hmmm-i-wonder

Putting on my tinfoil hat here.

One of the reasons Russia and China cooperate is because they also implicitly are supporting each others expansionist (reclaimationist? depending on point of view perhaps) stances, at least those not along shared borders.

The current US administration is suddenly moving towards an expansionist narrative, as well as being supportive of Russian interest in Europe and much less antagonistic to China than it has been previously.

Expecting this US administration to take ANY action opposing China or Russian interests that doesn't oppose its own going forward seems like betting no a dead horse.

This highlights just how useless and unusable existing scroll bars are.

The ability to easily see where you were on the page was great. And it's got some humour. I love it.

Agreed on both counts (I made the same points in other comments :))

>This is total nonsense, nobody thinks they can annex Canada…

Trump defies typical expectations and does things everyone else thinks would never happen. Often because to do so would be very damaging and idiotic, but that never actually stops Trump.

However you do NOT threaten to annex, take over or otherwise threaten the sovereignty of an ally or friend. That is geo-politics 101, so regardless of how serious he is about doing it, the act of threatening it is belligerent and shows he isn't a reliable trading partner or ally.

Outside of annexing, the trade war is also actively hostile on top of being perpetuated on complete lies.

I really have to add

>they just want to “manufacture consent” for the forward march of the global hegemony, that oligarchy… nobody in their right mind, with eyes unclouded by hate, would come to these conclusions naturally.

The oligarchy has taken over. The few that benefit from the "global hegemony" you refer to, which is largely the 'interests of the rich' are now completely in control of the US.

The US administration absolutely is not looking out for the interests of the average Americans. Most of what they are doing directly hurts most or all Americans in one way or another, and the few things they do that help Americans benefit the rich the most.

Now is the time much of the US populace has always claimed it would stand up against tyranny, an oppressive "lord" class and kings. They are watching it and cheering it on instead.

>I believe the body of people who are promoting such a narrative (and it’s clearly coordinated) have major conflicts of interests,

I'm a Canadian. Operating SOLELY on the actions and statements of your executive branch, not the media's reporting but the wording of the government, their executive orders, their direct public statements. your government is increasingly belligerent, untrustworthy and unreliable.

Belligerant -> Constantly making subtle threads of annexation. Calling the Prime Minister of Canada the "Governor" of Canada. Constantly lying about trade deficits that are surpluses and drug and migrant problems that are actually a bigger problem moving north across the border than south.

Untrustworthy -> After renegotiating NAFTA to USMCA and hailing that as a great agreement, now its a shit agreement and he's putting tarrifs on to get more from Canada under the threat (and likely actuality) of causing economic harm to both our countries.

Unreliable -> You were our biggest and staunchest ally. Electing an administration that is actively hostile to our government and sovereignty means you are no longer reliable as an ally.

> they want to maintain the status quo for their own enrichment at the expense of any specific nation, because in reality plain old paying attention shows nearly the exact opposite is true in every sense.

The current actions of the administration are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in order to enrich a few thousand at the top. They are alienating ally's, destabilizing peace and almost guaranteeing more conflict and war in the near future.

Chomsky warned of the damage a demagogue supported by a disenfranchised, hurting and angry populace can have on a country. This is happening now, and half the country is burying their head in the sand claiming its propaganda.

Ah yes, I missed that note, thanks.

I'll point out notice of appearance doesn't mean they COULD have done anything. The TRO was granted for 7 days already.

From a strategic position, they probably saw they could work with the client and withdraw the TRO faster and cheaper than challenging the TRO in court. Its unlikely a challenge would have significantly decreased the time they were required to not act under the TRO.

Uber specifically needs to be removed from that list. The business model is 'drain investor money to undercut existing business and then abuse contractors and employment laws to attempt to make a profit after'. There isn't much innovation anymore, most cab companies have similar apps and experiences now.

This is a list of general technology. Musk, Zuck and Trump specifically (the post I was replying to) have had little impact on much of this list.

