MFogleman
Joined 8 years ago
Joined 8 years ago
I'm not asserting whether things are safer or not. Im asserting that judging "safer" cannot be accurately done with metrics such as "murder rate".
I can't vouch for the reliability of this source[1], but it will serve for my example here. The murder rate in the US was 5 and 5.1 in 1960 and 2019 respectively. The aggravated assault rate was shot from 86 to 250.
Life didn't get safer, we just got better at saving lives.
Then again, this looks like its probably based on UCR data, which is sent to the FBI from local/state law enforcement. I imagine there are certain demographics, especially in 1960s America, that didn't get crimes against them reported with full accuracy.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Especially regarding crime. "Gun violence" can include suicide in some reporting systems, and not in others. Some will put a shooting at a bank robbery in with the same category as a single mother shooting an intruder in her home, and some wont.
My point is that the subject of safety is far more complicated than "See, less people are dead, it's safer". Imagine a special forces team of 20 conducts 100 hostage rescues in a year, gets in a firefight in every one, takes multiple injuries, but no one dies. Now imagine the logistics unit of 20 that performs maintenance, paperwork, administrative functions, etc, at a forward operating base has one of their members crushed by a vending machine.
1 in 20 people in logistics died, 0 in 20 in the special ops team died. Most people would not reasonably argue that the logistics team was more dangerous.
"King's Throne: Game of Lust.", with advertised gameplay content such as "I, [the King], shall interrogate this female prisoner privately in my bed chambers", is one of the top advertised games on google play.
Got it.
Grain of salt and all that, just offering a lead for those curious of the counter argument
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher [2]https://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/
I love it, and using anything else feels weird. I remember having some problems with it before as well, but I haven't bothered looking at the settings or anything for months. I had to go back just now to see if I had any weird configs set up, (I don't)
Said differently: The percentage of people who are not from the US - but are aware of CNN as the Cable News Network, is higher than the percentage of people who are not machine learning experts - but are aware of CNN as a Convolutional Neural Network
I can give anecdotes about friends who are cops that risked their lives to save strangers, even the bad guys. I know more than 1 cop who arrested a guy, and had the suspects family thank them for how they saved their life in the process.
I can also bring up anecdotes about how people who were so passionate about security were also criminals hiding criminal deeds. I could assume, and assert, that since I've personally seen people use their phones' security to hide evidence of murder, and infant rape, that all people who care about their phones' security are the same.
But that'd be a disservice. It'd be a disservice to those who legitimately care about security for legitimate reasons, because freedom is important, and fragile. It'd be a disservice to others who aren't sold on either side of the discussion. And it'd be a disservice to myself in that it makes me seem very narrow minded and narrow viewed. Its letting fear overcome observation.
There are 700,000 cops in America alone. Undoubtedly some are unqualified garbage. Some are malicious monsters. Some are believe the ends justify the means. Some are paragons of truth and justice. Some aren't malicious, or dumb, but only care about their careers and are shortsighted with all else. We can't make sweeping statements either way, it does nothing to help.
There have undoubtedly been cases of cops using rubber hose decryption. There have been warrants falsified intentionally and unintentionally.
But cops wanting to be able to execute search warrants on phones isn't as simple as "We want more power, more control". There are countless legitimate cases of human trafficking, murder, and sadly worse. We, as a society, have to figure this stuff out. We have to find the balance between "Give us all your secrets" and "Do whatever you want without question".
But we can't have this conversation to find the balance, until we admit that we are on a scale.
The tools that Cellebrite sells will handle all but the most recent iPhones and maybe the most recent Androids. The newer the iPhone, the less likely a law enforcement officer is gonna have the tools to get into it. Cellebrite offers a service where you can ship them the phone and let their techs go at it. Whether it is because of legitimate limitations in their technology, or purely a marketing/commercial limitation, is unknown.
In general, any non-i{hone is Android. Most Androids are garbage phones that are sold by the dozen in the bottom of a bin at a gas station. Security isn't something its creator or buyer is really concerned about.
I have been out of the field for a few years, so things may have changed slightly in either direction, but I imagine its the same general concept. Newer is harder to break into, brand new iPhone model is probably impossible for now.
Steam alone regularly has over 10,000,000 people logged in at a time [2].
I think saying "Adults dont want a tower PC" is a pretty wide sweeping statement. I agree about Alyx. If they release a full length game that has the same level of quality that Half-life 2 had, with the same level of mod and customization support, that is going to be the tipping point. If VR is still a sub-niche in gaming/PCs, we won't see it takeoff for another 20+ years. But we may see it become the new standard.
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/808630/csgo-number-playe....
The closest solution we've gotten is to not do that, but instead use it as an opportunity to talk to the pre-schooler about charity and sharing with the less fortunate, eventually leading him to the "lets give our extra toys we don't play with very much to other kids" thought.
"I always used to get some compilation errors which were hard to understand initially, and I scratched my head trying to figure out the problem. "
Which is like saying, "I got rid of my carbon monoxide detector because it kept beeping at me"