tikums

That's not quite correct. There were also 'Latvian vikings', the Curonians. Latvia was also ruled by Sweden for centuries. There's not much difference there, apart from language. They were a mix of Baltic tribes, some combination of which formed the modern nation states.

I care very little what you do with this rather uncivil "doxxing" here, Mr. J.Č and certainly plan to take no action.

> No proper term in Latvian can be found in this example [by yours truly]

FTFY.

The word for independence ("neatkarība") in Latvian is a calque from the German Abhängigkeit ‎("dependence")[1]. Thus, "atkarāties" and "karāties" ("to hang"). Thus, the English expression "it hangs in the balance". On balance, most of the things you've said about the Latvian language in this thread hang by a thread, and that thread is close to tear.

Please check your sources and brush up on whatever rudimentary Latvian skills you still posses. You will certainly not master the language by defaulting to what is, in essence, chauvinism. Rest assured, we can read between the lines of what you're implying ["Russian language superior! We have big words, words for everything! The best words!], but it's just not gonna fly here.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atkar%C4%ABba

Calque of German abhängig ‎(“dependent”), coined at the end of the 19th century from atkār(t) ‎(“to hang down”) +‎ -īgs (with atkārt from at- +‎ kārt ‎(“to hang”)), together with the related term atkarība.

Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atkar%C4%ABgs

> Latvian for "independence" is "neatkarība" which itself is wrong pair, because "independence" means not being dependent, and therefore free, while Latvian word means more like "impossibility to take by force".

"Ne" is a negation (= "in" or "not"), whereas "atkarība" is simply "dependence". Thus, (in)(dependence) is the equivalent of (ne)(atkarība). I don't see where you got it to mean "impossibility to take by force". Independence can be lost, it's not an impossibility. Source:

https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/neatkar%C4%ABba

http://www.tezaurs.lv/?w=neatkar%C4%ABba#/sv/neatkar%C4%ABba

I am talking about the general principle of translating a text with developed and precise terminology that is steeped in tradition for which no reference point exists in the language-of-destination. Therefore, it matters very little whether we're talking about translating ancient Chinese or Tibetan texts. The challenges are similar in scale. Case in point[1]:

"This is a major reason why the Daodejing, to take a famous example, is impenetrable to a few, enigmatic to many more, and highly allusive for everyone, and has been the subject of well over 150 translations of it in English alone."

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-translate-interpr...

I don't find it strange at all, it plays very well into the "divide and conquer" approach to ethnic politics that Russia has put to use both in the past and more recently in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and elsewhere. For what it's worth, I disagree with there being ethnic markings in the Latvian Passport to begin with. I am in complete favor of removing them, not least because it would prevent Russian state from winning such cheap propaganda points.

Indeed, there are so many words of French and German origins in the Russian language, that linguists have lost their count. This is to do with the Russian nobility, at different periods, helming from those countries and/or it being the language of the court at the time (same as with French in England, however briefly). There is no shame in borrowing. Good languages copy, great languages steal.

Why, thank you, I speak Russian fluently. It doesn't matter whether the text has been translated from Traditional Chinese or Sanskrit, the issue remains the same: Buddhist terminology is specific to the Buddhist tradition. You will face the same challenge, as long as the language that it is being translated to is not steeped in the same tradition.

Indeed, Latvian is a somewhat formalized version of Latgalian, so I'm not sure how that can be "truth worth discovery [sic]". If you haven't kept up with news back home, it might be of interest to you that there are MPs in the Parliament that are delivering their swear-in ceremony speeches in Latgalian now. More power to them. The rest of your comment, however, is a non sequitur.

> try to translate a piece of classic buddhist text to Latvian

Here is a translation of a classic buddhist sūtra in Latvian: http://www.ugis.info/?t#sutra_

> You will simply have no words to express what you need

That is a challenge that all translators face, no matter the language pair. There are no direct equivalents of "अभिधर्म" or "Ānanda" in any of the Western languages either, be it Latvian, English or Welsh. Incidentally, both Lithuanian and Latvian happen to be closer to Sanskrit than the latter. Again, I don't quite see the point you're making. Care to elaborate?

