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I've threat modeled this myself, and as I understand it the Bitwarden client side decrypts/encrypts everything locally. So even if backend was entirely compromised, it's never getting anything without the master password, and that's never sent across by the client. Then again, there's also the web interface.


Yeah if an attacker was able to insert javascript then it's possible.


For this particular threat vector, where the client is compromised, the backend doesn’t matter.


A compromised server can inject exfil code into the web page it serves. If you only ever use the apps then you should be fine though.


Which is only possible if logging into the web client and not when using the bitwarden desktop app or browser extensions.


This is just rubberducking into a private channel. It's really not that new.

I actually do this, but into a personal google doc.


All the progressive solutions seem to only not work, but exacerbate the problem and expose the public to more risk. Not to mention all the sympathy and gentle parenting the problem under the masquerade of tolerance just keeps the homeless in their addictions and spirals while those that dictate policies can get away with doing nothing and live in their secure buildings and escorted by private cars and security so as to never look at the problem. The lack of authority on the matter leaves it to random citizens to deal with, sometimes with deadly or legal consequences when its mishandled instead of being handled appropriately by trained law enforcement or social workers. Sadly, the past solution was more humane than the current ones when you look purely at the end results.


Which solutions are you writing about that have been tried? Were those solutions properly funded? Were those solutions watered down into broken systems moments before signing the bill?

The past solution was not more humane. Tell me this, what part of the past solution was different from a prison? Why do you think they broke them up in the first place?

You want to round people up against their rights, then give everyone healthcare so you don’t burden them with debt by forcing them into care.


> Which solutions are you writing about that have been tried? Were those solutions properly funded? Were those solutions watered down into broken systems moments before signing the bill?

Last time I parked in that garage that's right across the street from Berkeley, I saw a middle aged woman screaming in some kind of mental anguish in a dirty sleeping bag covered in her own shit. From what I remember the students having a coffee at the cafe 20 feet away just sort of dealt with it, I think I was around Fulton and Oxford. If you can't propose a solution to this, I don't see what you are adding to conversation.

And yes, we should give everyone healthcare, that's a foregone conclusion here. The question is, _what_ is the solution to the above scenario. Is it a checkup, a clean needle (is that van still parked at the BART downtown idk), a pat on the back, a pile of job applications, a warm sandwich and a pamphlet that says vote democrat. Man we are so far beyond stupidity, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, here's your prompt. The above situation is a microcosm of a broader issue, engineer your way out of it, or stay out of the conversation.


You’re not listening then, you have to incentivize the use of healthcare. That solves that situation. If using healthcare isn’t a stigma that leaves you with a horrendously expensive bill, then people would feel confident in getting the help.

I am sorry you had to listen to someone scream. At least that person wasn’t unjustly locked up and stripped of their rights because you got anxiety. Her screaming is a 10000% better than creating another “mental health” private prison system.


There are people who are literally insane. The issue isn’t “healthcare” it’s that they are literally insane. They don’t even know what is going on all day


it sounds like you are describing "mental health" issues. the provider of mental health care is.... the health care system.


dang seems your only parrot argument is "health care!!!"

hmm have you seen stabby maniacs and drug addicts in "healthcare provided countries"?

does having healthcare make those people visit those "providers" and go:

"Hello! I'm a maniac with mental issues/drug problems, and I'm visiting you to be treated! good day!"


what is your proposal exactly?


They, um, might be able to become sane by using... healthcare?


They are not capable of getting treatment themselves as they are insane and homeless. They need to be forcibly moved into an asylum


No. Asylums are just prisons and forcibly removing someone is stripping them of their rights. Try again.


You didn't answer the question. What past solution was tried and actually worked and wasn't cruel or abusive to those who were "helped"?

People adopt this attitude that "obviously we just need to fix the problem using tried and true methods" but they can't actually articulate what those methods are. It's all just hot air.

I would like to suggest that at least in the case of the US the problems are largely political and thus there can be no straightforward solution since the people who would enact any solution are themselves the root cause.

> engineer your way out of it, or stay out of the conversation.

Yet a solution is conspicuously missing from your own rant.


> engineer your way out of it, or stay out of the conversation

The civilian conservation core, as conceived and executed in the 33-42 era, while updated to more modern standards of participation and scope would work wonders.

You're welcome.

EDIT: We're haunted by the same ghost. It's either up and out or over and through. Buenas noches.


That would certainly reduce the issue but it fails to address the most severe cases. The people yelling at shrubs on the sidewalk probably aren't going to be compatible with such an effort.


The solution is to take the screaming mentally insane off the street and put them into 24/7 mental care at asylums! Why can you not understand this clear solution?


I mean I completely agree with you but you have to understand that historically that doesn't have a great record for the people removed. It hid them away from the rest of us but at least past implementations were notoriously cruel and abusive to the imprisoned patients.


