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It seems that people who express such strong, polarizing opinions often do so because they enjoy engaging in debate. If their goal were simply to communicate their perspective without confrontation, they could present their views in a more measured and considerate way.

With that in mind, it might be more effective to share your logical arguments with someone who is genuinely open to hearing them, rather than with someone who appears committed to their position.

Just my 2 cents.


Thanks for pointing that out. I've spent a little too much time today engaging in such debate on HN and should reconsider.


> what'll they do ? Switch to someone who won't ? And who would that be ?

FOSS


This is a parenting issue. The internet doesn’t need training wheels. No offense to those children, but their parents are complete failures.


20+ years ago kids would play out on the street unsupervised with their friends from the neighbourhood from the age of 6-8 and all the adults would look out for each others' kids. It's only recently that everyone's retreated inside onto their screens that all sense of community has been lost and you get comments like this.


At some point you reach a critical mass of personal responsibility failures where you need a systemic solution.

Even if the internet doesn't need training wheels, the video game where the average player is 12 might.


This is my main frustration. Every teenager who wants to get porn will get porn regardless. VPN companies saw the writing on the wall years ago, and have been paying any YouTuber that will accept a sponsorship to shill for them.

I think the Online Safety Act is just setting a precedent that will be used further down the line to ban personal VPN usage.

"Children are using encrypted VPN tunnels to see porn online! Criminals also use those same VPN networks!"

Let me guess... There will be a law requiring ISPs to block VPN traffic if the VPN server's hostname isn't registered to a business and approved by the government.

UK: "Do you have a license for that VPN?!"

Anyway, download i2p, or Hyphanet/freenet


China has been trying for decades to ban VPNs and they have failed. It's just an infinite cat and mouse game. There's no reason to think that the UK could succeed where China has failed.


Yes, I agree with you. But the average person would no longer use a VPN if VPNs were outlawed. The people who are clever enough to evade detection like you and I are a tiny percentage of the population, and we don't really matter.

People like you and I don't truly matter in the grand scheme of things, because if the government ban VPNs, we will use i2p or TOR, or Hyphanet/freenet.

Surveillance states care about numbers. The more people who lose VPN access, the better (from their POV).


My real frustration is that it's just not a real problem. If it was we'd be seeing the negative effects of children having had access to porn today.

Instead it's clearly about control and being able to tiptoe their way to a totalitarian state.


You nailed it. However, it is good to see more people waking up from the contrived nightmare that is social media.


I have a T450 with a issue that I haven’t been able to figure out for years: When I shut the lid, the screen will shut off, and when I open the lid again, I can hear the fans spinning and I know the laptop is on, but the screen WILL NOT TURN BACK ON. I have to hold the power button to force power off and then start it up again.

Issue happens in Windows and Linux. I tried disabling the sleep enhancement feature in the BIOS (can’t remember what it’s called).

So it’s just sitting on my bookshelf. Sad because it works great, but you just can’t close the lid.


Did you disable hibernation ? Is the screen just turning off or is it going to sleep?

Always recommend fully disabling hibernation in windows as it's useless - if it's NOT going to sleep then might be worth messing with the BIOS power settings


I recommend this video by Computerphile - He talks about how NIST may have been pressured into enforcing compromised (backdoored?) cryptography methods as a standard - Dual_EC_DRBG to be exact. He also gives a super cool/intuitive breakdown on how this came to be. It will definitely grow some food for thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nybVFJVXbww


Small summary, courtesy of Wikipedia which makes a stronger claim than "may have been pressured":

> In September 2013, both The Guardian and The New York Times reported that NIST allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to insert a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator called Dual EC DRBG into NIST standard SP 800-90 that had a kleptographic backdoor that the NSA can use to covertly predict the future outputs of this pseudorandom number generator. [...] the NSA worked covertly to get its own version of SP 800-90 approved for worldwide use in 2006. The whistle-blowing document states that "eventually, NSA became the sole editor".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Standard...


Dual EC was not the product of a contest. The NIST PQC algorithms are all designed by academic cryptographers, many of them not US nationals.


And chosen by NIST…


And? Finish that thought.


You are tptacek; I believe you know exactly what I meant. But to indulge you, do you think we can know that the selection process is not comprised?


Explain what the compromised selection process does here. NIST doesn't control the submissions.


Seems pretty obvious no?

1. Pretend to be someone else and enter a backdoored algorithm. Or pressure someone to enter a backdoored algorithm for you. Or just give them the algorithm for the reward of being the winner.

2. Be NIST, and choose that algorithm.


You think someone is going to pretend to be Chris Peikert and submit a backdoored construction as him, and that's going to work?

This is the problem with all these modern NIST contest theories. They're not even movie plots. Your last bit, about them paying someone like Peikert off, isn't even coherent; they could do that with or without the contest.


> they could do that with or without the contest

Then why does the contest give you any more confidence that the selection isn't backdoored?


It's not the contest so much as the reputation of the winning team and the reputations of all the teams who did cryptanalytic work. Wait, I guess that means it is the contest. Well, there's your answer.

People on threads like these are pretending NIST was a shadowy force making secret determinations, but the whole thing happens in the open, and NIST is essentially just proctoring.

A lot of this kind of thing is just people telling on themselves that they don't follow the field and don't trust any cryptography not done by one of the three cryptographers they've ever heard of.


>the reputation of the winning team and the reputations of all the teams who did cryptanalytic work

>NIST is essentially just proctoring

Well, there we go. These items are actually good information (to be verified of course). Way better information than questions that seem to miss the concern. Thank you.


Your question presupposes a claim that the selection process is compromised. I'm not saying it is. I just wonder how we know it's not.

In NIST's position one could analyze the submissions for vulnerabilities to closely held (non-public) attacks, then select submissions having those vulnerabilities.


I have a Garmin Forerunner 255 (which does everything you requested and much much more). I used to be a Fitbit guy, and the sleep tracking and data is 10x better than Fitbit, with no subscription. The battery life is about 20 days.

The Forerunner 255 can be found on Amazon right now for $250.

Mind you, I also used to own an Apple Watch. Garmin is the best, and second place isn't close.


If you had checked the link on the comment you answered, you would have seen that he reviewed the forerunner 255 (and if that matters all Garmin watch) and found out that their heart rate accuracy and sleep analysis suck. All of them, some more, some less but nowhere near as good as apple watch or a very few Huawei watch and maybe the latest Google watch.


I have the Forerunner 945 and it's the only thing that has ever filled the void left by Pebble. Garmin is so good.


Same here. It's the best smart watch I've had.


>Yes, I am aware of SMS's vulnerabilities - but the weakest link is always the user

Or the phone provider's call center employee who gets tricked into helping a bad actor perform a sim swap. I pray you're never in charge of my data.


They'd still have to have your vault password.


It seems impossible to reach great success without someone trying to tear you down.


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