is horseshit. This idiot should learn the basic facts before opening his trap. I read court filings on this just in a past few days (widely reported) that include the information that Apple has never provided this type of assistance.
There are currently over a dozen cases where the government is attempting to use the All Writs Act to force Apple to do this sort of work; all of those are pending and under challenge or appeal.
Zero is not "countless" even for small values of countless.;)
It would, because there would be a paper trail on the employee. If you know it is not an accident that changes the meaning of all the details in the investigation at the company; you can follow leads a lot more confidently. You also know to invest real money in certain types of audits of network activity that would not otherwise be of clear value.
If it is not distinguishable from a mistake, then you can't make inferences of malicious intent, and you can't reasonably audit networks expecting to uncover anything. You also don't know when the lack of information is suspicious and implies an altered log, or when you simply failed to find a correlation. There are lots of details where knowing that there is a malicious party involved really helps to decide which logs to worry more about. Whereas if you weren't sure there was anything amiss, it would just be wasted money and if you didn't find anything, you could keep looking forever.
Just because you disbelieve the factual nature of every statement doesn't automatically mean it is "FUD." FUD is a real accusation with real meaning, it isn't just how you say BS when you're visiting slashdot.
There is no reason at all to create FUD here. He is clearly not trying to create that at all; he is trying to create certainty about his own relevance to the issue, and calling out various elements in the government by accusing them of what they are suspected of doing. Time will tend to prove him right in a significant percent of those types of accusations. It is a good strategy to raise his profile, which he is obviously doing with his work at business insider.
Also he raises important general philosophical issues software development practices, and proposes specific responses to them.
You can disagree with everything he says, but it won't add up to FUD.
If you're worried about the "sanity of the message" and flat-out conflating the quality of the messenger with the quality of the message, I can you're wrong and dull-minded in the most ordinary, typical, sane way. You're very sane, you just don't comprehend the activities around you. Your position would only be insane if held by a mentally competent person. An incompetent person is not insane merely because they do not comprehend.
"Grain of salt" just means that you don't believe it blindly, you're aware the details may be wrong and you have to check them before believing each one. It applies to everything all the time; the phrase is just a reminder in some cases that checking is prudent.
Checking the details of what he says is important, you might have missed a few of the jokes with just a casual listening.
But I'm not convinced you understand American English cliches very well.
Instead, research the subject independently and come back here to discuss things more interesting than whatever vapid shit the story went on and on about.
This is exactly the reason I use a VPN at work for "everything" not customer-facing. I don't really care if a sophisticated attacker could get in; I have backups and would never pay anybody for that data. I'm more worried about casual access, and confidential business data ending up in web caches or other databases.
Doesn't mean I leave things less secure than practicable, it just means that I don't get snooty about having it locked down well. The important thing is having it locked down at all!
Heck, my car isn't entirely locked down either; a professional could break in a few seconds. If my car got stolen it would cause me more grief than if my webservers got p0wned; I can't just re-install my car the same day.
They are protecting the rights of their customers in this instance
False. They are protecting their own rights, not the rights of their customers. As a matter of fact. The stuff about "customer rights" is PR. Customers don't have a "right" to secure products, they are simply free to choose a product they believe to be more secure. Customers preferring secure products invokes Apple's right to offer what products they believe will sell. Apple has a right to choose what they sell, customers don't have a right to have certain features offered in the marketplace.
No, actually Apple is claiming legal high ground. Time will tell, but their position seems to be a slam dunk. Just read the decisions that the FBI is claiming in their filings support them; they don't! In the NY phone case, the phone company already used the equipment they were asked to deploy, and it is right in the decision that that is one of the main reasons that they had to assist; they were already assisting clients using the same tool! Very different than Apple's case. The media is intentionally reporting this in a hand-wringing, "gosh nobody knows" type of fashion, as are many legal blogs, but as awesome as clicks are, Apple really does have the high ground.
