Cleaning after defecation really requires the skillful application of wet paper towel, then dry paper towel, followed by a shower with a removable shower head set to the laser setting, with soap and disposable rag.
Having spent time in Japan, I found that a Toto washlet is inferior to the shower method. However, washlets are clearly better than only dry paper towel.
My process for American public restrooms involves wetting paper towels, preferably after defecating to maintain absorption of water in the clumped paper towels. It’s odd to me that bathroom stalls don’t offer the facility to wet paper towels. It must be obvious to all that dry paper towel (without soap nor water) cannot possibly clean fecal matter sufficiently, yet this seems to be the cultural norm.
Perhaps someone will invent a kind of washlet that works better than the current offering. I personally don’t need heating and gizmos, just a high quality and reliable cleaning on par with the shower method.
Eventide’s classic DSP4000b has algorithms for phone call sonic simulation. The patches are highly modular (and thus can be inspected for analysis - at least down to the blocks used to construct the patch) and it would be interesting to see how that old school hardware DSP approach compares to the author’s design and implementation.
It's unclear why you've chosen to respond to my comment about my personal situation (which I'm not hiding at all), but I suspect you're trying to conflate something about my credibility with my argument. If that's the case, please stop. In fact, I'd rather you not bring up off topic issues in response to my comment.
We likely have orthogonal life experiences, and I'm simply trying to share my experiences and views. I'd like to stay on topic in doing so for a particular comment. Thanks.
Improving on the design of Exceptional Access systems isn't just about math, nor about considering the problems of key escrow. Rather, it's about considering how to reduce the risks for the issues you've raised.
Fighting on principle is fine, but if the laws are changed to require exceptional access for these systems, it would behoove everyone to work towards a better compromise. Otherwise, your concerns will remain.
If you give E2EE to the masses, then the endpoints will need to remain vulnerable by design, or LE/IC won't be able to do their jobs fighting criminals.
If the endpoints are designed to be as free of vulnerabilities as possible (which isn't the case anyway - consumer phones and computers are still Mickey Mouse by design), and provide E2EE at scale, criminals will be able to operate with impunity at scale. This isn't a desirable solution.
I'd rather see a trend towards locking down endpoints, but allowing Exceptional Access for communications at scale. Allow the math to exist (code for encrypted comms can exist on GitHub, for instance) but disallow it to be distributed at scale (walled garden App Stores, large Social Networks for instance). Reduce the (growth of) entropy.
Guns aren't sold via the App Store, and Signal shouldn't be given to the masses.
The community here seems more or less unified in the belief that essentially unbreakable E2EE at scale, distributed by GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, and APPLE, is always a good idea. I don't agree with this at all.
Few people in this neck of the woods are willing to argue the counterpoint - the risks of E2EE at scale.
Somewhat related: I'd personally rather see a move towards better cooperation between social network service providers, internet service providers, government agencies, and device manufacturers. Apple, for instance, won't get involved at all if your device is hacked. Rather, it would be nice to see a trend towards designing devices to have automatic cooperation between the various parties to both prevent and investigate hacks.
I have lived in {} since the mid 2000’s. Stalking by strangers and acquaintances has gotten out of hand in (at least) the past five years. (Any such behavior against me has since calmed down in the past year, after reworking my digital devices, but the effects have had significant impact on me. I also dropped out and gave up on life this past year, which may make me a much less interesting target to harass.)
Such technologies are part of an ongoing increase in information and power asymmetries that can be abused to harass innocent competitors, as has happened to me. I’ve had strangers come up to me in public and discuss specifics of my private life, including non public details about my since failed startup, and personal/private comms. Concurrently, I was falsely accused of a serious crime and was put under the microscope and harassed on a regular basis by strangers regarding this. It became apparent that my life was completely owned at that point, digitally and publicly. It amounted to ongoing bullying which really pushed me beyond thresholds of learned helplessness already long since established.
There seems to be no recourse against this behavior. If you have a digital “kick me” sign attached to your back, there’s little you can do to remove it, short of avoiding being in public. Or, as in my case, one can drop out of life, go homeless, give up all of your assets, and prepare for suicide. Strangers can verbally harass/own/gaslight others, maintain perfect plausible deniability, have perfect encryption to cover their tracks, and devastate people who aren’t equipped to deal with this behavior.
Evolution of survival going forward is trending towards resilience to increasingly sophisticated psychological violence and harassment, as well as the ability to accept being an unwitting voyeur in all public places.
One of the most difficult aspects to this was reporting these incidents (admittedly, under duress in the heat of the moment), and being told that I must be delusional and mentally ill. To me, the delusion is genuinely believing that technology is not used to stalk or harass people in public. As a counterpoint, I will say that being stalked repeatedly does increase your paranoia, so you’ll start to look over your shoulder at every turn. If you believe that all of your devices and accounts are hacked and being used to harass you, the complete lack of digital privacy can have a profound impact on sanity.
To this day, I’m utterly freaked out by the presence of personal cameras, to the point where I’ve nudged people in the community to be aware of the cultural impact of holding phones vertically in coffee shops or other public places. As most people are of course good natured, I’ve noticed a trend in the places that I frequent towards people being more prudent in this regard. I personally cover the public facing back camera on my phone with my index finger as a matter of habit by now, to avoid pointing it at strangers in public. Personally I believe responsibility amongst the tech elite would include immediate installation of physical shutters that open only when a camera is in use. Shutters can be colored blue or yellow, perhaps as a culturally standardized signal that the camera is “closed”.
