AndrewDMcG

I use a hand-rolled gpg + git + owncloud for myself, but that's not convenient if you don't routinely have terminal windows open.

That's not meant to be snarky; it's a real problem. I have an android phone but I am very conscious that it's doing a lot of things I don't control and I can't really trust it.

A VPN can be part of a carefully implemented security policy, or it can be a thing that might help a little on a generally insecure base, but it can't turn an insecure machine into a secure one.

So Telecom Malaysia messed up a config, and Global Crossing accepted their updates automatically.

Global Crossing didn't have to accept the bad update. They generally trust updates from other organisations that are generally trustworthy. They apply checks and restrictions proportionate to the risks involved.

These mistakes happen rarely. If they were to happen more often, major operators would apply more checks and restrictions. If they were to stop happening, operators would apply less checks and restrictions, because they have a cost in manpower, complexity, and loss of flexibility.

That's how the internet works. You could almost say that's what the internet is--the idea of being actively managed by people who know what they're doing and are not bound by exhaustive predefined policies is defining of how the internet came about and how it came to be dominant.

If you want a network guaranteed to be resistant to this kind of f---up, build one. The internet is that network which does not work that way, which is flexible, expandable, mostly "good enough" but not ever designed for absolute reliability.

That implies the social value of the transactions outweighs the cost of carrying them on the blockchain. If the bulk of transactions are penny-valued "scratch card" gambles (are they still a thing?), that is obviously not true.

When you put something in a configuration file, you need to define who is going to change it, and how they are going to test their change. Otherwise you're in danger of muddling together different levels of abstraction, and breaking encapsulation all over the place.