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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I think this is maybe best expressed as pmOS development being controlled by the community, rather than a single organisation. I’d much rather use an OS where I have confidence that the developers are acting in the users best interest, rather than their employers best interest.

    My opinion is that forks/downstreams of giant codebases like AOSP are largely going to have to accept choices made by the upstream. They can maybe pick and chose a few points where they maintain local patches, but that takes a lot of effort.

    As an example, I think most chromium-based browsers will end up dropping support for uBlock Origin because Google dropped it upstream. That’s the kind of choice they [edit: i.e. google] can make in their own self-interest by virtue of controlling the project, and the reason I’d prefer to use community-developed software.




  • I think multiple people already have access to the databases that store the data the device sends. I don’t really care whether they get the data from the device itself or from the database.

    Similarly, I think multiple people have the ability to make changes to the firmware build and the systems that distribute it. So those people already have the potential ability to gain access to the device.

    One person or multiple people having unauthorised access are both unacceptable. I’m saying that the users have to trust the companies ability to prevent that occurring, and that therefore this particular technical detail is mostly irrelevant


  • CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlA backdoor in a bed
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    1 month ago

    I’m 90% sure it is not a single user. I just don’t see how that really affects the security of the product, given that the company that sells it can already do the things the author is saying can be done if you have this key.

    To be clear, I wouldn’t buy this. I just don’t think the SSH key makes it any worse than it already was


  • CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlA backdoor in a bed
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    1 month ago

    A shared account doesn’t mean everyone who works there has access to it, or that those who do have access aren’t subject to some type of access control.

    The article basically goes on to say that the existence of this key makes a huge difference to the security/privacy of the product. It argues that using it, someone could access data from the device, or use it to upload arbitrary code to the device for it to run. However, those are both things the user is already trusting the company with. They have to trust that the company has access controls/policies to prevent individual rogue employees doing the things described. It seems unreasonable to say that an SSH key being on the device demonstrates that those controls aren’t in place.




  • Sure, but then you’ve just shifted the problem up a level. Now I have to trust that the user id you provide me in the insecure channel really is you. Which means either trusting the insecure channel or trusting that the web app has confirmed who you are in some other way before giving you an ID.

    We have to reject the first since we could skip all the asymmetric crypt and just send a symmetric key directly in the insecure channel.

    If we’re trusting the web app has confirmed your identity, we’ve moved from “just quickly go to this page and it’ll generate you a public key” to “go to this site, upload a photo of your ID and a video of you saying that its you and whatever other verification is needed, then it’ll give you a public key”.

    You originally wrote:

    The one sticking point is that your recipient needs to visit the site before you can send your vacation photos to them, but is it really that hard?

    The hard part isn’t them going to the site in advance, it’s them establishing trust with the site that they are who they claim to be.







  • CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy Guides@lemmy.oneDivestOS ends development
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    3 months ago

    It’s a quite entitled view to take that they should make an effort to pass the project on. It would be very hard to build sufficient trust in a new developer quickly, and passing it on without that trust would be undermining the trust that users of the projects have placed in this dev. If I were him, I wouldn’t be staking my reputation on finding someone to take over from me if there wasn’t already an obvious candidate.

    The successful fundraiser you mention looks to have had a target of $12k USD (from: https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/divestos-is-unsustainable-needs-community-support-we-sent-250-and-you-can-help-too/6660, the original page has been taken down), and was as a alternative to them taking a full time job. I’d say its a reasonable bet that money was spent on living expenses, and IMO $12k a year is much less than this level of skilled work is worth. It’s certainly not enough money to make it unreasonable to shut down the project a year later, and I doubt anyone who donated feels shortchanged by it.




  • If you’re just commuting & riding flat, even-ish trails, you maybe don’t need a MTB at all. You’ll get much bigger changes in handling/comfort/speed from changing the style of bike than the marginal gains from upgrading individual parts.

    What are you hoping to gain from a drivetrain upgrade? It might make more sense to look at changing the type of bike you have, rather than trying to transform a MTB to act like a hybrid/gravel/road bike