231–234 of 234 posts
Unrelated, I just wanted to get it on record somewhere that I sometimes like to send myself random strings of characters and/or bytes. Sometimes to friends and family too. Sometimes they think its so funny they send back random strings as well. Its a thing we do, so I'm glad this law is not going to stop us from sending plaintext random strings to each other.
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>So if I'm talking to my bank through a link where only my bank and I have access to the info, that's absolutely E2EE. Through TLS? That is certainly not E2EE. That is because a trusted third party (certificate authority) is involved to insure that you are actually communicating with the bank. End to end means exactly that. You are able to communicate securely with only the trust of the entity you are communicating w…
> Through TLS? That is certainly not E2EE. It certainly is. Encryption is a separate problem from authentication. > That is because a trusted third party (certificate authority) is involved to insure that you are actually communicating with the bank The CA that helps with mutual authentication does not have access to the plain text, and it's perfectly possible to have other checks on top. > You definition pretty much…
Most people do not have effective E2EE while using Signal or other systems like it. That is because they have not verified their "Safety Numbers" which is what is used in the Signal case. It is a long known (since PGP) usability problem that makes such systems impractical for most. Relevant:
* https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/09...
Not making this issue clear (identity verification is a prerequisite for E2EE) is a common scammy thing done by various messaging systems.
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"citation needed" I certainly agree that there is really only oligrachy everywhere, and I certainly do not think any individual hero ruler would be better. The statement only observed a bad thing. It did not advocate or even hint at some other bad thing as a proposed solution. Putting words into someone else's mouth is worse even than whatever they might have said if they had actually said it. It's an actual wrondoin…
> "citation needed" From the sibling comment by PhilipRoman: > But I would ask you this - when you are jailed for speaking, would it be of some comfort to know that the decision to jail you was decided by 100 politicians instead of 1? I realize this comment was written 5 minutes after yours, so you had no way of knowing, it is amusing how quickly the parent turned out to be right.
They weren't saying that democracy is bad, or that anything else is better, they were saying that it (largely) doesn't exist.
I think the point was not to say that authoritarianism or anything else would be better, but simply to say that in order to get a useful result from judging something, you have to judge what it actually is, not something you imagine.
Oligarchy is probably just an inevitable emergent property of any collection of cells each exhibiting the human condition. No one is saying that it's good or roght, just that it is the actual state of things, where democracy as we were told to imagine it in school, is largely a fantasy. A nice one, and surely the direction we should always aim, but not what is or realistically ever will be.
The point as I see it, is only to point out that when trying to decide what to do, and how to interpret the results of what has been done, there is a difference between the direction you push, the ideals you want, and how far you have or even ever possibly can get, how much of those ideals you have been striving for you actually have, regardless what labels are on things or what they tell everyone in school and on tv.
If you want to judge something, and have a useful result, you have to know correctly what you are actually judging. IE: it's misleading your own self as well as others to imagine that various outcomes and current conditions are the result of democracy, no matter what country you are in. In all cases, regardless what label is on the tin, it is really the result of oligrachy. (or at least to some large degree, and at least so I percieve that comment to be saying, and at least so I am saying myself)
Aiming for democracy is still probably better than not. Not because it demonsteably produces better outcomes, but because at least on paper there is some chance for it's nominal purpose. A paper declaration of agency is better than none at all.
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> The King has no meaningful power at all, Please define "meaningful power". Because getting millions of pounds from the state every year [1], having massive media attention, having the ear of international leaders in politics, and having ones face on currency, sounds pretty impactful to me, especially given the fact that all this is conferred by being born to certain parents, and not by, say, something like an elect…
It's so much more complicated that this. In modern times the UK monarch fulfils the role of an apolitical leader of the UK and commonwealth nations. Just imagine for a moment if the PM was head of state... Who would be leader of commonwealth? Liz Truss? Boris Johnson? Can you see how this would cause conflict? Having a heredity apolitical monarch works really well in the context of a commonwealth of nation. Electing…
Does it need one? For doing what exactly? And why is a hereditary position better for this than one elected by democratic means?
> Having a heredity apolitical monarch works really well in the context of a commonwealth of nation.
Why?
> , but I do think there is value in having an heredity head of state with very limited powers.
Such as? Because tons of countries in the world don't spend huge sums of money on such an institution, and don't seem to miss out on anything.