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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: February 17th, 2026

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  • To give it to you straight: it would take roughly 1.2 unvigintillion years (that’s a 1 followed by 51 zeros) for the fastest supercomputer on Earth to brute-force AES-256 encryption. In other words, AES-256 is practically unbreakable by modern computing standards. Even if you hijacked every computer on the planet, the sun would literally burn out and the entire universe would experience heat death long before you even made a dent. The above commenter apparently has “foundational level knowledge” of computer systems, yet thinks they can put backdoors into their own products.

    Just to give you an idea of how this actually functions in their products; Apple comprehensively bakes encryption into both the hardware and software levels of iPhones and iPads by default, making it one of the most secure consumer operating systems available. Every modern Apple device features a dedicated coprocessor called the Secure Enclave which leverages a Built-in Crypto Engine, to ensure that that all data stored on the device’s flash storage is encrypted at the hardware level using an AES-256 crypto engine. On top of that, they utilise UIDs (Unique Device Keys) which are physically fused into the device’s silicon , Unique Device Keys: A Unique ID (UID) is physically fused into the device’s silicon during manufacturing. Neither Apple nor the iOS software itself can read this key directly. It is used to generate the base keys that encrypt the entire file system (including the OS itself). Because the encryption is tied to the specific hardware, they are not even capable of engineering their own backdoors into their systems, without completely breaking the entire underlying security architecture, which underpins all their devices.



  • It’s not about me trusting these proprietary systems, it’s about me trusting mathematics, and basing my decisions off historical facts. Apple can’t just “magic” backdoors into their devices, and since a significant part of their business model has been in pioneering widespread commercial data privacy, it would literally go against their entire business interests. OS backdoors do compromise devices, which is why Apple pays > $1M for bug bounty hunters who find them first.

    The problem with you, is that you have no foundational knowledge of how digital devices work, and that’s understandable given how widespread these technologies have become. But trust me when I say, cybersecurity isn’t a multi-billion dollar industry for no reason, individuals and large corporations pay a shit ton of money to guarantee they aren’t shooting in the dark with their systems security & privacy. If you wanna learn more about this stuff, I highly recommend watching Edward Snowden’s video interviews where he talks extensively about what he found in the leaks he made about the NSA, because he’s able to detail a lot about what intelligence agencies can and can’t do when it comes to this stuff.

    Keep in mind though, that encryption has been a fundamental game changer which makes it impossible for the CIA even to create a giant search engine that indexes everyone’s data, that was only possible back then because everything was sent in plain text with practically zero wifi security. Now wifi security has become a cybersecurity speciality in and of itself.


  • You are not “giving the key to the cops” with Apple, I am so sick of seeing this bullshit misinformation online regarding user privacy. iCloud storage now provides the ability for users to store their encryption keys on their own devices locally, see ‘Advanced Data Protection’. On top of that, even Apple doesn’t have the ability to access user encrypted cloud data, because no one besides possibly state level agencies, has the capability to crack AES-256 encryption; hence why it is the industry standard. There was even the famous San Bernadino Legal Case case where Apple flat out denied the FBI a backdoor into a known terrorist’s phone because of the wide-scale security risks it would’ve introduced into their devices. In the end they had to buy a backdoor exploit from an Australian Cyber firm.

    Has Apple been notorious for traditionally overspending on advertising, packaging, and hype campaigns to justify higher prices? Absolutely, but in ~2020 Apple realised this wasn’t sustainable (at least for their phones) and made a significant pivot towards more affordable iphones. They first test ran this in 2018 when they launched the iPhone XR for $749 alongside the $999 iPhone XS. Then in 2020 they made the actual pivot with the release of the iPhone SE (2nd Gen) for just $399, placing flagship processing power in an older chasis. Then in 2022 they decided to make the same pivot with their Laptops, and for the first time in modern history, Apple intentionally cultivated a tiered budget laptop strategy.. Then you have the release of the Macbook Neo as recently as last year, and now Apple is now starting to make budget competitive laptop models.

