It’s also a way for people who regularly travel less than 20 miles (if this number is correct).

Most device consume more power than you can realiable get from solar on the device. You can’t power a cellphone from a back-mounted solar cell nor run a car from a solar roof alone.

But don’t make the mistake to assume that everyone has (cheap) power at home or that everyone has a (suburban) home. Photovoltaic is cheap and reliable. And you need space, so it makes sense to put solar everywhere.

I heared people love worldwide-radio. What’s so cool about it? And why as a browser plugin? This could be a stand-alone app or website.

So what exactly are 3rd party cookies?

I’m on a.com, that is what’s shown in the address bar.

The page includes a resource a.com/image.png. A request the server will include cookies from a.com. That’s a 1st party cookie. Correct?

The page includes a resource b.com/image.png. The request will not include cookies from a.com; this was always the case. b.com can however set their own cookies. Since we are on a.com, cookies from b.com are ‘third party’. Correct?

It gets interesting when we navigate to c.com and c.com includes b.com/image.png, a tracking pixel we have seen before on a.com.

Without 3rd party cookie protection, b.com sees the cookie they set previously while on a.com. This will now be blocked. Correct?

Now explain this in a Javascript world.

I don’t use wired headphones with my phone anymore since it doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack, but I miss that i cannot plug my headphone quickly in a laptop’s 3.5mm jack quickly.

I like that binary nature of cables. When physically connected they work. No fiddling with Bluetooth menus.

I agree, but at least it is now possible to compete with Apple Pay. The position of Apple and Google Pay is too strong if competition is unthinkable.

Apple was smart to partner with the banks and acting as a proxy initially. The next step could bypass Visa, MasterCard, banks, payment processors, …

Have you looked into how existing software handles captive portals. I believe, both Ubuntu (or Gnome or Network-Manager) and Firefox do check for such portals and detect real internet access. (They simple poll some URL http://detectportal.vendor.com and check for the expected return code. Portals usually redirect.)

Now I’m thinking, what if this check could trigger a change to the DNS configuration. That is use DoT when internet is available, otherwise fall back to DHCP announced DNS

That was also my question. A broader question is how to access services on the local network that are announced through local DNS? Like your router’s web interface or any similar device.

Can you have split routing? Most queries go to our preferred DNSoverTLS endpoint, but some go to DNS53 on the local network.

This would also solve the captive portal if the host used to detect captive portals is always resolved locally.

Those printers are definitely gold for heavy users. Cheap ink. If you don’t use it a lot, would the ink dry and damage the printer? Or evaporate and vanish?

Honest question because imk cartridges dry out all the time.

Who’s blocking what?

Last time, IIRC someone blamed Cloudflare and they said they did not do anything, just relaying from upstream.

I missed the part where they pump water up to generate power from the downdraft (of cooled air). I don’t want to shit on cool ideas. Maaaaybe there’s are range of parameters where this works, but I’m holding my breath.

Also PV does neither require heat nor dryness.

Websites built for Chrome do work in Firefox.

The alternative to multiple cores is a single core that runs faster. We tried this and hit a limit. So, it’s many cores, now.

The OpenAI people built ChatGPT, the Microsoft folks worked on Clippy.

This. Job hopping works for some time even when you are young, when you learn fast and when everyone is hiring.

I took me one year to get out of my managerial job and I took a paycut, went to work a smaller company with lesser job title. My previous job was too good on paper. In reality it was a total shitshow. I was open to take the first reasonable offer, but recruiters were hesitant to even talk to me.

And it’s not just job titles. Skills fade if you are in position where you don’t continue learning.

Ignore my ignorance. Are you saying the aircrafts track where they are going by calculating their position from gyroscope data? And this is more precise than GPS?

That’s like using the accelaration sensors in your phone to navigate. Or sailing with compass and nautical maps.

Possible. Tech isn’t even that novel. But still impressive.

I can’t understand what is to be gained by deliberately trying to knock civilian airliners off course.

You don’t deal with terrorists, do you?

GPS is old, the amount of data you get from the satellite is small, essentially satellite id and timestamp. If we would redesign this today, you could include a digital signature.

Sure, but… you can google this to verify … one can probably manipulate GPS by introducing delay, i.e. resend data from a sat that was hear some seconds ago. With this signal the location will be off.

You are not wrong, but you we should understand what class of attacks we are protecting against. Will biometrics stop your maid from using your device? Probably less. Will it stop the FBI? Not so sure.

Now, you may say, an FBI raid is not what you worry about on a daily basis. Agree.

If you are trying to keep the photos on your device safe from snooping, your good. Attacker needs the device and your fingerprint.

When we talk online accounts, I’d count device+fingerprint as one factor. Sure, the maid from the example above can’t login into your gmail without your fingerprint, but most attacks are online. Your device sends a token to gmail, a cookie, a String; that’s like a password. One factor.

Technically, it’s slightly better than a password, because this token can be short-lived (although often it’s not), could be cryptographic signature to be used exactly once (although…), you cannot brute-force guess the token… But IF the token leaks, the attacker has full access (or enough to cause damage).

That’s why I would suggest an independent second factor, such as password. Yes, a password. Not for your daily routine (biometrics+device is much better), but maybe for high-risk operations.

Well

The biometrics only unlock the device

Yes

and give access to the security key

This is the goal, sure, but what does this actually mean on device that’s mostly governed by software?

There’s a chip (like a yubikey) in the device that can hold cryptographic keys.

That’s good because the key cannot (easily) be extracted from the device.

That’s good as long as no one has physical access to your device.

With physical access, you hope that the device’s unlock mechanism is reasonably secure. That’s biometrics OR password/pin.

The ‘or’ is the problem. For practical reasons you don’t want exactly one method hard-wired. You have a fingerprint scanner (good enough), the secure element (good enough) and lots of hard- and software in between (tricky).

I’m not against biometrics (to unlock a device) because it’s convinient and much better than not locking the device at all. I’m also not against device trust (which you need if you want to store crypto keys sonewhere without separate hardware), but the convience of a single-device solution (laptop or phone) comes with a risk.

If an attacker can bypass the unlock method or trick you into unlocking or compromise the device, your secrets are at risk. Having the key stored in the secure enclave (and not in a regular file on the hard disk) prevents copying the key material, but it does not prevent using the key when the attacker has some control over the (unlocked) device.

A yubikey is more secure because it’s tiny and you can carry it on your keychain. The same chip inside your laptop is more likely to fall into the hands of an attacker.