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Let the sheep have their facebook apps. Modern tech has also brought us strong open source tools. We have stronger encryption in any linux distro than any arm

Let the sheep have their facebook apps. Modern tech has also brought us strong open source tools. We have stronger encryption in any linux distro than any army had in the 90s. We have communication pathways (Tor) that defeat censorship. I can send an email today, encrypted then sent via Tor, that no government can censor, read or even detect that I have sent. I have a dongle that plugs into my phone that can decode aircraft transponders, or tune any station on a wide spectrum, that cost less than a fancy coffee. Tech has brought many wonderful tools to those of us willing to learn.

wildrhythms 5y ago
Temporarily shrouding oneself in Tor, DDG, VPNs, etc doesn't address the root problem: the commoditization of data. The next generations will have fewer and fewer tools to subvert the system. Real change will come from addressing the root problem rather than finding individualistic, temporary solutions.
corinroyal 5y ago
Tempting. Sadly, if we let the sheep have their FB, the likely result will be that we lose whatever semblance of democracy we have left. Already we're down to one party that belives in free and fair elections. Our system depends on informed citizens, not massive authoritarian psyop experiments. The longer we go where the majority can't get overwhelmingly popular policies accomplished, the closer we get to turning to any strongman who promises bold action, no matter how nightmarish that would be for most people.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  That is the US story. It has less to do with facebook and more to do with the US political system. There are plenty of countries who have very different systems that have not followed the same path in recent years. Tech companies are part of the problem but should not be made scapegoat to avoid the deeper issues within the American political system, issues that existed long before the internet was a thing.
  - blippage 5y ago
    UK Brit here. Countries like the UK and the US certainly have their flaws, but I'd take them before nearly everything else that's on offer. China's system seems terrible. The whole of Africa seems like a corrupt system. The EU seems mostly woke, and I'm not sure I particularly want that. Canada seems to have bought a first class ticket on the Progressivist crazy train from what I've been hearing. What's left? Not much, by the looks of it. Singapore, maybe?
    - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
      Brazil.
    - 0xcafecafe 5y ago
      >>The EU seems mostly woke Can you please elaborate more on that? I thought US is going more woke and France in the EU is pushing back on wokeism.
    - hardlianotion 5y ago
      The whole of Africa is a host of very different systems. It's rather annoying fielding this stuff that appears quite ignorant.
- zwirbl 5y ago
  Down from, like, two at the best of times. It's always either them or us, which is likely part of the problem
  - spockz 5y ago
    I’m by no means an expert in US political history but all books and papers I’ve read indicate that this polarisation between the parties did not always exist. Members were allowed to vote according to their own principals instead of just the party line which is basically always opposing the other party. Senators and other politicians would have bbq on Saturday at each other’s place. It appears that this no longer happens.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Too much transparency. If thousands of eyes of gatekeepers are at you at all times, and immediately start screaming that you are a DINO or a RINO if you do not hold the party line at all times, you have all the incentives to be strictly partisan. We generally consider transparency in politics a good thing, especially because it may reduce corruption. But it comes with significant downsides. Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. The rest will submit to Moloch. (Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" are a good read; I was lucky enough to meet the author two days ago at a meetup in Prague.)
      - Radim 5y ago
        Oh. What meetup, what did I miss?
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        Prague-Karlín, Sunday Oct the 3rd.
      - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        >Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. Then don't visit twitter and post on an obscure nntp newsgroup instead.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  Will it be better if we destroy FB and the sheep is back at TVs?
  - krapp 5y ago
    It would be better if we didn't keep referring to people as sheep, TBH.
helloworld11 5y ago
curious, what is this dongle called and where would I get one to give it a try?
- sandworm101 5y ago
  https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ Don't go for the 15$ bare-bones options. Buy one of the 50-100$ kits so you have at least some basic antennas and necessary cables.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    If you're spending $50-$100 on equipment, maybe it's worth buying a better dongle too with more than 2-3 MHz of bandwidth.
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      When it comes to radio-related gear, there is always a slightly better model for a few dollars more.
wetmore 5y ago
Calling people sheep in this context is uncalled for.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Let the sheep have their facebook apps. Those "sheep" (i.e. people who aren't crypto-nerds) are the people I mainly want to communicate with. > Modern tech has also brought us strong open source tools. We have stronger encryption in any linux distro than any army had in the 90s. We have communication pathways (Tor) that defeat censorship. I can send an email today, encrypted then sent via Tor, that no government can censor, read or even detect that I have sent. And those pathways are almost never used, except by people who have an unusual interest in the pathways themselves and people who want to use them to do ignoble and illegal things. Also, those technologies aren't as powerful as you think they are. Any major government that cares to detect and block them can, and if they want to find out what you sent they can always hack your endpoint or beat you until you tell them. China is the proof of concept for that.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> And those pathways are almost never used I used signal this morning to talk to a team of 100+ people on a big project. I sent an encrypted email to my parents last night. A month ago I used Tor to bypass a hotel's silly DNS block on "Torrentfreak.com". My laptop is running a linux distro that I downloaded as a torrent. These are all everyday non-cryptonerd activities that leverage very powerful security products.
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    n=1 and all. I think "almost never used" isn't far off the mark. All of this sounds like hardcore nerd territory to me, with the possible exception of Signal, which still has strong nerdy vibes and is very tiny compared to its competitors. Sending encrypted e-mail from Linux definitely seems to be something that's almost never done, at population scale. If that isn't crypto nerd territory, what is? If you were looking for everyday things lots of people do that make use of powerful security technology, Whatsapp's e2e encryption or https would be much better examples I guess; people actually use these en masse and can do so all by themselves, without support or nagging by experienced hardcore nerds.
    - 5y ago
mellavora 5y ago
Sheep are interesting animals. I was in the Rockies last week, read a newspaper article about a female sheep who killed a bear who was threatening her children.
- dennis_moore 5y ago
  I think that was a goat...

