Tavern on the Meta

Catija

12:00 AM

I don't think 18 months counts as "teenage". :P

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Catija notifications or ring tone?

Catija

@JourneymanGeek Depends on if ano's in the room :P

Journeyman Geek

and heh

(fr - replace bong and twiddletwieedle sound with antique steam horns for april fools days...)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: What’s the correct way to refer to “the Doctor”? by Radon the guy on scifi.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: What is the concept of androids in Doctor Who? by Radon the guy on scifi.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer: How to become a vampire and werewolf hybrid? by vampiredefilers on gaming.SE

Shog9

12:25 AM

...I did not expect to see that much relevant spam on a "how do I become a vampire" question.

Anonymous

hah

Catija

Vampire spam?

Tooth sharpening? SPF 5000 sunscreen?

Jon Ericson

I can't think of a universe in which it's a good idea to respond to an email offering to make you a vampire. There's always a catch.

Catija

It's not too bad in the Dresden Files universe... depending on the kind of vampire you become...

Shog9

Obvious downside: you become a vampire. But! There's a hidden catch.

user202362

12:33 AM

Can vampire detect AIDs?

Catija

Though... I suppose that the only ones you could become in that were the bad kind... the others were hereditary.

user202362

I mean it would be awful if you are an vampire and you drink blood from a person who is HIV positive

Shog9

Funny you bring that up... Today on Ars Technica: Gut bacteria key to the vampire bat’s ability to survive on blood

tl;dr: being a vampire is probably even worse than we thought

user202362

Bombardier beetle escapes from a toad’s stomach after launching a chemical attack

►

user202362

when swallowed by a predator, try to have a diarrhea in its stomach

user202362

12:37 AM

eventually, when you are disgusting enough, no one would possibly want to eat you ...

MetaEd

@Catija s/your/one's/

Or even better s/one's/my/

Plus she's technically no longer a teenager.

Catija

@MetaEd :D All grown up. :)

MetaEd

@Catija I'm really very proud.

Catija

@MetaEd :D In college or working?

MetaEd

@Catija Yes.

Catija

12:48 AM

Nice :D Studying something she loves, I hope.

MetaEd

Vocal music. But in school she's working on her basics.

Catija

Oooh, nice! That was my major before I switched it. It's challenging! I was never willing to put in the time.

What styles does she prefer?

MetaEd

Amazingly, opera, though she's also crossing over a bit into musicals.

Catija

Oooh, fun! What voice type?

Journeyman Geek

@Catija and lots of black...

Catija

12:52 AM

When I was studying, they always encouraged us to do both because it was good to get some variety.

MetaEd

@Catija I think what we're looking at is lyric soprano.

Catija

@MetaEd There's a lot of good stuff there. :) And people like listening to them.

MetaEd

Right.

Catija

Really need strong vocal agility, though... for some of those roles.

MetaEd

She seems to have a good teacher, and a good ear and a good range.

Catija

12:55 AM

All excellent things. :D Hopefully the former will encourage her to have fun, and that latter will give her many options and easy learning.

MetaEd

At 18 months I assume you've already got the first two years of college planned? :-)

Journeyman Geek

._.

Catija

HAHA! Nope! We're fully prepared to let him be who he wants to be... and figuring it out (with help). We're giving him the start we hope will make him better at being gritty and working through problems but it's his ride.

... and, you know... being a good person in there somewhere.

Journeyman Geek

heh

I'm pretty sure the secret of being a good person is... being a terrible person. Then realising it kinda sucks :)

Catija

Huh... maybe that's why I'll only ever be a mediocre person... never was horrible.

MetaEd

1:06 AM

I've heard you can learn from the wisdom of others. But it seems much more common to learn from mistakes.

I know I learned to keep plants alive by killing a lot of plants.

