No, you wouldn't

L_X_A · 2023-02-25T18:06:14+00:00

I sleep

Trailer park dude wears a shirt with an innuendo the children are unlikely to understand

REAL SHIT!!!!

Redditors are pathetic

L_X_A · 2022-09-09T10:50:07+00:00

FYI, asshole thumbing is an essential part of work-life balance.

L_X_A · 2022-01-14T10:16:14+00:00

Odysee sucks because they require a password so complex to sign up that I couldn't produce one.

Weird, because I have a natural-language-based mnemonic password for Odysee. If you don't use "Pa$$word123" or "hun7er5" you should be fine.

L_X_A · 2022-01-14T10:08:35+00:00

* proceeds to post a link from imgur * /jk

L_X_A · 2022-01-16T17:10:42+00:00

The retards parroting this shit don't. But you better believe the minds behind this fuckedup cancerous construct that is critical theory do. In fact, they are very proficient wordsmiths. They are deliberately and surgically changing language and diluting meaning, so they can manufacture validity for their otherwise baseless, "alchemical" theoretical constructs. The control and manipulation of language are at the very core of the so-called long march through the institutions.

That's why they want to change the meaning of words. That's why they want to control which words you can and cannot say and in which context (e.g. pronouns put in law).

As /u/proc0 pointed out, this is endemic in every insidious and controlling endeavor they put forth.

"Trans women are women." (changing the meaning of "woman")
January 6th was an "insurgency" (changing the meaning of "insurgency")
"This is a threat to our democracy" (diluting meaning and promoting tautological vagueness)
"LatinX" (enforced neologism) (as a South American, this one is particularly insulting)
Maths is subjective and sometimes 2+2=5 (corrosion of objective language) (yes, really [1] [2] [3])

L_X_A · 2022-03-13T14:52:54+00:00

I didn't believe it at first. This is just too pathetic, even for Reddit.

Nope, turns out it's real, and the replies are just as cringeworthy.

L_X_A · 2022-02-11T09:00:05+00:00

Fine. Will that exempt me from being taxed for public education? Yeah, didn't think so.

L_X_A · 2022-08-19T17:43:32+00:00

They have started with this program back in 2020. Here's the official WEF podcast proudly announcing that they have partnered with the UN in addition to contracting private service providers such as www.purpose.com to "turn the tine on misinformation" (i.e. push their narrative).

OP, it is important to include the source when posting these things. Anyone can produce an "official-looking" screenshot (made this one just for you).

It's important to link to official sources, so we can reliably distinguish between actual valuable info and BS.

L_X_A · 2022-03-16T12:09:13+00:00

Wait, what? Chemtrails are real now?

L_X_A · 2022-01-14T17:54:41+00:00

The problem with perennial cookies are multiple. From the top of my head, the main ones relate to either someone stealing the cookie on the client (e.g. through javascript if you don't set the HTTPOnly flag), or the user logging in from a machine someone else has access to (e.g. library), or the user trying to connect to your site from a public network (hotel, Starbucks, etc.) and falling victim to an MiTM attack (no, HTTPS would not help you in this scenario. Unless your are using mTLS you wouldn't know whether you are talking to the MiTM or the legitimate user).

Also, depending on how you configured SSL, there are ways to downgrade it client-side so the attacker could sniff the communication even if they're not directly relaying information to and from the legitimate user.
Examples: https://access.redhat.com/articles/1232123 and https://freakattack.com/

But I think the perennial cookies are the least of our problems here.

I'm assuming that:

a) site_password is a static secret in your server which is used of all users. That is, user_1 gets MD5(concat(email_1, site_password)); user_2 gets MD5(concat(email_2, site_password)) and so on.

b) The cookies themselves are not encrypted.

