AlBugdy

> Is there anything plug-and-play that can do a reasonable job of flagging/disconnecting massive outbound data transfers?

I don't know of such a tool but you'd have to run it everywhere you have data. If the LAPD's data was not on prem, which is expected (but not necessarily a good practice for sensitive data), it would be harder to both have an exfiltration monitor for the data they do have on prem and for the data they have in whatever hosting provider or "cloud" they stored it at. Maybe the bill for the egress transfers in the morning plays such a role to a certain extent.

PS - where can one find the 7.7 TB data?

> The brutal reality is everyone is doing this and there's nothing you can do about it.

Maybe not me personally, but society can.

Non-US citizens - what's the situation with cameras in public spaces where you live? In my town every 2nd hour or building entrance has a private camera pointed at the street. It's very depressing because the cops don't care - I've asked 2 in a patrol car when there was a mild case of vandalism I witnessed. Technically it's illegal, but nothing happens. The public cameras are on intersection and some bus stops. Too much, if you ask me, but the private cameras are everywhere.

> William Shockley another Nobel Prize...for inventing the transistor, probably the most consequential invention of the 20th century, could not recognize that touring college campuses promoting eugenics and forced sterilization was half-baked.

This seems different than the astrology or AIDS or cancer ideas mentioned above it as it's scientifically sound, just widely considered unethical.

> And if you don't trust the source, then why are you loading it to begin with??

I trust that Proton (for example) has implemented E2EE in their services. I wouldn't trust them to handle my unencrypted data - I wouldn't trust anyone for that. I don't trust that their security is perfect - no one's security is. So if they're breached, they could serve me malicious JS. I don't trust they're impervious to government pressure or blackmail. By making sure the files served to me are the same as the files served to anyone else, I can be relatively sure I'm not targeted personally. People could also review those files to make sure they're not malicious.

I can resize my window easily if I wanted shorter text. Or used ctrl-shift-m on Firefox. But I can't easily make the text longer without userscripts or addons.

> actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read

That may apply to most people, but not to everyone.

It's obvious what GP meant - we can verify that the apps we download are the apps everyone else downloads.

We can't do this with Proton where our mail is supposedly end-to-end encrypted. They can easily view our mail if they can send us a different code when we load their site.

> That isn't what "sandboxed" means, it has nothing to do with checking hashes. And no, mobile apps are not really sandboxed

Apps ARE somewhat sandboxes and GP didn't mean than sandboxing == checking hashes. It was 2 sentences appearing one after the other.

> And that you can't check the "hash" of the webapp, like you can with an app?

Can someone reading this make an addon for this?

Being required to use an Android app sucks and is annoying, but an AOSP VM would solve the issue. Perhaps MITM-ing the app would be harder than MITM-ing a site without reversing the app. And not everyone has the hardware resources for an Android VM.

But for me the main issues with "you need our app" BS is that they don't give you the apk but tell you to download it from the Google Play Store. They don't give you the source for the apk as well, as if it's such a huge trade secret how some shitty API works. The worst offenders ask for all the attestation shit (unrooted phone and so on). That's what's wrong with apps vs sites, not just the format itself. We should fight for FOSS apks with no attestation if companies want to invest so heavily in apps.

I doubt it will ever happen. This is Google after all, not a small company we can hope will get it right after a while. They've left the search parameters shitty for years. Google, arguably the most advanced search company ever, can't make an efficient filter for custom time ranges? They obviously can, but, as other comments have noted, they seem to think that good search is an anti-feature.

> Computers screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs bigger and bigger

Sadly, most websites forcefully limit the width of the text. It's like they pretend our monitors are oriented to be tall rather than wide. Even HN has unnecessarily big margins. So unless I try to cram another window in my FHD monitor, I have ~50% or more completely wasted space. Margins should be 2-3 pixels wide, not 20-30% of the screen.

> I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.

First hand from a couple of ~16 year olds I know. Definitely not a representative sample. Some know how to type at an acceptable speed. They're awful at shortcuts (alt-tab, many of the browser shortcuts that also present in many other programs (ctrl-w,-t,-s,-q) and most text-selection and movement shortcuts (ctrl-a,-x,-c,-v and (ctrl-)shift-left,-right)) so they navigate clumsily compared to us. They feel awkward when performing simple tasks but they do it faster than on a smartphone. They don't understand some of the terms and abstractions, likely because the smartphones keep that away from them.