Catija

Dead plants always make me really sad... I hated going to the nursery with my dad (landscape architect) when I was a kid because I always wanted to take home the sad looking plants... which of course, he never would.

user315433

An interesting idea: fold Patents into Law. One ghost town fewer.

user202362

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the even-toed ungulate family Suidae. Pigs include the domestic pig and its ancestor, the common Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa), along with other species. Related creatures outside the genus include the peccary, the babirusa, and the warthog. Pigs, like all suids, are native to the Eurasian and African continents. Juvenile pigs are known as piglets. Pigs are highly social and intelligent animals. With around 1 billion individuals alive at any time, the domestic pig is among the most populous large mammals in the world. Pigs are omnivores and...

user202362

An average pig litter (a group of piglets is called a litter, just like with puppies and kittens) is normally eight to twelve piglets.

user202362

makes humans look like such a failure ...

user315433

1:09 AM

The idea being law.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/662/…

MetaEd

@Catija Of course not. The plan is always to take them home and make them look sad there.

Journeyman Geek

@FTP forgetting that AP's a bit special and serves a very specific purpose...

Catija

@MetaEd And hopefully not kill them. It's sort of like the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.

user202362

laws don't usually cover true innovation, laws are usually based on prevailing morals

MetaEd

@Catija I have an aloe you'd probably recognize.

user202362

1:15 AM

and there usually isn't a prevailing moral on things people have not encountered before ...

user202362

so big break through, and some of them are very useful innovations, inherently treading on the edge of law

Catija

@MetaEd Ironically, the plant I've managed to keep alive the longest is called a "carrion plant". Looks sorta like this:

MetaEd

Nice. Does it actually smell like dead meat?

Catija

The flowers do... if you get close and smell... but it's not too noticeable otherwise.

user202362

flower is pretty, and it doesn't look like it needs watering much

Journeyman Geek

1:34 AM

@Catija my mom has green fingers...

she keeps accidentally growing lemon ... in pots

(they need a LOT of soil so...)

user202362

1:47 AM

Opposite problem here, cut lemon tree & passion flowers down a few times because too close to building. They grow right back the next year.

user202362

inherited many different flowers and trees from previous owners, they don't tend to die and need constant trimming

user202362

although backyard needs watering, lawn is becoming a desert :(

Catija

@TelautonomousKitty Yep. And when it needs it, it starts sort of drooping... so then you give it water and it's happy again.

HTTP

2:12 AM

Does Apple love curly quotes?

Does Stack Exchange love curly quotes?

Catija

{Who} {Doesn't} {?}

Curly stuff is awesome... :P

HTTP

Well, seeing a post with curly quotes and proper ellipsis, I can guess the poster is using Apple product...

Catija

I'm writing on a MBP... I don't think it does those things.

HTTP

hmm? hmm...

I think it's possible as an option.

SmokeDetector

3:08 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Username similar to website in answer: Import my SSH key as GPG sub-key to use for SSH authentication by cuihao on unix.SE

SmokeDetector

5:52 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL-only title, bad NS for domain in body, bad NS for domain in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, +6 more: getnutritionshelp.com/advanced-iq/ by rsurzvymb on askubuntu.com

SmokeDetector

6:14 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title, bad NS for domain in body, bad NS for domain in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, +5 more: getnutritionshelp.com/advanced-iq/ by rsurzvymb on apple.SE

SmokeDetector

6:29 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Username similar to website in answer: Is collagen supplementation useless? by vitasave on biology.SE

HTTP

@SmokeDetector I produce food when under sunlight

Journeyman Geek

6:47 AM

@HTTP @rene probably does....

user202362

6:58 AM

@HTTP chickens and piglets produce food for us when they are under sunlight - they convert veges or meat they eat into their own meat ... are you the same?

user202362

cows and sheep do too

Travis J

7:14 AM

I thought I read somewhere this place was supposed to be, and I quote "FULL OF STARS".. oh well, at least there seems to be talk of chicken.

user202362

chicken ate all the stars ... it's possible

Travis J

7:30 AM

So basically, the chicken... is FULL of STARS.

Got it.

It all makes sense now.

HTTP

@TelautonomousKitty Why did the chicken eat the star?