If that's the case, with this simple attack I could impersonate all of your users:

Register for your site with my email 1337.h4x0r@veryedgy.com
receive MD5(concat(1337.h4x0r@veryedgy.com, site_password)) = myEmailDigest
Run a parallelized MD5 crack, varying variable_salt on concat(1337.h4x0r@veryedgy.com, variable_salt)until I get myEmailDigest (with MD5 there are optimized ways of doing this).
Now I know which variable_salt value will produce an MD5 hash which will be interpreted as legitimate by your server. Even worse, I potentially stumbled upon site_password itself. All I need now is a few more fake accounts and MD5(concat(fakeEmail, site_password)) results to be 99% sure.

From this point on, I have deduced site_password and thus have access to all of your users' accounts because all of them are authenticated through site_password.

I mean, it's good enough for a school/uni project. Or a site where it doesn't matter if one user can impersonate another (e.g. those "scrum poker" sites that don't require an account). But I wouldn't put it on anything which has persistent user data. Especially if it is used by people living in a country where GDPR applies.

L_X_A · 2022-01-14T16:27:34+00:00

On my sites one just enters one's email and gets a link with a hash that sets a persistent cookie. No need for annoying passwords.

That's a cool concept.

If I understood you correctly:

The user first enters his email address on your site to login/register.
Your server then generates a nonce (say, 128-bit, Base64 encoded) and associates it with that email address.
The nonce is then sent to the user's email as the parameter of a hyperlinked URL (e.g. fschmidt.cool.site/authn/ZnNjaG1pZHQncyBzaXRl)
Your server checks the nonce for a) an associated email, and b) the time elapsed since generating the nonce and the endpoint call (say, less than 10mins)
If all checks pass, you produce a long(er) lived cookie to be used as a bearer token by the user agent (browser, app, etc.)

Which means that the user's email service is the de-facto (albeit indirect) authentication provider.

Cookies should not be valid indeterminately. You'd just be spreading that attack vector wide open. With that in mind, how would you deal with a user who has been inactive past the cookie's expiration date? Do you just send them a new URL containing a new nonce? How do you prevent an attack where nonces are requested repeatedly? Heuristically through API management or do you simply cap-and-throttle?

L_X_A · 2022-09-06T19:00:34+00:00

Well, the post is a meme, so I guess we can both agree its content is to be interpreted as hyperbole. And I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss its message just because the current situation is nothing like literal re-education camps.

I appreciate and understand that you, like many others, do not perceive the push for "goodthink" as all that intrusive. And that you see no problem with a single 3-hour training done once for one's entire tenure at a company. Neither would I.

But standpoint epistemology ("lived experiences") is not a good tool for assessing generalized sociocultural trends. Your company might be doing it right; meanwhile, Coca-Cola is telling their employees to be "less white". Just because it's not happening to you at this moment, doesn't mean it is not happening to others, or that it won't happen to you in the future.

Complacency and desensitization are two of standpoint epistemology's blindspots woke grifters take advantage of. It's the boiling frog paradigm. They will not start by hitting you with compelled speech, identity-based penitence, public demoralization, and fully-fledged Robin DiAngelo-style indoctrination. If they did that, there would be immediate resistance, and the gig would be over. Instead, they will encroach little by little, shifting the line just a little bit further. Enough to make you slightly uncomfortable, but not enough that you'd do something about it.

This gradual, ever-intrusive progression was already mentioned in the Harvard Business Review article I linked to in my original comment:

we recommend investing in a multipronged diversity and inclusion program [...] this includes a broad range of approaches, from targeting training to different audiences, to re-engineering hiring practices, to normalizing flex time, to using technology and behavioral science [...] collect data on the attitudes and behaviors of current employees who are the target of most diversity trainings

Just to be 100% clear. I do think certain types of cultural sensitivity and inclusion training do make sense in a lot of situations. I, for example, attended cultural sensitivity training before assuming a technical lead position on a project where half the workforce was located in India. It was really informative and saved me a lot of potential trouble down the line. I also think a code of conduct course addressing harassment and discrimination is a perfectly reasonable part of onboarding.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the encroachment of pseudoscientific, ideology-based, behavioral and language policing; the attempted highjacking of the workplace for social engineering purposes. [1] [2] [3]

L_X_A · 2022-09-06T08:49:51+00:00

Where are these "re-education camps" in the US?