> historically that doesn't have a great record for the people removed

Is it better than what we're doing now? Having them live on the streets neglected, unsheltered, hungry, and sick?

Seems like what we're doing today has a worse record.


We should hide them away in asylums and have modern techniques to prevent abuse


There are no modern techniques that’s why we left the old ways. The fact that you have nothing to offer but vague “use modern techniques” proves there are no modern techniques. It also shows you have a shallow understanding about health.

Do you understand how slippery of a slope “round them up and lock away mentally ill people” is? How do you determine who is dangerous and who is not? How do you determine which illnesses are for locking people up? How do you reason that with stripping away due process? Being mentally ill is not a crime.


FYI, a small state had great success in recent years, though this story is ten years old, have not seen any updates. They simply gave housing to the homeless as the first step. I do not think anyone would call Utah progressive.

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...


I saw a report from another guy who couches it as not a homeless problem but a mental health and addiction problem. Everyone thinks its just people down on their luck and a home will solve it. He showed one person who had been given housing but for whatever (mental) reason, she slept on the street, that's how she always lived and wanted to live and her place sits empty. There's also a "homeless industrial complex" that is incentivized to offer temporary aid, but not solve the problem, which primarily treating the underlying mental health or addiction issues, because it keeps them employed. Not talking about the volunteers, talking about the leadership at the top that gets all the money.

The guy I'm talking about operates out of Portland.

https://x.com/kevinvdahlgren

All that to say, you can give normal "down on their luck" people homes and that solves the problem. Those people generally do pull themselves out of it somehow anyway or can take advantage of available assistance. But give an addict, or someone with schizophrenia housing and it will either be destroyed, or they can't live by the rules (usually staying clean or not using) and it won't workout. Letting them live on the streets hurts everyone, giving them houses just has negative results. The solution, sadly, the only one that "worked" despite how cruel it was, is to either incarcerate or isolate them from the public or treat them where possible which with an addict or mental health person requires voluntary choice or an asylum. Simply gentle parenting the problem and letting them live how they want to naturally is not working, as what they want is often harmful to everyone that lives around them. The only solutions that worked were often cruel, but skid row isn't kindness either and comes with its own cruelty, and leads to worse situations.

All that to say, there's no perfect solution, and the only working solutions might be ones that are considered cruel by some or tough love by others, but doing so in the least cruel manner and with treatment options where possible is probably the best way.


There's a really good overview at the combination of factors that caused what we are seeing now, with references:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/AUrfQETViO


Yes, we really tried so hard to help these people, didn't we?


Engadget often has sensationalist, inaccurate headlines. I stopped reading them when I was intimately with the actual details of an article vs the way they framed/presented it. Also, what kind of water? Pure clean water, untreated water, Grey water, etc? Bottled water and other industries consume millions of gallons too. If its for cooling, I imagine water can be used that isn't being used for any other purpose. At least the water cycle is a thing, the alternative is A/C cooling which would be even more harmful. This is one of those cases where even if a company picks the least bad option, they're going to get criticized because negative agitating headlines get clicks.

A reminder that Meta tried to go green/nuclear, but couldn't because some bees were on or near the proposed location. Another example, of letting the perfect environmental ideal that isn't feasible be the enemy of the good.


Do some research, there's lots of info online. Water use for example: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co...


It didn't specify if fresh water meant non-salt water from a natural water source, or treated drinkable water. I'd need to see the rainfall averages for the region the data center is in, susceptibility to drought to know how much of a problem this actually is. Data center locations are often chosen based on cooling costs, availability of greener electricity, water, etc. This blanket statement, "only 3% of the world is fresh water" is pointless and alarmist language because a good portion of the world is desert or arid. Some places have very little water, others have an over-abundance, and location matters. Most of the water problems regarding access to clean water and access to drinkable water have more to do with over populating a region because of the nice weather (LA, CA for example) beyond what is sustainable or practical. Putting a data center in Illinois or something has very little do to with the problems of access to water in southern CA, where movies like Chinatown as far back as the 70s depicts the problem of access to water being a huge problem because it gets little rainfall being close to the desert and isn't a good place to put a large populace and not have that problem.

If they're building the data center in the desert or a drought susceptible region, where fresh water usage is way past its limits, fine, but if the data center is in the Upper Midwest or parts of the Pacific NW, the consumption of water there isn't going to have any impact on the areas that have a consumption issue.


I couldn't find on this page how to quantify the breakdown between water lost on site to evaporation or to rejection from pure to grey water, and water lost elsewhere for electricity production, or earlier for semiconductor manufacturing. But I have the impression that water lost on site is quite small compared to indirect loss.


