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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2024

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  • Discord’s audio and video end-to-end encryption (“E2EE A/V” or “E2EE” for short)

    That last bit is a little concerning. E2EE is widely understood to mean full end-to-end encryption of communications, not selective encryption of just the audio/video bits while passing the text around in the clear. If Discord starts writing “E2EE” for short when describing their partial solution, it is likely to mislead people into thinking their text chats are protected, or thinking that Discord is comparable to real E2EE systems. They aren’t, and it isn’t.

    We want an E2EE A/V protocol that is publicly auditable

    Their use of the word “auditable” here is also concerning. What does it mean for a protocol to be auditable? Sure, it’s nice that they’re publishing their design, but that doesn’t allow independent audit of the implementation that actually runs on their servers and (importantly) people’s devices. Without publicly auditable code that can be independently, built, run, and used instead of the binaries they provide, there’s no practical way to know that it matches the design that was reviewed. And even if code is made available, without a way to verify that the code being run is the code that was inspected, any claim giving the impression that the system was audited is misleading at best.

    During the rollout phase, a single non-supporting member being present forces the call to transport-only encryption. The call will automatically “upgrade” to E2EE if that member disconnects.

    This sort of thing has historically been ripe for abuse. (See also: downgrade attack.) I hope they are very careful about how they implement it.

    The protocol uses Messaging Layer Security (MLS) for group key exchange

    Interesting. This makes me wonder if their motivation might be eventual compliance with the European Digital Markets Act. If that is the case, perhaps they also have a plan in the works for protecting text chats?

    My early impression, based on what they wrote:

    This won’t fix Discord’s major fundamental flaws. However, if their E2EE A/V design holds up to scrutiny, and if they were to fix their problematic language and provide truly auditable client code, the protection offered for audio & video could at least reduce Discord users’ exposure to unwanted harvesting of voice & face samples. A step in the right direction, and a timely one, given that biometric data collection and AI impersonation are on the rise.






  • We could quibble about the details, but all of them are fundamentally last-man-standing competitions.

    The Hunger Games was indeed one of them. I didn’t mention it because it’s the most obvious one in current cultural memory (no need for me to point it out) and because Battle Royale came a decade earlier, and Battle Royal half a century before that. The characters’ situation is probably older than printed words.

    Even if a competitive game format was unique to the Hindi film, it would be tough to argue that nobody else could have thought of that detail when making their own variation of the same theme. Calling it a “blatant rip-off” of Luck (2009) is quite a stretch.

    (Incidentally, the Luck synopsis that I read says it focuses on gambling, not competitive trials or children’s games. A quick look at the video confirms it.)








  • That number is a single manufacturer’s performance target. It is not a guarantee of results. You might be able to get Intel to replace an SSD if it corrupts data in under 52 weeks (assuming you notice it) but your data will still be gone.

    Hardware performance can and does vary by manufacturer, model, and production run. Even the nominally identical cores within a single CPU have slightly different operating limits. YMMV.

    Note also: the 52 week target you quoted is halved for every 5° rise in temperature.


  • I explained that they ought to be recipes to new media every N number of years or risk deteriorating or becoming unreadable

    This is important, and for some media, it should be more often than that.

    People forget that flash memory uses electrical charge to store data. It’s not durable. If left unpowered for too long, that data will get corrupted. A failure might not even be visible without examining every bit of every file.

    Keep backups. Include recovery data (e.g. PAR2). Store them on multiple media. Keep them well-maintained (e.g. give flash drives power). Mind their environment. Copy them to new storage devices before the old ones become obsolete.

    It’s funny that with all our technology, paper is still the most durable storage medium (under normal conditions) that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.






  • How would this control people selling their used hardware? I don’t see anything about Sony trying to disable resold consoles.

    you’ll get “a product that works like new with genuine PlayStation replacement parts (as needed) that has been thoroughly cleaned, inspected and tested”. You will receive all the cables and paperwork you need for a PS5, and it comes with a 12-month manufacturer’s warranty

    That’s worth a premium to some people.