In your workplace.

Virtually all Fortune 500 companies employ diversity and inclusivity training, and there is an orchestrated effort to apply them more broadly and make them continuously more effective. (see also: PWC survey)

Disciplinary action is now the norm to compel employees to be re-educated for wrongthink [1] [2] [3]

And yeah, the "pretending to be indoctrinated enough" is a real thing. People are afraid of speaking out against woke ideology in their workplace, and are actively avoiding situations where they could be targeted by the woke mob.

L_X_A · 2022-08-19T20:57:25+00:00

Yes, your post is correct. It's more about cultivating the practice of always backing up one's claims properly and making it easy for others to verify the information we are distributing. Obfuscation is their tactic, we should fight it with transparency.

BTW, the "OP is a fag" thing is not a comment on your sexual orientation, it's just a juvenile, old internet trope. I enjoy being a shitlord sometimes.

L_X_A · 2022-03-03T09:33:19+00:00

Dat list of adverse events of interest (appendix 1) tho... 😬

Here's hoping that their risk management and post-market surveillance files get leaked in full.

L_X_A · 2022-01-25T09:06:38+00:00

biological male, etc. are terms that only have value to you if you believe "sex" or "male" are insufficient or incomplete descriptors

Wait a second, isn't "male" and "female" being incomplete descriptors at the core of YOUR ideology!?

L_X_A · 2023-02-28T21:55:02+00:00

... as transparent as possible to the rest of the world. So people know what's going on.

> We've never-ever done X, and you are a horrible person for even insinuating we would ever consider doing X.

> Here's irrefutable evidence that you've done X.

> We have never denied doing X. X is a good and very important thing. We do X responsibly and firmly believe in being transparent about doing X.

Someone give me a baseball bat.

L_X_A · 2023-02-07T16:43:12+00:00

Are you telling me that memes are not a nuanced and faithful representation of all facets of reality but a crude, exaggerated, and overly generalized caricature of latent societal traits!?!

Well, I never!

L_X_A · 2022-09-13T11:07:15+00:00

There's nothing quite as scientific as "subconscious sex"

L_X_A · 2022-08-19T20:50:37+00:00

I'm convinced the majority of the world's political elite view us plebs as nothing but cattle, but this article grossly misrepresents Harari's position.

He doesn't want "to get rid of us", he's not "Schwab's right hand", and the article's quotation:

Harari, who spoke on behalf of the elites confirmed “We just don’t need the vast majority of you.”

is taken out of context. Harari is saying that this is the message people are getting from how the economy and society around them are evolving.

According to his logic, “common people” have no right to exist unless they are in service of the elite.

No, Harari is worried that the economic and cultural system might devolve into something where common people are completely devalued. He even speaks about one possible way out of this trajectory, which would be re-discovering the value of community and interpersonal care: raising and educating children, engaging in community building projects, providing health and living care for the elderly, etc.

Here's the original interview (July 2019): https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview_yuval_noah_harari_reveals_the_real_dangers_ahead

The part the article is talking about is at the 14min mark. Just listen to it, really!

Harari is not calling for the extermination of the vast majority of the world's population. He's talking about a real challenge that we will face in the coming decades. Namely, that most people who are not particularly bright or talented will be out of a job.

This is just a fact, and it's already happening. The people primarily affected are not necessarily manual laborers. They were already hit over a decade ago through globalization and the import of cheap labor. It's the NPC/office-drone-types with liberal arts degrees that hang around Reddit who are next on the line. Their work is either redundant or produces nothing of value. The only reason they do have a job is due to group dynamics and internal corporate politics (the incompetent mid-management need incompetent nothing-doers to feel important and justify their position). What they do is (relatively) easy to automate, and when AI can take over managerial and boiler-plate organizational matters, the paper pushers will be first against the wall.