    Anyways I sincerely apologise for these massive walls of text, I promise I am not an Apple shill, I have just been extremely passionate about computing hardware and cybersecurity ever since I began my unboxing video and Edward Snowden interview phase as a kid, so I have been following the evolution of the 2010s hardware and digital landscape era for the entirety of my childhood and adolescence; at a certain point, you get sick and tired of seeing people outright lie and spread misinformation that ends up causing people to make terrible misinformed decisions. What I hate more than anything however, is specifically those who end up demotivating people from exercising proper cyber hygiene (because of doomer propaganda), and making terrible product decisions (especially when it comes to Apple) because of historical misalignments with today’s current technology trends (see the .com bubble burst, death of netscape + internet explorer, death of widespread user forums and the corporatisation of the internet, the end of Google’s public perception of innocence, and the rise of ML and AI integration).

    If you’re to take anything away from this rant it should be the awareness that the technological landscape is evolving so fast that you can never be certain you’re making an informed decision, without first verifying the validity of whatever beliefs are informing your choice. Something easy you can do, is get into the habit of always asking yourself “Are these beliefs based on current or past facts?”- this line of reasoning has never once failed me my entire life, and I should know considering I’ve been browsing the web for as long as I’ve known how to read.







  • I’m not surprised, companies are starting to realise that AI is only as useful as the data it’s trained on. If you blast it with all the internet slop we have completely unfiltered, it’s going to start fucking up all it’s responses. It’s not just about the volume of data, it’s about the quality of that data. Sites like Github, and academic journals, contain the exact data that companies need to create well rounded LLMs, that don’t go off on racist rants and declare themselves as “MechaHitler”. That makes data like Github’s pure gold.


  • Yeah same, but I’m really upset at the amount of quality content netflix keeps killing. They literally had a David Fincher TV series Mindhunters, that was absolutely incredible, but cancelled it due to “costs”. The reality is, if Netflix just invested more into a smaller amount of films and shows, they could have made so much more money off them, by pushing them into the media spotlight. But instead they choose to give up every time something doesn’t look profitable.


  • S4m_S3p1l@infosec.pubtoFlippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.cominfinite money
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    3 months ago

    The problem is that COVID paralysed a lot of the extroverts, especially the extroverted children and teens. For me personally I can attest that the COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia, destroyed my sociability. But I’m maturing now, and I’m realising that I need to find others like me, because if this is a widespread problem effecting billions of other people, that means there are people out there that are ready to start getting to work, they just need support from others like myself. I think the degree to which the lockdowns impacted people’s cognitive health, was severely overlooked. But we can get through this, and we can fight back, they wouldn’t be introducing hate speech laws and trying to ban social media around the world if they weren’t worried of a collective voice forming on the internet.



  • Absolutely, although as a Sydneysider, I generally have pretty good bus services where I live. The only thing that makes my blood boil is how awful the bus drivers can be to children. There was one day I had to catch the bus to the library after school, and it was storming a fuck ton. This group of highschoolers get on, and some of them don’t tap on and go and sit down. The bus driver, an old grey haired lady yells her head off at the back of the bus, but since they had already sat down, she couldn’t find them. So she decides the only thing left for her to do, is to stand by the Opal card reader, and force every single person to tap on. You might be thinking “well fine she’s pissed, but those guys should’ve just tapped on right?”

    Well this little kid jumps on, and he looks no older than 12 years old. He asks, in a voice I can barely make out over the raging storm outside “can I come on? My family just moved here and I don’t have a card yet” - to which the decrepit bus driver yells “Not on my watch, get out of here! No one is allowed on this bus unless everyone taps on!”, she then proceeds to shove him to the middle of the entrance before shoving him outside.

    I remember kicking myself the rest of the trip to the library - I was furious at myself for not having recorded what she had done, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the week. No one, especially not a child, deserves to be forced out of a bus in the middle of a thunderstorm.

