I mean it is always better to have more open source. But the point of the multi-hop system is that you don’t need to trust the server. Even if the server was open source:

1. You wouldn’t know that we are running an unmodified version.
2. If you need to trust the server then someone could compel us to tap it or monitor it.

The open source client is enough to verify this and the security of the whole scheme.

Yeah, I can’t believe how hard targeting other consoles is for basically no reason. I love this Godot page that accurately showcases the difference:

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html

Currently, the only console Godot officially supports is Steam Deck (through the official Linux export templates).

The reason other consoles are not officially supported are:

• To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. As an open source project, Godot has no legal structure to provide console ports.
• Console SDKs are secret and covered by non-disclosure agreements. Even if we could get access to them, we could not publish the platform-specific code under an open source license.

Who at these console companies think that making it hard to develop software for them is beneficial? It’s not like the SDK APIs are actually technologically interesting in any way (maybe some early consoles were, the last “interesting” hardware is probably the PS2). Even if the APIs were open source (the signatures, not the implementation) every console has DRM to prevent running unsigned games, so it wouldn’t allow people to distribute games outside of the console marker’s control (other than modded systems).

So to develop for the Steam Deck:

1. Click export.
2. Test a bit.

To develop for Switch (or any other locked-down console):

1. Select a third-party who maintains a Godot port.
2. Negotiate a contract.
   • If this falls through go back to step 1.
3. Integrate your code to their port.
4. Click export.
5. Test a bit.

What it could be (after you register with Nintendo to get access to the SDK download):

1. Download the SDK to whatever location Godot expects it.
2. Click export.
3. Test a bit.

All they need to do is grant an open source license on the API headers. All the rest is done for them and magically they have more games on their platform.

Mullvad is one of the best options if you care about privacy. They take privacy seriously, both on their side and pushing users towards private options. They also support fully anonymous payments. Their price is also incredibly reasonable.

I’m actually working on a VPN product as well. It is a multi-hop system so that we can’t track you. But it isn’t publicly available yet, so in the meantime I happily recommend Mullvad.

HTTP/1.1 403 UNAUTHORIZED
{
  "error": {
    "status": "UNAUTHORIZED",
    "message": "Unauthorized access",
  },
}

I would separate the status from the HTTP status.

1. The HTTP status is great for reasonable default behaviours from clients.
2. The application status can be used for adding more specific errors. (Is the access token expired, is your account blocked, is your organization blocked)

Even if you don’t need the status now, it is nice to have it if you want to add it in the future.

You can use a string or an integer as the status code, string is probably a bit more convenient for easy readability.

The message should be something that could be sent directly to the user, but mostly helpful to developers.

This is basically admitting that consumers don’t actually value their subscription service for the cost. If users were buying used bikes and signing up for subscriptions Peloton would be thrilled, they would do everything that they could to encourage that like free trials. But it must be that most people who buy used bikes don’t find the subscription worth it and cancel within a few months. Adding this fee both extracts more money and creates a sunk cost fallacy that will cause them to go longer before cancelling.

If the product sold itself they would just let people pay them subscriptions, its basically free money.

Vista sucked so bad. I got a nice new laptop and it was constant pain. One of the real breaking points was that it would refuse to let me modify or delete some files even as superuser. If I recall correctly they weren’t even system files, maybe a separate partition or something.

I tried installing XP but there was some sort of driver issue with my CD drive. It would start installing fine, but then once it tried to reboot off of the HDD to finish the installation it couldn’t find the installation CD to finish copying things, so the install just crashed half-way done.

I installed Ubuntu on a partition, dual booted for a while. After a few months I realized that I never even used the Windows partition anymore so I wiped it.

Likely what is happening is that the game is probing audio devices and triggering the mic on your headphones to get picked up. This switches them into the “headset” profile which has awful audio quality. I don’t know why the UI isn’t showing that, make sure you are checking while the game is running and the audio sounds bad.