I mean, Harari even makes fun of the "learn to code" trope.

BTW, I think Harari is well aware that we are at least 50y away from fully automating things like farming, mechanical repair, healthcare, gastronomy, etc. Fully autonomous motion control, navigation planning, and generalized embodied cognition are notoriously difficult nuts to crack. Sure we can have some drones carry a package from A to B, but try to automate all the motoric and cognitive decisions a car mechanic must carry out. Good luck. (though it is true that, because of tooling and automation, we will need fewer farmers, mechanics, etc.)

L_X_A · 2022-03-16T16:05:42+00:00

Thanks! I'll check it out.

L_X_A · 2022-03-08T14:44:01+00:00

This is a good thing! No, wait, hear me out!

The book is about putting women in charge of the world. Since the authors recognize "woman" as a self-prescribed identity, all we have to do is to do is require world leaders to use they/them pronouns.

There, problem solved. We defeated patriarchy. 100% diversity achieved, just like Ubisoft Montreal. Now stop wining.

L_X_A · 2022-03-02T14:25:21+00:00

When offered extraction, Zelenskyy stood and fought against an invading army many times more powerful than his own.

When confronted by a group of truckers with their bouncy castles, Trudeau fled the country.

Just sayin'

L_X_A · 2022-02-09T11:45:51+00:00

Don't be ridiculous! She could have collapsed due to a myriad of other causes completely unrelated to the vaccine such as hypoxia, anaphylactic shock, myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis, myalgia, arthralgia, thrombocytopenia syndrome, Bell's palsy...

L_X_A · 2022-01-26T07:14:04+00:00

Thanks for the sources. I was aware that Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, de Beauvoir, etc. all demanded the abolition of the age of conscent. Foucault in particular was a degenerate pedo. I also knew that across the western world, 1968 neo-Marxists and postmodernists were "against the sexual inhibition of children" (ugh). But I didn't know about Die Rote Freiheit (gonna be sending that Spiegel article to every die-hard fan of Lacan, Derrida, and the sexual liberation movement I know just to fuck with them).

And yes, it is possible that they (or at least some of them) actually did believe children should be included in #2. But they didn't write it explicitly. For example, by adding the qualifier "for all ages".

You can't claim that they planned the mutilation of children based on this document alone. You have to base yourself on what is effectively written, not your inference on what it likely implies based on other characteristics of the leftist ideological umbrella.

L_X_A · 2023-08-19T11:47:24+00:00

Why the "/s"? Redditors were actually saying this.

They were parroting the NYT, Slate, and other assorted soy-blogs' position that:

Dubul' ibhunu (kill the boer) is a song about the struggles of the apartheid system
It's a remembrance of when blacks in SA were viciously oppressed
It has nothing to do with actually killing anyone.
Farmers are not being killed (It's Not Happening^TM ); if they are, those are isolated incidents with no political motivation behind them.

L_X_A · 2022-08-24T14:55:59+00:00

At the 8:30 mark:

The best one is quantum mechanics because they don't have a model for light they don't have a model for the electron, they don't have a model for how any of this stuff works, gravity (true, kinda), light, electromagnetism, all that...

And that's when you lost me, bud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory

Nothing practical has come out of anything they did in the past 50, 60 years.

Excuse me, what???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_quantum_dot_microscopy
https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/pogge.1/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging

Bonus: this guy doesn't believe in plate tectonics. He believes the earth is expanding:
http://www.dehilster.com/home/is-the-earth-expanding-and-even-growing/

L_X_A · 2022-08-16T15:33:27+00:00

It's a different sub: CoronavirusUS. It also links to a different article. OP's links to The Guardian, yours links to NYT.