I've been hating Apple ever since I first used a Mac. (loved the ][series though)
I can hate Apple at the same time as agreeing that they deserve Freedom. I can hate them even while standing up for their right to choose their own speech, to write (only) the software that they want to write. I can hate them even while standing up for their right under the 5th Amendment to have their own PR and not to have it taken away by the FBI without just compensation for the loss. Considering the incredible label-markup their products command, I doubt the FBI could even afford to buy out their PR as a legit taking.;)
A lot of people in the world just don't imagine how deep the American love of our Freedoms is. Love of Freedom trumps love of life, it certainly trumps hate of elitist walled gardens. If they can afford their stinky garden, then let them wallow in it!
Likewise, we're pretty neutral on Chinese freedom. If they valued it, they would have it. They seem to value national unity more. They are free to have that system.;)
Apple isn't a "Freedom Fighter" they're an American company who insists on fighting for their own American freedoms.
They're not Chinese, they don't really have a stake in Chinese Freedom, or an expectation of it.
It doesn't need to "fool" anybody; American companies are expected to stand up for their own rights, it is a prerogative of those having some Freedom, it is not presumed to be some sort of ideological or political or PR endeavor.
Is it still a "malfunction" if some percent of Tor users are in fact treating the hosts they connect to with mal-intent? And what if frequent captchas are believed to reduce specific forms of malicious behavior?
It may simply be a feature that is unpopular with some small subset of users.
You mistakenly believe that they are targeting Tor directly, rather than indirectly. They don't download a list of these IPs, they have the list based on what IPs are being used in attacks. An unpublished exit node would have just as many attacks appearing to originate from it as a published exit node, and would make the blacklist in the exact same amount of time.
These are lists created by software, not lists input by humans. That is silly, there are actually lots of IPs that need blocking. Lots and lots. And lots. If they were being input by hand, there would be a whole major country employed in doing it.;)
In any case, you have an odd definition of a "living hell" even from a first-world perspective.
Stop oppressing me by tracking me when I'm pretending I'm anonymous! lololol
Once upon a time, Tor was a shining beacon of light that caused me to think fond thoughts of oppressed Persians being able to access their own cultural history via the West. These days, they have phone apps for that in their own language, and Tor is just a joke that never stops giving.
One thing I've considered is maybe there should be an exit node that only accepts connections from countries that have repressive regimes, and few or no remotely-purchasable VPS hosting services. Or at least no VPS services with English or Russian sales pages.;)
Then you might have a safe exit node without all the American trolls and Russian criminals.
Pre-emptive strike: No, I did not overlook that various technical changes would be required, I simply didn't go into it.
I also have to block about 10% of Brazil that is still on shared IPs. Sad but true. It used to be like 25%, but as their ISPs upgrade to modern systems and give out IPs to individual users it is improving. IPv6 will mostly solve that.
What I would do is to increase the presence of US law enforcement on Tor.
Tor was created by the US government, not for privacy but for freedom of political and cultural speech under oppressive regimes. The whole premise of Tor was that a citizen of a repressive regime would be able to access the internet as if they were in a free nation; they would appear on the internet as being from there, and the only people who would have enough network access to identify them would be the people on the western side.
Those people are the "legitimate" traffic. The reason why libraries sign up as Tor nodes is to grant people under repressive regimes to view the world as it is viewed from a western library.
It is hilarious the people who think Tor would be some sort of "privacy" service that would shield their browsing from the US Government. The whole premise was to create a safe space for communication that was locally banned, but legal in the US and like-minded States. In my opinion, if people want to prevent Tor from being banned as a source of abuse, all they have to do is limit its use to the intended use. If they want it to be broadly used for other things, eventually it will be blocked from accessing almost anything, because DoS attacks are a thing.
They probably just missed a digit. Same thing happened to Solon when he related the story of Atlantis from the Egyptian priests to Plato; for thousands of years nobody could find the buried palace at Thera because of it, too. They were looking for a whole continent, instead of an island, because the dot in the center of a circle was misplaced. I blame the Egyptians, but it might have even been Solon's mistaken translation.
Yahoo! is real, it is out there somewhere, buried under the rubble of category-based browsing.
It isn't, and you already have the page if you realized that the javascript app doesn't work for you.
