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I feel like the #1 problem with the cookie law is that the vast majority of websites need to do something in order to comply while keeping their business model and the law hasn't provided a clear direction for how to comply with it.

If they had done that, nobody would be making cookie banners wrong.


The problem is that video quality increased to meet availability.

In the past 480p would be okay. Now everyone wants 4k.

In fact, in the past IMAGES were normal. Imgur was an image website. Now everything is about short videos. Even memes are now videos.

I'm pretty sure if we make Internet faster and storage cheaper, we'll also invent a new sort of media to waste that speed and storage.


I worry about that as well. I guess we assume nothing is going to happen because it's Google. But Google just dodged a bullet with Chrome which, if they had been hit, had a real chance to harm the entire web. Youtube could be next.


Oh, this is about crypto. I thought it was about the decentralized web for a moment.


Isn't it a bit crazy that phishing e-mails still exist? Like, couldn't this be solved by encrypting something in a header and using a public key in the DNS to unencrypt it?


I'm not a top-level expert in cybersecurity nor email infra....but the little that i know has taught me that i merely have to create a similar-looking domain name...

Let's say there's a company named Awesome...and i register the domain name of AwesomeSupport.com. I could be a total dark hat/evil hacker/neverdoweller....and this domain may not be infringing on any trademark, etc. And, then i can start using all the encryption you noted...which merely means that *my domain name* (the bad one) is "technically sound"...but of course, all that use of encryption fails to convey that i am not the legitimate Awesome company. So, how is the victim supposed to know which of the domains is legit or not? Especially considering that some departments of the real, legit Awesome company might register their own domain name to use for actual, real reasons - like the marketing department might register MyAwesome.com...for managing customer accounts, etc.

Is encryption necessary in digital life? Hellz yeah! Does it solve *all issues*? Hellz no! :-)


Email is not relevant to a good encryption scheme. You could sign an email, an image you post on Insta, a chat message, anything really.

Thing is, where are the user's credentials stored. In a goverment's computer probably. Greece is taking some steps towards this [1].

A Greek citizen to obtain a digital signature, he has to go to a bank, the bank verifies him, he pays a fee and then the government can accept his digital signature. My guess is that the dictatorship banks established with the Covid excuse might start to bear some fruits finally.

But, people on the internet might want something more advanced, more secure than some COBOL computers storing their identity. Then we save digital certificates and digital identities on the blockchain, making essentially the blockchain the heart of the internet.

When a person from a company sends a message to a client, he can sign the message with his own identity and the identity of the company. Problem solved. No one get's confused when the cryptographic signatures are not verified. The message is invalid and it is redirected to the spam folder.

[1] https://www.gov.gr/en/ipiresies/polites-kai-kathemerinoteta/...


an OV cert "solves" this, but you'd still have to bother to check it


True! But, the possibility exists that enough % of victims do not indeed check the OV cert. Also, are we 100% sure that every single legit company that you and I do business with, has an OV cert for their websites?


This honestly doesn't feel like it should be the case.

There aren't that many websites. The e-mail provider could have a list of "popular" domains, and the user could have their own list of trusted domains.

There is all sorts of ways to warn the user about it, e.g. "you have never interacted with this domain before." Even simply showing other e-mails from the same domain would be enough to prevent phishing in some cases.

There are practical ways to solve this problem. They aren't perfect but they are very feasible.


My previous comments were merely in response to your original comments...so really only to point out that bare use of encryption by itself is not sufficient protection - that's all.

To your more recent points, i agree that there are other several protections in place...and depending on a number of facotrs, some foks have more at their disposal, and others might have less...but, still there are mechnisms in place to help - without a doubt. But yet with all these mechanisms in place, people still fall prey to phishing attacks...and sometimes those victims are not lay people, but actual technologists. So, i think the solution(s) to solve this are not so simple, and likely are not only tech-based. ;-)


I might be missing the joke, but there are several layers like SPF and DMARC available to only allow your whitelisted servers to send email on the behalf of your domain.

Wouldn't help in this case where someone bought a domain that looked a tiny bit like the authentic one for a very casual observer.


100% solved and has been for a very long time. The PGP/GPG trust chain goes CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK. Everyone shuts it off after a week or so of experimentation.


It's still working for me?


It's depressing how much of the web didn't work the way it was supposed to. Attention is centralized on news websites because news can be posted on social media feeds every day. Those news articles never link to other websites due to arbitrary SEO considerations. Google's pagerank which was once based on backlinks can't function if the only links come from social media feeds in 3 websites and none of them come from actual websites. On top of it all, nobody even knows for sure if those SEO considerations matter or not because it's all on Google's whim and can change without notice.


It's worse now with Instagram and other video apps that don't even let you link out. "link in bio" is killing the web.


The web works fine it's just PACER and stuff that is garbage because there is no competition in the trash people create for the government and public apathy (or corruption, take your pick) is high.


There is a similar concept in English culture called "waste".


Doesn't sound as strong due to the lack of tv captions


Yes, waste is an English cultural concept, especially in the US.

In this concept, waste is viewed as a sign of affluence.

So ironically, the more one wastes the more "conservative" one is considered to be.

Pretty much the opposite of the Japanese concept of mottainai.


The idea of not wasting food as a sort of baseline concept is a thing plenty of parents in the US teach their children.


Many Boomers may have heard something along the lines of "Many kids in Japan are starving and would love to have that food" even, bringing this somewhat full-circle.


Many boomers had parents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression and war rationing.


> In this concept, waste is viewed as a sign of affluence.

Seems pretty dumb. Maybe mostly a US thing?


Not Japanese, but I feel if you translated it that way you would risk people reading the article into assuming the sentence could be used in ways that match the sense of "enjoy" in English that could never match the sense of the word used in Japanese, e.g. the staff enjoyed a movie later.


Step 1: burn billions of dollars.

Step 2: achieve AGI.

Step 3: ?

Step 4: transcend money.


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