If you want your headphone mic to work there is not much choice. There isn’t a standard bluetooth profile with good audio and mic. If you never want to use your headphone mic you can probably configure some advanced settings in your audio manager (probably PulseAudio or PipeWire).

These are all good points. This is why it is important to match your recommendations to the person. For example if I know they have Chrome and a Google account I might just recommend using that. Yes, it isn’t end-to-end encrypted and Google isn’t great for privacy but at least they are already managing logins over all of their devices.

In many cases perfect is the enemy of better. I would rather them use any password manager and unique passwords (even “a text file on their desktop”) than them sticking to one password anywhere because other solutions are too complicated.

It depends on your threat model. It does mostly reduce the benefit from 2FA, but you are probably still very safe if you use a random password per site. I mostly use 2FA when forced (other than a few high-value accounts) so I don’t worry about it. For most people having a random password which is auto-filled so that you don’t type it into the wrong site is more than sufficient to keep themselves secure.

Firefox Sync is end-to-end encrypted. So Firefox’s password manager with syncing does this.

Honestly nothing. I recommend this to everyone because it is the easiest way to set up and offers huge advantages.

1. No more password reuse, per site random passwords.
2. Auto-fill reduces chance of phishing attacks work because you get suspicious if the password doesn’t auto-fill.
3. Most browsers will integrate it into their sync service to reduce the risk of you losing your passwords.

I think these are the two biggest benefits and every browser password manager will accomplish both.

These are real issues however they are pretty easy to mitigate, and I would say that the upsides of a password manager far outweigh the downsides.

1. Make sure that you are regularly typing your master password for the first bit. After that you’ll never forget it. You can also help them out by saving a copy of their master password for them at least until they are sure they have memorized it. There are also password managers where you can recovery your account as long as you have the keys cached on at least one device.

2. This is far, far outweighed by the risk of password reuse. This is because when a single one of the sites you use gets hacked then people will take that credential list and try it on every other site. So with a password manager there is just one target, without it is one of hundreds of sites where you reused your password. Many password managers also have end-to-end encryption so without your password the sync service can’t be hacked (as it doesn’t have access to your passwords).

Basically they license out the system to companies. You can get a rough idea here: https://what3words.com/business

The idea is that by making it free to individuals they build up market familiarity and expectation. Free personal use is just marketing for the paid product. Then they can turn to businesses and convince them that they should offer their system as a service and charge them for it.

The closest alternative is probably Plus Codes. They are driven by Google but are free to use for everything with a pretty plain and simple Terms of Use.

Instead of words they use an alphanumeric encoding. The main downside is that this can be less memorable but the upside is that it works for users of all languages and you can shorten the codes by using a Country or City reference as well as control the precision.

what3words is proprietary and the owner is profit-hungry and litigious, I would recommend avoiding it.

Some basic info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words#Proprietary

The best option is probably using a geo: URL. This should open in all devices in their favourite mapping application. Example. If you want to link to a specific store or similar beyond just a location you can add a “query” which some apps will use to highlight that. Example.

Another decent option is Plus Codes. These are a bit shorter and easier to manage but lack a URL format as far as I can tell. MJ75+P3 Toronto, Ontario.

You can also just link to an alternative service such as Open Street Maps. This avoids Google but still imposes a particular service on others.

Also Canada, and I think in California.

Yeah, this is basically my line. If I intentionally subscribed I will be sure to unsubscribe properly once (maybe twice). But if it was unsolicited then it will be marked as spam.

Probably not. Google Ads explicitly allows mismatch between displayed domain and actual domain. This is literally a supported configuration with no tricks.

The link you sent gives me a “Redirect Notice” interstitial that mitigates this attack greatly.

Allowing showing different domains than the actual click target is wildly reckless and should be punishable.

“Oh but our poor advertisers want to use click tracking and it is too hard to set up on their main domain”. Oh boo hoo, I’m sure if it is important to them they will figure it out.

If they control the app they can read what they want anyways. If they are the end then E2EE doesn’t matter.