Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Candid Naivety of Geeks

ploum.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 88 posts

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#71

Post by disambiguation »

danaris wrote: post #64
disambiguation wrote: post #53

Naivety has layers. You either die a normie who doesn't care about privacy, or you live long enough to become a schizo who knows how bad things really are. Try bringing up at the dinner table the NSA dragnet or always-on backdoors embedded in consumer routers and CPUs. Everything is tracked, everything is logged, its been this way for a long time and there's nothing you can do about it. You have zero privacy in the i…

> Everything is tracked, everything is logged, its been this way for a long time and there's nothing you can do about it. You have zero privacy in the internet and you're an idiot if you think otherwise. But this nihilistic, all-or-nothing attitude is another kind of naïvety. There are absolutely still ways for people to keep large chunks of their online presence and activity private. Using E2EE services like Matrix…

I said nothing you can do about logging. Of course you can stop using large parts of the internet (or stop using it altogether) but that kind of defeats the purpose if there's no good alternative, regardless of accessibility. The point is that perfect privacy on the web is impossible, so why should OP worry about amazon storing voice data when tons is already logged in google meet, microsoft teams, zoom, webex, discord etc.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#72

Post by disambiguation »

boppo1 wrote: post #58
disambiguation wrote: post #53

Naivety has layers. You either die a normie who doesn't care about privacy, or you live long enough to become a schizo who knows how bad things really are. Try bringing up at the dinner table the NSA dragnet or always-on backdoors embedded in consumer routers and CPUs. Everything is tracked, everything is logged, its been this way for a long time and there's nothing you can do about it. You have zero privacy in the i…

>NSA dragnet Can you tell me more? What specifically, are they collecting? The porn I've looked at on /s/? >always-on backdoors embedded in consumer routers and CPUs Are we talking about IME? That's more of a 'theoretically it could execute code, but they'd need a crazy amount of software engineering to really use it to monitor you'. Besides, you can MITM your network traffic and see if it's phoning home. And I'm sur…

Yeah im memeing, i personally dont care but think "privacy enthusiasm" is a cope. Even signal I wouldn't trust, which OPs whole sales pitch. Exchanging a OTP in person is probably your best bet, but i personally have no use case. So yeah hardware telemetry might be an extreme example, but its certainly happening at every other layer.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#73

Post by disambiguation »

poincaredisk wrote: post #65
boppo1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>NSA dragnet Can you tell me more? What specifically, are they collecting? The porn I've looked at on /s/? >always-on backdoors embedded in consumer routers and CPUs Are we talking about IME? That's more of a 'theoretically it could execute code, but they'd need a crazy amount of software engineering to really use it to monitor you'. Besides, you can MITM your network traffic and see if it's phoning home. And I'm sur…

GP basically called himself a schizo so they know, at least subconsciously, they went too far down that rabbit hole. Even though they just called us idiots. My particular hot take, speaking partially from experience, is that indeed, there are insurmountable amounts of data collected - but it's collected by hundreds of disconnected, inhomogeneous and incompetent organizations with conflicting goals. There's no global…

Not a hot take at all, this is pretty realistic. But notice at no point is pure privacy a serious option, instead we count on hopium. Sure they DO have a lot of our data and they COULD be up to no good, but they wont, because.. reasons. I also never said anything about a conspiracy, just simple facts like how VPNs and social media sites are legally required to keep usage logs in case of illegal activity.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#74

Post by Lio »

danaris wrote: post #64
disambiguation wrote: post #53

Naivety has layers. You either die a normie who doesn't care about privacy, or you live long enough to become a schizo who knows how bad things really are. Try bringing up at the dinner table the NSA dragnet or always-on backdoors embedded in consumer routers and CPUs. Everything is tracked, everything is logged, its been this way for a long time and there's nothing you can do about it. You have zero privacy in the i…

> Everything is tracked, everything is logged, its been this way for a long time and there's nothing you can do about it. You have zero privacy in the internet and you're an idiot if you think otherwise. But this nihilistic, all-or-nothing attitude is another kind of naïvety. There are absolutely still ways for people to keep large chunks of their online presence and activity private. Using E2EE services like Matrix…

I’ve always been puzzled by the proposition of E2EE when you have no control of the ends.

If Meta wants to read your WhatsApp messages they’d just do it on your device. How would you know?

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#75

Post by buyucu »

poincaredisk wrote: post #68

I agree so far, but: >But was is happening in your inbox, really? >Most spam is not "black hat spam". It is what I call "white-collar spam": perfectly legitimate company, sending you emails from legitimate address. You slept in a hotel during a business trip? This is pure survivor paradox. This is true for your Gmail account, because all "black hat spam" was already filtered! I own two unfiltered email accounts that…

I have a protonmail account with close to 0 spam. In fact, I get more spam on my legacy gmail account.