3d printing, iphone, google, crispr, netflix have little to nothing to do with them.

Honestly why is CRISPR in this list, that is from scientists and labs not tech billionaires and busniess.

Cloud computing has been impacted a lot by Zuck and invented/reinvented by Bezos yes (not that Bezos was in the list I replied to).

Google Maps and Translate were both bought and innovation happened outside the space we're talking about.

Spacex and Electric Vehicles. Musk got onboard after the fact and used money and influence to push the existing path forward. The telling part is once that path is done things derail quickly when Musk is the one coming up with ideas (cybertruck, booring company etc..)

This is exactly my issue with "sprints" and "Agile".

As a business, even as a "project" the needs change between the start and the end of a project. Periods of low and high activity coincide with the various phases of things. Expecting some crunch time at the end and allowing some slack time at the start/middle allows a natural flow.

Now managers have decided employees must work at a high level of output/at crunch time pace ALL the time. Any change in forecasted points, burn down results in meltdowns at the VP and higher levels, while actual expectations, requirements and deadlines are changed at the drop of a hat multiple times.

Waterfall (not the sprint version of waterfall, the Deming version of waterfall with iteration between steps) gives a much more natural alignment of this while also ensuring the starting point doesn't get shifted at the whims of a VP with a "good idea" in the middle of a project.

Possibly, I'm not sure if there is precedent for charging a company for taking valid legal actions, only vexatious in contract law. Probably depends on the legal jurisdiction and courts.

But there is here, so its a flawed analogy.

The TRO was filed for and granted without DigiCerts input. By the time they responded, both parties filed to vacate the TRO (3 days later). Judges I expect weigh, to the best of their abilities, the perceived harm in granting/not granting the TRO. Considering the technical literacy of our court system I expect that leaves much to be desired

That's a great list of examples that fall well under "Usually it's just illegal cabs or e-waste littering as a service."

Is there examples of the alternative?

I think a baseline for both disrupt and reform is an understanding of the problem space and existing solutions first, maybe more-so for successful disruption.

To add to this, 3 days after the TRO was filed both parties moved to vacate the TRO.

DOCKET TEXT ORDER. 9 Joint Motion to Vacate 3 Order Granting Ex Parte Motion for TRO is GRANTED

I'm not sure DigiCert could have done anything about the TRO or the impacted certs, but it should have been able to move forward with the revocation of all other certificates. That IMO is the real issue/failure, alongside the concern/impact of TRO's on security processes in the future.

The TRO actually means you aren't allowed, that's the point. It's an ordered injunction that legally obliges you from not acting until the courts can review the facts.

The court IS deciding, temporarily.

DigiCert and other CA's need to write in their terms that failure to follow the policies and revocation timelines can/will result in termination of the contract. Alegeus should have been dropped as a customer as soon as the incident was resolved and refused further products/renewals.

Use of a TRO protects you short term, but results in having to migrate to a new CA medium term. You can't stop them from using TRO's but you can make it not worth it.

The middle ground here is DigiCert should have been able and continued with the revocation of all the other certificates not impacted by the TRO within the policies and contractual agreements it has.

The policy and its designers aren't incompetent, the intention is to ensure security first when fact-finding can take time to establish a subset of actual abuse. This is common in IT/Security and is clearly communicated in the policy customers agree to as well as something agreed on by all CA's. Security > Uptime is the baseline, and while you may disagree with that and have good arguments for the contrary, the argument is much wider than us and has been extensively hashed out in the working groups and discussions around this and other similar issues and is implemented this way by consensus while weighing valid arguments for different approaches and pros and cons.

This seems like a misunderstanding of the TRO.

Alegeus, a client of DigiCert, filed a court motion to stop DigiCert from revoking their certificate. The courts granted the temporary restraining order.

There is no "update their legal work to prevent customers from legal action" that can avoid a temporary restraining order that is ordered by the courts to provide time to establish facts. Its simply how the legal process works. "they can't help but" seems unfair as the issue was the client Alegeus was unable to replace their certificates in the revocation timeline.