Seeing them navigate things like homework or spreadsheets or multiple tabs in a browser from a smartphone is like watching a caveman trying to use a piece of brittle rock as a hammer. It will work in the end, but it's slow. I haven't looked at them closely enough, but I doubt they can comfortably keep more than 10 tabs open and navigate between them with the same speed as on a laptop or a desktop. I assume their browsing habits are qualitatively different than ours because of that. You can't really do adequate research on a smartphone.

> For that reason when I'm hiring I've stopped asking for someone's previous salary, and just ask them what they want instead.

Why don't you post what you're paying in the job ad/offer? Some people even skip ads without a salary or a salary range because of all the uncertainty. As a potential employee somewhere, you've obviously already calculated a range or a fixed number - so why ask the employee?

I wish I could select "between 2.5 and 6 minutes". That search can translate to 2 queries to YouTube (<4 and 4-20), then the results can be combined and pruned to keep only those between 2.5 and 6. To get enough videos if there aren't enough after pruning, we could access the 2nd, 3rd and so on pages from the results. But I doubt YouTube will like 6 searches in a row.

> It was a short, not a normal video mind you.

If anyone doesn't know, you can change shorts/<ID> with watch?v=<ID> in the URL and it gives you the same UI as for other videos, including the controls (the time line). Not sure why YouTube doesn't have controls for shorts. I've seen some Facebook videos not having controls, either, when I've been sent a link. I imagine it's the same for Instagram and TikTok.

It was another, shorter video, not by TC. Just different voltages (or maybe there were other variables) one after the other until the water boiled really quickly and afterwards the kettle blew a fuse or broke (can't remember).

I guess many people have tried doing something like this. But I'll watch TC's video, too - he hasn't disappointed me so far.

Edit: Watched it. Not the same video, but this one had a lot more info and troubleshooting than what the one I had in mind.

In electric kettles or a microwave or even in a moka pot or another small container on a decent induction stove it's just 2-3 minutes. There was a video I can't find where they increased the voltage or something for a kettle and at one point it boiled the water in like 10-15 seconds.

Most countries could easily adapt to other types of food. There are multiple source for carbs, fat and proteins, as well for various micronutrients. Some countries where obesity is rampant could also adapt to eating a lot less than they do now. That would bring the number from 3 (assuming that's true) to a lot more.

It would be unfortunate, but we are grown adults living in a society where computers have existed for decades. Ignorance is not an excuse, especially if we have various options to choose from.

If we are given the option to choose from doing everything in person in a government office or via a computer of our choosing, it would be up to each of us to decide the tradeoff between security and convenience, price, privacy, ethics and other factors.

I can use an old laptop I keep in a drawer only for things related to IDs, banking and taxes.

I can use my main desktop and choose to rely on the security provided by virtualization, not installing random crap and having a hardened system. I can choose to keep my desktop inside my building that has multiple security measures - a doorman, an alarm system, multiple cameras inside and outside and a kill switch for shutting off power if someone enters using brute force. That desktop may be booted up, but it will have a long random password on the lockscreen with timeouts for wrong guesses. Unless you're an extremely good social engineer and don't care about being recorded, or if you're a master ninja who can crawl the ceiling and somehow get in without being noticed, good luck. Even then, you'd have to manage not triggering any alarms or kill switches. You'd then have to use a cold boot attack to extract my LUKS keys.

I can also choose to use a XingDong smartphone with a Google account where I have TikTok, Meta apps, LinkedIn, Tinder, Grindr, 100s of random games and a whole lot of other shady weather apps, news apps and so on. I can choose to bring that smartphone with me everywhere I go and leave it on the table in a restaurant when I go to take a shit with a common pattern lock (I've unlocked 4 or 5 locked smartphones by just searching for "most common patterns lockscreen android") or with irrevocable easily-spoofed biometrics.

In both cases (and in the infinite other cases) it's my responsibility. If I'm unsure of my security posture, I can buy a security dongle or rely on Google's attestation mechanisms for Android or decide that I don't understand enough - in which case I'd have to drive an hour to my government office once in a while to file my taxes or to the bank once in a while to move around some money.

In the ideal scenario, nothing would prevent the uneducated people from using their smartphone. They might even get prompted by the government or banks - "You're using/downloading this app on a smartphone. Would you like to use whatever attestation is available to be more secure?".