wildrhythms 5y ago

Temporarily shrouding oneself in Tor, DDG, VPNs, etc doesn't address the root problem: the commoditization of data. The next generations will have fewer and fewer tools to subvert the system. Real change will come from addressing the root problem rather than finding individualistic, temporary solutions.

corinroyal 5y ago

Tempting. Sadly, if we let the sheep have their FB, the likely result will be that we lose whatever semblance of democracy we have left. Already we're down to one party that belives in free and fair elections. Our system depends on informed citizens, not massive authoritarian psyop experiments. The longer we go where the majority can't get overwhelmingly popular policies accomplished, the closer we get to turning to any strongman who promises bold action, no matter how nightmarish that would be for most people.

sandworm101 5y ago
That is the US story. It has less to do with facebook and more to do with the US political system. There are plenty of countries who have very different systems that have not followed the same path in recent years. Tech companies are part of the problem but should not be made scapegoat to avoid the deeper issues within the American political system, issues that existed long before the internet was a thing.
- blippage 5y ago
  UK Brit here. Countries like the UK and the US certainly have their flaws, but I'd take them before nearly everything else that's on offer. China's system seems terrible. The whole of Africa seems like a corrupt system. The EU seems mostly woke, and I'm not sure I particularly want that. Canada seems to have bought a first class ticket on the Progressivist crazy train from what I've been hearing. What's left? Not much, by the looks of it. Singapore, maybe?
  - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
    Brazil.
  - 0xcafecafe 5y ago
    >>The EU seems mostly woke Can you please elaborate more on that? I thought US is going more woke and France in the EU is pushing back on wokeism.
  - hardlianotion 5y ago
    The whole of Africa is a host of very different systems. It's rather annoying fielding this stuff that appears quite ignorant.
zwirbl 5y ago
Down from, like, two at the best of times. It's always either them or us, which is likely part of the problem
- spockz 5y ago
  I’m by no means an expert in US political history but all books and papers I’ve read indicate that this polarisation between the parties did not always exist. Members were allowed to vote according to their own principals instead of just the party line which is basically always opposing the other party. Senators and other politicians would have bbq on Saturday at each other’s place. It appears that this no longer happens.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Too much transparency. If thousands of eyes of gatekeepers are at you at all times, and immediately start screaming that you are a DINO or a RINO if you do not hold the party line at all times, you have all the incentives to be strictly partisan. We generally consider transparency in politics a good thing, especially because it may reduce corruption. But it comes with significant downsides. Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. The rest will submit to Moloch. (Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" are a good read; I was lucky enough to meet the author two days ago at a meetup in Prague.)
    - Radim 5y ago
      Oh. What meetup, what did I miss?
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Prague-Karlín, Sunday Oct the 3rd.
    - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
      >Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. Then don't visit twitter and post on an obscure nntp newsgroup instead.
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
Will it be better if we destroy FB and the sheep is back at TVs?
- krapp 5y ago
  It would be better if we didn't keep referring to people as sheep, TBH.

helloworld11 5y ago

curious, what is this dongle called and where would I get one to give it a try?

sandworm101 5y ago
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ Don't go for the 15$ bare-bones options. Buy one of the 50-100$ kits so you have at least some basic antennas and necessary cables.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  If you're spending $50-$100 on equipment, maybe it's worth buying a better dongle too with more than 2-3 MHz of bandwidth.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    When it comes to radio-related gear, there is always a slightly better model for a few dollars more.

wetmore 5y ago

Calling people sheep in this context is uncalled for.

tablespoon 5y ago

> Let the sheep have their facebook apps. Those "sheep" (i.e. people who aren't crypto-nerds) are the people I mainly want to communicate with. > Modern tech has also brought us strong open source tools. We have stronger encryption in any linux distro than any army had in the 90s. We have communication pathways (Tor) that defeat censorship. I can send an email today, encrypted then sent via Tor, that no government can censor, read or even detect that I have sent. And those pathways are almost never used, except by people who have an unusual interest in the pathways themselves and people who want to use them to do ignoble and illegal things. Also, those technologies aren't as powerful as you think they are. Any major government that cares to detect and block them can, and if they want to find out what you sent they can always hack your endpoint or beat you until you tell them. China is the proof of concept for that.

sandworm101 5y ago
>> And those pathways are almost never used I used signal this morning to talk to a team of 100+ people on a big project. I sent an encrypted email to my parents last night. A month ago I used Tor to bypass a hotel's silly DNS block on "Torrentfreak.com". My laptop is running a linux distro that I downloaded as a torrent. These are all everyday non-cryptonerd activities that leverage very powerful security products.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  n=1 and all. I think "almost never used" isn't far off the mark. All of this sounds like hardcore nerd territory to me, with the possible exception of Signal, which still has strong nerdy vibes and is very tiny compared to its competitors. Sending encrypted e-mail from Linux definitely seems to be something that's almost never done, at population scale. If that isn't crypto nerd territory, what is? If you were looking for everyday things lots of people do that make use of powerful security technology, Whatsapp's e2e encryption or https would be much better examples I guess; people actually use these en masse and can do so all by themselves, without support or nagging by experienced hardcore nerds.
  - 5y ago

mellavora 5y ago

Sheep are interesting animals. I was in the Rockies last week, read a newspaper article about a female sheep who killed a bear who was threatening her children.

dennis_moore 5y ago
I think that was a goat...