It is entirely up to the individual if they want to consume data from javascript apps, or only from "web pages." But if you're using a web browser, you can't generally even get the app until you have the page. If the page doesn't have content, that is easy to solve by closing it and surfing the next wave, or by finding better information sources.
Take responsibility for the pixels you consume; there are way too many available pixel configurations offered for random or passive consumption to result in personally relevant experiences.
You can't even identify one thing that I said that would count as "baggage." You'll have to carry it yourself, because it is entirely in your stuff.
When you want to make that sort of accusation, you need to be able to back it up with specific analysis; what words are you saying implied baggage? Without even any specificity of what you think is in error, you haven't even made the claim.
The idea of "baggage" in a conversation is a real idea, it isn't a general negative like "that stinks" or "you're wrong." It is a specific sort of accusation that is open to analysis, and yet you are unable to find it; before or after making said accusation!
Look at a map of the English colony, which was not in fact English soil and was never actually annexed by England. (That's actually part of the premise of a colony; it isn't your nation's actual soil, it is just a place you have some economic interest in)
Now that you've found out about these "map" things that modern society has, what percent of the US population lives in a place that was ever even part of a British colony?
If the whole premise of your question is horse shit, then don't expect me to worry about if I answered the part you asked about. I will instead attempt to correct the low hanging fruit among your fallacies.
I'm a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell, you might not want to engage too seriously in silly arguments about that which was owned in the past by different people, based on hereditary claims. It might turn out I own your land by that sort of theory. And why did fat King George "own" anything at all? Oh, because Richard Cromwell granted the crown control of foreign policy. Georgie certainly didn't rule anything in Britain, the Parliament already ruled that. Weak sauce in so many ways. And that is without even getting into treaties between governments that establish the British recognition of the United States and her borders.
Slashdot Mirror
Specifically:
is horseshit. This idiot should learn the basic facts before opening his trap. I read court filings on this just in a past few days (widely reported) that include the information that Apple has never provided this type of assistance.
There are currently over a dozen cases where the government is attempting to use the All Writs Act to force Apple to do this sort of work; all of those are pending and under challenge or appeal.
Zero is not "countless" even for small values of countless. ;)
I'm pretty sure that having a low slashdot uid also went out of vogue 20 years ago
Wow kiddo, never stopped being jealous over digits. What a maroon.
No, I said we don't want any get off the lawn
It would, because there would be a paper trail on the employee. If you know it is not an accident that changes the meaning of all the details in the investigation at the company; you can follow leads a lot more confidently. You also know to invest real money in certain types of audits of network activity that would not otherwise be of clear value.
If it is not distinguishable from a mistake, then you can't make inferences of malicious intent, and you can't reasonably audit networks expecting to uncover anything. You also don't know when the lack of information is suspicious and implies an altered log, or when you simply failed to find a correlation. There are lots of details where knowing that there is a malicious party involved really helps to decide which logs to worry more about. Whereas if you weren't sure there was anything amiss, it would just be wasted money and if you didn't find anything, you could keep looking forever.
Just because you disbelieve the factual nature of every statement doesn't automatically mean it is "FUD." FUD is a real accusation with real meaning, it isn't just how you say BS when you're visiting slashdot.
There is no reason at all to create FUD here. He is clearly not trying to create that at all; he is trying to create certainty about his own relevance to the issue, and calling out various elements in the government by accusing them of what they are suspected of doing. Time will tend to prove him right in a significant percent of those types of accusations. It is a good strategy to raise his profile, which he is obviously doing with his work at business insider.
Also he raises important general philosophical issues software development practices, and proposes specific responses to them.
You can disagree with everything he says, but it won't add up to FUD.
If you're worried about the "sanity of the message" and flat-out conflating the quality of the messenger with the quality of the message, I can you're wrong and dull-minded in the most ordinary, typical, sane way. You're very sane, you just don't comprehend the activities around you. Your position would only be insane if held by a mentally competent person. An incompetent person is not insane merely because they do not comprehend.
"Grain of salt" just means that you don't believe it blindly, you're aware the details may be wrong and you have to check them before believing each one. It applies to everything all the time; the phrase is just a reminder in some cases that checking is prudent.
