Posts by tekHedd

DNS-over-HTTPS: iceberg, tip of

DoH was first because it was easiest to justify. "Think of the poor children in oppressed regimes!" they said, but we know it's low hanging fruit. It's an easy sell AND DNS-level is the easiest way to block tons and tons of crappy flashing ads.

I used to only manually block the worst ads, but it turns out 1) all ads come from the same handful of servers, and 2) there are very, very few ads that aren't "worst." So, starting with a fresh ABL install, I find I'm blocking basically 100% of ad content by the end of the week anyway. I genuinely tried to leave "nonintrusive and interesting" ads in but there simply are none.

Where were they before now?

The skeptic in me wants to know: Where was this "blocking Trump's overreach" up until now? Suddenly, when it affects big-corp's ability to get cheap labor, we have action. Funny how well the system works when it's working for them and not us.

Yeah I know it's obsolete

But the news still made me cry, just for a second. Not so much for the loss to science. We've lost one more symbol of the things we can achieve when we really want to. Never mind that it's mostly because "we," at the time, were really scared of the dirty commies or whatever. It's still impressive in a way that smart robotic minefields never will be.

"Market Rates"

Maybe the only reason they will be "... forced to fire workers for not being paid tens of thousands of dollars more than market rates" is that the market rates are being dragged down by dirt cheap "bussed-in" overseas labor?

Jealousy

World's biggest thief of other people's content is angry that users can download content. Not sure how exactly I should feel about this.

DHS?

I realize that at this point we've dismantled most of the institutions in the Executive branch, but am I the only one who think it's weird that DHS responsible for *designing* the H1B visa program's caps and thresholds? Maybe it only looks that way because they're the ones enforcing it, but... still weird.

Not a big fan of Trump but...

I'm OK with this.

The program's really corrupt beyond the bounds of decency really.

"still in the testing phase" LOL

That's a laugh. We all know that, in the world of US defense R&D, "we started testing" translates as "they are in manufacture and should be ready to deploy soon" or else "we tested them two years ago and have decided they're not feasible."

Politicians!

...and as we all know, a random politician's privacy is important, whereas mine is not. :P

I know it's just whining, but even El Reg echoes the attitude that "the privacy of the plebs is not important", which does not help when we're trying to defend strong end-to-end encryption for the masses.

So the only difference here *really*

for 99.9% of us, the only difference now is that you can't run your own DNS proxy easily, making it harder to filter out ad servers.

Acronyms

"Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act" doesn't make a good acronym, but it makes a great oxymoron.

Because if a third party has access to it, it's not encrypted.

We wanted to say something earlier but...

...we waited this long to say anything because *we* wanted to be the ones with the monopoly store.

So much for my router-level blocks

Because my older DD-WRT router only supports classic DNS and not the new protocol, this magically disables all of my ad- and malware-domain blocks until I hack hidden settings in each browser. Which I believe is its primary purpose.

Any privacy- or speech-enhancing purpose is secondary and IMO becomes a technical problem to thwart at the edge networking level if you want to ... well anyway we all know the boring arguments.

And, of course, as it is an anti-censorship tool, it is a real PITA to redirect these requests to my own DoH servers. I mean, either it can't be done, in which case the ad servers win, or it can be done, in which case it is a COMPLETE waste of effort and why did we do it? The ad servers win.

If only!

Since the only reason to run Windows is because you have an app that only runs on Windows, I'm not sure what the point is.

But then it's already the year of Linux On The Desktop[TM]. Since systemd has streamlined the Linux experience across systems and made all notebooks and apps work seamlessly together in perfect harmony, Linux has... OK I can't continue with a straight face, Devuan-devotee here to the core.

"XML"

Oh dear. "co-author of the original specifications for XML" as an endorsement of one's technical prowess.. I mean it's like saying "I helped invent hangnails." Well, at least he's done something good now to help even the balance.

"optional and reorderable"

The parts of CSS I find hardest to do on the fly, without yet another trip to StackOverflow are the "optional and reorderable" parts. So, of course, let's add more.

I remember when I was junior and there were things like "language designers" and books on the theory of good user interface design and coding style, and they weren't trendy. Now even the Microsoft IDE is rejecting Microsoft's own best practices. :(

One person.

Look at this another way: they successfully matched one (1) person for the duration of the trial. For a sample set of this size, that looks like a huge success.

What if that one person hadn't taken that route during the trial? Then they would have matched 0%.

Cynic in me asks: how much did they pay that one person to walk through the area so the test would look like a success? Did they just get lucky?

(And TBH the other comments above are right: even if it had only a 1% false positive rate, the real issue isn't accuracy here, it's rights.)

An infinite number of typewriters gets you every time

The chance of exploitation is miniscule...and you get an unlimited number of attempts. I think I see the problem here.

So... we've built basically an entire world full of computers with a hardware backdoor, but fortunately only *trusted authorities* have the key to that backdoor. Only now the key is leaking. Time to pretend to be surprised and shocked and double down because a) this was never really a backdoor it's a handy tool for administrators, and b) this doesn't invalidate the need to put backdoors in everything else as well, which also aren't backdoors but desperately needed to protect you.

"[EPID] is used for things like providing anti-piracy DRM protections, and Internet-of-Things attestation"

Translation: the point of EPID is to ensure that you, the end user, do not have control of your computer. This is why its compromise is a disaster of biblical proportions. If your computer is compromised that's sad. If /their/ telemetry and DRM content is compromised, cats and dogs sleeping together, mass hysteria.

Illinois is in the top 10?

If Illinois is in the top 10, then the situation really is dire.

Last week's email from dad in Chicagoland: "I'm sick of Comcast Internet (XFinity), what are my other options?"

Me: "I have bad news for you..."

Because in California there are no victims

"It's Tesla's fault! It's Apple's fault!" Executive decisions about how to drive were made by one person. It's the driver's fault, and he has taken responsibility for his actions by dying.

I agree that Tesla could do more, but shifting responsibility to a game or the car is the reason everything sucks now.