Headline News Thread II: Meanwhile...

[aparch]

Connecticut land owner finds out a South African scammer somehow signed away his property to be sold and developed.

https://www.ctinsider.com/columnist/...t-18261063.php

[SonofSouthie]

Hit 'em where it hurts.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/7/23...udgment-denied

[Kepler]

Hit 'em where it hurts.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/7/23...udgment-denied

Make it 5 trillion.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Hit 'em where it hurts.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/7/23...udgment-denied

The only thing these "private" browsing modes really do is keep URLs out of your browser history. Basically, it's for HS boys (and more than a few grown men) who want to browse pr0n, or "manosphere" sites, or look up the effects of specific weed strains without having to remember to clear their history like we did back in 2003.

[Kepler]

The only thing these "private" browsing modes really do is keep URLs out of your browser history. Basically, it's for HS boys (and more than a few grown men) who want to browse pr0n, or "manosphere" sites, or look up the effects of specific weed strains without having to remember to clear their history like we did back in 2003.

I don't think clearing your browser history fixes it. It seems like every Muslim who gets popped always has evidence of linking to sites with bomb instructions, and every Christian preacher who gets popped always has a hard drive full of "child porn*." I assume these people -- the actual bad guys, not the innocent victims of fishing -- are clearing their cache. There must be other things going on under the hood.

* I've never understood this, and always assumed when the cops say somebody has 5 PB of child porn what they mean is the guy has been cruising RedTube and searching on "uncle and niece" videos, and the DOJ assumes every non-registered porn actress is 15. Which... I mean maybe, but I have a hard time believing more than a handful of criminally insane people are actually downloading the equivalent of the Library of Congress of actual child porn on Torrent and then keeping the files around. I would assume with perversity also comes a healthy dose of paranoia. So I always think it's the cop equivalent of "we found $2M street value of drugs" when it's a 2/3rds empty vial of meth and a broken hash pipe.

[Swansong]

I use incognito mode for adult viewing solely because I don't want it cluttering up my history. I'm fully aware of the limitations otherwise.


That said, f Alphabet.

[French Rage]

Which... I mean maybe, but I have a hard time believing more than a handful of criminally insane people are actually downloading the equivalent of the Library of Congress of actual child porn on Torrent and then keeping the files around.

I think you're forgetting how dumb the average person is.

[Kepler]

I think you're forgetting how dumb the average person is.

I expect more from my criminals.

[Kepler]

I use incognito mode for adult viewing solely because I don't want it cluttering up my history. I'm fully aware of the limitations otherwise.

I've always assumed this is like the button on the street light that doesn't do anything but eases the user's mind.

Even VPNs probably don't do anything if they want to discover where you go on the internet. It makes it harder to trace and Glenn Youngkin's morality theater doesn't have the brains or patience, but the FBI looking for your drug lord history will have both the brains and the patience.

[Kepler]

This month's solid headline.

[Kepler]

Who is the greatest American athlete of the 21st century so far, and why can't you immediately think of their name?

[walrus]

Who is the greatest American athlete of the 21st century so far, and why can't you immediately think of their name?

I watched some of championships routines. Amazing stuff. Pound for pound some of the strongest athletes in the country.

[unofan]

I've always assumed this is like the button on the street light that doesn't do anything but eases the user's mind.

Even VPNs probably don't do anything if they want to discover where you go on the internet. It makes it harder to trace and Glenn Youngkin's morality theater doesn't have the brains or patience, but the FBI looking for your drug lord history will have both the brains and the patience.

It's more that when you delete something it's not actually erased, it's just removed from the normal index and marked by the OS as free space able to be overwritten. Until that particular segment of the disk / flash memory / whatever is actually overwritten by something new, however, it's still there and accessible to those with the tools to do so, such as the police who basically just take an image of the entire drive when they do a phone dump.

[dxmnkd316]

It's more that when you delete something it's not actually erased, it's just removed from the normal index and marked by the OS as free space able to be overwritten. Until that particular segment of the disk / flash memory / whatever is actually overwritten by something new, however, it's still there and accessible to those with the tools to do so, such as the police who basically just take an image of the entire drive when they do a phone dump.

Magnetic media is even worse. Every time it overwrites, it doesn't exactly stay within the lines. So to really erase something, you need to write random bits something like 10-20 times. We used to call that DBANing the computer. Derek's boot and nuke. (Or something like that.)

SSDs are a bit more complicated since they aren't striped like HDDs. I don't know if it's still the case, but back when SSDs came out, the controller would pretty much take the most efficient and speediest chunk of space it could find to write a bit. They weren't typically sequential. So if you fried the controller it was impossible to recover the data. You'd basically need to randomly brute force your way to detangle it.

[aparch]

FBI investigating a car explosion near the Rainbow Bridge in Buffalo, NY.

All other western NY crossings with Canada are closed for now.