Generally, countries don't consider even offensive cyber operations to be acts of war. Every country has said they reserve the right to change their mind, but countries like Russia with their own cyberops capability don't really want to push that button -- they've definitely been relying on cyberops not being seen as acts of war, and it's in their interests to keep that status quo.

At some point, some offensive op will go too far and some major power will see it as an act of war. That's going to be a huge event when it happens. I doubt it will happen in this conflict.

fringe sites like 4chan, far-right social networks like Gettr and Rumble and mainstream social media sites

They called out all of two right-wing sites, and they're both well-known places where extremists gather and communicate -- at the moment, there isn't any good example of a large-scale far-left forum (at the moment, it's much more fragmented than the far-right); 4-chan isn't right-wing (it does have a lot of right-wing activity, but it's definitely got lots of left-wing/far-left communities and content), and neither are the mainstream social media sites.

Seems to me like the plan is to monitor social media including fringe sites to look for early indicators of activity to disrupt an election; it's certainly not "only conservatives".

Minimalism as a concept is the reduction of a thing to its essential components. That is, to make a thing that does what it needs to do; no more, but also no less. Which means it's always a scoping question.

A minimalist *phone* would only make phone calls; and possibly would only make phone calls to pre-defined numbers, depending on the scope of what's essential.

A minimalist *smartphone* would do more than that, but how much more is going to depend on what the essential features of a smartphone are for you. For me, for example, there's no point in carrying a smartphone at all unless it has a secure messaging platform that interops with my friends', mapping and navigation, a solid contacts list, a way to record voice and text notes, and a decent browser. It wouldn't need to have a "phone" at all.

1. A ton of industrial printers work like this; "upgrades" are done by a technician coming out and updating firmware.
2. The microphone on the Pebble Time series watches was disabled in software upon shipping and enabled via a software update later
3. Intel did this in 2010 on some models of processor

And there are a lot more. In some cases, this is reasonable -- it's cheaper to make one version of something and then remove features to make it affordable, especially if it's something you're leasing/licensing; or the software to adequately support a feature just isn't ready yet. In other cases, it's market segmentation gone amok.

Insurance is a way to externalize risk by diluting it among a population -- I can take a known loss instead of accepting the entire risk of something bad happening. By definition, most people have to actually realize less risk than the individual insurance rate covers, but you gain huge advantages to having certainty of what your risk is.

Take fire insurance, for example. I insure a building that would cost $200k to rebuild, and it costs me $50/month. Given the chance of a fire actually occurring and causing enough damage to require a rebuild, my loss expectancy over the next 10 years is greater than what I pay in insurance. It seems scammy because there's a chance my loss over 10 years to fire will be $0, in which case I'm "out" $6k with no value returned, right?

But here's the thing -- I know exactly what it's going to cost me for insurance this year, and I can plan around that. I don't need to keep huge piles of cash on hand to rebuild that $200k structure. That means I can spend that money on growing my business, etc.; the value of being able to know what I'm on the hook for means I can keep a smaller amount of cash on hand, and that's absolutely value returned.

Insurance only becomes a bad deal if you entirely trust the insurance company to represent the risk fairly to you, or if you don't bother to assess whether a particular risk makes sense to externalize.

Would it not be cheaper to maybe grow a bit thicker skin?

There is a pretty significant difference between the hand-wringing over "someone was mean to me" and actually being harassed or bullied. Just because some Tumblr kids don't know the difference doesn't mean there is no difference.

Harassment, for example, requires making contacts "in a manner that could be expected to cause distress or fear in any reasonable person" under UK law, not just being annoying. Growing a "thicker skin" isn't reasonable advice in response to actual harassment.

Yes, hypocrisy. The world is black and white, and people should avoid using something that's less than desirable, even when it's their only option currently, to advocate replacing that thing with a superior thing.

Advocates for eliminating wired networks for last mile should not use any; advocates for the telephone system should not have used the telegraph; advocates for reforming courts should not use them to effect change.

It's not that clearing your browsing history, throwing out old logs/emails or flushing your toilet are inherently illegal, it's when you use them and why.