Checking the details of what he says is important, you might have missed a few of the jokes with just a casual listening.
But I'm not convinced you understand American English cliches very well.
Never click the story. This is slashdot.
Instead, research the subject independently and come back here to discuss things more interesting than whatever vapid shit the story went on and on about.
This is exactly the reason I use a VPN at work for "everything" not customer-facing. I don't really care if a sophisticated attacker could get in; I have backups and would never pay anybody for that data. I'm more worried about casual access, and confidential business data ending up in web caches or other databases.
Doesn't mean I leave things less secure than practicable, it just means that I don't get snooty about having it locked down well. The important thing is having it locked down at all!
Heck, my car isn't entirely locked down either; a professional could break in a few seconds. If my car got stolen it would cause me more grief than if my webservers got p0wned; I can't just re-install my car the same day.
They are protecting the rights of their customers in this instance
False. They are protecting their own rights, not the rights of their customers. As a matter of fact. The stuff about "customer rights" is PR. Customers don't have a "right" to secure products, they are simply free to choose a product they believe to be more secure. Customers preferring secure products invokes Apple's right to offer what products they believe will sell. Apple has a right to choose what they sell, customers don't have a right to have certain features offered in the marketplace.
Apple is claiming a moral highground
No, actually Apple is claiming legal high ground. Time will tell, but their position seems to be a slam dunk. Just read the decisions that the FBI is claiming in their filings support them; they don't! In the NY phone case, the phone company already used the equipment they were asked to deploy, and it is right in the decision that that is one of the main reasons that they had to assist; they were already assisting clients using the same tool! Very different than Apple's case. The media is intentionally reporting this in a hand-wringing, "gosh nobody knows" type of fashion, as are many legal blogs, but as awesome as clicks are, Apple really does have the high ground.
I've been hating Apple ever since I first used a Mac. (loved the ][series though)
I can hate Apple at the same time as agreeing that they deserve Freedom. I can hate them even while standing up for their right to choose their own speech, to write (only) the software that they want to write. I can hate them even while standing up for their right under the 5th Amendment to have their own PR and not to have it taken away by the FBI without just compensation for the loss. Considering the incredible label-markup their products command, I doubt the FBI could even afford to buy out their PR as a legit taking. ;)
A lot of people in the world just don't imagine how deep the American love of our Freedoms is. Love of Freedom trumps love of life, it certainly trumps hate of elitist walled gardens. If they can afford their stinky garden, then let them wallow in it!
Likewise, we're pretty neutral on Chinese freedom. If they valued it, they would have it. They seem to value national unity more. They are free to have that system. ;)
Apple isn't a "Freedom Fighter" they're an American company who insists on fighting for their own American freedoms.
They're not Chinese, they don't really have a stake in Chinese Freedom, or an expectation of it.
It doesn't need to "fool" anybody; American companies are expected to stand up for their own rights, it is a prerogative of those having some Freedom, it is not presumed to be some sort of ideological or political or PR endeavor.
Is it still a "malfunction" if some percent of Tor users are in fact treating the hosts they connect to with mal-intent? And what if frequent captchas are believed to reduce specific forms of malicious behavior?
It may simply be a feature that is unpopular with some small subset of users.
You mistakenly believe that they are targeting Tor directly, rather than indirectly. They don't download a list of these IPs, they have the list based on what IPs are being used in attacks. An unpublished exit node would have just as many attacks appearing to originate from it as a published exit node, and would make the blacklist in the exact same amount of time.
These are lists created by software, not lists input by humans. That is silly, there are actually lots of IPs that need blocking. Lots and lots. And lots. If they were being input by hand, there would be a whole major country employed in doing it. ;)
Yeah, what an idiot that Sisyphus was, he should have just closed the window and ignored the stone! They were sure simple-minded in the past.
Because no baby animal ever died to replace a dairy with a chemical factory!
Oh, wait...
In any case, you have an odd definition of a "living hell" even from a first-world perspective.
Stop oppressing me by tracking me when I'm pretending I'm anonymous! lololol
Once upon a time, Tor was a shining beacon of light that caused me to think fond thoughts of oppressed Persians being able to access their own cultural history via the West. These days, they have phone apps for that in their own language, and Tor is just a joke that never stops giving.
