empire building for the boss.
Sane people don't further their personal interest at the cost of the deaths of thousands or millions.
I've reluctantly accepted that wireless exists, but don't yet trust it. :) None of my PCs have wireless cards, and I do like file transfers at GBE speed.
My DSL modem, which my PCs are wired to. Better a lighting strike than sending money to a cable company!
Oh, sure, if people take the warning seriously and take appropriate preventive measures we're fine! Meanwhile, here in America, after Katrina predictably trashed the levees in Louisiana, we rebuilt them just as before so the next major storm to hit would trash them again. But maybe this will be different, and we'll all act like smart people?
I have surge protection, but it's wimpy on my phone lines - a lighting strike to the phone lines would end in tears. If I were actually worried about this I'd do something to prevent that (if you live in lightning country, a lighting protector at the main breaker box is a wise move in general).
Oh, sure, lord it over us data peasants why don't you? Shall we knuckle under when you ride by on your mighty data horse?
I don't think you'r home electronics are really at risk though. Not enough antenna. You need something with a long cable to pick up the effects of a CME.
The power surges created on those long wires will travel to their endpoints. Anything plugged in may be fried, depending on just how good your surge protection is. How good is your surge protection on your cable and phone lines?
Shall we commit all our military might to protect Ukraine? Domino theory? We're halfway through gutting our military, so it wouldn't be a quick war, and I'm not sure we'd win. Sounds crazy to me.
Russia is a regional power. They will certainly start a war, but it would take insanity on our part that matches or exceeds Putin's to turn it into a world war.
When I had 10 year's experience, I had to struggle to find new work. With 20 years experience, recruiters beat a path to my door. Even without updating my LinkedIn I get a couple of pings a week from company recruiters.
But then, I've kept my skills current, and built a network of former co-workers who think well of me, many of them managers now. Are there companies who won't hire me? I'm sure there are. I don't care. Engineers have never been interchangeable, and your particular skill set including depth of experience limits the work that makes sense for you to attempt.
You can jail leaders, but you can't jail systematic abuse of leadership. There's always a new asshole waiting to step up. It's not the sort of evil that can be fixed by throwing a ring into a volcano.
Better IMO to accept that organizations inevitably become corrupt over time, and put and end to each organization once it's gone to far. You don't have to have the government stop doing that thing, but move the funding to some different or new org.
You forgot "but first, let me take a selfie"
I remember when COBOL could make similarly important-sounding claims. Didn't change the fact that COBOL blows goats.
Depends how "meta" they are. If their careful and question peer review practices and point out common methodology pitfalls, they might do OK. Better still would be to simply do science: science that refutes bogus published results through failure to reproduce the experiment as described. While that's absolutely key for science to work, no one funds it.
The NSA's SIGINT role was vital during the cold war. Now it's just overreach. Foreign SIGINT belongs with the CIA, and DIA on the battlefield. There should be no domestic SIGINT: while valuable, the cost exceeds the benefit.
They need to do more than withhold funding, they need to to put the people violating the law in jail, charge them with treason, and otherwise make their lives miserable.
Jail and torture and mass execution of those involved is trivial to a bureaucracy - but cut their funding and the whole public sector world will take notice, and flee.
And who is all this spying for? Could it be ... perhaps ... SATAN?
Don't forget the existing data: all the hardware should be shredded, and datacenters should be bulldozed "until a no stone stands atop another stone". In short, the NSA is like Beta: it should get the Carthage treatment.
It's damn good for taking notes with a stylus. It's fair for taking notes with a laptop
We use it at work instead of a whiteboard (or PowerPoint) for meetings, most of the time. It comes close to being good enough for that, but doesn't quite make it - the lack of table formatting options really hold it back (or some other way to do "boxes and arrows" more easily). For something other than engineering design meetings, it's probably fine.
A Microsoft account is also free, but they're giving away the normal client software, not just some cloud offering, right?
Whether OneNote is wonderfully organized or a big disorganized mess is not a property of OneNote. :)
It takes more than a well-functioning brain to be an engineer or artist - it takes years of training. OTOH. no one digs a ditch with a shovel any more, so if you meant "backhoe operator", well, all due respect for the apex predator of the internet!
In any case, it's skill that's valuable, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So why then has the EU and CA established even higher restrictions on emissions? Could it be that SULEV, PZEV, or ZEVs actually make a tangible difference?
Don't assume any overlap between politics and reality - you can't reason from "a law was passed about X" to "a law was needed about X".
Air quality has steadily improved in US cities for a couple of decades now. Consumer tailpipe emissions stopped being the dominant factor in air quality some time ago, with 2-strokes taking over (and heavy trucks and other heavy equipment still playing a role).
Old-school diesels are a menace to air quality. You can tell the latest ones in cars in the US are a difference in kind, as the back bumper is no longer stained black around the exhaust. There's really no excuse for particulate emissions with current tech.