Joe

No? It doesn’t seem to be a use case they target.

If you want to use git to store sensitive data, you should encrypt it before committing / pushing it.

I have a second SIM card for my phone number (for a tiny fee) … I need to direct where SMS go, but it rings on both.

You could probably also setup call forwarding from your work phone to your personal dumb phone - there will likely be an extra per-call cost.

This was similar to a trick that a few smaller (less serious) hobby-ISPs did back in the days of 14.4k/28.8k modems to take advantage of the “reasonably priced” business plans for ISDN. They’d register multiple businesses at a single address to qualify for the plans, then balance new egress connections across the pool using squid and other magic. Fun times…

How is it being enforced in Australia?

A webcam photo by the website or a specific third party service, ID verification through a “trusted third party” process, or a checkbox to confirm age?

How much information does the website get over and above “user is over 16 years old”, and how much does the government get, if any?

Explain your reasoning, please.

With DPRK it seems pretty simple: Are citizens permitted to leave the country of their own accord? The answer of course is no, and that is extremely telling. Combined with choreographed & escort-only tourism, one really has to question it.

My opinion: Odds are likely that it really is a shithole in many ways and in many places (and for many reasons, sanctions included). That said, people will still live their lives within those constraints, because that’s what people tend to do. We won’t get accurate and verifiable information from their government about citizen health and longevity, causes of death, etc. so OP’s propaganda must be taken as just that.

At some point NK’s system will fall, and some historians and archeologists will get to do their thing, and we’ll gain some more insights.

I find it pretty useful to help get me over mental hurdle of starting something. So it’s faster than me procrastinating for another day. ;-)

Many governments get access to source code for critical systems as a condition for their use / part of contract negotiations. It’s also quite likely that Microsoft and all its services in China is operated as a Joint Venture.

China did have Red Flag Linux (with Government support) for a while, too.

Boomerang-Fu ?

Hmm. You are right, but they might not need it for every region. Steam is probably big enough that existing regional companies would come to it and be eager to form partnerships. They could become more of a payment processor aggregator, focused on a low risk market segment. And of course they can do CCs directly too - that’s the easy part.

The challenge will be to get consumers on board. I know that I groan every time I need to enter my CC details online these days.

They would face anti-competitive behaviour from Peepal though. So it’s a risk.

Internally, they are probably already working on ways to appropriately segment their catalog based on payment provider. “Sorry User, you cannot purchase title X using Paypal. We recommend $Competitor instead.”

It sounds like some payment processors are treating mastercard’s contractual requirements as a hard risk in this case - maybe it’s justified, maybe not. Try getting corporate lawyers to be risk averse in the finance world. Mastercard doesn’t seem to want to soften their wording but talks platitudes in public statements. Shrug.

They could do it with significantly fewer people, for themselves and even for GOG, Itch and potentially others. Their use-case is digital payments for games, which is limited in scope and risk. PCI and compliance is a PITA, but manageable.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hacker

“The media’s definition of the real term malicious cracker. A hacker used to be a well respected individual who loved to tinker with gadgets.”, plus a few other definitions.

It’s time for Steam to launch their own payment processing company, and apply pressure directly on the card networks and the future competition.

It won’t be nearly as profitable as their current business model, but sometimes industries need a shakeup.

Judges usually don’t know this stuff, but they primarily work with systems and software supplied by the state…whose experts should know what they are doing.

My bet is that this guy decided to work on personal equipment, probably in violation of the rules. Being a judge, he’s unlikely to be sanctioned for it, and will certainly learn from the experience. If anything, there may be some internal discussions which we’ll never hear about.

Law is an area where AI can add value, though… searching through past rulings and legal opinions is tedious, and anything that can assist to find needles in haystacks would be welcome. It shouldn’t be used to write legal judgements or arguments though…

There are so many time-saving things that can be done with a little bit of scripting. It’s one reason why excel is so abused. Now that the bar to real scripting is dropping significantly, and we’ll see more and more people solving their own small problems rather than relying on others or suffering through repetitive work. Good stuff.

It doesn’t mean that they are ready to design, build and maintain reliable software or services…

We’ll see more APIs and libraries being used directly by end users, though.

AI agents are a counter-force to this, letting LLMs interact directly with APIs, meaning users don’t have to even touch code.

Just wait until they release the list … it’ll have a few holes.

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to trust any such list. If he had any sense, he would have also added a few extra names over the years of people who he just didn’t like, or those he wanted to manipulate. Scumbags be scumbaggy, whether rich or poor.

That said, all implications and accusations should be thoroughly investigated, and if corroborated by victims and/or witnesses, and then be brought to public trial or just made public if the reasonably accused is dead.

I don’t think you need separate laptops, but a separate router may be useful.

If you use Linux, you can have apps isolated to their own lightweight network namespaces (like containers), using different VPNs. Otherwise VMs can serve a similar purpose on Windows and Macs.

Iptables can also be used to block traffic, and force it through proxies (which can be whitelisted by uid/gid) or VPNs.

If you want a more secure VPN setup, I’d even recommend having the VPN(s) running on the router (eg. portable OpenWRT setup) so your laptop never gets offered a public IP / connects directly to network. Put a proxy on it for special (eg. DNS based) routing exceptions, like banking from real IP, reddit via the US, etc.

Disable IPv6 on your router or primary interface, and enable it on your VPN. If anything can discover an Internet IP on your PC, the link can be formed. Worst case, you are not using the VPN for IPv6 at all.

In the EU, there are typically three levels of VAT, with members having some leeway to choose which applies to what.

Health services, public transport, rentals/housing and education are often exempt, while most groceries and medications are at a reduced rate. eg. Germany has 7% and 19% as the reduced and normal rates.

Income taxes are additional and (in most EU countries progressive). Social insurances are often separate, and similarly progressive.

This works alongside the basic welfare nets, which ensures that people have just enough to survive if they fell through the cracks. Without this net, even the reduced rates on groceries would seem punitive.

Not every EU country is equal, but there is a goal to provide these societal safety nets alongside fair taxation, which is invested back in society.

What do you have against the project and the people behind it? It sounds personal.

There are plenty of non-commercial Linux distributions. Some managed better than others. Some generic, some with niches. OpenWRT is a favourite of mine.