His LinkedIn post looks like it was written by ChatGPT, so everything checks out. Maybe "Matt Turnbull" doesn't exist and the AI bots really are taking over?

OK, yes, the free Wifi scenario makes sense.

But I still think it's a bit weird to have proof of identity for IP addresses. For example, if a host presents a valid certificate for "example.com", then I can be reasonably confident that the host I'm talking to is controlled by whoever registered the domain "example.com", barring a compromised machine or leaked private key. There's a trail from the domain registrar to the name servers to the host.

But if someone tells me to visit 16.34.212.76 I have no idea who that is. Great! Whoever controls 16.34.212.76 has managed to prove they control 16.34.212.76 from different vantage points around the Internet... but so what? Who the heck is 16.34.212.76 anyway?

I can see this being useful for DoH if you configure your name servers with IP addresses like 8.8.8.8. Struggling to see other use cases that can't be handled better with a FQDN.

The SSL cert doesn't "encrypt the traffic". It's solely used as proof of identity.

You can have proof of identity without encryption, and you can have encryption without proof of identity.

If an attacker can reroute traffic destined for a specific IP address, then they can also obtain a certificate for that IP address by running the ACME challenge. (Same for the ACME HTTP challenge, actually...)

The only way this would fail is if an attacker can reroute my traffic, but not the traffic needed for the ACME challenge.

I don't understand the use case. If I connect via TCP to some IP address 42.42.42.42, it's rather difficult for an attacker to actually connect me to a different IP address... much more difficult than spoofing a domain name.

So, the certificate tells me "Yes, this really is 42.42.42.42." But I knew that already.

Maybe for UDP, attacks are a bit more feasible, but even so... they're not exactly easy.

I guess the only real use case I can see is to avoid a scary browser warning if you navigate to an IP address instead of a domain name.

Ignorance is knowledge. Superstition is science. Cruelty is compassion. Greed is altruism.

Maybe in the past. But now with the Rethuglicans aiming their ire at education, US universities are no longer going to attract the best and brightest, and innovation in the USA will decline. Do you honestly think Google, Amazon or Meta have innovated recently? All they've done is consolidate monopoly power.

Meanwhile, China is in fact innovating in many areas. And if you want to see innovation in Europe, you only need to look to Ukraine to appreciate their ingenuity in standing up to a much larger military power.

"This will stifle innovation!!" is the 2020s version of "Think of the children!!!"

Transparent bullshit. The USA is a lost cause, but maybe the rest of the world can stand up to the oligarchs.

It is possible to make sensible efficiency and emissions laws without repeating the stupidity of what the USA did.

A tariff is a consumption tax. It's paid for by consumers of imported goods.

This was IMO a dumb move on Carney's part. He should have suspended the tax just so long as negotiations were under way. Now Canada has one less point of leverage.

Though I suppose if things go badly, the tax can always be resurrected.

And selfishly, the tax would not cost me anything because I don't buy or use products or services from any companies that would be affected. :) (No Netflix, Amazon, Meta, etc.)

Probably an AI editor.

I use AI for the following tasks:

(1) generating cartoon-like illustrations for my web site, because I have no artistic talent and the output of AI good enough for my tiny personal site.

(2) Transcribing speech to text to generate video captions (using whisper-cpp

(3) Generating speech from text with Piper TTS because it generates really high-quality speech.

(4) Removing the backgrounds from images with RemBG because it does a decent job with very little effort.

All of the processing is done locally on my computer (except for the image generation in point 1.) I do not use LLMs such as ChatGPT or coding assistants because I find them useless and untrustworthy.

I've never used Uber and never will, so I have no personal experience. Just going on what I read.

The issue is that Uber is hiding how it prices its services, which means consumers (and drivers) can't make an informed choice.

If Uber were totally transparent about its pricing, I'd agree with you.