Melody Fwygon

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • It is likely they have the ability to sign the public key of your console with a “Suicide Key” which would signal your console to commit suicide by burning some internal e-fuse.

    It is also equally likely this is an over-broad version of “Legal Rear Armor” that means nothing explicitly about what they can do. This is because modifying your system has long carried risk of bricking and their security systems to prevent modifications have only increased in strength.

    It’s likely the new security system in the Switch 2 is so naively hair-trigger sensitive that it absolutely will brick you or disable some functionality permanently if it thinks you even so much as modified a backup copy of a save file or encrypted binary stored on your SD card itself. It’s very likely that any kind of attempt to write invalid foreign files onto an SD may result in issues. I’d expect Switch 2 systems to spontaneously self destruct if exposed to bad quality or fake SD cards with insufficient capacity; or an SD card that is failing if what I am guessing is true.

    Is this confirmed? No; it’s just idle wild speculation. But it is what I expect from Nintendo; given that their creatives have all been driven away from the executive positions of power and only money driven executives are left at the helm.

    Given that the Switch has already been thoroughly cracked; it’s likely now more than a want or need, Nintendo now has a mania or obsession with making their consoles un-exploitable. Likely, this is because they’re too naive to avoid promising their consoles are ‘unbreakable’ to their third parties and publishers.

    Unfortunately Nintendo is full of foolish pride and stubbornness. Tinkerers and video game preservers the world over will need to once again break the Switch 2 security to pieces to prove to Nintendo that this endeavor is futile.

    In the meantime; don’t tinker with a Switch or Switch 2 you can’t afford to lose. Hell, don’t even buy one if you’re sensitive to it being un-tinkerable. Don’t gift them to any children in your life either. Instead; gift them something more useful; like teaching them how to emulate one of the older Nintendo Systems and gift them a Library of ROMs so they don’t have to torrent it themselves and ‘give the family computer a virus’ or ‘cause a scary letter to be sent to their parents’ with their inexperience. If you can’t bear piracy; then go pick up one of the old legitimate retro systems. Buy it somewhere used and pick up whatever used games you can for them at any occasion.


  • Given the absurd number of sites that require a login for no discernible security reason at all whatsoever; I get it.

    A “Common” password makes sense. This password should never be used to log into or protect anything secure however.

    Similarly a “Common” password might be used to enable login more easily from certain devices; but ideally this “temporary” password should probably be something that is, yet again, different from the first “Common” password you use.

    It boggles my mind that someone like this isn’t at least using a specific passphrase for secure work accounts only.

    While I can personally understand a need for some password reuse across multiple domains; at least there should be some separation of larger “superdomains” such as “work”, “personal” and “throwaway” so that breaches don’t have such a catastrophic impact.

    A system of generating secure, unrelated but memorable phrases (for you) for those times you can’t carry or use a password manager is frequently essential. That way you can recall the password on the fly when it is asked of you; all you need to do is think about the unrelated thing you attached that information to.


  • This is mostly useless to me; I already enforce all tabs into unique containers to isolate browsing and website contexts from one another; while still allowing me to make exceptions to the rule and “unbreak” things if that’s causing an issue, but still keeping things isolated from the rest of the browsing.

    As for Tab Management; I use two windows and a plugin; Tab Stash Plus; which collapses tabs I stash into a bookmark.

    Every so often when I reach a critical mass of tabs I personally go through them and play “Keep/Toss” with more odds on Toss. Only useful tabs get stashed and are then searchable from the plugin.

    In general; since this feature now presents a possibility of an extremely UNWANTED AI integration I will be setting the config to off and leaving it off…using a relevant config policy tool or plugin to enforce this to off if needed. I hate AI features that I didn’t ask for and this one definitely doesn’t seem like it’s going to be helpful nor compatible with my current workflow.



  • No; it’s not inarguable.

    I do feel that some minor limitations around social media should exist; such as hours of the day you may not be allowed to read or post; but they should be simple age-gates created to privately verify a person’s age via a simple SSO/OAuth style token. If you can’t authenticate against some privacy respecting identity proving entity you probably aren’t old enough and any account(s) you create would be limited.

    Not all social media needs to be age-gated either; but social networks could be forced by law to avoid monetizing your account or habits at all if you don’t willingly identify. (and by doing so; also CONSENT TO THIS MONETIZATION) In short; if you are not verified they’re required to assume you are a child and handle your data as such…with utmost respect to your privacy.



  • All that being said; I’m going to be watching carefully.

    I still think they have time to backpedal, make it right, and clarify. I don’t permit my installations to talk to their data collection services anyways; via network policies. I have no problem tightening those screws and forcefully disabling their telemetry in other ways as well.

    If I have to migrate; well; I already have LibreWolf installed. I might try a few other forks next; to see which ones ‘just work’ with the web properly to protect my privacy while still allowing all websites to work properly as intended so long as I give that website appropriate permissions as I see fit.


  • I don’t believe that anyone misunderstood the wording.

    The problem lies within the broad meaning of the chosen words. If you are angry, you have absolutely every right to be.