Citizens are not brain dead morons. They're not cats or dogs. They're not mentally retarded (those who are can receive assistance). They're not 13. We have education. We've had computers for decades. Computer security is not a novel idea. If a citizen wants the convenience of online banking or online tax filing or of any other online participation with the government, they should be able to do so on a computer of their choice. If they install Windows XP and random spyware, it should be on them if and when they get hacked. It's a choice they made. Even the proverbial grandma should be aware of computer security by now. It's not 1990.

To say Android or iOS can't get viruses is plain wrong. They do and will continue to do so. Even if you restrict the smartphones to the latest models with the latest OSes, you'll still get viruses.

About 2FA/MFA - I can setup TOTP on another VM or physical computer. It's prone to phishing, but I am an educated adult who can accept the risk of being phished. Put me in jail if I get phished. I most likely won't. I'm the one who knocks. It's more likely someone will come to you with a gun and make you wire them money from your own smartphone.

I don't need a smartphone. I have enough desktops and laptops much more powerful than any smartphone on the market. If I have a smartphone, it won't be with a Google or Apple account. It might not even be with iOS or Android. There are many options and they will hopefully grow in the future.

I'm getting tired from editing this comment, but finally - I have a few friends who are completely illiterate wrt computers. They somehow manage to install Temu and other crap. They don't know what an "app" is, what a "browser" is, what an "OS" is and so on. They've been scammed a few times. They know they don't know anything, though. Or even if they haven't considered it before, if they do, they'd admit they don't know anything. They are not mentally retarded otherwise. An analogy would be that I'm offered to go to the moon for free so I can file my taxes there if I can pilot the rocket. I am 100% illiterate about rockets. I haven't even flown a drone. I don't know the first thing about yaw and pitch and whatnot. I am not retarded otherwise so I'll say "I don't know enough about flying rockets so I won't risk going to the moon on my own. Can I achieve the same things by coming to your office or by riding in a rocket piloted by someone else?".

AFAIK some types of drug tests can't measure whether you're high on $drug now or if you're taken it before and you're sober now. If you're driving sober but you've taken $drug yesterday, you might be arrested for DWI.

If these tests can't reliably show you're high at the time the test was taken, don't use them.

For anything other than driving or operating heavy machinery and so on, there's no point in such tests at all. Let people take whatever drugs they want. Just do what we do with legal drugs like alcohol and cigarettes - regulate the quality, require an ID card for purchase and tax them.

This will obviously lower organized crime. If you make prostitution legal, you'll lower it even more. There will still be people trying to sell their shitty home made drugs cheaper than the regulated ones - like we have illegal cigarettes, but that's nothing compared to what we have now.

Make drugs less of a taboo. Educate people on harm reduction and make it easy to admit when you have a problem with something.

As a somewhat-educated person without medical education, I've taken almost everything under the sun and still function well within society. It's really possible to use drugs responsibly. If the image you have is a junkie with ragged clothes lying on some old mattress under a bridge sharing a dirty needle, you're only looking at the uneducated people with no safety net from society. Believe it or not, educated drug users are everywhere. We just don't often talk about it like we don't casually mention our fetishes to others in work or academia.

But drugs and sex are fun, maybe too fun, and we can't let the citizens enjoy themselves too much. :/

> If the ID is just a password, you can tell other people your password, and it can be stolen, and it can be cloned.

You can give your physical cards to other people or give them access to your computers, too.

> Germany is a strict liability country, and you will be fined or imprisoned for anything that is done with your identity card that was cloned because your PC was infected by malware if you don't report it stolen.

I don't see an issue with this.

All these requirements for specific hardware and software are ridiculous. Let every citizen use whatever computer they want. It should be up to the user to secure themselves. Authentication should only require a password or a key pair. If the user wants more security, they can set up TOTP or buy a security dongle or something.

It's also ridiculous how it seems we've forgotten computers other than smartphones exist and that not everyone even has a smartphone, let alone with an Apple or Google account.

One more reason to use FOSS and hardware that's as open as possible.

Can't edit my other reply.

Edit: I looked at your other comments to see if you had discussed Linux or Android security before (and to avoid repetitive threads). I'll reply to this post of yours here as you'll likely not see that I've replied there:

> Also linux only really has block level encryption, not file based encryption like iOS/Android. It would be trivial for LEO to access your device unless it was totally powered off and then the only protection is LUKS. Or really even if you lose your phone and someone was so inclined to they could just extract all the data if it was powered on but on the “lock screen,” as most if not all desktop (and I’d imagine linux phone) environments do not actually do any encryption or anything when the system is locked, it’s just a cosmetic lock for all intents and purposes.