There’s clear benefit to tech such as Clearview but the potential for abuse by irresponsible or immoral actors is tremendous. As someone pointed out, such tech can be rolled yourself. It seems that the problem is therefore out of control. Welcome to the age of unwitting voyeurism.
Edit: I did make a comment on the linked NYT article, including my real identity. In this comment, I called out at least one person involved in shenanigans against me. This person name dropped {} as someone who would recognize him, before he trashed my startup without seeing it, encouraged me to drop out of my continuing Computer Science studies at the local University (due to the bad rep I would receive for doing so as a middle age adult, so he said), and then threatened my career/reputation if I told the truth about specific stalking incidents, all in one conversation. Not long thereafter, I experienced a stalking incident in public by two men with walkie talkies who harassed me about said startup, mentioning non-public specifics about an engagement we were seeking. In retrospect, these men could have been using tech such as Clearview to more easily enable their stalking and harassment of me. The location of this incident was the playground of wealthy folks in my city’s most affluent public area. My comment on the NYT article was not approved by the moderators, understandably.
Yesterday, a fellow customer of one of the big US wireless telecom carriers received a spoofed call from my mobile number. He called me up thinking I had called him, and we started talking, and turns out he’s a Data Broker from the East Coast (I’m on the West Coast). He was very friendly and discussed specifics for how the mobile phone anonymous token works and how it’s supposedly a secure, anonymous arrangement.
I discussed with this gentleman the concerns from this article and he wasn’t too happy, naturally, given my disagreement with the practice of sharing such data due to such deanonymization concerns.
As I’m a bit of an activist regarding E2EE and voyeuristically supportive of certain disliked politicians, and against the described data sharing, I have to wonder if someone chose my number to play a prank. Of course, it could simply be an odd coincidence, which is the most reasonable base assumption. Still, I wonder why my number specifically was chosen to target this individual, who said he was the victim of substantial identity theft and yet has refused to change his phone number, likely due to the complexities in doing so.
I have a habit of consistently following up on such matters, and so perhaps someone was knowingly demonstrating to me that this wireless carrier can’t even stop in-network spoofed calls, aware that I would investigate it. Of course that’s a bit far fetched but who knows? If the offending party was able to cover their tracks then that says something about the absurd age we are in.
At the least, and unrelated to the original article, it’s clear that this major wireless carrier doesn’t even have the ability to prevent spoofed calls from within their own nationwide network from numbers associated with their own customers. I called their support and pointed out that, at least conceptually, it should be trivial to build a security feature to prevent this. And presumably shaken/stirred ss7 cert authentication for did’s should already cover in-network did authentication and prevent in-network spoofing. Is this a reasonable assumption? Have all the major carriers built these protocol upgrades to prevent spoofed calls?
There’s the outside possibility this gentleman lied to me about his carrier, dialed back the wrong number, or lied to me about the spoofed call but I gained the sense that he was being truthful to me.
Overall it seems that the cyber world is really quite a mess, whether with data sharing malfeasance per the article, insecure wireless networks, globally enabled ransomware, and ever-increasing data in the hands of private global entities that will exist beyond our lifetimes.
Semantics aside, if FB isn’t allowed to use the math behind E2EE, they’ve effectively been stopped from using math. Just trying to avoid getting into the weeds.
Similarly to you questioning my faith in the matter, you’re ignoring my argument, ostensibly not in good faith, either. I’m suggesting to build a better mousetrap. It may not be perfect but might help maintain and improve civility in society.
Alcoholism and alcohol aren’t really a great analogy.
I understand math better than you may realize. You said that you don’t believe there’s a better way. You’ve effectively conceded that the existing key escrow solutions with the known risks are the best that can be done. I’m suggesting to do better. Find a better compromise.
Three party access in current incarnations may have flaws but the statement isn’t factually false. It’s simply undiscovered.
Having exceptional access is important to keeping and improving society. It’s unethical to ignore and fight LE’s ongoing needs regarding such access. E2EE at scale, unchecked, is an extreme viewpoint with trade offs that I consider unethical at best, and fundamentally dangerous at worst.
You can stop math. Legally stop fb from using E2EE. You’ve stopped math. You haven’t stopped some people from using it. But you’ve prevented common people from having default usage of that math.
Disagree. Don’t use key escrow. Find a better way. Two parties or three parties; three doesn’t have to be significantly more susceptible than two
Apologies on the wording. Significantly weaker, not measurably. My mistake.
I’m suggesting to rethink the problem fundamentally. Minimize abuses of an exceptional access system. The problem with purely technical folks is often an inability to socially transcend from their techno libertarian ideals
And my statement wasn’t entirely wrong. You can legally prevent large entities from using strong E2EE thus “stopping” the math to some degree - or minimize/isolate the usage of those munitions.
It might be more accurate to say “you can’t stop everyone from trying to use the known math”. And this is likely an acceptable compromise to LE. Reduce the entropy.
Still not clear what I’ve said that’s false.
And, as per another comment, you can claim that the problem isn’t solvable when a compromise aims to minimize the abuses not necessarily eliminate them (although that would also be acceptable).
As it’s possible this will be legally required it makes sense to work towards a compromise instead of arguing on principles that may be strictly true (3>2, how to trust the 3rd wheel, for instance)