I couldn't find The Guardian's article, nor OP's post on CoronavirusUS. It might be that the mods deleted it as a duplicate, it might be shopped.

But this is mild compared to what those dimwitted harpies at Reddit normally do.

They have an entire sub dedicated to gloating over the suffering and dying of COVID patients because they either didn't take the vaccine or doubted the severity of the disease. Reddit even created a corresponding award for it.

I grow more and more disgusted with Reddit and its users with every visit.

L_X_A · 2022-07-29T07:28:34+00:00

I don't think it's fair to say "it shows his true colors". Up until around 10y ago, Chomsky has been remarkably consistent in his beliefs. And he was never an "ends justify the means" guy. Up until around 2010, there were only 2 things I fundamentally disagreed with him: 1) Intentions playno role in the moral evaluation and justifiability of intervening action; only consequences do. And 2) Complete contractual freedom, as proposed by Nozick, will inevitably lead to neo-feudalism and complete tyranny.

From 2010 onwards, Chomsky's cognitive decline started becoming more and more apparent. Nowadays, his opinions range from self-contradicting to downright absurd.

L_X_A · 2022-03-08T14:20:57+00:00

A few weeks ago I was discussing the merits of Canada's Freedom Convoy on r/TrueReddit, a sub which is supposed to be a place for measured, evidence-based discussion on Reddit (it is not; well, not anymore).

The discussion branched off into why the protestors were justified into being skeptical of statements issued by govt. health institutions. One of the top-voted comments said something along the lines of "Nobody ever said that vaccines were totally effective, and nobody ever said they were safe".

In my response, I linked to papers and news articles such as this saying that the vaccine was perfectly safe and effective. I was polite, respectful, and substantiated my point with evidence.

r/TrueReddit banned me 1h after I posted that comment. No reason given.

L_X_A · 2022-03-03T08:00:04+00:00

Considerably? You make it sound like anyone who doesn't wear a seatbelt is a dead man walking. Seatbelts provide a minuscule increase in protection for what's already virtually zero chance of death.

Driving a car is very unlikely to get you killed. But if you get into an accident, you're much better off wearing a seatbelt than not. The benefits range from not having a busted lip to not dying.

A non-vaccinated person has less than .8% chance of being hospitalized, much less dying from Covid.

Where did you get those stats from? 0.8% is lower than the case fatality rate for alpha to delta. The hospitalization rate should be considerably higher than that.

Obs: Omicron has changed those numbers considerably, but my comment is not referring to transplant refusals only in the last 2 months.

The biggest predictor in Covid death isn't vaccination status. It's pre-existing health problems. And there's no vaccine for that. And there's no vaccine for that.

Yes, there is. It's literally the vaccine.

Vaccines help the vulnerable and have a proven efficacy against sequelae. Natural immunity discounted, transplant candidates are and will remain vulnerable for the rest of their lives.

You're acting like the mirror image of a triple boosted Redditor saying you'll kill grandma if you don't vaccinate your newborn.

L_X_A · 2022-03-02T17:32:23+00:00

Natural immunity.

Good point. Did not consider it.

L_X_A · 2022-03-02T16:25:49+00:00

I am a strong opponent of vaccine mandates, and I'm also 100% certain the WHO, the CDC, and most of the state health institutions around the world LIED about the virus, the vaccine efficacy, and its safety.

That being said, the "you don't deserve a heart transplant unless you are vaccinated" thing actually makes sense.

Is the vaccine perfectly safe? No.
Is the vaccine 100% effective? No, and its efficacy drops with every new variant.

BUT: The vaccine offers significant protection against the alpha and delta variants, considerably reducing the risk of severe sequelae and death.

Organ recipients are going to be immunocompromised for the rest of their lives. And there are far more candidates than there are organs.

In a situation where there are no other potential recipients for the organ, it's absurd to deny the surgery based on vaccination status. In a situation where there are other people dependent on a transplant, I'd say you gotta give it to the ones with the highest probability of long-term survival.