> "A reminder that Meta tried to go green/nuclear, but couldn't because some bees were on or near the proposed location."

https://www.ft.com/content/ed602e09-6c40-4979-aff9-7453ee284... ("Meta’s plan for nuclear-powered AI data centre thwarted by rare bees")

https://archive.is/gPkii


That commentary was far less prevalent and met a lot of resistance from the same people here.

Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.


My point is that those conversations were happening in earnest, irrespective of the GPs perception or lack thereof. Additionally, the element of scrutiny I described would still be interesting to explore with the particular EOs referenced by the GP.

Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-cut-china-off-more-...

Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.


Reminds me of this piece:

https://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-intellectual-dark-web-is...

tldr; Public discussions carry too much risk if you discuss anything honestly, you get brigaded or doxed, or things are taken out of context or re-framed by someone based on their own biases of "what you really meant". So people have gone more towards sharing their views or having honest discussions in smaller more trusted groups.


TBF Skype wasn't profitable when MS bought it, it every much was in the line of make something everyone wants to use and figure out how to make money later. Skype was more or less free to use and it didn't make enough from paid services to cover its operating costs if I remember correctly. So it was always someone buys it or it dies.

The point of many of those companies is to get bought out and then get enshitified or stripped for its IP and integrated into for profit products.

Discord is very much in the same boat of build user base, then either sell or lock people in and charge a lot. It's current model is unsustainable. It will get bought out or enshitify eventually, there's no other sustainable model unless every user starts handing them money every month like its Netflix.

People here used to know this, are we getting an eternal September? Comments are getting more and more "reddit" like.


> Discord is very much in the same boat of build user base, then either sell or lock people in and charge a lot. It's current model is unsustainable. It will get bought out or enshitify eventually, there's no other sustainable model unless every user starts handing them money every month like its Netflix.

I haven't looked at their financials, but I wouldn't be surprised if their current subscription offerings targeting power users were enough to support the service.


Capitalism doesn’t tend toward “enough”, it tends towards maximizing profits.

(Saying this without judging it as bad or good, simply how it is)


While that might be true on a systems level, individual companies can choose their own destiny and many companies have chosen to operate over long time periods while making less than maximum potential revenue.


> People here used to know this, are we getting an eternal September? Comments are getting more and more "reddit" like.

What?! I do know this, and take great offense to the insinuation that my comment is "reddit"-like. I didn't feel it necessary to iterate over how VCware works since, as you said, everyone already gets that part.

Anyway, the "this place is getting more like Reddit by the day" thing has been a Hacker News staple for (well) over a decade too. Check the end of the HN guidelines, you'll have a chuckle.


Sorry, just I thought anyone lurking here for a while was pretty familiar with the whole model of "offer service for free to gain user adoption, then sell out or pivot". Most of these services that we enjoy simply aren't sustainable and are running on borrowed time (or VC money).


I'm confused, is familiarity with it somehow an argument for it?

As I understand, the complaint was that things get ruined once acquired. Great, we all know that it's in part because of unsustainable business models in the hope of getting acquired*. Does that mean we have to like it? Wouldn't it be nice to encourage companies to have sustainable business models?

*But also not entirely. Even if you build a sustainable business model, for you it's throwing off profit and that's gravy for you. But once someone buys it from you, suddenly they are in the hole and have an investment to recoup, especially if they overpaid. And so the temptation arises to goose things to pay back that investment more quickly


> Most of these services that we enjoy simply aren't sustainable and are running on borrowed time (or VC money).

That's also what HN said about Uber and many other services still running today, including old Twitter.


This is what I don't get, the FTC is suing because the FTC allowed something to happen, when the platforms had even more dominance than they do now?

Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.


At the time, Instagram had 80 million users, it had no monetization strategy and was profitless[1]. I suppose this made it seem less of an immediate competitive threat to Facebook's business model, especially with the presence of other smaller photo sharing platforms by Google etc.

In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that FTC officials in 2012 had concerns about the deal raising antitrust issues. However, they were apprehensive about potentially losing an antitrust case in court if they sued to block the deal.[2] If they would lose then on the merits of trying to enforce the Clayton Act, it would set a precedent that likely could not be undone.

[1] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-instagram-deal-down-747m-...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-ceos-defend-operations-ahe...


I remember hearing from friends at Facebook that an insider story was FB used VPN and in app IP address tracking to identify that instagram and whatsapp were hitting crazy growth metrics and that's how they knew they needed to buy them at all costs


Onavo, the VPN app-company that was repurposed by facebook for market intelligence, was only acquired in 2013, Instagram was acquired a year earlier in 2012.

But before 2013 there were methods on both iOS and Android for an App to get a list of all OTHER installed apps on the device.

Facebook had the means to know exactly at which rate each app was growing and how many of the users they have to share with it, the facebook app itself was gathering this info.

They could gather enough data to even calculate how much user-attention they lose after each app is installed on a users' device.

