The other point missed by the article is that if you run lineage OS even with opengapps (or even Stock) if you also run a decent firewall (properly configured) with root permissions, that can provide application level access control you can eliminate leaked data for applications that don't need access, and significant reduce leaked data for applications that need connectivity (by limiting when they can access the net).

If you don't have root access on your phone even then you can reduce the leaking by making use of firewalls that pretend to be a VPN. I've used Netguard on phones where I don't have root, and could at least limit application level leaked info.

If you're curious what is being leaked you can also turn on logging in the firewall.

The key thing to realize is your phone is a computer... if you're concerned about "leaking" you should also take a careful look at your laptop or desktop running windows and phoning home.

What we need is legislation about privacy and data collection, with steep fines that make it unprofitable if caught... I hope we will start to see laws catch up some what in the next 5 years ( likely not in the US, but in Europe and elsewhere).

A few days later.. in other news google has millions of accounts go dark and suddenly outlook.com gains millions of new customers...

You make something secure you make it harder to use... You make authentication harder, I have to tell you more about myself for you to accept my authentication...

If I don't want things to be hard to use, when you make it harder, as far as I'm concerned you "break" the product.

If I don't want to tell you more about me, eg what devices belong to me and are associated with me, and you ask for more info... as far as I'm concerned you "break" the product.

I don't use "broken" products, and when you break them I switch.

If 6 hours outage moved 70 million people to Telegram... "Telegram Founder Says Over 70 Million New Users Joined During Facebook Outage" -> https://www.usnews.com/news/te...

Just imagine what permanent 2FA will do.

The other fact perhaps to consider is whether it makes sense to argue about this at all or whether we should look at the hard data:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/da...

UK + US + Sweden all countries not effected by COVID at the beginning (unlike Italy and Spain) with limited coordinated responses (staying home, wearing masks, physical distancing, testing and contact tracing) and a highly "individualist" mindset, make the "top 10"

Death's per 100K
UK: 65 (4th worst)
Sweden: 53 (7th worst)
USA: 38 (9th worst)

By contrast Countries with quick non politicized, expert based response, with a more collaborative culture:
Canada: 23 (almost 1/2 the deaths per 100K of the USA)
Germany: 11 (almost a 1/4 the deaths per 100K of the USA)
Taiwan: 0.03 (almost a 1/1000! the deaths per 100K of the USA)

If you think about it instead of 125K dead Americans if the USA had done as well as the Canadians (and they had issues with their old age homes) there could be
60.000 Less dead mothers, fathers, grandparents, nieces, nephews etc...

With numbers like that you should put you mask on even if there might be some uncertainty about how much a mask protects you.

I mean think about it in terms of if someone else wearing a mask could reduce the number of sick and dead, and save the life of someone _you_ love,
wouldn't you do the same for them? (Pretty much everyone has Parents, Siblings, Children, Nieces Nephews, friends etc... they care about).

If you don't want to wear the mask for yourself then wear it for them.

And oh wash your fricken hands... like your mom told you to when you were growing up.

Reduce the population:

"Any Volunteers" ??

And Computers will eliminate all paper...

And "Journalists will write headlines that provoke outrage / get attention"

When's the last time Cringly worked in IT... Oh wait he's a self declared journalist.

I call bullshit. Half of our helpdesk calls are about password resets (and yes we have a very easy to use simple reset site).

We tried pushing the reset site, as per management...
People want help, and when you don't help them the way they want they get pissed.
The backlash almost cost the CIO his job...

Basically when people get frustrated with their computer, at least half of what the IT support does is reassure, empathize and educate, and people will pay for that.
As long as that's the case IT help desk will continue to exist.

And as long as people respond to bullshit headlines and give them clicks Journallists like Cringly will write click bait.

This is not news and shouldn't be on Slashdot...

At this point much of the western world would take a Ficus tree or a rock for President over Trump, and consider it an improvement.

Reagan had a healthy case of dementia as well and likely was a better president for it.

At least for a man with dementia there's a better chance will listen to his advisors and experts..

A good number of the critical posts in the US government where never properly filled. We have a man in charge of the Worlds largest nuclear force and he didn't know that the DOE _is_ responsible for the security of nuclear weapons...