2

user202362

it helps digestion?

user202362

oops ... diamond not star, but they are essentially the same :p

Princess Luna

7:53 AM

They both shine :>

user202362

:D

SmokeDetector

9:51 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer: Unusual feeling during salah please help (New Muslim) by ali imran Nagori on islam.SE

Derpy

10:19 AM

@MikeTheLiar Somehow, I wish this would be "valid" html.

<legend for="Zelda">
    <a href="the past"/>
</legend>

Magisch

@JeremyBanks Over here (despite it being illegal) it's in the contract that you can't discuss your salary with anyone in the company and doing so is grounds for termination

reason being that a bunch of people who have worked here for a long time get paid less then new hires and they'd be miffed to find that out

Ano

10:35 AM

So much for that earlier statement. Woke up too early.

Derpy

10:48 AM

@Magisch there are still people that think that salary is based on your experience?

Should be pretty know by now that your salary is directly proportional to how much you wag your tail

Magisch

@Derpy most people I think

Derpy

11:15 AM

@Magisch dreamers.

yet, it is not like the Will of the D. can do much in this world.

Derpy

11:52 AM

> +1 #SqlInjectionInVbaApp #Year2018 #WhereIsMyMorningStar

Magisch

@Derpy Thing is, if you're more experienced and more involved you kind of expect to make more then a grad who happened to have been hired during a boom rather than a recession

Derpy

12:11 PM

2 hours ago, by Magisch

@JeremyBanks Over here (despite it being illegal) it's in the contract that you can't discuss your salary with anyone in the company and doing so is grounds for termination

^ coming from yet another country where salary discussion is regarded as progeny of the devil, I have come to not expecting much.

user202362

everything happens for a reason, but a lot of the times not to the advantage of you ...

HTTP

like... q-ban... or suspension...

user202362

sometimes, ignorance is a bliss ... I mean, if you have not asked a question for 3 years, you would not know that you have been Q banned for that long

user202362

then you could cry to a CM how you have reformed ...

user202362

like how you have not asked any low quality questions for 3 years ...

Journeyman Geek

12:25 PM

erm

if you haven't asked any questions in 3 years, you ought to be getting that "one question every 6 months" grace question, right?

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek aye

Derpy

@MetaEd Evil plan of the day. On April fool day, switch all the avatars of the people in the anime chat room to images generated from that tools we were discussing before.

HTTP

@Derpy or every posted images on their chat room...

Derpy

1:44 PM

@JourneymanGeek Quick question since you seem to be a Linux user. Do you use any form of virus scanner (not necessarily realtime)?

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy nope

tbh, usually when you get pwned on linux, its your own stupidity ;)

(so, disable root ssh logins, try to only use key based ssh logins, patch regularly, and you should be fine)

I've gotten bitten in the ass by at least two of these

Catija

Ok... so this question is about a specific site and the op specifically comes to MSE to circumvent their site mods, which is why I voted to close in the first place... meta.stackexchange.com/q/307374/284336

Can I get some understanding why this isn't site-specific?

Journeyman Geek

@Catija eh, its something that multiple sites can use?

Catija

They're asking how to make it possible on their site...

Journeyman Geek

In this case, this specific use case/site feels like context rather than something uniquely useful for spanish.se

Catija

1:52 PM

No... based on my experience, they're looking for someone to just do it , skipping their site entirely.

Journeyman Geek

ehh

I'd probably stop and ask "Am I looking at the question or the person?"

(simply cause I'm not seeing that outside - trying to get staff attention on a problem)

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek Point is that the only reason to use a "security suite" on windows IMHO was to hope that the suite will at least "warn you" when something manages to cause an infection.

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy well, if it makes you feel better, there's such things ;p

I've never used one, even on internet facing servers

HTTP

@Catija I just read it, and I think it's an appropriate question on MSE too. If it can't be done (since the original purpose is the "proffesional disclaimer" as mentioned in the answer), then that's that, and it'd be helpful for other sites too.

Unless SE decided to allow it for more general purpose

They could have also posted on their own meta too for explicit feature-request, but the outcome would have been the same

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek Note that I didn't say it would "stop" the threat. Just somehow raise some red flags.