With LUKS or plain dm-crypt unencrypted data never touches the storage. Small parts of the storage are decrypted in RAM, but what gets written is encrypted. FDE at the block level gives less info to the adversary than file based encryption. With detached /boot (and maybesome other stuff) (like on a USB stick), and plain dm-crypt, you can even have plausible deniability that the storage medium was just overwritten with random data. LEO can't do anything for LUKS or dm-crypt if they can't bypass the lock screen, short of a cold boot attack. That's true for file-based encryption, too. The lock screen (on Linux, at least) isn't related to disk encryption and doesn't have to be.

I agree you might not need it, but the issue is one of principle. I want it because I might need it. I don't want to find another OS that supports root if I realize I need it.

Just how I may be OK with staying at home for months with deliveries and internet access and everything else provided for me, but I want the freedom to go outside. There is rarely anything I need that's outside, to be honest. And outside is more dangerous. But I want to be able to sudo outside whenever I want for whatever reason I want.

> Sure, now get a date, connect with old friends, get invited to a party or join your children's school parent groups exclusively on free software.

It's tough, but that's a normal part of trying to change the status quo and fight for something you believe in. The people who I truly care for (and who care for me) have actually installed secure FOSS apps to connect with me and invite me to parties. They were reluctant and in some cases it took months of prodding, but it happened. And slowly there's a network effect - friend X and friend Y both have app Z. They might continue to use Meta to communicate between each other, but if and when they realize they want to move away from Meta, they can use Z.

I haven't had to deal with school parent groups in particular, but I have, in just a few cases over the years, managed to convert small groups from proprietary to FOSS solutions. It's hard, it's not the usual outcome (often they stay in their walled garden and I don't join them), but sometimes, just sometimes it works. That means there is actually hope and we can keep fighting the good fight. If we win, everyone wins.

I also understand if someone agrees with me, but reluctantly uses a closed proprietary solution to connect to the school parent group if it's important to them to be in that community. But losing a battle doesn't mean we have to forfeit the whole fight.

I don't agree with you, but I appreciate the time you took to reply. Apologies if I may appear terse.

> The security models of desktop operating systems are far, far behind those of mobile operating systems

What about Qubes? That's my standard. Everything else has worse security almost by definition (since you can virtualize it and increase its security that way).

> The first sentence is inherently incompatible with the security structure of GrapheneOS (for example).

My mistake - sorry. I wanted to say something like:

> I would choose something as locked down as GrapheneOS (no root) for its security if I were to use it to install random apps or to run JS from random sites - examples of exposing myself to unnecessary danger like someone who doesn't know what he's doing. I would choose something with root but wouldn't run random apps with root permissions or JS on a browser started with root permissions.

I somehow mixed both sentences when editing.

> it doesn’t matter if you’re only giving “trusted” apps root, all it takes is one supply chain exploit, one malicious developer, one anything to make that app with root do something its not supposed to do.

That's where we differ on our views of security, agency and responsibility. I own the computer so I should be able to give root to whatever I trust. I already trust the the hardware, the myriad of developers writing the OS, the libraries they've used and so on. Yes, trusting less things is better, but there's a tradeoff and we can easier restrict the OS further and further until we're left with nothing. The OS shouldn't restrict what I can trust and what I can't trust. Why is the OS trying to force me to not trust any app but only the millions on lines of code of the OS itself and the hardware?

> The point is to not give applications root, giving them root circumvents basically all of the protections GrapheneOS and Android give the user.

Giving all applications root might circumvent all protections in GrapheneOS and Android. How does giving 1 application I trust circumvent all protections? Let's say I wrote the app (and I trust myself) and then formally verified it - just for the sake of argument. Although I'd give root to apps I didn't write or verify because I am an adult who can choose what code to trust. We already have important information and already give important permissions to apps that, if compromised, can ruin our lives easily (browsers, communication apps and so on).

> The problem is that we don’t know how they could leverage it, so the solution is to eliminate that pathway entirely.

So apps are both sandboxed and there are robust permissions which make Android much more secure than most desktop OSes, but we can't even give an app root because it might somehow wreck the whole system? I don't get this. By that logic we don't know if any app could compromise any of the system processes that have root (or functionally equivalent access). The solution would be to not run untrusted apps in the same OS at all, to have different computers or some hardened virtualization like Qubes? I get that it's not black and white, but my hypothetical terminal app with root permissions won't be the only process with root permissions running on the OS, so why is it THAT bad to give it root? Especially when I'd run it with root only for certain tasks, just like I don't "sudo ls ~" but just "ls ~".

