Is your humanity being questioned?

[MegabiteOG]

Bacon aside, my confidence in the future has dropped through the floor in the last few months.

AI's used to be a minor annoyance. They are presently a rising problem, and before long, I am quite confident they will cause major issues, driven by malevolent actors and AI's that decide how to solve "problems" in ways that were not anticipated by their designers.

What you wrote reminded me about the movie….

 

[NJHC]

I must get this message 30 - 40 times a day.

Download the app it’s the easiest coolest thing

 

[MegabiteOG]

If the Hunt Brothers would have only had the foresight and not mucked around with silver.

Great reference!

 

[MegabiteOG]

Download the app it’s the easiest coolest thing

I have it, but prefer the web interface. I usually prefer it for just about anything. Old people, huh?

 

[A_Blind_Reefer]

Spam is not bacon, but SPAM is amazing.

Slice your spam
Fry your spam somewhat crispy
Sprinkle your fried spam with brown sugar
Fry your brown sugar coated spam a bit longer
Crispy sweet salty spam treats
Thank me later

As I child I did call the resulting goodness "spam bacon" and that is allowable because I said it is.

I’ve been told as much (that spam is yummy goodness) pretty much my entire life. I just can’t seem to get past the texture enough to try it, one of those neurodivergent issues of mine. My gramps always told me that they wouldn’t have survived the war without Spam and Tabasco. I guess there wasn’t a ton of room for provisions on those old wooden hulled mine sweepers.

I guess I need to get over it and try out your recipe before we’re eliminated in 2030! Ha

 

[A_Blind_Reefer]

What you wrote reminded me about the movie….

Joshua

 

[Bob Weigant]

Never seen it before

 

[MegabiteOG]

Never seen it before

WarGames circa 1983. Hard to believe that movie was 43 years ago.

 

[Bob Weigant]

WarGames circa 1983. Hard to believe that movie was 43 years ago.

Now I feel even older

 

[commod0re]

A VPN can prevent DNS hijacking when connected to a rogue network.

it can also prevent or mitigate other forms of man-in-the middle attacks, as well as evil twin attacks (rogue hotspots). It also foils surveillance by other members of the local network including that network's administrators, which when combined with a wide variety of low-effort mitm attacks can be used to do all kinds of bad things like bypass https, hijack sessions, steal credit card numbers, kick dogs, etc

and most consumer VPNs do not disable LAN access by default.

you're way out of date on this unfortunately, this hasn't been true since 2019. The main remaining known exception to this is the tunnelvision attack

My basic point was that, for the average user, consumer VPNs create more problems than they solve

and I agree with that in the majority of cases

while protecting against an unlikely attack.

more than one, not super common in general but they do happen. I know multiple people who have been compromised on hotel wifi for example, but simply not connecting to hotel wifi at all is even more effective and also costs zero dollars so I recommend that more lol

 

[commod0re]

WarGames circa 1983. Hard to believe that movie was 43 years ago.

 

[MegabiteOG]

Now I feel even older

You and me both!

 

[BeanAnimal]

it can also prevent or mitigate other forms of man-in-the middle attacks...

You agreed with my basic point. What remains are edge cases and specific attacks and vulnerabilities that are not relevant to the vast majority of users or use cases. I have no wish to keep expanding a general observation into an exhaustive public discussion of every possible attack vector, it clouds the original point.

I am not out of date. This has been my profession for nearly three decades, across thousands of endpoints, networks, services, and users. I am happy to discuss the technical details privately if you are genuinely interested, but the general point stands: in the current era of rapidly expanding bot mitigation and user-authenticity filtering, a consumer VPN is becoming more of a nuisance to the average user than a shield against the attacks they are actually likely to face.

 

[Dan_P]

My master plan is to not shut down the internet, but rather to simply have all bacon routed to me.

If you want to be shocked, go look at the stats for bot traffic and SPAM vs human traffic. Your jaw will drop.

I have not looked in a while but last I did, bad bots and automated spam were said to be 40% of all internet traffic, while total bot traffic (good and bad combined) regularly outnumbered actual human beings browsing the web.

Send me your home address. I am going back to letter writing. We’ll be the new cool kids.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Send me your home address. I am going back to letter writing. We’ll be the new cool kids.

Please send $7 and a S.A.S.E. and I'll mail you the plan back, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams if you follow it. Hint: it's as easy as crossing names off a list and asking people to send you $7 and an S.A.S.E. to get a copy of the plan.

 

[Dan_P]

Please send $7 and a S.A.S.E. and I'll mail you the plan back, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams if you follow it. Hint: it's as easy as crossing names off a list and asking people to send you $7 and an S.A.S.E. to get a copy of the plan.

Nice! I can see how this might work. I can raise the $7 by selling all the syringes I have accumulated from used up test kits.

 

[kevgib67]