The amount of damage Trump has done to the reputation and loss of influence of the US globally will likely never be undone. People have even forgotten Rob Ford...

His current handling (or lack there of) of COVID 19 isn't over yet.

the numbers we're seeing are 21 days behind.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health...

and compared to the rest of the western world the people Trump appointed really F'd up COVID 19.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/wo...

Come November people will be voting after burying their, friends, children, and parents and they won't forget his mishandling of the situation. They will also blame him for the economy tanking (even if it isn't his fault).

I don't think it matters who the democrats put in as a candidate. What matters is whether the people on the left show up to vote.

Just some basic back of the envelop ball parking:

Best case (40% get it 0.5% fatality)
300 Million People x 40% = 120 million case

120 Million cases x 0.5% fatality rate = 600K people dead.

Optimistic Worst case (70% get it 1% fatality)
300 Million x 70% getting COVID = 210 million cases

210 Million cases x 1% fatality rate = 2.1 Million people dead.

and that's neglecting the fact that 2% will need ventilators and likely there are not enough to go around.

100K isn't just optimistic, it's a pipe dream and irresponsible number to be talking about as president of the US.

Quick sources:
up to 70% get it: ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=70%2... ) ~30-70% are expert estimates.
US Population ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) ~308 Million
COVID Fatality rates: (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=covid+19+fatality+rate&t=canonical&ia=web ) China has as high as 4% Germany as low as 0.5%

There is no "cloud".

You're just putting your stuff on someone elses computer.

This is an old discussion no different than SAS (software as a service), there's no real story here.

Yes cloud makes it so easy to spin up a server or datacenter that a 16 year old script kiddie can pretend to have an IT company, but at the end of the day _anyone_ can (and do) run their own IT infrastructure by buying hardware and setting up a real data center... AND that's the key thing to understand anyone can run their own data center, and even become a cloud provider.

If you want control of your IT infrastructure and not be held hostage you need to pay for it. The full spectrum from DYI datacenter to rented servers to on the cloud is available to you.

IMO any business that uses cloud only for anything other than development and testing better have one hell of a disaster recovery strategy, because anything else means putting your business in the hands of a cloud provider that could go bankrupt / get shutdown without any notice.

You get what you pay for.

Canada's public education system is worth every penny.
https://www.bbc.com/news/busin...

The Canadian Economy (Toronto in particular) is booming because Canadians are well educated and have a talent pool attracting business:
https://www.theglobeandmail.co...

Germany one of the strongest economies in the world even offers free university education to non-Germans:
https://www.studying-in-german...

They understand attracting the best talent is what drives there economy and if about 50% of the foreign grads stay for 5 years (which is roughly true) they get more than their money back. Plus those that don't stay go back to their countries as advocates for Germany.

I don't expect the US to learn from example though. Hard data has never swayed the argument in favour of free anything down south... Understanding and responding to data requires well educated leadership and a functioning democractic government (another benefit of a good public education system).

Obligatory: Get of my lawn!

You young punk. LOL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

When will Application developers finally cross compile their code to work on linux, and release linux versions of their software?
If they aren't doing it why not?

There. Fixed your question.

Answer: They already are. The entire cloud / internet runs on open code that runs on a nix stack. Steam is available under linux. Open and Libre office run under linux. I've found suitable replacements for almost all software I used to use under linux.
I haven't booted into Windows (at home) in years. If a company just wants to support wall gardens then I'm happy not to use their software.

Its time to stop treating systems like pets, rather treat them like cattle. This is what's needed to manage growth / and scale without more staff. A cornerstone of this is automation. Its just the next skill set for admins to build out. Automation is part of commoditization and standardization, the next steps in the evolution of a service or product.

The assumption that automation requires less staff is only valid if nothing is changing. The reality is that IT use is growing rapidly, where I work the number of applications and servers we're managing has more than doubled in less than 5 years. Most of the servers are now virtual and the only reason we've

If you're scared of automation, then your current job description is probably so simple that it will be automated, or you don't understand automation.