    So every time someone praises public transport here, I’m grateful for the comfortable experience I get to enjoy. But each and every time someone praises the buses, the first thing I can think of is that little boy, and how despite confessing to the bus driver he was new to the area, was pushed into the middle of a raging thunderstorm.



  • It’s unbelievable how much more powerful, livable, and culturally cohesive you could be as a country, if you had a government that wanted to actually solve systematic problems to make life better for all Americans. Imagine an alternate reality where the US gov actually worked to provide you with the essentials you need to survive? The US could’ve become objectively, the strongest cornerstone of western democracy, cemented in a history of moral altruism.

    This website visualises the ultra wealthy to scale, with examples of issues that could’ve been solved using this money, such as:

    • Chemotherapy for Every Cancer Patient: The site states that the annual cost of chemotherapy for all cancer patients is approximately $9 billion. It then points out that Jeff Bezos made that much money in just 40 days in 2018.
    • Malaria Eradication: It highlights that a tiny fraction of the wealth of the 400 richest Americans could eradicate malaria globally.
    • Ending Homelessness: The visualization includes the cost to house every homeless veteran in the United States.
    • Clean Water: It estimates the cost of providing clean water and waste disposal to every human on earth.
    • Testing for COVID-19: During the pandemic, the site was updated to show that **Bezos’s wealth could easily pay to test every single person in the U.S. for the virus. ** and the US would still easily be the richest country in the world. This is without even taking into account the sheer amount of wealth the US and it’s politicians possess as a whole country.

    So in short, if the US gov actually wanted to help support their own population the US could have:

    • Eradicated homelessness, malaria, chemotherapy costs, water scarcity + waste colonialism, and COVID-19 test costs.
    • Provided universal free chemotherapy to every single cancer patient in the US
    • The best and most affordable healthcare system in the world
    • The best education system
    • The most affordable housing system
    • The best Transport
    • Solved and you’d still have more than enough money to invest in your military, intelligence agencies, and crucial architecture that big business relies on.

    Yes that means that every single problem that Americans suffer with, is optional. The only reason Americans don’t have all these things, is because the wealthiest people in the world have decided that instead of working in symbiosis with the rest of humanity, they would rather feed off of and suppress the 99%.

    The top 1% wants ownership over the whole planet. It isn’t enough to live obscenely luxurious lives, they want total control over everyone’s values, beliefs, actions, and decisions. They want to own you, they want to own me, and they want to own everyone else. To them we’re the **equivalent of house squatters living off THEIR real-estate. ** So how exactly do they solve that problem? They can’t exactly go and evict 9 billion people without serious repercussions. Yet BlackRock bought Christmas Island and has invested so much in housing; along with billionaires like Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos, even bought their own islands. So what do they do if they can’t evict us? They do the next best thing; ** destroy our autonomy, ** forcing us to rely entirely on them, through legal retribution. How? By criminalising ownership, and forcing everyone to pay subscription fees for everything.

    First it was music and podcasts. Then movies and TV shows, digital and audio books, as well as social media. So what’s left? Well, the only thing not on that list are the essentials, and they’re already coming for those too. Think housing, water, food, cars (eventually public transport). If you thought communism, is bad, oligarchy is much worse, just look at Russia.

    If you’re someone that thinks this will never happen to us, think again. Musk is already looking at implementing paid subscriptions to unlock features in Tesla cars

    We can fight back. We can stop things from getting worse, and we can undo the damage that’s been done. But** only if we can overcome the social divisions they are purposely funding in order to keep everyone from organising against them**. We have to become active participants in our communities, if we want to ever live in a truly free world. That might look like something as small as spending time with your family and friends, or helping volunteer with clean up in your council. Whatever you do it is clear, the only way for humanity to survive the commercialized corporate hellscape Earth is becoming, is by coming together in spite of our differences, to fight for something bigger than all of us individually; a world whose freedoms are no longer held hostage by the top 1%.