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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2025

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  • It’s shocking that the US actually engaged in war with Iran so readily without the administration considering the known scenario of the Straight of Hormuz being closed by Iran. I’m amazed by the lack of planning and logistics for something that should have been planned and discussed a good while beforehand, but I guess I shouldn’t be with this administration.

    There really need to be safeguards implemented to prevent actions like this from just being conducted on the turn of a dime without any awareness of others, discussion, etc. beforehand.

    I used to think that illegal actions of the US Executive Branch would just fail like getting a 403 error when trying to access a Web resource without proper authorization, but I guess this was naïve to think.

    There really need to be major changes in the US Government to make it so that the mechanisms of government won’t so willing put illegal actions into play. Though the response of the courts has often been good, it is super slow and merely reactive. Instead, impermissible, illegal actions need to be preempted before the mechanisms of government carry them out.


  • It’s interesting. I was just about to remark on how they are owned by Verizon, but this is no longer the case as of 2021. They are now apparently 90% owned by some private equity company called Apollo Global Management.

    The article in question is decent because Yahoo displays news articles from dedicated news organizations in the same way as MSN.com. In this case, the article is written by AFP (Agence France-Presse).

    My favorite aspect is the button that says “Add Yahoo on Google.” This would be an absolutely insane phrase in 2006.









  • m0stlyharmless@lemmy.ziptolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldYour car is here.
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    3 months ago

    Those 60s classic cars, though iconic, relied on a very different planned lifespan compared to modern cars. It was much shorter than the cars of today.

    A better analogy for Debian would probably be an older Honda Civic model. It’s older and lacks many flashy or hyper-modern features, but it’s reliable, maintainable, and actively supported.


  • Apple did add a new feature to iCloud called Advanced Data Protection, which enables E2E encryption on iCloud contents, which includes message and device backups.

    After enabling this, it is likely prudent to regenerate FileVault keys. It’s also notable that for the initial setup of macOS, it does offer you to forego uploading the recovery key to iCloud, but selecting this option presents a warning stating that Apple will be unable to help you retrieve your data if you lose it. Thus, I am certain most Mac users just upload them to iCloud, which opens them up to exactly the same issue as in the article, but does help protect against thieves or adversaries with brief device access.

    I have tried to convince Apple users I know to enable ADP, but I have been faced with the expected dismissal of it being unnecessary because they are not interesting, etc.

    More people need to engage in a culture of security and privacy when it comes to their digital lives.

    Edit: added missing word


  • The initial setup of macOS offers disk encryption by default, but also prompts the user to upload the FileVault recovery keys to iCloud. It’s more transparent than Windows, which, if I recall correctly, just silently encrypts the disk and uploads the key to Microsoft servers.

    iCloud’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature, which enables E2E encryption, does protect these recovery keys, but I would worry about them being copied elsewhere or retained in unprotected backups after ADP is enabled.

    One would probably want to regenerate the FileVault encryption keys after enabling ADP and potentially fully disable uploading the recovery keys to iCloud.

    Similarly, it is possible to disable uploading of the BitLocker decryption key in Windows with the Pro and Enterprise versions.

    Personally, I doubt most users would use disk encryption if they had to keep track of the disk recovery keys on their own, so this provides meaningful protection against exfiltration of sensitive information if an adversary were to have brief physical access to the device or were to steal it, but it does no good at all for protecting against Microsoft, someone with deep access to Microsoft’s systems, or legal requests to Microsoft.

    The same goes for Apple users who don’t have ADP enabled for their iCloud accounts or who have enabled ADP without later regenerating their FileVault keys. (I don’t think one can be reasonably sure that there will be no traces of the cleartext FileVault recovery key on Apple’s servers after ADP is enabled for iCloud.)

    Ultimately, so many users should better engage a culture of privacy and security, think seriously about their threat models, and think about what would happen if one where to get access to their sensitive information.