At that point you have two choices:
1) Wait until someone else automates things without you or outsources it to a company that has already built and automation library / skills and lose your job.
or
2) Become the local automation expert. Or if not local be ready for a job market that will be asking for admins with automation skills.

The reality is autiomation will happen with or without you, the business case for it is there. For the windows admins: Powershell is here to stay and if you don't learn it someone else will. Beyond that automated deployment, or even self provisioning are quickly becoming the norm.

I'm currently working on 2). When you start to look at automation you'll find that:
(a) automation isn't trivial and requires lots of set up work and maintenance when done right...
(b) when not done right it just scales up the screw ups... (aka wrong command as a domain admin with two broad a target)... Just ask the guy that formated all machines on campus ( https://it.slashdot.org/story/... )
(b) over time it frees you from the mundane tasks to actually start tackling real IT issues in the organization, and get to the projects you never had time for before.
(c) it scales, it improves your productivity, and it makes you harder to replace, not easier.

Automation will happen with or without you. The cool thing is that there are tools out there that once you learn them enable your productivity as an admin to offer better quality service, and shift from reactive to proactive management off your environment.

This solves your problem, but requires some work.

A Linux install with a virtual box instance running a nicely sandboxed version of Windows is the solution. If you run it in seamless mode you can even set it up to have dedicated VMs for different apps, and have those apps appear and behave on the linux desktop like regular applications. By setting up a shared folder and storing all data on the host (not on the VMs), and allowing clipboard sharing it becomes completely transparent that the app is running in a VM.

I run the windows apps I require that way, and with VTx the virtualization doesn't really suffer any performance penalty.

It takes a bit of work to set up but then once its running you realize you have the best of both OS worlds. No more rebooting... etc... all the pains associated with Windows, but windows compatibility. As a bonus you can snapshot the VMs, which means if something gets screwed up due to an update or patch you can just revert to the working snapshot and finish whatever work you need, and leave the patching issue to later.

Admittedly you need to invest a little time to learn how to use Virtual Box and set it up, but its worth it.

Plus as you said if the OS goes to pot, you can move your VMs to any OS that runs VirtualBox. I recently switch Linux distros, and migrating was fairly painless (I kept home intact), and used my existing VMs with the new distro without blinking.

I was a Mac User a long time but once the hardware became shitty (battery problems) and even more expensive, and with the OS only being supported for two cycles eventually forcing a hardware buy (the old hardware doesn't support the newer OS, and the older OS version is no longer patched/supported) I said good bye to Apple. I've used this Linux + VM strategy on several machines now and have never look back or missed my Mac since (in fact its running linux now too).

I already run several VMs to support legacy (aka windows) apps on my desktop..

Sounds like its time to stick the browser in its own locked down VM with only the minimum connectivity it needs to function.

Vbox VM running Seamless mode (containing a small minimal linux install) is fantastic for this. You can even snapshot and fully lock the sucker down.
That and with Seamless mode it appears just like an app on the desktop.

Qubes OS (https://www.qubes-os.org/) is looking more interesting by the minute.

Everyone keeps talking about drones being an issue.. They are just the side show and distraction. We don't need to regulate drones, we need to regulate big data.

Reality is that the NSA didn't need drones to know everything about you. They could collect all payment information, all internet presence, own your smartphone with spy apps, own your PC, and track your every relationship through meta data from your telecom provider. They know who you talk to and how frequently and in fact and have in fact "stopped revolutions" while they were small when it comes to terrorism. The notion that we live in a free and open society is long gone. People have ended up on watch lists for being aware of TOR, linux and other technologies. I wouldn't surprise me if anyone that uses slashdot as they have had discussions is "watched". That's just your US government. Companies track your spending, and manipulate your environment to try an get you to consume more. There are records on your credit, what services you buy, what you read, where you shop, where you live that are traded and bought and sold as profiles between corporate entities for the sole purpose of their profitability.

Practical surveillance is here. They don't know when you fart and burp yet but with exercise sensors that report to the cloud, and the internet of things they'll know those things soon too. All they need is a big enough data center to consolidate the data build complete profiles on you. If stores (e.g Target) can start sending you diaper coupons because your purchasing habits suggest you might be pregnant believe me they will (in fact they already have).