Viewing profile — billdietrich1

I "like" plenty of speech I disagree with, if the speech is fact-based and informative and rational and interesting. I enjoy a good debate, I learn stuff, it's good. I don't "like"…

Is climate change a problem ? Could you make a product to help address it ? Is malware / phishing / security a problem ? Could you make a product to help address it ? Sure products…

Probably: The search engines and sites you access are reporting "guy in ZIP code 12345 is interested in ". Later, Windows says "what ads should I show to this guy who is located in…

Several of these are just updates of existing laptops to use newer generation of CPU, not "ground-breaking" at all.

Please check my reasoning; I don't want hardware keys doing FIDO or something because: - would have to have 2 or 3, in case of loss - would have to register each key separately to …

"Neglecting" nuclear energy is the right thing to do. Nuclear is losing the economic competition. We should be pushing full speed ahead on renewables and storage. Those other count…

Answer to "What sites does this work with ?" carefully gives no useful information at all. "Keep both your digital identity and crypto assets in this secure browser extension" soun…

It's going to be the most locked-down and telemetry-based version of Linux you ever saw. Think a Chromebook but far, far worse. Yes, there will be Linux stuff inside it. But it won…

> 5. Mass migration due to sea level rise Sea level rise is far from the only impact of climate change that will cause mass migrations. Droughts, floods, changes in growing season,…

Could someone please explain this ? I don't understand what he means: "I don’t think they [Flatpaks] have the security story and I also don’t think they have the ability to deliver…

As a normal home user, I avoid SSO like the plague. I don't want to wake up one day to find that Google has decided I'm a spammer or something, and turned off my Google account, th…

Not YubiKey, but: ETrade (now being acquired by JP Morgan) uses the Symantec VIP hardware token. A quick search for JP Morgan 2FA leads me to believe that JP Morgan uses something …

You could spend 20 minutes reading the list, and come up with 2 or 3 things you want to do right away. A lot of security things are one-and-done: install uBlock Origin browser exte…

I don't have a threat model. I just have typical data (financial, family, hobbies, etc) and want a reasonable level of protection against all threats (snoops, thieves, scammers, po…

For most sites I use, JS detracts from the "user experience". I just want to read an article, not deal with accept-cookie popups or ads or menus etc. Even on interactive sites such…

Also, I think Google Auth gives no way to make a backup of its data, although outside solutions exist.

I think tools need to get easier, and be "safe by default". For example, operating systems should be aware of and support third-party encryption such as VeraCrypt. Today, a VC volu…

No, I disagree. Most people are so baffled by computers that they don't want to know "why" or "how things work". They just want to be told what to do, or better still they just wan…

I think most people's threat model is the same. They just want to protect all their data against all threats, to a reasonable level of inconvenience. It's too general to be useful.…

No RSS feed ? :-(

https://www.billdietrich.me/ Static site, handcrafted HTML/CSS/JS. A late-90's look because I want to keep everything simple, portable, able to use locally, and I'm no expert in UI…

Is there no good way to size-cap and rate-limit anonymous accounts ? Maybe not, if the bad guys slowly build up a large mesh of accounts and use bots that use lots of different IP …

But we have anonymous cash transactions, and somehow law enforcement still works.

Why should you care ? Because maybe your data (with mistakes in it, too) will be used to make decisions about things you want (jobs, insurance), without you even knowing why you go…

But KYC generally is not required for cash transactions. Why can't we have anonymous digital transactions, as long as they are size-capped and rate-limited ? How is sending $300 th…