Basically, I still wonder how you would notice something going amiss on a linux machine. I am not even sure I can notice some more elaborate infections on a windows machine, less so on a new OS.

Usual reply is "be prepared with backups"

but how can you backup something when it is impossible for you to know when an infection started?

Should you tomorrow find a rootkit on your Windows machine, what can guarantee that the infection wasn't there a month ago when you backuped your data?

That said, I guess that may be said for every system.

Information Security is a mess.

Journeyman Geek

2:11 PM

hmm

that's a good question

the last time, my host complained.

In theory with a well run system, you'd have some flavour of monitoring

sudden high load or traffic = something fishy

HTTP

including sudden disk activity and fan?

Journeyman Geek

well, you rarely are around your own servers...

but that would be a sign

someone like me would more likely just fire htop for something unrelated and get confused to the high loads ;)

Derpy

Actually to be fair I was thinking about the average "home users" that usually don't want to set up a corporate level security infrastructure just to watch cats videos on youtube in the weekend.

Journeyman Geek

oh

ya, we just survive on smugness

;p

(I've literally never thought of securing my linux system. That said my windows systems only run defender these days soooo)

Derpy

surviving on ... self-satisfaction? Sorry, must be the language barrier but I don't get it.

Journeyman Geek

2:24 PM

@Derpy making a joke about how linux users are convinced their systems are immune to everything...

Derpy

I was just going to ask if home users are supposed to either start a 24/7 security crusade and never find the time to actually use their computers or just live a life in malware denial.

Journeyman Geek

usually the latter

Derpy

because the more I try to delve into the problem, the more the approach "You don't need the antivirus if you know what you are doing" seems to be nothing more than malware denial.

John Dvorak

I choose the middle road: use MS Essentials and a password manager, don't visit shady sites and call it a day

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak on linux? ;p

John Dvorak

2:36 PM

and back up my documents folder

I don't need to replace an OS that came free with my laptop with another OS just because that other one is also free.

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak heh, I run it on mostly DIY boxen, or servers...

John Dvorak

that's a valid use case, yes

Journeyman Geek

tbh, also, I like it when I have a system where everything I need's on CLI

which is a goal for my home box, other than my torrent client not having a feature in its web UI ._.

most of my linux usage is through the dedi I run my webserver and a few other things on.

Derpy

@JohnDvorak As I said, 5 years ago (maybe more) I would have agree - not visiting shady sites was a way to stay safe. Today....

Anonymous

@Magisch "despite it being illegal" well that sounds like a healthy company.

Journeyman Geek

2:44 PM

heh

John Dvorak

often I feel like paid antiviruses are more shady than useful...

Journeyman Geek

@JeremyBanks I was told specifically not to discuss salary at my last interview.... ._. (which went roughly as badly as they can go :( )

Derpy

Consider this. 4k sites, including .gov ones hacked so that browsing users would end up mining bitcoin

Journeyman Geek

Well, stuff out of my contriol anyway...

Anonymous

I got into the habit of not using anti malware protection because I wasn't using Windows for a long time. Now I'm back on Windows... but still, fuck antiviruses >_>. They're malware themselves, maintained largely by teams who don't understand security. Browsers are pretty secure, and I don't run pirated software any more.

Journeyman Geek

2:45 PM

@Derpy mostly run by the lowest bidder...

@JeremyBanks and don't run as admin... ;p

which windows finally started enforcing 2-3 versions ago

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek Good advice for life. :D

John Dvorak

I don't mind mining someone's bitcoins if it means I don't get to see ads

Anonymous

@Derpy Mining bitcoins isn't a security issue per se.

Anonymous

@JohnDvorak I think this does't actually make economic sense, but that's the publishers' problem I guess.

John Dvorak

@JeremyBanks unless your iPhone tends to explode when it does

Anonymous

2:47 PM

Statistically, most do not.

John Dvorak

survivor bias? :P

Anonymous

It's a usability/performance issue, which many sites these days have without anything deliberately malicious going on.

Journeyman Geek

lol

Its samsungs that blow up anyway...

John Dvorak

... should I start putting my phone in a tin tray?

