Terminal stage of console
There are two camps. People will constantly try to drag you into one. They will get mad if you resist. They will call you a filthy centrist if you resist.
It doesn’t not matter what’s your political view, if it is not radical enough, if it does not align unquestionably with one of the camps, people will get mad.
This is just how it is nowadays.
And E2EE is only available on phones, circa a couple of years ago anyways
Telegram’s servers are located in US, Singapore, Netherlands (and maybe some other countries) from what I’ve gathered. And all chats that are not E2EE’ed are stored there, encrypted at rest at best with keys in the same database, or somewhere else that can still be accessed in automated way. Maybe it is not even encrypted at rest.
The point is, all those countries are either in 5 eyes or have information sharing agreements with 5 eyes countries. So as far as I’m concerned, TLAs can still have their fingers in those pies, in addition to Telegram’s overall shadiness and Russian ties. So maybe you get KGB strongman keeping a watch over your chats too.
This is not something I’d have much confidence in to be honest.
Switch to Telegram
You know it’s not even E2EE by default, and when it is it uses a homegrown algo that is not exactly well spoken of? (at least V1)
“Stealing” is a stretch here but alright. That’s basically why I still use Apple Mail / Thunderbird on all my devices. All the swanky 3rd party clients are too keen on “enabling push notifications” by sending my credentials off to far shores.
Omega-3 is an EFA
My bad, “I’m not a scientist” bit me hard here lol, though I did read that if you get your omega-3 from plant sources (linolenic acid) its absorption rate is extremely low comparing to sources like salmon.
Regarding supplementation, I feel like having to do that because of inherent issues with your diet is somewhat of a dirty hack (I do take some supplements though, so I’m not gonna pretend like it is not an option).
Even taking this claim at face value, we would have to solve plant based diet issues, such as insufficiencies in some vitamins (e.g. B12), complexity of getting sufficient amount of essential amino acids (esp. omega-3) and omega-3, slow but steady reduction in an overall amount of nutrients present in both vegetables and fruits etc.
And if we say that the answer is to “engineer” foods: fortify grains with vitamins, come up with “equivalent on paper” diary replacements (e.g. oat “milk”) etc, then we need to ask ourselves whether this is actually the answer? Can we effectively reduce foods to a small number of “key ingredients” and add them everywhere? Is this sustainable? What about the environmental impact of running all those factories that “engineer” plant-based alternatives to the foods our ancestors ate for generations?
I do not know the answer, I’m no scientist, nor proponent of any specific way forward. I just read stuff. The only thing that I do believe is that there is no silver bullet.
Books I find very interesting:
UPDATE: Corrected that Omega-3 is indeed not an amino acid
The article you’ve linked ignores two very important points: how much of that land is marginal (not suitable for growing crops) and the fact that our monoculture approach to growing crops is as much (if not more) devastating to our environment.
There’s no way to put it apart from “humans destroy habitats”, and I don’t think that it makes much difference whether the land was dedicated for grazing or crops.
Any study that mashes together processed and unprocessed meat in epidemiological setting is next to meaningless in my opinion. You can associate basically anything this way.
Guess where read meat and processed meat intersect? McDonald’s, for example. Now tell me that eating sirloins kills me.
It is reasonable yet subpar under a threat model where you do not trust any single provider, which is a model I find appropriate most of the time.
You should not assume your password manager is unhackable.
That’s my main point. Perfect is an enemy of good indeed, but I feel that doing things properly the first time is a good idea in general, especially when it as easy as using a different app for your TOTP tokens. It’s a low hanging fruit really.
Please don’t use your password manager for TOTP tokens. It is called two factor authentication for a reason.
Until next time they try to push through something similarly stupid. Now it’s EU’s turn to make their mind too.
Tbh I’d not be surprised if that’s the case. Last time I had enough time to spare to rice me some arches was all the way back when I was in uni :(
I barely have enough time to hotfix my dotfiles nowadays :/
And the cringe inducing lttstore and “no sponsored fragment” plugs. Like somehow it sounds like your typical apology.jpeg and “haha funny-funny jokesies” at the same time.
For MFA apps, Google Authenticator seems to be the norm.
I personally use OTPAuth with sync disabled and regular backups. Mostly because it is easier to organise and back up.
Regarding hardware security keys as part of MFA, you can either get yourself dual USB-C / Lightning or USB-C / USB-A keys from Yubikey. Then just buy a USB-A to USB-C dongle (or vice versa) and keep it on your key chain. That’s mostly what I do, not ideal but does the job.
I also use OnlyKey for some passwords, especially encryption passphrases on some servers and laptops. I usually need to enter them on boot, and it just takes too long to do that manually and I’m lazy.
I agree with you on most of the points. Some security is better than nothing. More security is better than less, layers and all.
Regarding data breaches and malware, and threat models in general. We should not forget phishing too. People voluntarily entering their credentials on a website masquerading as their bank etc.
With all of that, having your credentials split over multiple applications and devices actually saves you from an endpoint compromise and evil maid attacks, at least in a sense of limiting the fallout.
Regarding VeraCrypt and “FREE”. While it is, again, better than nothing, VeraCrypt is fiddly, not always works consistently on all operating systems (I look at you, MacOS), and is susceptible to key logging. I prefer actual certified hardware with physical keypads instead. It is not free and has its own downsides, but it is just something I find more appealing.
As a rule of thumb, do not put all your eggs into one basket. No software is infallible and vulnerabilities can be uncovered and exploited in both open and closed sourced applications.
That’s being said, as long as you don’t store all information necessary for a successful login in your password manager, you should be fine.
So storing credentials for your bank account is fine, as long as it is also protected by MFA and you do not use the same password manager for handling that.
You can store PIN codes from your debit cards in the password manager as long as you do not store card number / expiration / CVV2 there too.
Personally, I keep passwords in a password manager, MFA tokens in a separate authenticator, MFA recovery codes go to FIPS 140-2 certified encrypted USB sticks (3 separate copies). I do store debit card PIN codes in my password manager, but only alongside the last 4 digits of the card number.
lol