L_X_A · 2022-03-01T17:03:50+00:00

Guys, don't rely on "Coach Red Pill" for geopolitical commentary. I'm an illiterate retard myself, but it's clear that he's talking out of his ass

They just want to change the regime and then let it go. They don't want to manage Ukraine, they don't want it to be a burden on them.

Ukraine possesses vast fertile land and is referred to as the "breadbasket of Europe"
It is an integral and vital part of Russia's energy export (pipelines + year-round accessible ports)
It has natural boundaries (Carpathian, Black Sea) providing a much better defensible position than the Greater European Plain.
Putin is ideologically driven to unify Ukraine into a greater Russia, believing that Ukraine and its population were always a constituent part of the olden ethnic Russian people. He wrote about this in many essays, the latest one published in Summer 2021

Zelensky is evil for handing weapons to its population and having them share the burden of defending the country against an invading force.

Motherfucker, have you ever heard of the 2nd amendment, or Yamamoto's quote "There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass"? Are you aware that this is the defacto defense strategy of many nations around the world?

One does not need years of training to somewhat competently shoot a rifle or fire a stinger rocket. That can be trained in a matter of days or hours.

L_X_A · 2022-02-08T21:15:59+00:00

Yet Canadians keep re-electing this fraud. Though it's unfair to refer to them as "Canadians". We have seen what true Canadians look like on their way to Ottawa. Trudeau supporters are Cucknuks.

L_X_A · 2022-01-25T22:43:36+00:00

I don't think they intended children to be included in #2.

And even though the introduction is obvious Marcusian lunacy, the only points I disagree with are:

\3. If it means no imposition whatsoever. I don't want to see lunatics walking around with dildos up their butt. Otherwise, men should be able to wear dresses and women should be able to wear suits. Idc.
\7. Because it's compelled speech.
\10. Agreed on the judicial punishment of any organization which directly brings about or orchestrates the prosecution of individuals or groups based on their beliefs, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc. Disagree with restricting belief. Everyone should be allowed to believe and proselytize whatever they want.
\12. Again, people should be free to live their lives however they want as long as doing so doesn't directly infringe on other people's freedoms.

I'm undecided on #17. Because it's retarded Neo-Marxist LARPing nonsense. But sure, demand that from China, Laos, or North Korea. See how that works out for you. If they are talking about "tHe PeOpLeS rEvOlUtIoNaRy ArMy" of western countries then I'm all for it. In fact, I think they should heavily prioritize body-positive feminists with disabilities. That'll really tip the scales in their favor. Literally.

L_X_A · 2022-01-19T07:47:49+00:00

When I said "That guy is an astroturfer paid by the DNC" I was talking about Majid Padellan or BrooklynDad_Defiant!, i.e. the person who wrote the tweets.

I agree that the deportation of Djokovic was a pathetic political theater.

with Djokovic why does it matter?

It matters because the astroturfed support for the deportation sows the seeds for legitimizing ostracism due to ideological non-compliance in the public eye. And a large portion of the public is guzzling it up like cognitively impaired automatons.

We need to stand up for people's rights even if we don't like them or agree with them.

Preach! And I even believe this applies to Majid Padellan and his dishonest and whorish practice of parroting the party line as if it was his own opinion for money. He should have every right to do so.
As it is our duty to point out his dishonesty and reveal his hustle. He's not "a Brooklin dad" speaking his mind. He's a DNC-paid shill.

L_X_A · 2022-01-18T10:03:29+00:00

That guy is an astroturfer paid by the DNC. I've looked into it some years ago, but I don't have the links and documents handy. It would take me some time to dig that up again (his name was in the NY DNC financial disclosure as a monthly recipient).

EDIT: I'm talking about Majid Padellan, the person making the tweet. He's a paid shill. NOT Djokovic. Meanwhile, I saw that the NY Post wrote about him.

