Deceptive marketing and straight up lying is so prevalent that people have all sorts of wild ideas about VPNs. That’s why it’s high time someone cleared things up.

VPN: essential or snake oil?

History repeats itself.

Some Old Thing (software/website/service/whatever) becomes bad, and people get really upset. Initially, many say that SOT is going to die. Techies switch from SOT to New Great Thing. For a while, techies at NGT celebrate and pat each other on the back for making this brilliant move.

Meanwhile, normies at SOT continue to use it. They hate it at first or even complain about it, but eventually they get used to how bad SOT is. Every now and then, they hear about NGT, but they just can’t switch because reasons.

After a few years it’s clear that, SOT hasn’t died yet, but also continues to have quite a few users too. Some people end up using both, while a small group of people vow to never touch SOT ever again. SOT and NGT both continue to exist, because apparently there are enough users for both.

I’ve seen these things happen so many times, that it’s about time to point out that there’s a pattern. Just look back at any tech controversy over the past 30 years and you can see it usually follows this pattern pretty well.

My guess is, the people who care didn’t stick around. As s result, quality went down.

The tin can phone inherently provides end-to-end encryption. The acoustic signals, which are essentially longitudinal mechanical vibrations, travel directly through a taut string or wire. This physical medium ensures that the sound waves are converted into mechanical vibrations at the transmitting end and reconverted into sound at the receiving end, effectively eliminating any possibility of electronic eavesdropping or interception.

One of the most significant advantages of the tin can phone is its complete absence of a digital footprint. Unlike modern telecommunication devices that rely on electronic signals and data packets, tin can phone operates purely on mechanical principles. This means there are no digital records, metadata, or logs that can be hacked, traced, or subpoenaed.

The simplicity of the tin can phone renders it immune to a wide array of cyber threats. There are no software vulnerabilities, no firmware to update, and no risk of malware or ransomware attacks. The device’s operation is entirely analog, relying on the physical properties of sound waves and mechanical vibrations, making it impervious to digital exploits.

The physical nature of the tin can phone also contributes to its security. The string must be kept taut for effective communication, and any attempt to tap into the line would be immediately noticeable due to the loss of tension and degradation of sound quality. This provides a built-in tamper-evident feature, ensuring that any unauthorized access attempts are easily detected. On top of that, if someone attempts a man in the middle attack, you should be able to see it happening during the call and act accordingly before any sensitive data gets exposed.

The operational simplicity of the string and cans phone is another layer of security. With no complex interfaces or user authentication mechanisms, the risk of user error leading to security breaches is virtually nonexistent.

Well, you could make a cleaning product that smells like durian or surströmming to see how well it sells. I have a sneaking suspicion that the lemon variant of the same product will be more popular.

CommonSense 2024, the best antivirus solution I’ve ever tried. Highly recommend it. Compatible with phones, tablets, computers, potatoes etc.

Can we slap on some augmented reality, IoT, big data and sprinkle some quantum encryption on top? After that, it should tick all the boxes. ✅

You could summarize the whole transparency thing into just one word: trust. As long as people trust that everything is fine, the society can continue to function. When people loose trust, everything falls apart.

If you can convince millions of people that the voting system works and is fair, you can have a democratic society. If not, you might want to look into alternatives such as totalitarian dictatorship, monarchy or even post apocalyptic absolute chaos.

The torrent of lies and absurd statements should keep the rest of the world entertained. For most Americans, it’s probably going to be horrifying, tragic and/or embarrassing.

Edit: corrected the mess left behind by autocorrect

What about her policies though? Being more than one step away from the grave is great, but would she actually make sensible decisions?

And then someone will create a new AI capable of defeating the old one. It’s just AIs all the way.

A few months ago, I did a similar assessment where I categorized potential threats in the following manner.

Category 1 - financial impact

A criminal might gain access to my account, steal my money or make online purchases in my name. The impact is potentially great, but the probability is low. Overall risk is medium. Using good online practices helps mitigate the risk.

Category 2 - social impact

I may carelessly share personal information online and coworkers, friends or family may find out something they aren’t supposed to. The impact is medium to high, but the probability is very low. Overall risk is low. Not sharing personal information online helps mitigate the risk. Besides, I don’t even use Facebook, Xitter and other modern online trash. I do share stuff on Lemmy, but I try to keep my personal details out of it. Also, I don’t use my real name here, so a random family members probably aren’t going to stumble upon this account without first putting in some serious snooping effort.

Category 3 - matters of principle

Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and all the other large companies are constantly trying to learn as much as possible. The potential harm is low, but the probability is very high. Overall risk is still low. I’m using many techniques to limit the amount of information professional snoopers might get their hands on.

So, category 1 is obviously the highest priority, and that’s where I put most of my effort. Category 3 is nice to have, but screwing up here isn’t going the be the end of the world. If you want to know more about the actual mitigation methods, don’t be afraid to ask.

But it is difficult to acquire here on earth.

As uranium and thorium naturally decay underground, they produce some helium as well. That’s why you can literally make a helium mine. On earth it’s also a finite resource, because once released into the atmosphere, it will eventually escape the atmosphere and end up in space.

Skin irritation is a pretty good sign that it’s about time to clean it.

If the wristband is made of silicon, you can just clean it with soap and water.

I think I’ve read somewhere that the watch itself should be washed with normal water instead. I guess there are some gaps and holes where soap isn’t welcome.

If you have a fancy metal wristband, soap will do an acceptable job, but an ultrasound bath would be better.

No problem, we’ll just start calling him “the general secretary who must not be named”.

When looking at Fox, CNN or NY times, the cookie count looks realistic, but nothing else does. I refuse to believe these sites don’t use any other methods.

Also, the number of loanwords in English is completely absurd. Some other languages resisted borrowing/stealing special terminology from other languages by coming to with their own clever new words.

For example, entrepreneur is a clear loan from French where a salesman is a simple and clear description of a man who sells something. If you don’t know French, you’ll have no idea what the word entrepreneur means, but if you know basic English, salesman should be crystal clear to you.

Many other languages developed lots of these types of clear words in order to make communication easier and less elitist. English is completely wild and there’s no central authority that could reasonably give any recommendations that anyone would listen. This sorts of uncontrolled wild growth and stealing has been going on for centuries, and now we’ve ended up with a complete train wreck of a language.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Wait until you hear about the history behind how spelling and pronunciation became the disaster we have today.

Can confirm. Especially wet snow/sleet can make bicycling completely impossible. A few centimeters is only a minor annoyance, but 10 cm is a serious problem. Fortunately, it doesn’t last long where I live, since the streets get cleared fairly quickly. During one of those mornings you better take a bus/train/subway instead. It also really depends on how well your town takes care of the streets and what public transport options are available.

Pineapple is delicious, especially on pizza.