Email spam is not the huge problem people make it out to be. Common sense goes a long way.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#76

Post by keybored »

disambiguation wrote: post #72
boppo1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>NSA dragnet Can you tell me more? What specifically, are they collecting? The porn I've looked at on /s/? >always-on backdoors embedded in consumer routers and CPUs Are we talking about IME? That's more of a 'theoretically it could execute code, but they'd need a crazy amount of software engineering to really use it to monitor you'. Besides, you can MITM your network traffic and see if it's phoning home. And I'm sur…

Yeah im memeing, i personally dont care but think "privacy enthusiasm" is a cope. Even signal I wouldn't trust, which OPs whole sales pitch. Exchanging a OTP in person is probably your best bet, but i personally have no use case. So yeah hardware telemetry might be an extreme example, but its certainly happening at every other layer.

Not all are naive on some kind of layer. That would imply sticking your neck out and proposing solutions. There are also the fatalists. They are immune to being wrong because they think it is hopeless. That means never being able to be called an idiot, a very important protection for some.[1] They also literally don’t care so there’s that too.

[1] There’s so much surveillance that it is very easy to fall into the trap of being a naive idiot. Not to worry. We can be fatalist and not have to worry about that charge.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#77

Post by rini17 »

kortilla wrote: post #59

The cognitive dissonance in the article when it comes to Signal and Protonmail is the same thing the author is deriding with people trusting Apple et al. Apple has far more to lose monetarily than protonmail if it comes out that Apple sells off iMessage contents or similar. I agree with the ideal of the article and the plight, but the shilling of Signal and Protonmail absolutely destroy the message because it goes ri…

Even if you self-host on own domain using libre software, you have to trust the registrar and certificate authorities. Thinking you can cut out all trusted third parties is naive,too.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#78

Post by disambiguation »

keybored wrote: post #76
disambiguation wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah im memeing, i personally dont care but think "privacy enthusiasm" is a cope. Even signal I wouldn't trust, which OPs whole sales pitch. Exchanging a OTP in person is probably your best bet, but i personally have no use case. So yeah hardware telemetry might be an extreme example, but its certainly happening at every other layer.

Not all are naive on some kind of layer. That would imply sticking your neck out and proposing solutions. There are also the fatalists. They are immune to being wrong because they think it is hopeless. That means never being able to be called an idiot, a very important protection for some.[1] They also literally don’t care so there’s that too. [1] There’s so much surveillance that it is very easy to fall into the tra…

You can get hung up on the "attitude" like most people, or realize that the first step to a solution is facing the facts. I'm not being blunt to be condescending, but its tedious how we're constantly sold half-baked "solutions." "Just use Signal!" No I'm not handing all my data over to yet another company because made a super duper promise to respect privacy. I'm still waiting to hear an actual solution except for the obvious: don't use the internet. And even then the world is still full of cameras, microphones and satellites.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#79

Post by keybored »

disambiguation wrote: post #78
keybored wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all are naive on some kind of layer. That would imply sticking your neck out and proposing solutions. There are also the fatalists. They are immune to being wrong because they think it is hopeless. That means never being able to be called an idiot, a very important protection for some.[1] They also literally don’t care so there’s that too. [1] There’s so much surveillance that it is very easy to fall into the tra…

You can get hung up on the "attitude" like most people, or realize that the first step to a solution is facing the facts. I'm not being blunt to be condescending, but its tedious how we're constantly sold half-baked "solutions." "Just use Signal!" No I'm not handing all my data over to yet another company because made a super duper promise to respect privacy. I'm still waiting to hear an actual solution except for th…

Now you care? One comment ago you personally didn’t care. And I’m responding to someone who said that “there's nothing you can do about it”. Where was the in for anyone to take the “first step”? No, I’m not taking the first step towards facing the solution since you already said that’s off the table.[1]

Now you can get hung up on someone pointing out that this fatalism is intellectually a three-feet deep pond and trying to pivot to someone else having their feelings hurt by your badass attitude. But it’s clearly all heat and no light.

[1] For the first step I would ask someone serious about the subject.

Re: The Candid Naivety of Geeks

#80

Post by disambiguation »

keybored wrote: post #79
disambiguation wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get hung up on the "attitude" like most people, or realize that the first step to a solution is facing the facts. I'm not being blunt to be condescending, but its tedious how we're constantly sold half-baked "solutions." "Just use Signal!" No I'm not handing all my data over to yet another company because made a super duper promise to respect privacy. I'm still waiting to hear an actual solution except for th…

Now you care? One comment ago you personally didn’t care. And I’m responding to someone who said that “there's nothing you can do about it”. Where was the in for anyone to take the “first step”? No, I’m not taking the first step towards facing the solution since you already said that’s off the table.[1] Now you can get hung up on someone pointing out that this fatalism is intellectually a three-feet deep pond and try…

You're really desperate to get this dunk, but you don't have to try so hard. Its really simple: prove me wrong.
Post reply on HN