One thing I've considered is maybe there should be an exit node that only accepts connections from countries that have repressive regimes, and few or no remotely-purchasable VPS hosting services. Or at least no VPS services with English or Russian sales pages. ;)
Then you might have a safe exit node without all the American trolls and Russian criminals.
Pre-emptive strike: No, I did not overlook that various technical changes would be required, I simply didn't go into it.
You say you doubt they do it purposely, but then you go on to describe doing it purposely, for reasons.
Yes, they likely do have reasons. It is a valuable insight that many are missing.
I also have to block about 10% of Brazil that is still on shared IPs. Sad but true. It used to be like 25%, but as their ISPs upgrade to modern systems and give out IPs to individual users it is improving. IPv6 will mostly solve that.
What I would do is to increase the presence of US law enforcement on Tor.
Tor was created by the US government, not for privacy but for freedom of political and cultural speech under oppressive regimes. The whole premise of Tor was that a citizen of a repressive regime would be able to access the internet as if they were in a free nation; they would appear on the internet as being from there, and the only people who would have enough network access to identify them would be the people on the western side.
Those people are the "legitimate" traffic. The reason why libraries sign up as Tor nodes is to grant people under repressive regimes to view the world as it is viewed from a western library.
It is hilarious the people who think Tor would be some sort of "privacy" service that would shield their browsing from the US Government. The whole premise was to create a safe space for communication that was locally banned, but legal in the US and like-minded States. In my opinion, if people want to prevent Tor from being banned as a source of abuse, all they have to do is limit its use to the intended use. If they want it to be broadly used for other things, eventually it will be blocked from accessing almost anything, because DoS attacks are a thing.
They probably just missed a digit. Same thing happened to Solon when he related the story of Atlantis from the Egyptian priests to Plato; for thousands of years nobody could find the buried palace at Thera because of it, too. They were looking for a whole continent, instead of an island, because the dot in the center of a circle was misplaced. I blame the Egyptians, but it might have even been Solon's mistaken translation.
Yahoo! is real, it is out there somewhere, buried under the rubble of category-based browsing.
It isn't, and you already have the page if you realized that the javascript app doesn't work for you.
It is entirely up to the individual if they want to consume data from javascript apps, or only from "web pages." But if you're using a web browser, you can't generally even get the app until you have the page. If the page doesn't have content, that is easy to solve by closing it and surfing the next wave, or by finding better information sources.
Take responsibility for the pixels you consume; there are way too many available pixel configurations offered for random or passive consumption to result in personally relevant experiences.
You can't even identify one thing that I said that would count as "baggage." You'll have to carry it yourself, because it is entirely in your stuff.
When you want to make that sort of accusation, you need to be able to back it up with specific analysis; what words are you saying implied baggage? Without even any specificity of what you think is in error, you haven't even made the claim.
The idea of "baggage" in a conversation is a real idea, it isn't a general negative like "that stinks" or "you're wrong." It is a specific sort of accusation that is open to analysis, and yet you are unable to find it; before or after making said accusation!
Find a map, don't just be an arse.
Look at a map of the English colony, which was not in fact English soil and was never actually annexed by England. (That's actually part of the premise of a colony; it isn't your nation's actual soil, it is just a place you have some economic interest in)
Now that you've found out about these "map" things that modern society has, what percent of the US population lives in a place that was ever even part of a British colony?
If the whole premise of your question is horse shit, then don't expect me to worry about if I answered the part you asked about. I will instead attempt to correct the low hanging fruit among your fallacies.
I'm a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell, you might not want to engage too seriously in silly arguments about that which was owned in the past by different people, based on hereditary claims. It might turn out I own your land by that sort of theory. And why did fat King George "own" anything at all? Oh, because Richard Cromwell granted the crown control of foreign policy. Georgie certainly didn't rule anything in Britain, the Parliament already ruled that. Weak sauce in so many ways. And that is without even getting into treaties between governments that establish the British recognition of the United States and her borders.