Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

Twitter led the migration of tech orgs from the rest of the Bay Area north into SF. I suspect many will follow their lead to a distributed workforce w/o SF's high cost of living. Big implications for SF economy mid-term.

Surveillance vendor NSO Group pitched hacking tools to US police forces that would "turn your target's smartphone into an intelligence gold mine" #privacy #infosec https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8899nz/nso-group-pitched-phone-hacking-tech-american-police

It doesn't have to be this way. Messaging isn't complicated. We solved this more than a decade ago. You have five incompatible messaging apps on your phone because greed drives companies to ignore compatibility and optimize for vendor lock-in. https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/lessons-vendor-lock-messaging

Internet messaging is so broken that FB alone owns 3 incompatible apps. Google has *6*, not counting the ones they canceled: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/google-unifies-messenger-teams-plans-more-coherent-vision/

How many more cloud-connected devices have to turn into bricks before people realize they don't own the hardware, they only rent it? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/wink-smart-hub-users-get-one-weeks-notice-to-pay-up-or-lose-access/

So @Sonic's gigabit fiber is so fast that I couldn't perform an accurate speed test in Qubes because Xen network virtualization overhead capped my speeds. ~250Mbps in a dispvm, ~500 in sys-net, ~980 on a different Linux computer.

Update: I'm 400 pages in and it's quite the page turner! I never heard people say that about War and Peace, so either most read it when they are too young to appreciate it, or all the Gibbon and Durant has changed my threshold for "page turner" #whynotboth #itsreallygoodtho

My brain is weird. I walk past a bowl of soup on the kitchen table and immediately a soup-based parody of Salt-n-Pepa's Shoop enters my head. ("Girls what's my weakness?" "Ramen!" "OK then")

Sourdough schmourdough.

This kind of patronizing remote control isn't limited to IT and management. Many tech companies, in the name of security, exercise the same kind of remote control over your computers without your permission. I wrote about the phenomenon here: https://puri.sm/posts/consent-matters-when-tech-takes-remote-control-without-your-permission/

Managers who could only measure productivity by butts-in-seats are turning to surveillance software and always-on webcams to measure butts-in-seats at home. If you don't trust your employees and can't measure their productivity, maybe you are the problem. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/30/work-from-home-surveillance/

Well that's pretty encouraging. It looks like when people are better informed about #privacy trade-offs and must opt-in, instead of being forced to opt-out, many prefer the privacy-preserving option. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/half-of-americans-wont-trust-contact-tracing-apps-new-poll-finds/

Here's one in likely many #IoT startups that go out of business from #COVID-19, leaving customers with bricked hardware. Vendor lock-in from cloud-dependent devices using proprietary APIs causes so much e-waste when those services eventually go away. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/after-prolonged-service-outage-petnet-shuts-down-citing-coronavirus/

Many of the #infosec arguments in the encryption backdoor debate (life-or-death, manpower vs automation, tech ineffectiveness, #privacy + freedom vs benefit, govt. + big tech power) apply to #COVID-19 app tracking debate, but with many ppl changing sides.

As an update to this, @purism published a video to demonstrate how hardware kill switches work in practice to enable your webcam and microphone only during meetings, not the rest of the time your laptop is aimed at your living room or bedroom. https://youtu.be/gw1M9c3x4uQ

I'm at the phase in quarantine where I'm daydreaming about living on a sailboat for months at a time. Instead, I just spent the day cleaning and reorganizing my garage.

(apologies to Katrina and the Waves)

I used to think maybe you caught it, now baby I'm sure
And I just can't wait for a doctor to knock on my door
Now every time I get a new Prime box, gotta hold myself down
Cause I just gotta try the new treatment that's going around

Now I'm injecting sunshine, whoa
I'm injecting Clorox, whoa
I'm ingesting Lysol, whoa
And don't it feel good
Hey, all right now
And don't it feel good

I expected a global pandemic with partial shutdown of society would be the time for preppers to shine and practice their training. Yet after only a month of easy sheltering (grid up, clean water, ample food, even Netflix), some preppers are starting to crack. Disappointing.

Once I ran outside
Now I stay inside
This tainted test you've given
I give you all a swab can give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
Tainted test:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/cdcs-failed-coronavirus-tests-were-tainted-with-coronavirus-feds-confirm/