So the “reality” is the opposite, he was arrested for not putting ketchup on the hotdog!

Yes, it’s a shame he doesn’t seem to be considering PeerTube

I never pay full price for any of the games, they always have a few discounted and rotate through their full catalog eventually.

I didn’t but I wasn’t downloading random suspicious crap off the Internet either. I’m not sure I even saw the famous ones like I Love You or Anna Kournikova. I probably wouldn’t have been hit, though, since I’d also been taught not to open random, unexpected email attachments.

I’m no expert but given the repeated efforts from governments around the world to get backdoors added to encryption and frequent pushback from big tech, or at least Apple, I’m more inclined to think there currently, or recently, aren’t backdoors. At least, not easy ones, not official ones. As an example, recall a few years ago there was a terror-related attack in the U.S. where someone tied to Muslim extremists went on a shooting spree before taking his own life (I’m not bothering to look up the details and my recollection could be flawed). The attacker used an iPhone and the U.S. government took the opportunity of strong public outrage to try to force Apple to create a tool to break the encryption on the iPhone so they could examine its contents. Apple resisted and the effort went to court, with the decision eventually being that Apple did not have to break the encryption. The government then revealed that they had access to a third party tool that they used to break into the phone and recover its contents. That’s pretty much been the pattern before and since: a government will try to find a cause that seems likely to gather widespread support and use that to get a backdoor they promise not to abuse, and the companies push back to varying degrees. All the while there seem to be third party tools that exploit various flaws, including zero-day flaws to gain the access the companies won’t provide. My impression is that at least a couple times a year there’s a story about an Apple security update patching these holes and notifying certain users if they may have been targeted.

It’s possible that’s all just theater put on by the U.S. and allies to help Apple or Google tell governments the U.S. doesn’t trust, “see, we can’t even give the U.S. government we’re subject to access, so we certainly can’t give you access.” Given some of the cases that have been used to try to force access, though, I’m more inclined to think the government really doesn’t have the easy access some might like.

Of course, it’s also possible that some of the flaws used by zero-day exploits to gain access are intentionally planted, either by the software companies or by an individual programmer acting at a government’s behest. The later patches could be to maintain appearances to outsiders, since there always seem to be additional flaws. Still, programming is hard enough and operating systems are complex enough that I’m more inclined to say that usually these really are just human error and not something malicious.

None of that is to say that anyone should fully trust these encryption systems. Used properly, they’re probably good enough against ordinary hackers, people just looking for financial rewards. You can keep your family photos, important records, school notes, etc. on them without worrying too much. Financial records you might want to doubly encrypt, just so they’re not so easy to exploit if there is a breach and data dump. If you’re doing something any government cares enough about to really investigate, they’re probably going to find a way into your computer, phone, or cloud service, depending on how motivated they are. Maybe not some impoverished “third-world” governments, but most of the big ones have some resources. I’d be extremely cautious about things that could actually send someone to jail, either in your own country or one that is less friendly.

I take it you’ve never seen The Money Pit?

I should play Kerbal Space Program again

You’re torrenting from your phone?

These are browser engines, or at least software for rendering HTML but not necessarily the actual browser. I don’t know them all, but top left, Gecko, is the engine for Mozilla, center is Web Kit for Safari, bottom center is Chromium for Chrome, Brave, Edge, etc., and bottom right is Trident, the old engine for Microsoft Internet Explorer.

FYI this article is from June 2024

I was going to ask if this was Mutts, then read your credit and the illustration is by the creator of Mutts!

This is the second reference I’ve seen to this today, so I had to look it up and see that it is (was) in fact real.

I’d definitely be pressing for criminal charges in that situation!

How hard are 6 figure jobs to get?

High School dropout NEET directly to 6-figure would probably need to involve selling drugs or something, right?