Exactly; it's analogous to shredding documents. People shred documents all the time. If you do it as a matter of course (e.g. because of document retention policies, or just because you periodically clean and shred stuff you don't think you want anymore), you're not doing anything wrong.

But if the FBI asks you some investigative questions about something and then you immediately go shred a bunch of stuff, they're going to argue that you were doing that in order to destroy evidence. Intent matters. A lot.

Same thing here: if you're using incognito mode or routinely clearing history and cookies, there's no issue. If you do it in response to an investigation, they're going to argue you did it to destroy evidence. Intent matters.

The cards aren't the core cost, it's the infrastructure and hardware to support them. How does the smartcard work with tablets? How does it work with Chromebooks? And so on.

Writing down passwords isn't an automatic fail—it just means you need good physical security on whatever you write them down in. A notebook is bad advice, but writing them down on a wallet card or similar wouldn't be too bad.

Something like LastPass is probably your best bet, since it works everywhere (including Chromebook); though it isn't free if you want to use the mobile app, it is pretty inexpensive. Of course, if LastPass has an outage, you're gonna have a bad time.

As a security professional, I often recommend Password Cards (passwordcard.org) as a free, low-tech solution that hits a good balance among cost, security, and ease of use. The site generates a printable card (which is easy to make a backup of!) that has a row of symbols and then several rows of random text elements in color-coded rows. All you need to remember for each site is a symbol+color combo; then you simply start from that grid point and type the required number of characters. You could even safely note down the symbol+color for each site, because as long as you keep the card safe in your wallet, that information isn't useful.

It's not perfect, but it's quite good, free, and simple.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. By your logic, I could hire someone to put an ad on television for me and I'd have no recourse if they instead make an ad for a competitor or make an ad that's just one long "FUUUUUUUUUUUCK".

All freedoms have limits, none are absolute. Freedom of speech, for example, does not include:

• The right for you to place others in immediate danger as a result of your speech (e.g. the "yelling Fire in a crowded theatre" example)
• The right for you to damage others' reputations through telling of falsehoods (libel and slander)
• The right for private property owners to give you a platform -- I can kick you out of my building for your racist speech, but I can't kick you off the sidewalk

And those are just a few examples. The fact that you have freedom of speech means that you have the free choice to enter into an NDA or not. You cannot be coerced (this would invalidate the contract) to do so, and NDAs have to be limited in scope (you can't talk about this thing, specifically) and duration (I can't prevent you from talking about it forever).

Your ideas of both constitutional and contract law are incredibly naive.

you would run the risk of basically losing the original, viable variants.

I don't follow that reasoning. How does a synthetically sterile strain put the existence of viable strains at risk? It's not like it can reproduce and overwhelm the viable strains...

Nice catch -- tired fingers and a long discussion about DNSSEC...

If they don't like an app, it doesn't get in the store, and, unless you've broken your device (which is of questionable legality), you're limited to Apple approved apps.

You're limited to Apple-approved native apps. You can "install" HTML5-based apps (including ones with local storage that work offline) without any approval process from Apple. You won't have full access to all the device capabilities, but there you go.

Besides, GP was using examples of media content, not application content. Apple doesn't restrict what content you can view or load, and the formats they support are open standards. Hardly a restrictive regime, App Store aside.

Amazon can delete books you've bought, or even edit the content of books without your consent.

Again, when we're talking about device capabilities, that's a tiny slice. The Kindle supports a great many things that don't have Amazon DRM, and Amazon does not have the capabilities you describe with media that's not DRM-controlled. Again, you can read whatever you want on a Kindle provided it's in one of a handful of formats.

The GP is arguing that Google restricts what you can stream -- that is, content -- to the Chromecast, and likens it to Apple and Amazon. Firstly, it isn't true - you can stream pretty much any content you want to a Chromecast, as long as it'll load in a Chrome tab without 3rd-party plugins (and that means common open standards as well as Flash content). Secondly, even if it were true that Google makes content or content-provider restrictions, that would make them exceptional in the industry. Neither Apple nor Amazon prevent you from viewing content or accessing information you choose, so long as it's in one of the ubiquitous and standard formats.

That would be a tremendous waste of time. So no.