    Regardless of Mozilla’s intent here they have made a rather large mistake in re-wording their Terms. Rather than engaging with a legal team in problematic regions; they took the lazy way out and used overbroad terms to cover their bottom.

    Frequently when wording like this changes it causes companies to only be bound by weak verbal promises which oftentimes go out the door whenever an executive change takes place, or an executive feels threatened enough.

    Do not be deceived; this is a downgrade of their promise. It is inevitable that the promises will be broken now that there is no fear of a lawsuit. There’s nothing left to bind them to their promises.

    The Mozilla foundation wasn’t ever intended to remain “financially viable”; it was supposed to remain non-profit. They should be “rightsizing” and taking pay cuts instead of slipping a EULA roofie into their terms of use.


  • It is not only true; it is required by the WMF. Wikipedia and Wikimedia will go dark before it compromises those values.

    Wikipedia can always be revived by it’s massive worldwide community; on Tor even. Trump taking down the WMF servers won’t help; the databases probably get backed up daily and would likely end up on torrents within moments of it being taken down.


  • As an editor with advanced rollback rights on Wikipedia; I can agree with the above statement.

    It is Extremely Difficult; even with slighly escalated rollback rights such as mine; to push an agenda on Wikipedia.

    WP:NPOV is a good read and the editing community and contribution culture on Wikipedia enforces it strongly.

    EnWiki itself for certain has some very strong Page Protection policies that prevent just any editor from munging up the encyclopedia or changing history.

    It’s safe to say that Wikimedia cannot be bent or broken easily by special interest groups…Vandalism and PoV pushing is quickly quelled by sysops on Wikipedia. There are more of us editors than Elon could ever possibly hope to take on.

    Not even Elon Musk gets to ignore Wikimedia policies. That will never change. They are written in blood and sweat and cannot be manipulated. The entire foundation is set up in a way that it always, eventually, cracks down on corruption and greed. Not even a cabal of admins, bureaucrats and Wikimedia Stewards can help you.




  • This 100%.

    The more valuable and critical a government employee knows they are; the more effective they can be by doing this.

    Everyone in any federal agency who is resisting and who is being ordered to do something they object to should be falling to this maliciously compliant default to the maximum extent they can afford to do so. Gum up the works; extend out projects, stretch deadlines out, passively resist every step of the way and insist that every possible reasonable rule be followed to it’s exact and literal definition…even if it’s not common practice or expedient.

    Exhaust the servants of the tyrant of their every resource; run these liaisons ragged; overload them with petty questions and minor, but critical, decisions; especially if they’re bogged down. If you can make them quit or get fired by the cheeto in a non suspicious way; all the better. Making it impossible to keep a liaison in your department will keep them guessing if they keep quitting on their own due to extreme stress and overwork.

    Anybody who is a Political Appointee should be considered a hostile co-worker automatically and kept out of every loop possible. Make them battle for every inch of information or status updates and give as little information as you can while only answering explicit questions. Bonus points if management is in on the game; and can ping-pong any information requests around violently across all the various managers and supervisors who each only leak a tiny tidbit of information.






  • The shocked anger reaction coming from Trump is priceless as he finds out that there really weren’t as many immigrants as the far-right proclaimed there to be.

    No doubt that number got inflated, much like it would in a game of telephone, when it was making furious rounds through the conservative disinformation machine. I hope he feels just as stupid as anyone who voted for him and are finding out that he really did not represent their ideals nor their best interests after all.



  • Regardless of that; another shenanigan exists for those who did make it to the polls; Gerrymandering.

    Yes; it’s horrid as it sounds and it limits the voting power of lower class people, as well as the power of people who are considered to be “ethnic minorities” by the party in power. If there’s a neighborhood of blacks next to a poor neighborhood; well both find themselves districted together and their cumulative votes are diminished by how the votes are counted by district such that a 2-3 victory for Democrats; is actually counted as a 2-3 victory for the Republicans…all because the Republicans were already in power somehow and managed to re-district the place so that the vote result never changes anything…unless the unlikely event that all three neighborhoods choose to vote the same way occurs.

    Yet another shenanigan exists where voting rolls are frequently “purged” due to false assertions of fraud and onerous and routine registration becomes necessary, which isn’t a problem if you don’t work full-time in the USA; but good luck getting a day off work if you do work full-time and need to vote. (Hint: YOU DON’T; OR ELSE YOU GET FIRED WITH NO RECOURSE!)

    Even if that wasn’t enough already; many times the voting times, locations, dates and even rules change from year-to-year, and sometimes even month-to-month.

    What worked this time might not work next time. From ID requirements to ballot order manipulation or even other flat out shady practices like misleading or leading poll questions on the ballot are all employed.

    The media is even worse; and frequently spouts simple and blatant lies. they could literally be absolutely passionate about their issue in particular and still end up being misled or lied to; as there’s no accountability for this. This would result in mistakenly casting a vote for the wrong candidate who would then go on to not represent the will or needs of the citizens voting for them once they’re in power.

    The average American, just simply can’t always be on top of every one of these things 24/7. It’s easy to get taken by any one of them by surprise.


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