I work for an ISP. You're wrong on almost every point.

Most infrastructure repair costs are for what we jokingly call the "Backhoe disconnect"
We're talking upwards of 90% of our repair costs are construction related. And before you say it, no, they don't pay us back for it. It's almost always the city that cuts the cable, they can't afford to pay us, and if we tried to make them they'd issue a press release the next day stating "We're laying off 1 police officer and 2 kindergarten teachers to pay off your Nazi ISP, sorry" and we'd be driven out of town with pitchforks.

Further, Fiber does have a lot of longevity, you are correct there. But what doesn't have a lot of longevity is wired internet service as a whole. By 2025 we'll start seeing the first 5g cellular plans they'll offer 1gig+ service for a lower price and using less spectrum than 4g. When that comes along, the residential side of my industry will die. The financial people have to plan for that, and would be idiots if they approved infrastructure projects to invest in that part of the buisness. We'll still have a lot of business services, and we are, of course, the trunks between those cellular towers. But the industry as a whole has been exiting the residential market lately. It's becoming less and less profitable. Even televisions services are a losing proposition. The tiered television services ensure that TV is VERY expensive and the only people getting those profits are the channel executives. This is why all the cable companies are trying to merge now... they want to be big enough to fight those big content providers like Viacom.

Long story short, focus your ire on the cellular industry. They will be your ISP in 10 to 20 years and you'll have forgotten all about us.

Well, now that we have the word of someone that has absolutely no clue how infosec works I guess it's case closed right?

As far as how secure this service is... well... meh? Who the hell knows. Would I keep the launch codes there? No. My password for that Cartoon network? Sure. The point is, you seem to be claiming that your local hard drive is safer than a websevice literally dedicated to security. That's laughable to say the least. IF this site really is what it claims to be, then it's definitely more secure than your local hard drive, but certainly not as secure as simply memorizing the password.

The concern I would have immediately would be that you have to trust that vendor. Are they located in the US (or whichever country you live in so you can sue them) and subject to the jurisdiction of US courts should they turn out to be bad actors? And almost more importantly, do they keep all of their data on US servers? Being headquartered in the US but outsourcing your database to China would kind of defeat the purpose right?

When you get down to it, when you get into big-time security in major corporations, it's not really that you're jumping through lots of hoops to make sure the data is secure. You will ALWAYS fail at that. You just can't stay that on top of things. What you're really doing is trying to ensure that if there is a breach, you can recover from it and that you have someone to sue/blame to pay for the recovery. So you make sure you pick a service that's in the US, and is well insured. Then you leave it up to them and their insurance company to duke out the difference between higher premiums or more security people.

But if you're just Joe-schmo at home, and you want to store credentials to your netflix accounts and such? And it's a huge well know company like lastpass? Yes, they are more secure than your windows harddrive. A lot more secure. Maybe keep your bank login on a post-it note in the back of your sock drawer just to be safe though.

That's the problem, there were no files (as far as we know) that contain the kind of information you describe.

You're asking the wrong questions. The first question is: "Did this even happen" and the answer is no. This is FUD spread by the UK government just before an important vote on new security laws.

Yea, and then the most hilarious part is:

So they are bragging about how smart they are for thwarting the scammers with "Deep analytics" whatever the hell that means. If you were smart enough to do "Deep analytics" should you also have been smart enough to design a system that wasn't so easily scammed? I dunno... like you don't get your payout for 3 months or something? or your payout's in the form of an Amazon Gift card that you can only use from your Uber account? There's about 100 different trivial ways to completely subvert the scam from the start, it's mind boggling that they allow it to continue.

About 10yrs ago I decided to do some volunteer work. By the time I was done, I decided not to volunteer anymore. It's just too depressing that most, if not all, of the charities are run so poorly. But the red cross was one of the worst. I told them I was a programmer and a DBA so they made me the "host" meaning I handed out cookies and made people frozen pizzas while they donated blood. For this I had to go through a background check, speak with a councilor. They told me that if I couldn't pass the background check, that was ok, I could drive the trucks if I had a record. You know, the trucks with the blood in them. Really.