Doesn't cover all the dirt I saw on him, but at least it lends credibility to what I wrote earlier.

It has become a common practice for political parties or other interest groups to pay social-media (semi-)influential people to parrot their agenda.

It's especially funny when the "anti-establishment revolutionaries" from BredTube do it on behalf of the establishment.

L_X_A · 2022-01-17T06:37:49+00:00

I think people anticipate that moving to another predominantly English-speaking, developed nation is going to be the same. No ma'am. It's completely different food, entertainment, and news sources. People act differently. On top of that, not having any friends and leaving my job to be a full-time parent were traumatizing.

"The food in this other highly developed place with the same language and near identical culture was a bit different. I was traumatized."

L_X_A · 2022-01-16T11:56:24+00:00

If you want to prevent the attack I described and still not have to store the passwords/salt-values in your server, you could go the authentication through encryption route.

Namely, you'd ditch the email and hash cookies for a single cookie containing the user's encrypted email address.

When the user registers with user_email, you send them an URL that will result in them receiving the cookie user-cookie = Encrypt(user_email, server_secret).
I'd recommend a symmetric, strong (enough) cipher such as AES-256-GCM or ChaCha20Poly1305. You did choose MD5 as hashing algo earlier, and I'm assuming you did so for performance reasons. So it's up to you to judge which cipher would still accommodate your performance needs.
Don't forget to set the HttpOnly, Secure and SameSite flags.
On every request, the server would decrypt the ciphertext in the user-cookie's value using Decrypt(ciphertext, server_secret). If it matches the email of a user account, the authentication succeeded. Here's where you should watch out for your performance needs. This needs to be done on every request.

This solves the following problems:

You are no longer storing (plaintext) user information in the cookie, thus compliant with GDPR (see: https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-data/)
If someone steals the cookie, they won't be able to know what's in there.
If you chose a decent cypher, a plaintext collision attack as I described earlier becomes unfeasible.

This method still has the problem that every user's email is encrypted with the same key, though. So should someone be able to crack server_secret (very difficult depending on the cipher you choose, but still), they would be able to access every account they know the email of.

To circumvent this, you could extend this pattern with a Diffie-Hellman-based KDF functionality:

On your server, instead of the symmetric key as stated above, you generate and store a secret prime number which will be used in a "deferred" Diffie-Hellman key agreement. That is: server_secretPrime
When the user registers, you generate an ephemeral secret prime for the user, and calculate the user's public prime: user_publicPrime.
You then store the following cookies:
** The encrypted email address: user-access = Encrypt(user_email, DH_KDF(user_publicPrime, server_secretPrime))
** The user-specific public prime used for the Diffie-Hellman key agreement: user-prime = user_publicPrime
When you receive a request from the user, you use the values stored on the cookie to authenticate them: Decrypt(user_email, DH_KDF(user_publicPrime, server_secretPrime))

This will ensure that a new key is used for every user, and it will not require you to store user-specific passwords in your DB.

It still leaves singular users vulnerable to someone stealing their cookie and getting access to their account in perpetuity (user-access + user-prime will always produce a valid ciphertext).

If you want to prevent this from happening, I see no other alternative than storing user_publicPrime in the DB and associating it with the user_email. Whereby you'd invalidate the cookie by generating a new value of user_publicPrime and storing it in the DB.

If you do this, you could of course forgo the DH_KDF pattern altogether by simply saving user-specific server_secrets. Then again, you'd be storing cryptographic material in a DB. Not exactly something you want to do. With the DH_KDF pattern, you can keep 1 server_secretPrime stored somewhere secure, while user_publicPrime can be stored in the DB without concern.

L_X_A · 2022-01-13T15:29:19+00:00

I didn't believe this was real, so I went and checked.

It's worse than I thought. It's from the MIT Tech Review !!! And the MIT press is now completely filled with nonsense like this. Including that coming from the new chancellor who is a historian and "race expert".