Derpy

@JeremyBanks Don't take me wrongly, but that is useless to specify. The point is that just browsing a .gov site can make your machine perform unwanted work without you even knowing. It is not like it would have been much difference if instead of mining bitcoin your calculation power was used to join a DDos attack. The point is that even visiting a government site cannot be taken as intrinsically secure.

Journeyman Geek

2:49 PM

fire proof bag, in a steel case....

@Derpy I guess it comes down to whether you're going to use your computer, and assume some risk, or lock it down so hard,.... you practically can't use it.

Anonymous

@Derpy But neither of those examples compromise your personal security, so they don't feel like a compelling case to take on the risk of an anti-virus.

Anonymous

Those sites cause you personal performance issues in rare cases, while antiviruses do in all cases.

Anonymous

If a website has porn ads, minimize your time on it. That's my only rule of internet safety.

Derpy

@JeremyBanks well, the second one does make you legally liable in some countries...

Journeyman Geek

also, at this point, you'd want something a little more ... proactive...

You'd start with a locked down system and start opening stuff as you needed it

Anonymous

2:52 PM

Everything is way more secure than it's been in the past, not less. The revolutionary attacks that break barriers are things like rowhammer and spectre that bypass antiviruses anyway.

Journeyman Geek

and I mean literally locked down. Played with an old XP setup that literally made you whitelist every single thing you ran...

John Dvorak

Linux fails on the proactivity front. The active user account is insecure by design

Journeyman Geek

for about 5 minutes before I got bored...

;p

Anonymous

And for an antivirus to actually be effective relative to other antiviruses you need to be constantly updating definitions and increasing your performance burden.

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak the active user account only has limited previleges...

Anonymous

2:53 PM

@JourneymanGeek which include 99% of private user data.

Journeyman Geek

and many distros come with hardening - selinux is a pain in the arse...

John Dvorak

such as sending arbitrary HTTP requests

Journeyman Geek

@JeremyBanks which big internet companies probably have already ;p

Anonymous

They aren't the threat I'm concerned about.

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak shrug might as well airgap it then

@JeremyBanks probably just as true of windows?

Anonymous

2:54 PM

@JourneymanGeek Air-gapped computers are no longer secure ;P

John Dvorak

O-o

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek I use umatrix on block all by default. Which means that if I go to youtube, I reautorized each single domain/content type touple actually needed for the site by hand.

Anonymous

(I share as a joke; this is also outside of my threat model.)

Journeyman Geek

Lets just switch it off, drill the hard disk, fill it with concrete, put it back, fill the PC with concrete, and drop in the ocean.

HACK THAT

Anonymous

If you want security use a Chromebook.

Derpy

2:56 PM

Already knew about the airgap bypass techniques. Luckily most are for now pretty impossible to use in the real world.

Journeyman Geek

heh. Where's the fun in that?

Derpy

@JeremyBanks will be honest. I have considered that.

Anonymous

I use a Chromebook with remote shells a lot of the time. It's not that bad if your org has the right tooling.

Journeyman Geek

hm, deb mode, or can you chuck a ssh client on it?

or android apps, I do have a juicessh licence...

Anonymous

secure shell chrome app stuff like this

Journeyman Geek

2:59 PM

there's also a rumour they're getting lxc containers

John Dvorak

If you want security, use EBCDIC-encoded smoke signals. Nobody's crazy enough to try and make sense of that.

using an automated kiln, of course. You can even mine silver in the process.

Anonymous

unfortunately Kiln is no longer in service :(

Journeyman Geek

@JeremyBanks didn't SO use that for repos at some point?

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek I'm not sure. If they did it was before my time.

Journeyman Geek

ah

John Dvorak

3:01 PM

A blast furnace might do in a pinch, but it's susceptible to side-channel attacks due to black-body radiation of molten iron.

HTTP

inb4 SE is actually using our browsers to mine Unicoins in the background

Journeyman Geek

(I think someone mentioned it somewere on meta, so I have no idea)

@HTTP if they're open about it and its easy to opt in/out, sure why not?