Then they needed help with this Access database, I was a DBA right? No, get back to the cookies! they say. They hired this consulting firm to help them with Access, who charged them $20k and sent it a kid strait out of community college.

They'd run adds on TV "We're running low on blood! We desperately need you to donate this weekend!" but that came out of marketing, who didn't tell the doctors or nurses, so they'd get slammed when they weren't staffed to handle it.

The red cross is completely mismanaged, disorganized, and clueless. But then again, so was every other charity I found so...

Elitist and racist comments that trigger the like reflexes pretty much everyone on slashdot right?
Buy American! Be American! lol

I see "Entry level" programers float in from the local community college every other day. They usually can't figure out how to use our vending machine, much less write a line of code. The people from India/Pakistan show up and just get shit done. They also bring awesome stuff to our pot lucks.

The problem isn't H1B visas. The problem is the rub stamp educational standards colleges have in this country and completely destroyed employers faith in what a US degree means.

So, I think that the word we need to get out to the uninformed public is that hackers do not have magic powers that are impossible to defend against. Governments and Corporations responsible for these breaches keep trying to portray the hackers as if they were mad-men flying planes into buildings. How can you stop a fully loaded 747 flying at 800mph right?!?!

But that's not the case. Every single one of these breaches has been the result of mistakes made my the organization that was attacked as trivial as leaving keys in the lock of your safe with a big sign that says "Money inside!" These agencies and companies could easily, and with little monetary investment, make breaches like this nearly impossible.

In most cases the mistakes aren't even technological, they're institutional. Usually those attacked had well qualified security folks on staff who were doing their best to prevent the attack. But when the "VP of operations" (or whatever) comes in and says "The project is late, everyone's telling me it's because you're department is insisting on two factor authentication. I'm going to sign off on that and we're going to move forward" there's not much they can do.

Look at the Sony attack. You had executives of the company sitting there with the entire companies financial records down to the penny sitting on their windows desktop... WHILE their security department was telling them the entire network had an active virus infection running rampant. Basically nothing happened to any of the people responsible.

First: What the fuck is a "Technologist?" Personally, I reffer to myself as a Pornomancer, but what that means outside of my secret closet in the basement, I'm not sure.
Secondly: Since when did having a 4 line wikipedia entry mean you were a notable person? This guy has a bigger article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Personally, I don't understand why people have browser history turned on at all. I build a lot of computers for people (by happenstance it's a hobby) I build a dozen or so per year. The FIRST thing I do after the first boot is install Firefox (my preference), permanently turn off browsing history, install AdBlock+, install HTTPS Anywhere, then launch Windows update and go watch a movie.

I've never seen history help anyone. But I've seen it cause all sorts of embarrassing accidents, fights with spouses, legal trouble, etc... Is there actually a use for it?

So is this the "Change we can believe in"?

And no, I'm not making fun on democrats. I'm making fun of anyone that thinks their party cares about them or their country at all.

Basically the definition of every word in your statement is ambiguous so I find that hard to answer.
What is a "Friend"
What do you mean by "Point"
and "Social media"?!?! Does anyone know what that means?

It's on the internet, there's text, he clicks buttons, it makes him smile. More power to him.

wtf are you talking about? Name any other backup scheme that wouldn't suffer the exact same potential disaster? Even if you set it up yourself in your own house on your own network that could happen. The difference is Googles far less likely to have that sort of problem than the NAS you bought off Newegg did.

If you REALLY wanted to protect your data, you'd back it up to both your house and google.

But it IS reliable and private. It's only NOT private when you take the "Free" options. I've been using Google Photos for backing up my entire families photos (80gig and climbing) for years. It costs me a $1 and is as complicated as checking a box on each of our phones.

If you want something else... ok write it and stop bitching.

I doubt that. I think the US often overestimates themselves. Pretty much every war we've fought since WW2 has been against 3rd world countries with a few key assets provided by China/Russia. A war against China or Russia proper I suspect would be an eye opener for a lot of people. Aircraft Carriers are really big targets and Stealth aircraft are only really stealthy to pre-1980s anti-air systems.