> History and race
> Chancellor
> MIT

From her bio:

Through her leadership and service to the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, she helped to:

Create a new theater building and a forthcoming music building, a state-of-the-art center for music research, innovation, and performance at MIT;
Catalyze and champion the pioneering “MIT & Slavery” research class;
Secure new support for graduate students, post-docs, and professorships; and
Launch the Digital Humanities Lab, the Music Technology Lab, the non-partisan MIT Election Data & Science Lab, and the King Climate Action Initiative at J-PAL that focuses on the nexus of climate change and poverty.

What sort of spineless, cowardly, pathetic, submissive wimps are we that we handing over the very marvels of the enlightenment age to these self-interested, narcissistic, intellectual charlatans.

L_X_A · 2021-08-31T16:22:05+00:00

Well, OP's link leaves much to the imagination but you can read the OfS statement here

So yeah, it doesn't look like this is money that is going to "artists", but rather the managerial and lecturing class.

L_X_A · 2021-08-16T08:51:05+00:00

Here is the official bulletin

Read it. It's fucked up.

[...] Anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists will remain a national threat priority for the United States. These extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks.

The reopening of institutions, including schools, as well as several dates of religious significance over the next few months, could also provide increased targets of opportunity for violence.
(Now, is't that convenient?)

There are also continued, non-specific calls for violence on multiple online platforms associated with DVE ideologies or conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement, and responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases.

Ideologically motivated violent extremists fueled by personal grievances and extremist ideological beliefs continue to derive inspiration and obtain operational guidance through the consumption of information shared in certain online communities.

How You Can Help
Report suspicious activity and threats of violence, including online threats, to local law enforcement, FBI Field Offices, or local Fusion Center.
If you know someone who is struggling with mental health issues or may be a danger to themselves or others, support is available.

L_X_A · 2022-08-25T06:47:38+00:00

Thank you. But I wouldn't call it "fear-mongering". This shit is already happening. And yes, it's happening in the West, not only in China:
https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DCN-Google-Data-Collection-Paper.pdf
https://archive.ph/tL6wk

He's also not saying the elites "should get rid of the useless people" and that they will "make them docile with drugs and video games". He's warning about a potential dystopian future that we are already moving towards and that it will be horrible for the majority of people if we don't actively try to solve the problem of professional obsolescence. He even considers the re-discovery of family, intimate communities, and meaningful interpersonal relationships as a potential way out of this dystopian trap.

Here's the interview where Harari talks about people numbing themselves with drugs and videogames (20mins mark)

Here's the interview where he re-visits the subject again, talking about the rediscovery of communities as a potential solution (problem description at 15mins mark; community as a potential solution at 21mins mark)

It's already bad enough that the political and economic elite view us as cattle and want us docile, obedient, and productive. Shooting the messenger will not do us any favors.

L_X_A · 2022-08-20T09:23:41+00:00

The article

L_X_A · 2022-08-20T06:05:43+00:00

Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica!

L_X_A · 2022-08-01T19:48:52+00:00

If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat

They do.

[...] scientists would study that monkey

They have.

Turns out "hoarder monkeys" use the food to pay for sex

L_X_A · 2022-01-30T19:11:48+00:00

Does anyone know whether that campaign really did "cost" € 2.5M (meaning, they made that silly video and pocketed in the money)? Or was the claim about the 2.5M just bogus?

L_X_A · 2021-08-31T06:36:11+00:00

put it into the pockets of artists that despise them.

Hah, you wish! It wouldn't be so bad if that was really the case, but it isn't. Where the money actually goes to are snobbish, self-proclaimed "art connoisseurs". A plutocratic clique of professional charlatans who spend their lives writing unnecessarily convoluted essays using words they don't fully understand to describe things no one cares about in a self-maintained cycle of idea laundering.

L_X_A