Recent submissions

Comment · 2 days ago
https://www.tuta.com/ Is the only other major player I am aware of— although they have a significantly smaller product lineup than Proton, and aren’t as viable an alternative to Google for those who want a fully integrated suite. Tuta does Mail and Calendar fairly well, cant speak to their drive product.

The other option is self hosting.

Comment · 3 days ago
Parent’s point is that economic inequality is so bad that the costs are meaningless to the ultra wealthy.
Comment · 7 days ago
This assumes that it is possible to actually write truly secure code.

Even of that were possible in the abstract, it would also have to be secure when running on hardware. I personally don’t believe that perfect security can exist or that we will reach that ideal of somehow being ahead of the curve. Patches will get better and faster, so will exploits. The stakes will grow. There will always be a human or budget issue.

The only way I see to mitigate the impact is to reduce our reliance on connected systems.

Comment · 11 days ago
I just love getting a full body lidar scan by a random corporation while I’m walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood!

I can’t possibly imagine any bad stuff happening as a result of petabytes of frequent high resolution data being constantly captured in our communities!

Definitely no privacy concerns there, we love IoT connected sensors on all our vehicles! It’s not like anyone has ever used these incidental surveillance systems to target critical infrastructure or assassinate targets before, that would be crazy making. Anyway, I’m glad that Waymo constantly surveils it’s occupants too and snitches to the cops, that’s super chill.

Comment · 16 days ago
When your project is literally writing a BIOS/ UEFI alternative that exists for the purpose of making base runtime systems open and verifiable and to improve the user’s ability to trust in their system, an opposition to unverified machine generated code seems not only justifiable but sensible. If Leah were not taking steps to mitigate generated code in the project, the project would no longer meet my needs as a Libreboot user.
Comment · 20 days ago
One requires owning the device you are using (which apple/google has default visibility into, and which becomes a data aggregator) the other does not.
Comment · 29 days ago
> According to the legal filing, that afternoon, J.C. [an ICE agent] called [the spouse of an individual who had lawfully recorded an ICE detainment] on her cell phone, identifying himself only as "the Department of Homeland Security." According to [the call recipient], he told her she "should encourage" her spouse, [the observer], "not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist." J.C. testified in a deposition that he warned [the observer’s spouse] she would be arrested if she “continue[d] to do this.”

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone following US news, but we should be angry about it. Textbook intimidation.

> Government attorneys asserted in a court filing that [agent J.C.] denied referencing a “domestic terrorism watchlist.”

And then they lied about it!

Comment · 1 month ago
This could also be achieved so many other ways for a fraction of the price
Comment · 1 month ago
There is at least one attempt [0] of input manipulation I am aware of, but it was several years ago, unproven, and I have to assume that input data manipulation vulnerabilities are unlikely to be present. If a new destructive attack could be found by visual data input, mass simultaneous deployment would be the most effective use of it, the logistical issues of which are a substantial barrier to efficacy.

Changing stickers or vehicle color would have little effect since they would all be read normally: you change your clothes daily but that does not have any impact on the database itself or the cameras. Swapping or covering plates is illegal, and even things like ghost plates [1] are just misdirection and would do nothing to combat the surveillance system itself.

Wrapping tour vehicle in a custom tailored adversarial pattern [2] may work, but this is mostly unproven technology in the field, and it would only work until the failures it caused became part of the training set, at which point you would need to re-wrap tour vehicle. It would also be a lot of effort and expense to do something that wouldn't make any impact on the surveillance systems themselves (by definition the best case scenario here is that object detection does not work on the wrapped vehicle, but it could still be recorded and you would not be doing anything to combat the surveillance itself).

Ultimately, our best bet is to start with the end goal: stop the data from being collected in the first place, don’t just try to hide from it. Social and political campaigning is probably the most effective path currently. Map your neighborhood on deflock.me, put flyers on your local streets, talk to your neighbors, attend city council meetings, and call your reps incessantly. Change the incentives… If you are independently wealthy, offer your county or PD a donation (via their PAC or a grant) in exchange for signing an agreement for X years to not use these technologies. If you work in governance, tie funding to privacy agreements. Make individual donations to groups like the Ludlow Institute or EFF, or ask them about grant funding for your projects. If we are able to pass better privacy laws, it’s possible that a private right of action would make it prohibitively costly for private companies to create programs like this which mass infringe on personal rights.

Some individuals have taken to the more expedient solution of direct action, physically disabling cameras with spray foam, tin snips, etc for a more expedient solution (vandalism is obviously illegal, don’t do crimes, that would be bad and naughty).

[0] https://www.ioactive.com/sql-injection-in-the-wild/ [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq9860162dj2o [2] https://sandbox.norecognition.org/

Comment · 1 month ago
I think it might be symptomatic of broader tech illiteracy: People don't know anything else or anything better. They want their software to Just Work, and ultimately the decision is made by an executive who decides that microsoft products are “the most stable” or “easiest” route.
Comment · 1 month ago
What a terrible fucked up system.
Comment · 1 month ago
Chaotic neutral behavior.
Comment · 1 month ago
I think parent is within bounds to complain here. This is a pretty horrendous font that is an accessibility issue not just a “tangential annoyance”— this is also a uniquely nauseating multi color font with flicker effects that is both interesting in its own right and hardly common.

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton