Hosting costs money. Theoretically (some) cryptocurrency can obfuscate that but… there is a reason graph problems got really popular again for a little bit.
But domain names also cost money. They also need to be registered to a person/company.
That is why a lot of torrent sites end up getting their domain stolen.
Also, all of this ignores the actual developers. But that is par for the course when it comes to discussing liability with open source projects.
Yeah. It is why I really like that Proton basically say "We will turn on you in an instant if we get a legal order. But here is what we’ll actually turn over and here is how you can minimize your vulnerability to that.
C&Ds and legal threats still go to a person who isn’t going to go to jail or have their wages garnished by Mario until the end of their days.
At best you have a single gitlab instance running in a country that is known to not cooperate with those kinds of demands. But… just ask the various torrent sites how well that works after actively pissing off an army of lawyers who don’t mind slipping a hosting company a couple hundred bucks to get the identity and address of the person paying for that.
Plenty of hosts and providers over the years have claimed to be super privacy oriented and blah blah blah. Once they get a legal request, they roll over. Because they aren’t going to prison for the customer anymore than they are going to prison for you.
Nope.
C&Ds and legal threats still go to a person who isn’t going to go to jail or have their wages garnished by Mario until the end of their days.
At best you have a single gitlab instance running in a country that is known to not cooperate with those kinds of demands. But… just ask the various torrent sites how well that works after actively pissing off an army of lawyers who don’t mind slipping a hosting company a couple hundred bucks to get the identity and address of the person paying for that.
What is the alternative?
Closed source “I swear this executable that will let you play all the games you want is legit” hosted on sourceforge or random websites that get hugged to death every day that ends in a y?
Also: it isn’t like that would stop this kind of legal action. MS/Github are barely a factor. It is the devs themselves getting the “hey, stop it or we’ll turn you into indentured servants” letters.
My understanding is a lot of those were just wrappers for mobi files to add even more drm, but I haven’t looked super closely.
I dunno. I used to be super hardcore about ripping every book and putting it in my calibre library. Then I eventually realized that… mostly I don’t care. There are very few books I am going to re-read and the majority of those were so good that I either want the hardcover to put on a shelf or don’t mind buying again from a vendor that gives the author a better percentage.
Doesn’t even really let you do that.
A “DRM Free” kindle ebook still basically requires a physical kindle (or shenanigans with apps) to even access the raw file of. If you just go to your content library to try and download it to transfer via USB you get told to pound sand and buy a kindle. That might change if you have a physical kindle registered to your account (I currently read exclusively via my phone and my onyx boox) but… yeah.
And yeah, as long as it is in The Cloud, amazon can do whatever they want. I am not aware of having any books removed from my account but I do recall having the option to “upgrade” an ebook to a newer version in the case of publisher screw ups.
Of course you don’t. Did anyone think otherwise?
Kindles have always slotted in as somewhere between the mass market paperbacks and trade paperbacks. Cheap books you read once or twice and then likely never again. If you do get in the mood to read it again? mobi files hold up a lot better than pulp designed to decay in order months but MMPBs always had a tendency to be lost forever just like amazon has a tendency to fuck with your library.
We live in a world where everything you do or say on the internet is potentially part of someone else’s training data. Lemmy is already a shitshow for that but you can bet that “ooh, piracy board” is fair game for everyone because nobody would be dumb enough to sue about that.
If someone wants to delete a comment for ANY reason, they are more than welcome to.
If y9ou are close enough to a system of importance that you can spray it, you are close enough to compromise it in countless other ways.
This is just one of many physical access attacks. Just like “you could take a hammer to it”
Like, I know people want to think this is some Ocean’s Eleven heist waiting to happen. It isn’t. This is only viable if you can drench an area with helium (which means you can already gas everyone you care about) or you have such close physical access that there are so many other things you could do. At best it is an episode of Burn Notice where Michael has to rapidly improvise an escape where his CIA handler of the week already refused to give him something much more useful.
If you are close enough to spray a device you are close enough to just steal it. Or spray the owner.
If you are in a position where you can dump random gases into the air supply to the degree it impacts these devices then they are likely compromised in other ways as well.
… mostly the other way around?
Theoretically it is possible that a compromised machine could compromise a USB stick. If you are at the point where you are having to worry about government or corporate entities setting traps at the local library? You… kind of already lost.
Which is the thing to understand. Most of what you see on the internet is, to borrow from a phrase, Privacy Theatre. It is so that people can larp and pretend they are Steve Rogers fighting a global conspiracy while necking with a hot co-worker at an Apple store. The reality is that if you are actually in a position where this level of privacy and security matters then you need to actually change your behaviors. Which often involves keeping VERY strong disconnects between any “personal” device and any “private” device.
There have been a lot of terrible (but wonderfully written) articles about journalists needing to do this because a government or megacorporation was after them. Stuff like having a secret laptop that they never even take out of a farraday cage unless they are closer than not to an hour away from wherever they are staying that night.
I think any “privacy oriented OS” is inherently a questionable (kneejerk: Stupid and reeks of stale honey) strategy in the first place.
A very good friend of mine is a journalist. The kind of journalist where… she actually deals with the shit the average person online larps and then some. And what I and her colleagues have suggested is the following:
Two flash drives
Given the option? Boot the public computer to the live image. Regardless, use the latter to access whatever chat or email accounts (that NEVER are logged into on any machine you “own” or near your home) you need.
It isn’t about being reasonable.
If you are expected to track your time to this degree (and, to make it clear, the majority of employers actively don’t want you to), there is a reason. That reason usually being different funding sources. Generally a mix of grants and clients.
And if a client or grant source finds out you are lying about those? Maybe you only had enough work to do 34 hours instead of 40 hours in one week. Would you be cool paying extra because the guy repairing your muffler had a slow week?
And if people think being proud of a tool that openly talks about what everyone else silently does isn’t a red flag for employers? Hey, its a great job market so I am sure none of that will matter.
Tracking time is fine.
Normalizing your time to the hours you were supposed to work is a massive no no. Especially if you are expected to break down your hours per project.
I mean, you obviously do it. But you never put it in writing.
Pretending the most important use of bit torrent is Linux ISO’s is the kind of cya that people giggle at.
If a candidate I am interviewing has a tool to change their reported hours to me or clients on their public GitHub? That person is radioactive no matter how many times they say “but don’t do anything naughty wink wink”
So … it is a tool to automate time fraud?
Make sure to put this front and center on your CV
Is saving the game from an early leak worth getting rid of physical games? I hope not.
As a PC gamer who has been basically digital only since the late 00s/early 10s? Probably?
But the thing to remember is that, like with DRM, the studios have this data. There are orgs dedicated to analyzing (and selling…) sales data that can detect the impact that Mass Effect PC being “unplayable” for pirates because of securom for the first week or so had on sales (anecdotal but… probably real positive). Because this kind of stuff costs money (well, less so for removing a disc drive…) and they aren’t going to do that if they think it will hurt revenue.
And they change nothing? It still boils down to human beings being liable.