mspencer712

Fun fact: you can actually do mitm-proof end to end encryption between a web server and a client: TLS client authentication. It’s tricky to set up, so this is more useful for e.g. small private web servers with tech savvy users. Any mitm would require cooperation of at least one party.

In windows you manage certs with start / run / mmc, then add snap-in and pick certificates, local machine or current user. And then usually the browser requires you to whitelist the domain so it’ll be allowed to ask for a cert.

You still have to coordinate to exchange cert identities (thumbprint ideally, CN if you really have to).

I’m not really fond of signaling disrespect like this. I like to encourage respect.

And If sites start trying to block Firefox, we work around it. User-Agent is still malleable.

Agreed. I don’t know if this is the term for it, but I’ve been thinking of all this as “signaling disrespect,” a deliberate attempt to make people think of their peers as lesser, as other.

I feel like either people have been conditioned to do this online all the time for some reason, or maybe there’s some directed attack against civility. I don’t know. But I refuse to let myself be affected by it. I won’t hate people.

Like, to find the canonical DNS name of one of my home lab IPs, 209.180.104.202, you search for a PTR record for 202.104.180.209.in-addr.arpa. (You get git.mspencer.net. Note my username here.) The first A in ARPA stands for something. (That’s how you know I’m not a bot - bots don’t have 25-year-old domain names. . . . I didn’t say I was interesting, I just said I’m not a bot. :-) )

We don’t own it though. We never should - too much concentrated wealth and corruption. Like many technology stories, big wealth (whether Cold War military spending or giant corporations using money to squeeze out more money) creates something for one purpose, but people adapt and convert it for a better purpose. Business computing tech becomes home computing or gaming tech. Military redundant communications research becomes public redundant communication infrastructure.

There are some more current-affairs-y shows that use comedy to make deep dives into difficult-to-understand issues more palatable. I think Comedy Central and HBO both have some.

Ohhh I get you then. Instead of checking against an author’s key, and building a distributed web of trust between trusted authors, you build a system that requires everyone collaborate on one shared chain of signatures.

Friend, PGP signed messages were around in the 90s. Key signing parties. Web of trust.

This is one of those “technically true but functionally useless” arguments, and I hate arguing the other side here… Valve always has the option to stop using Visa and, I don’t know, have customers write out and physically mail checks or money orders.

Obviously the number of customers who would do this is microscopic. It’s not a real thing anytime would ever do. But because the option exists, they aren’t technically making the content impossible to sell.

Ok yeah that makes sense. Thanks.

There’s no karma here. No automated mechanism gives the submitter any benefit for a popular submission.

Right?