John Dvorak

@HTTP that's common knowledge. Why do you think they want to have not one but two apps on each of our phones?

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak the ones they mostly stopped developing?

Anonymous

you've discovered the secret reason that 20% of the staff quit in protest -- the lay-offs were a cover.

HTTP

3:04 PM

gasp!

Journeyman Geek

@JeremyBanks mostly marketing... oh wait...

Anonymous

lmao

Magisch

3:15 PM

@JeremyBanks The company owners treat labor laws more like suggestions

A bet that has paid off for now since awards for successful lawsuits are small and lawyers aren't free

Derpy

Seems we have degenerate in appeal to ridicule. -_-'
Yet again, I find no way to be sure that at any point the data on a machine isn't compromised by obscure yet to be know vulnerability. And that means that at any point you couldn't be sure that any backup you take isn't already compromised. If you also refuse antivirus software - which is somehow justified when you cannot even trust the AV to not have backdoors for random country scale entities - you don't have any way to check those files. Nor would the antivirus give you full security in the first place.

...Yep, I know that the answer is that you can't be sure... but so far no "security expert" has managed to give me a realistic security plan between the two extreme ends of "no security, just hope and live in denial that malware do exist" and "live your life doing 24/7 monitoring of your logs and hope to notice something before you die of starvation"

John Dvorak

every realistic security plan is tailor-made and costs a fortune

Derpy

@JohnDvorak so by default we developers have managed to build a system that is a pathetic colander-like mess that even we can't safely use and yet we expect the world to trive on this cardboard castle , end users be happy to yet again have their credential stolen and all magically work because mankind is a beautiful thing and no men outside there would even think to maliciously harm anyone.

yep, seems a wonderful idea indeed.

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy well

security is really, to a large extent, a people problem

John Dvorak

You know, even DNA mistranscribes at times, and yet it's working just fine to maintain a population of 7G humans.

Journeyman Geek

3:26 PM

and even when it isn't is as much about behaviour as about hardware and software

John Dvorak

when we don't even have a 4G internet.

HTTP

int random()
     return 4;

definitely secure

John Dvorak

If most people turn into muderers all of a sudden, we'll need to push out a firmware update or something.

Derpy

@JohnDvorak I was somehow hoping someone would post that one image. Yet another wonderful appeal to ridicule here. Because you know, the real issue would be cardboard cutout. Not remote hacking the self driving car or anything similar.

Also, most people aren't thief. Go, please, next time you go to sleep please leave your front door open.

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy well, I think the best middle ground, for me is to work around a threat profile

I'm currently unimportant enough that my web server's mostly "oh its there, lets botnet it"

John Dvorak

3:33 PM

@Derpy I'd rather not. The security warnings would be waking me up at night

Derpy

that is more realistic. I just struggle to find that profile. As I said, if anyone would like to point me to a way to be reasonably sure that a backup (let's assume for simplicity a disk with only images, music and word files) isn't compromised by some malware let me know.

Anonymous

@Derpy I, in fact, do.

Derpy

Please. Just don't try to tell me to put all on onedrive and trust them to not have the account stolen again server side

Anonymous

@Derpy Has OneDrive been compromised in the past?

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy in theory - you could checksum all of them, and check between backups

but that feels like a lot of work

also you have me curious and I'll see if I have any ideas in the morning ;p

Derpy

3:39 PM

@JeremyBanks well....

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy you could store everything in something like git-annex or boar

or rdiff backup

Anonymous

@Derpy That sounds like one of the dozens of times people aggregate info from other hacks and check for password reuse. That doesn't sound like a compromise.

Journeyman Geek

then presumably if a file you didn't change changed between backups its fishy

Anonymous

perkeep.org/doc/overview is a good personal file management system but I'm not sure it's designed for the isolated offline backup case. Maybe.

Derpy

@JeremyBanks didn't had the time to find a specific case. Yet wouldn't trust one to not happen just because it never happened before. Linkedin had security breaches, PSNetwork did too just to name a fek. And I think I remind something with Netflix too.