> This is also my issue with the push for Linux phones onto the average person (instead of the community coming together and forking AOSP if they want to escape Google). The platform has zero real sandboxing, and the average person still wants to use Meta apps as shit as they are. These big tech companies’ and governments’ apps would go absolutely crazy on Linux phones.

Why not try to use existing security mechanisms in various Linux distros (or Qubes) to prevent Meta's apps from going crazy? Additionally, why can I load facebook.com in Firefox on Linux and be relatively certain I won't get pwnd by Facebook even though I have root on Linux? That would mean we trust browser sandboxing more than Android sandboxing. Yet we have root on Linux and can do anything with the browser. What I mean is, you state that Android is so secure, yet we trust it less than untrusted JS on a browser on desktop. If we don't, should we disallow people to run JS (or even CSS, as there have been attacks via CSS) at all?

> my view is that we shouldn’t be pushing root-capable mobile operating systems onto the average person

My view is that we should default on root-capable devices for anyone. If a user doesn't feel sure in their abilities, they may select "I am not sure of my abilities to operate a computer, lock it down for me permanently" option. Otherwise it's on them. We shouldn't be nannies for people. People will eventually learn when enough people get burned. We should be nannies for obvious cases of mental retardation where the person requires round the clock care, but not for everybody. We're not sheep and shouldn't all be treated as sheep even if a lot of us are.

> Also preventing root allows devices to pass attestation checks. I know it has a dirty connotation in light of how companies are behaving recently, but it really is a security benefit for a device to be able to prove that it’s base operating system is unmodified (i.e. no persistent malware is present).

I might see a benefit for workers in a company for work-provided computers because they're company owned, but any attestation for user-owned computers that is imposed on a user will almost inevitably lead to a dystopian future where computers get more and more controlled, locked down and even backdoored without a way to even see if they are. For example, in many jurisdictions you're required to have phone, to use Android or iOS, to have an account with Google or Apple, to not have root and to not run a custom ROM in order to use basic public services or banking (even if my bank account has like 5 bucks in it and I wouldn't care less if it got hacked). That is absolutely wrong and if we don't do something it's going to get much worse in the future. We should fight these restrictions whenever we encounter them. We the people own our lives - we should own our computers and we should own (as in responsibility) our choices.

We shouldn't let naive or mentally disabled people to dictate how computing should work. That's the same logic behind the age verification shit that's happening worldwide.

If you (not you specifically) are unsure of your abilities to use computers, let a friend or a family member buy a dumbed down device for you or install parental controls or something. Or maybe have clicking the build number 7 times reveal "toddler mode" where you can lock your device down irreversibly as much as you want.

Because my new phone would be my new phone. And a phone is a computer. That should be enough of a reason.

I'm quite surprised people who post here don't get that. I've been lurking for years even though my account is new and even though general hackerishness here has gotten a bit reduced over the years, but it's still HackerNews, not ConsumerNews. No offense implied - I just hoped I'd see more people willing to claim their right to own and modify their OS like a true hacker.

> I think a problem is that phones, as a concept, are communication first, rather than general computing first.

I use all kinds of computers for communication. I'm communicating with you on my desktop. I had a call earlier on my laptop. And a phone IS a computer, so why pretend it's not?

> If you want to partake in social networks, messaging, work communication, banking, etc you're at the mercy of the service's owner and their moat. You can't access Instagram in any other way than their app, and at that point an open OS doesn't help a lot.

I wouldn't use proprietary work tools on a personal device. It's not good hygiene.

I don't care if Instagram requires an app on a non-rooted phone with verified Google attestations because I don't use it and it's not essential.

Banking apps ARE a problem because a lot of banks don't let you use their site without their app at all. That should be solved with regulations - give people a FOSS banking app or, better yet, an API, so they can bank however they want to. Let us create FOSS interfaces for the different banks. Right now we need to revert the regulations who more or less force us to rely on Google or Apple's attestation. Internet banking is important both because there's a trend, even in countries where cash is still widely used, to have places that don't take cash, and because it's a highly regulated system paid for my taxes - I should be able to participate in a modern way with bullshit restrictions allegedly made to prevent someone's grandpa from getting hacked or phished.

But if I can't access my bank online, I'm not going to bow my head and buy a bank-approved phone with a bank-approved OS and a bank-approved $tech_company account. Who banks that often that they really need to do that, outside of places like Sweden where cash is almost dead?