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Comment Re:Integral layer of the Trusted-Computing/DRM sta (Score 1) 34

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

Comment Re:Dual purpose age-bracket signal :o (Score 1) 129

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

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Comment Integral layer of the Trusted-Computing/DRM stack (Score 1) 34

This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

Comment Re:Long-term solution: (Score 4, Interesting) 43

Or just require logins, and require a modest microtransaction of $1 to create a login, or explicit administrator approval. Longtime actual users and contributors will be exempt through the administrator provision, and bots are free to create $1 accounts (which are bannable for abuse) thus funding the project. New actual users probably woud not be bothered if the rationale is explained.
If it's really worth it for them to crawl endless random URLs until the sun burns out its fuel, make them pay for the privilege.

Comment Re: Laying the groundwork (Score 1) 136

Because the Democrat Party (tm) finally saw the writing on the wall and the biggest supporters told his crusty old ass that if he ran he would 100% guarantee a trump victory, and he ultimately withdrew at the 11th hour. The important part is: it did not stop him from TRYING.
Maybe you forget about the part where the party basically had to have a fake as fuck primary due to low confidence in him (normally it would just be assumed), and when he was finally convinced not to run they had to push Kamala in as a nominated candidate, ultimately doing an end run around the democratic process--nobody outside of super delegates voted for her in a primary. The Democrat Party (tm) does not embrace democracy.

Comment Re: Enemy of the State (Score 3, Interesting) 64

The technology that was highlighted in that movie originated around that time or a bit before. It goes by several names, but WAMI (wide area motion imagery) is kind of the generic term; it allows a forensic tech to rewind and track objects (people, vehicles) after an event. With AI and persistent vision, bottomless data center storage, it will allow everything / everyone to be tracked at all times. People don't know that this is already deployed over many large cities; essentially global hawk drones with high resolution hemispherical cameras constantly flying patterns, watching everything.

Comment Re: They had to find suckers somewhere (Score 2) 120

Let's be real. They blew the school up because it was a school, and most likely a lot of the leadership / military families sent their girls there. And our leaders are evil bastards, working for evil bastards on behalf of other evil bastards. It's an exercise for the reader to determine the nature of those evil bastards.

Comment Re: It's consumption not wealth (Score 1) 143

Over 60=net tax consumers who on average radically over-consume health benefits and entitlements relative to their lifetime tax contributions. The 20,30,40,50 year old workers may be getting 'paid' by because they're servicing those patients, but those patient's checks are written by and at the expense of their children, their grand children, great grandchildren, maybe even further removed than that. In other words, those checks are both written and cashed by the very same people working that hospital, which is a peculiar sort of arrangement.

That's not to say we shouldn't take care of older folks; we should. Nor am I laying blame on those people, but that voting block is quite powerful, and continuing to live is a powerful instinct. However, it is a fact. When just one emergency can outstrip anything most people have ever scrimped and saved, it's kind of inevitable. Our entire system is just broken, and something has got to give, sooner or later.

Comment Re: It was never about "the kids" (Score 1) 97

It's dreadfully simple: if you want to keep kids off the interwebs, you have to prove you're not a kid, do you not? So you pass a law which says that as a company providing social media must effectively positively identify the entire user base in that locality. Are they going to erase that proof once a positive identification is made? Of course not! It's a value added proposition to these companies, which in addition to pitching advertisements, operate as data brokers. Positively identifying your users only means more money.
Your identity is now forever tied to your profile and posts, unless you chose to post only to obscure non-mainstream sites which have no reach.
Presto voila, anonymity is forever gone, and so is the meaningful ability to communicate perspectives which are contrary to the mainstream narrative, which is almost always completely manufactured and curated. If you dare post something that someone in a position of power dislikes for whatever reason, the police know just who hunt down, and thanks to the omnipresent surveillance networks they probably know to a very precise degree where you're at, at all times.

The stasi wished they possessed an iota of the ruthless efficiency.

Comment Re: Governments don't have the right (Score 3, Insightful) 132

You mentioned whatever a human policeman can see and memorize. That's the difference.
If all policemen had a photographic autobiographical memory, eyelids which never closed, required no sleep, were connected to a distributed consciousness which never forgot anything they ever saw and allowed them to collaborate across vast distances, and furthermore could be inexpensively placed at every intersection... I'm confident the founders would have outlawed them.

Comment Re: The challenge for AI? Sales. (Score 1) 94

For generations the women in the family took care of the financials of the family. They kept budgets, wrote checks and balanced the books. Females are quite capable of doing math.

I think the problem is 1) families are going the way of the dodo. 2) virtue signaling is now included as a category to be balanced on the books for egurls, and that virtue signaling is disproportionally weighted against everything else. Gotta spend a lot on clothes and travel for your instas so you can pull a whale that doesn't exist and wouldn't want you even if he did.

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