Anonymous

3:42 PM

Put your files in Google Drive and use 2FA and you'll be secure enough to mitigate all but the most targeted attacks, which you'll probably never need to worry about.

Anonymous

That is the reasonable middle-ground for 95% of users.

John Dvorak

except the world's largest ad distributor now knows everything about you

Journeyman Geek

(personally, I just back up everything to multiple hard drives, including an offline one, automatically ;p)

Shog9

what's that old thing about just putting everything on a public website & letting the Internet back up what's actually valuable for you...

Anonymous

@JohnDvorak Google doesn't use private data for ad targeting, even in Gmail any more, AFAIK.

John Dvorak

3:44 PM

or so they say

Derpy

@JeremyBanks and every time you want to watch an episode of your favorite show... redownload the 1gb to your machine.

Anonymous

@Derpy It has selective sync, so you can keep it offline, and will give you a record of whenever the files change, such as by malware.

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy see, what you need here is not a 'piece of software'

its a system

so "where am I going to store the files?" "how many copies? " "what are my threat profiles?" "how fresh do my backups need to be?" "how many days of snapshots do I need?"

then you build around that

Anonymous

@JohnDvorak This is an objectively bad argument. It doesn't make sense for Google to do this, even from a selfish capitalist position. The value of that data is minuscule, compared to the value of providing deeper security for paying enterprise customers.

Journeyman Geek

@JeremyBanks and individual data is worth less than the aggrigate anyway

John Dvorak

3:47 PM

Would you trust Google with, say, your password vault?

Journeyman Geek

rofl

that's one of those things I really want to run my own

cause I'm a horrible person who memorises passwords

Anonymous

@JohnDvorak If I had no alternative, maybe. What I do in practice is use Google to store an encrypted copy of it, which is worth the inconvenience because it's the single most valuable digital asset I have.

Anonymous

The typical individual security model justifies additional caution at that particular weak point.

John Dvorak

OK... is Google Drive or your phone's internal memory the safer option of the two?

Anonymous

Phone is safer from compromise, drive is safer from data loss. In this case, both are essential.

Journeyman Geek

3:50 PM

@JohnDvorak heh, tbh, duplicated/backed up, encrypted usb keys ;p

Anonymous

Again in practice I keep my password database encrypted in several locations including Google and my phone.

John Dvorak

I kinda assume my phone and laptop won't die at the same moment.

Journeyman Geek

I broke my phone last month so...

(god, 2fa is a bitch without a phone)

Derpy

deja-vu, already undergone this discussion. The isolated device is safer, but can be stolen more easily.

Anonymous

@JohnDvorak Losing or having stolen your phone and laptop at the same time is way more likely than Google drive being compromised.

John Dvorak

3:51 PM

It's not deja-vu if it actually happened

@JeremyBanks point taken

Anonymous

I've been mugged multiple times. I haven't been hacked.

John Dvorak

Which region should I avoid?

Anonymous

It's called "outside" and it's terrifying.

Derpy

@JohnDvorak Deja-vu is often linked to mental disorders like paranoia and the such. Which is the exact felling that started this ongoing discussion. So, pretty appropriate ^_^

HTTP

deja vu about Derpy explaining deja vu

Anonymous

3:54 PM

🥁

HTTP

but yeah, I like DJvu-ing

and lucid dreaming...

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek That is patently true

As a business, what do I care about Joe schmoe #9894 's entire life history? I want to know if it's worth advertising my product to him

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch or what ads would work in that geographic and demographic

Magisch

You could make an argument for background checks but we're nowhere near the point where data points of you can reliably predict performance to a satisfactory extent

Derpy

Returning to the original argument, I know multiple people (some relatives, some just friends) that work into the professional naturalistic photography field. Not everyone is really happy to have an isolated airgapped machine used just to manage the raw photo files.

Magisch

3:58 PM

You can be reasonably safe on the web with some precautions

Derpy

Yet, I can't say any suggestion comes to mind that could simplify their job

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy see, with something like that, I'd probably work differently from a gaming box

I'd build a system with a significant level of encryption for example...

(OS, storage, lots of SSDs...)

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