Fefes Blog

To quote Felix von Leitner (https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a7666dad):

> You cannot solve social problems by using technology.

And when you do try to do so, it quickly gets nasty. Just look at the #Shadowban scandal on Twitter.

You will need humans in the loop, and they need to be well-trained, in order to actually recognize images such as the famous Vietnam napalm girl, which FB banned for "nudity" until huge public shitstorm, and well-paid and well-"maintained" in psychological terms, given that they will see the nastiest content on the web... everything from child porn over gore to livestreams of rapes and murders.

But, to be honest: this should not be done by the sites themselves - the best solution is an "ombudsman", an independent institution maintained by the state but financed by the social networks. This prevents "overcensoring" (aka that the moderators don't delete too much content that's legit out of the fear they might be hit with costly punishments), and having them mandatory financed by the "big players" prevents them from systematically understaffing or exploiting the workers. Also, they will need to have a proper appeal process: both for content creators whose work has been inappropriately taken down, and for users who believe that the content in question is, in fact, illegitimate.

Also, the sites must be regulated as public utilities given their importance to people's communications. For example, my phone provider is not allowed to terminate me, only if I…

I sincerely doubt that.

Please remember that the engine control software is already there, doing exactly the same thing in normal operation: adjusting the engine settings to produce optimal results for the current driving situation. For example, the mix should certainly be different when the car is stationary (sitting at an intersection), than when accelerating or going full throttle.

There is nothing underhanded about this, quite the contrary, it is a Good Thing™.

Once you have knobs to turn, the temptation to turn them just a little too far is always great, especially if you have conflicting goals. On the one hand, you are supposed to reduce CO2 emissions, which having great mileage does, on the other hand you are supposed to reduce NOX emissions. So you fiddle.

And car companies have always fiddled with any knob they could to get performance and always pushed it as far as they could. For example, this particular problem has been known for some time and was tolerated, see http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146711288/Die-Bundesregierung-kannte-die-Betrueger-Technik.html or http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ab029b73 (German). Furthermore, manipulating the catalytic converters has also been long-standing industry practice, I found a Toyota forum post complaining about the practice from 2003, also in German: http://www.toyota-forum.de/threads/kat-schaltet-unter-vollast-aus.27911/ However, I remember those discussions from the late 80ies and early 90ies.

So if…

"Of course, this is still just guessing about the NSA's capabilities. As it turns out, the newer Elliptical keys may turn out to be relatively easier to crack than people thought, meaning that the older software may in fact be more secure. But since 1024 bit RSA/DH has been the most popular SSL encryption for the past decade, I'd assume that it's that, rather than curves, that the NSA is best at cracking."

So it is suggested to update to a newer version that uses EC, but we are not sure if EC is not breakable? Others ([1], [2]) suggest that RSA is more secure than EC!?

I wish that the security experts could give "clear" advise.

EDIT: Added proper links to sources suggesting RSA over EC.

[1] Bruce Schneider in http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

"Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can."

[2] Fefe (it's in German) http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=acd52294

Fefe is by no means "most Europeans", though he is quite well known as a ("political nerd") blogger in Germany. His comment on the matter, however, is less that of pointing and laughing and more that of worry, especially considering that there were some mild(er/ish) issues along similar lines in the wake of the 29C3.

As a quick and dirty(!) translation of this blog post: http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=afb76b8d

"The 'sexual harassment'-story at US computer conferences is escalating further. This has poisened the climate to a degree where I fear the sentiment towards women is shifting from 'great, we need more [of them]' towards 'risk, risk, stay away, better not to say anything'. Smaller cons might possibly not admit women anymore [in the future], just to avoid being subject to such risks. This is all very unfortunate [or: distressing/regrettable]. (Thanks, Michael)"

Everything in square brackets '[' & ']' serves as clarification.

I read a great reader comment on the topic (also in German so try DeepL)
https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9cb54d35

Its a political push and pull about who defaults on the existing contracts on gas import, seeing as Russia wants to be payed in ruble now, while Germany would prefer the payments to be stuck on a EU bank account as a form of reparation payments to the Ukraine. To prevent this outcome, Russia in effect might be liquidating the Gazprom Germania. With Gazprom Germania being the ones doing the actual importing. Over the last weekend there was a change in ownership of the Gazprom Germania to new unknown owners. So they might be already bankrupt. To prevent this, Germany is now seizing control of Gazprom Germania and might be on the hook to prevent an insolvency to not default on the contracts with Russia.

In short, the German government fucked up majorly.

edit: Check "throwhow"s post in this thread for a longer summary

What's interesting is that in the weeks leading up to the agenda, the Chaos Communication Club put up their own demands written like a digital agenda, essentially prewritten rules. And it turns out that the new agenda includes many of these rules! See https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9f60b12e

Things like companies being legally responsible for security holes in their products, a right to encryption, open standards in government bodies, no 'hackbacks' from German security agencies, software updates and replacement parts need to be available for the lifetime of a product, all these things in the new government's agenda seem to come from the CCC.

Lobbbying works!

English auto-translation of the CCC's demands:

https://www-ccc-de.translate.goog/de/updates/2021/ccc-formulierungshilfe-regierungsprogramm?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB&_x_tr_pto=nui