It tells when the user is online. This is useful for sending spam, because being on top of the inbox makes it more likely your message will be read.

To be fair, I doubt anyone’s implemented this specifically for ICMP. Instead I’d expect tracking that watches for any IP traffic whatsoever, and that happens to include ICMP.

ICMP reveals your IP address, which is easily correlated with other traffic…

Ahh, “Weev” is a four-letter version of “Weave” the same way “Chex” is a shortened “Checkerboard”, perhaps referring to the Ralston Purina checkerboard logo.

But what’s Weev?

And IntelliSync, so you could have the same contacts in your PC and your Palm Pilot.

I still wouldn’t trust it because of homograph attacks.

There’s a fatal flaw in the premise. It is impossible to fasten something to a cat.

Yeah. The huge legal distinctions between different ways of unlocking a device seem absurd. Comprehensive privacy legislation would help.

Authorities with a warrant can drill into a safe to get to its contents. That’s legally distinct from forcing someone to unlock the safe by entering the combination. It takes some mental effort to enter a combination, so it counts as “testimony”, and in the USA people can’t be forced to testify against themselves.

The parallel in US law is that people can be forced to unlock a phone using biometrics, but they can’t be forced to unlock a phone by entering a passcode. The absurd part here is that the actions have the same effect, but one of them can be compelled and the other cannot.

The downloadable shortcut described here also worked for me.

I assume you’re referring to Safari on iOS. I was able to select all on that Project Gutenberg page with a little-known scrolling trick:

1. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Yes, this part is a bit annoying but I was able to do that in 8 seconds with 25 full-screen flicks.
2. Long-press near the bottom of the page to start text selection.
3. Grab the bottom lollipop and drag it to the end of the page to select the last character.
4. Grab the top lollipop and drag it around a little to select more text. Don’t release it, and hold it still.
5. With a different finger, tap the status bar at the top of the screen. This is a shortcut for scrolling to the top of the page. Give it a couple seconds to finish scrolling. If you move the lollipop at all while it’s scrolling it will interrupt the scrolling, so keep that finger still until it’s done.
6. Now that you’re near the top of the page, drag the lollipop to the very top of the page and release it. The copy option should appear.

There’s no way to prove that something is secure. (It reduces to the halting problem.)

This is a terrible idea. It’s negligibly better than writing down the passwords, because it’s trivially easy to try every password represented on this card. Once someone has the card, your entropy is just two characters, which is the two characters you memorize for the site. In effect, you have a 2 character password.

One of the ways I do this is “spot the lie” when an ad comes on. Virtually every ad has some lie in it, even if it’s small. Buying this brand of car will make a sexy person like me (nobody cares what you drive). Altria Group is altruistic (they kill millions with cigarettes). Adopting a pet today will make you happy (Not everyone can care for a pet, and sometimes it’s miserable). A price of $4.99 is basically $4 (it’s really $5). I practice this, talking about why the ads exist and why they are effective, the biases they tap into. Everyone is vulnerable to manipulation like that. And then I extended that to some of the videos my kids watch. Why are the Ninja Kidz playing with that toy the entire episode? Because they were paid to do it. It’s just another ad.

Then that skill pivots to other things. Religion behaves the same way, selling itself to people. Conspiracy theories do this as well. And sometimes other people are doing the advertising right to your face, and they may not even realize it.

In short, equip your kid with the best BS detector that you can, and then let them find their way.

You can’t fight brainwashing by providing more facts. It doesn’t work. Brainwashing gives the victim mechanisms to reject new facts that contradict the false beliefs. The false beliefs become a part of a person’s identity, so it’s tied into self esteem and confidence. So that’s how you have to approach it: find ways to challenge the false beliefs that don’t also challenge their sense of self. For adults this is very difficult.

But for children, it’s easier. During the teen years children are trying on identities like they’re trying on clothes. Give you child a look at a good, comfortable identity. It should make them confident, give them a community they feel comfortable in, and not make enemies of the ones they love.

I find that scientific skepticism does this by giving people the tools to think rationally about the world, spot ways that the world tries to deceive them, and giving an understanding of why those deceptions are effective.

I’d prefer a commander from Supreme Commander. It can raise an entire military by itself, and it’s much hardier than basic builders. It’s deadly up close. Even if you somehow defeat it, your reward is a nuclear explosion.

Who gave lipstick to a sarlacc?