Honestly... How anybody with half a brain cell still listens to this guy is beyond me. And it's not even a political opinion: this guy talk crap all the time. Even if you're a hard-core republican and you agree with his societal project - and your moral values aren't put off by the whole Stormy Daniels thing - you can't possibly not see that he's talking utter crap.

And thousands of third-rate programmers around the world suddenly found themselves with no clue how to do their work.

Whoever considers Best Buy or Geek Squad for their computing needs is probably a prime target for a scammer. So it makes sense for the scammers to impersonate those concerns: whoever doesn't tell them to piss off rightaway is probably a grade-A mark.

It's a good method for scammers to quickly isolate the suckers who might fall for their scam - just like the scam mails full of outrageous typos that only the most gullible dandelions reply to.

Hoarding power when it's plentiful and selling it when it's scarce could be profitable. Something like a big-ass battery - gravity or chemical - could be a worthwhile investment.

That depends on which doctrine you use to define a monopoly.

I use the pre-Reagan definition: they stiffle competition and prevent newcomers from entering the markets they occupy.

Most judges unfortunately go with the Reagan doctrine which is solely based on the criterion of product prices, i.e. do the monopolies abuse their position to engage in price gouging.

Cleverly, Bezos has always stuck to his policy of charging as low as possible. So price-wise, the customer has always won with Amazon, and Amazon is not a monopoly as per the Reagan doctrine. As for Google, most of their shit is free as far as "customers" are concerned. You can't beat free.

The problem problem with determining monopolies solely based on the price they charge is that it misses other really, really bad side effects of modern tech monopolies, such as Big Data customers not really being their customers but their data-producing cows, and the cows in question are put under intolerable surveillance that makes 1984 a dystopian book that kind of missed the mark.

Of course, the legislators are very happy to side with the Reagan doctrine: it gives them a legal argument to leave the major corporations they're on the payroll of alone.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft.

That's beyond stupid.

I'm no fan of Google or Apple, but here they're collecting radio signals YOU choose to broadcast. It's like saying you didn't give other patrons permission to listen to what you're saying in a crowded bar. If you don't want them listening in, your only option is to shut up.

And that's bad how?

And that turned out to be a reality, only all the documents, audio, photos - but also actions, sites visited, location every single minute of the days, purchases, and a whole lot of data you never wanted to record - are now on servers controlled by giant unregulated monopolies who are busy monetizing your data behind your back and against your will, you don't have any recourse, and you don't get to relive those moments in your life. Only Big Data has access to them and they're not accessing it for your own good.

I bet that's not the future ole Gordon had in mind back then...

Oh the irony...

Having said that, I trust them to expose scammers, as it takes one to know one.

A growing portion is IPv6, but I don't think it's the majority yet. Google has it at about 46% of their traffic as of this last weekend. CloudFlare had a post in October 2023 suggested that a little over a third of what they saw was IPv6. A lot of that is driven by cell phones, as most or all wireless providers in the US (and probably a number of other countries) issue IPv6 addresses, and the mobile network stacks prioritize 6 over 4.

Home users aren't as lucky, often either stuck with IPv4 or, worse, IPv4 private addresses from CG-NAT. For those with some of the larger or more advanced ISPs such as Comcast, Charter, and Starlink, IPv6 is standard and pretty transparent. For those of us on smaller or less advanced networks, we either wait for them to catch up or use a 6to4 service. I think I read that DOCSIS 4.0 requires IPv6, though that may only be for management and it may not require that the subscribers actually get such addresses.

Signal is my app of choice when it comes to doing stuff that I want to leave no trace of.

I might half-believe employees of a small company with no formal IT use Signal because that's convenient and that's what they use normally. But Amazon has a vast IT infrastructure that its employees can use to send non-"structured narrative text", and a company that size has a well-defined policy on production and retention of company data. If someone at Amazon chooses to use Signal to communicate with colleagues, they immediately and automatically look as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo.

I'm sorry but that's just not true.

You can't get me to spend $10,000 simply by getting me on a video call and telling me it's super secret, even if it's the CEO and I have absolute proof that it's him. He'll have to sign me a paper, and he'll have to give me an account number that's either in our list of approved accounts.

It's not cultural differences, it's plain common sense: if I'm fired for refusing to pay something someone legit requested me to pay, I can drag my former employer to court for unfair dismissal - whereas if I'm social-engineered into paying crooks, I'm responsible and I can be dragged to court.

Besides, even if 15 totally legit officers ask me to do dodgy payments, it may very well be that all 15 officers are up to no good. It's my duty to refuse what they ask if it doesn't pass the sniff test.

I might have a hard time saying no to higher-ranking employees socially, but I won't say yes. As I said, ultimately, I believe the company wants me to be a barrier against fraud, and my work duty is to the company, not its officers. And a judge will side with me on that one if it comes to that.

However good the fake videos and voices in that call, if I was in charge of that much money, you'd better send me solid written evidence and proof that the bank account number is legit before I authorize a $25M transfer.

If you don't like it, you can't do a damn thing about it because EMVCo has a worldwide monoly on cashless payment.

EMV literally controls who gets to do what when it comes to payment. It's an unprecedented and absolutely scary level of control in the hands of private individuals, and nobody - least of which our elected officials - seems to give a flying fuck!

If you don't believe me, ask Pornhub or Wikileaks what happens when the obscene payment monopoly doesn't like what you do and unilateraly decides to kill your livelihood.