As a native Latvian speaker, I have no idea what you're talking about. In comparison to other languages spoken on the European continent, Lithuanian and Latvian have retained more of the features of what linguists call Proto-Indo-European (PIE), a language spoken circa 3500 BCE. It was certainly not "designed by Germans as 'slave language'". Perhaps that's what you were taught during the "ommunist" times under the Soviet occupation. Incidentally, this was also a time of Russification[1], i.e., marginalization of languages spoken by the native population. You can see how this would fit nicely into their narrative. Latvian speakers today, though, would really appreciate if people could stop spreading such falsehoods. That'd be really nice too, Jevgēnij.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

Vodafone's also actively pushing for "network management" (read, MITM) for HTTP/2. Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9422311

OpenBSD (+LibreSSL) folks have been uncomfortable with unpredictable compiler optimizations for quite a while too. Here's a previous discussion on compilers in OpenBSD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9322259

MinimaLT http://cr.yp.to/tcpip/minimalt-20130522.pdf

It may be misleading but also in the sense that there's no recommendation to just drop VPN altogether. How about we just stop relying on terribly over-designed protocols such as VPN and IPSec? Complexity is the enemy of security.

- Tab sandboxing

- No phoning home

- In-built privacy protection

I would never have my private keys leave a smart card. I'd assume your PGP private key on hard drive, located in your home directory no less, is as good as compromised.

> Bash would have been more appropriate

A script that is compatible with POSIX Bourne shell (/bin/sh) would be more appropriate. FreeBSD, for example, does not come pre-installed with bash. If you want cross-platform portability, this is a better default.

That's wrong. NSAs new IDS also protects enterprises that the state considers to be "critical infrastructure", such as banks.

> I'll email you a list of my designs and essays on there

Yes, please.

So, basically anyone providing online services to customers then? Who's threat model should not include intelligence agencies? Online pet shop?

There's no contest between physical vs. virtual isolation. Theo de Raadt and @thegrugq are right when they're saying you shouldn't put much trust in virtualisation-as-isolation model. Just look at the recent VENOM bug.

It's a Russian newspaper-in-exile. It wasn't hard to find:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meduza#Censorship

> much of the commercial world is thinly veiled NSA work

While security agencies of various governments are on the buy-side on the "zero day" vulnerability market, majority of commercial "cyber" security companies are not dealing in "cyber weapons" and are not involved with NSA. There are plentiful examples of successful "white hats": H. D. Moore, Dan Kaminsky, Tavis Ormandy, Michał Zalewski, even our own Colin Percival and tptacek etc. You don't have to do work for government to play in this area.

> They are highly skilled network attack specialists, with basically no way to apply their skills other than working for the NSA.

Why is commercial "cyber" security industry not a viable option? It pays well, there's currently a notable skill shortage and they can work in "pen-testing", "red teaming" and "exploit development" areas.

Or use multitail. It supports syntax highlighting, among other features: http://www.vanheusden.com/multitail/

> Wouldn't any process running as root on the computer be able to re-flash the router?

No, because router's management interface is only available out-of-band. This is a conscious design decision to mitigate against this threat: "In order to protect the PORTAL from tampering from malware (or malicious users), it also requires a third administration interface. This can be either a serial console, or physical connection."[0]

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[0] http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/10/05/thru-a-portal-darkly/

In the same vein, P.O.R.T.A.L.[0] mitigates against leaks by running Tor on a separate hardware router. In principle, it should reduce the risk of geolocation, as VM esape to dom0 is not possible. Annual success of pwn2own should tell you that all browsers are thoroughly compromised. If your adversary can escape to dom0, they should be able to reveal your real source IP. Whonix seems to provide this as an option[1], but not by default.

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[0] https://github.com/grugq/portal

[1] https://www.whonix.org/w/index.php?title=Dev/Build_Documenta...