Further "Going through the courts", they didn't go to the courts a client of theirs did.

Digicert is absolutely not blameless. Outside of the TRO, they have failed to meet revocation windows before and yes, are likely using the TRO in this instance as a shield for that.

However the TRO itself is a concerning development that all CA's need to consider depending on their legal jurisdiction, as it could put companies in a bind of being legally ordered to not to complete something they are contractually and legally required to do within the required timeline and interrupt standard security practices in cases like this.

Govt spending as a share of GDP is probably a good measure of how involved the government is in the economy. There are arguments that too much government involvement leads to stagnation, which considering many of the economies the US regularly out-grows have higher share of govt spending as a % of GDP has some merit. Its an interesting economic question what level that would be which changes depending on how you approach the problem.

Its similar to roads in a lot of ways, one of the important ones is that there is a civil/social utility in ensuring even remote people are "connected" by road or internet to the rest of the country/world, often at a cost to the society outside of private profit.

So the idea that it needs to be self-sustainable or profitable to be considered working is myopic. The completion/connection of the people is the achievement, the sustainability and integration with private companies hopefully reduces the government burden and enables innovation and competition without the need for vast capital expenditures.

That seems impractical and unsustainable.

>when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Ironic that as a Canadian, the US is moving from the nation that would be guided by Justice into the belligerent nation in this situation.

It also serves as a lesson to us that we should have learned from you and George Washington, and stood on our own first and ensured our own security before cooperating with others. We have a long way to go to get back there now, unfortunately under the position of potentially our closest ally and economic partner being belligerent, untrustworthy and unreliable.

It would be a cost to those companies to lease the lines. Whether those companies are profitable or not is up to their business models. Those companies didn't/wont invest in the infrastructure to start with, which is why this initiative exists in the first place.

You think you have some sort of gotcha argument against this but you keep missing it (largely from being uninformed on the subject). Private companies aren't investing to build the infra to remote areas due to recovery cost timelines. The Govt is providing funding to build the infra alongside private partnerships to fund the maintenance and operation of the system.

There is very little downside here, if anything it avoids monopolistic control due to infrastructure investments required to service areas by providing the infra companies can then leverage in their business model.

Very similar to roads, powerlines and other things we take for granted daily that are fundamental to the operation and success of private companies.

Its all ice and snow outside. I'd be locked out for a while

Then again maybe that would be a good thing.

>That's not how threat models work, it's not 'more' risk. It's additional work.

The "most likely" part does a lot of carrying here, and you made my point. The additional work self-hosting is not trivial in this space. Assuming you can either personally dedicate a LOT of time, or personally pay staff people to keep up vs a dedicated team working on this means that the threat model is inverted now.

I self-host a number of services, I'm very pro self hosting. I'm _VERY_ aware there is always a trade off between "I want this to work", "I don't have time to fix this regularly because I have a Job and Family and hopefully other hobbies besides self-hosting a service" and "I need to constantly update and apply changes that sometimes do not gracefully fall into automation or introduce breaking changes".

Now consider that communication is one service and add on self-hosting other services, and the additional updates and knowledge to support it.

Outside of the small group of people that dedicate themselves to hosting and managing their services, which excludes most USERS (its in the name) the threat model is indeed inverted.

You don't have to. Reproducible builds, audited E2E and the other technical details combine to remove the need to trust the server for anything other than availability.

Anything else is uninformed navel-gazing about the risk without understanding the subject.

You can't control when "someones" messages are delivered, only when "all" messages are delivered. I.E Signal servers control general availability, not selective availability.

Moving to a self-hosted service most likely introduces more risk at this point assuming you can keep the service and all related infrastructure up to date and monitored 24/7/365

I had a number of friends stop using it due to issues with normal SMS through the app.

I still have a few friends on it but now most are on WhatsApp too.