--

Onavo was then acquired in 2013, right when Apple started to lock-down those app-scanning methods with iOS7.

So it appears that the company was acquired to be able to KEEP doing something they have already been doing before that with the facebook app.


Onavo was the vpn app turned competitive intelligence tool


I can personally confirm that story.


Something being predicted poorly, hypothetically, doesn’t mean you can’t rectify a past mistake, right?

Not specifically related to this case, necessarily, but if you let an acquisition go through and discover a decade later that it was, in fact, anticompetitive (and intentionally so), presumably you would still try to break up the resulting monopoly, even if you didn’t predict it would happen?


Mistake shouldn't be based on outcome. If Instagram failed, would they still have the antitrust case?


Take a look at the Alcoa case from 1945 [0]. The courts ruled that Alcoa was an illegal monopoly even though it acquired that status legally.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa


Wow that would never happen now! Interesting how

A) that would be considered bad law now.

B) despite all branches of government going after Alcoa (Congress passing a special law to support the case mid way through), nothing happened upon remanding the case to the lower court due to the successful argument that other companies began competing

C) that would never happen now primarily due to only anticompetitive practices being scrutinized, not merely having the ability to control prices. But now I see where the confusion comes from, a 13 year saga in support of the Sherman Act

D) it’s so interesting how much the country changed solely from trying to differentiate itself from communism. So its gone to more of an extreme of private maximum extractable value.


This court decision seems insane, being illegal because you work hard to become the best.


Being a monopoly is correctly illegal regardless of how that status was obtained.


if you plan to steal something and get caught, you are guilty of planning to steal something, but you are not guilty of stealing it.

if you impulsively steal something and get caught, you are not guilty of planning to steal something, but you are guilty of stealing it.

monopoly is the same.


I guess theZuck didn't donate enough to the campaign


The trial has to go through in all cases of bribing:

- If I’m the politician, then I need to keep the company on the edge until the end of the trial where I promise them to be acquitted;

- If I’m the CEO, I need the trial to go through and acquit me, because it guarantees me against future trials.


> I need the trial to go through and acquit me, because it guarantees me against future trials

On substantially identical charges, where the principle of double jeopardy holds sway.


In the same jurisdiction*


Wasn't the FTC completely rebooted in 2021?


That explains changes in priorities, but it does not make for great jurisprudence to have their unanimous decision revoked.

They could argue that the decision was made based on declarations that did not align with the private conversation that Zuckerberg had at the time, as those emails came out since.


I remember when this happened, it was in the news then, except the conversation was everyone in SV was doing it, including Google. They decided not to. We don't convict for thinking about robbing a bank, you actually have to attempt it and nothing being discussed was explicitly illegal, merely unethical by some arguments, but then again, NSA has several listening posts at AT&T hubs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), and Apple is building backdoors for iCloud in the UK, its the cost of doing business in western countries, that ethically its simply complying with local laws at that point, just degrees of magnitude.


>Authoritarianism is fundamentally right wing.

Go look at a political compass. Authoritarianism is when you use force to push your ideals, whether they be radical/liberal (left) or orthodox/conservative)(right) ideals on a populace with extreme authority. Communism is considered left/radical, if you use government force to make people adopt it, that's using authority, hence authoritarianism. Please learn definitions and political axis before making silly arguments.

China isn't really communist because they tried it and people starved, then they had to go back to capitalism or some degree of it, but kept the authoritarianism, and effectively became some hybrid version that leans fascist.

Communism simply never works at scale, socialism can to an extent, assuming its not abused and there's a homogeneous society with shared cultural values and purpose that includes to contribute and to not abuse it. Hence Nordic socialism, which of course breaks down when you bring in those that don't share those values as its doing now. I've heard enough Swedes bitch about Eastern European migrants abusing their social welfare to say nothing of now to see the idealism fall apart when self interested parties without the same cultural values enter en masse.

Human psychology being about protecting and serving the interests of your tribe and things like "Dunbar's number" and the limit of the number of people you can literally care about and prioritize makes it impossible at scale. Families can be communist, even a small group of 10-50 people (more or less a cult or small tribe), massive populations can not. They simply are not going to work for the benefit of others without receiving something in exchange, unless you use a gun to their head, which is why all communist regimes start out authoritarian, but holding a gun to someone's head for 10-50 years won't change 200k years of evolutionary programming. Hence why Marx is good at pointing out capitalism's flaws, but he's naive and even more fundamentally flawed when it comes to prescribing a solution that does way more harm in the end.

Truth is most successful societies adopt a hybrid solution, socialism at the community or local level where everyone works for a shared purpose and contributes to the local community, whether that be through a church, small local government, etc. with capitalism that allows trade and mutually beneficial deals to happen with those outside of that community.


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