I’m sure Londoners were consulted on this prior and given the chance to vote on whether they wanted these implemented /s

I bet they make good target practice

Apple fanboys, buy a new phone every year when the new one comes out

The ‘new phone every year’ types are usually on a contract with their carrier where they get the latest model every x amount of months/years. Most aren’t buying it outright

I keep my phones for 5-7 years. Generally once it stops receiving security updates I’ll get a new one

Are you talking about tools to check for security holes in a network? NMap can give you info about your devices and open ports. But that’s more of a cybersecurity topic

Have you got a Mac too? You can just sync your photos to that and store them locally, then sync them back across to your devices. That’s what I do, no cloud storage involved and you get more control over which devices have which photos

Once the technology is implemented and ubiquitous it would only take a secret government mandate and a gag order for the code to be altered to listen for particular words and phrases and log them

Could this be solved with software that would just print its own random yellow dots to make the code unreadable? At the cost of wasted ink

Is it not accurate? That’s exactly what happened in Australia with similar laws. I was able to use a fake ID to bypass it but without that I wouldn’t be able to use any iOS/macOS device without restrictions

If you’ve got the money, blank burner phone and/or laptop. If you get questioned just say your regular devices are expensive and you were afraid of losing them/damaging them while traveling

Gotta ignore what they’re telling the public and listen to what they’re telling their shareholders and customers

I’d 100% take the job if you haven’t already. The technology exists and will be used with or without your involvement. Being in the industry gives you valuable info about how the tools work and what they’re capable of. Our fight against mass surveillance would be useless without people on the inside who have knowledge about what our enemies can do. We would have no idea what devices and operating systems Cellebrite can break into without the documents being leaked a while back, for example.

Not saying you should immediately leak sensitive info (don’t do anything dumb), but if you put your head down and be careful you can help us fight the good fight while doing a job you enjoy.

Well at least they’re giving people the option. Most other companies just declare they’re giving themselves permission to use your data unless you opt-out (meaning if you’ve lost access to the account you’ve got no way to stop them)

Don’t worry guys its only for specific high-danger events like ‘crowded areas’, easy enough to avoid

I think people who’ve had bank accounts frozen or seized by their government for attending a protest might disagree with you

I haven’t tried them for online shopping yet.

They mostly work from what I’ve used, but since websites are able to tell them apart from regular credit cards it’s up to them to decide. YMMV but most subscriptions won’t allow a prepaid card to be used as payment, but for one-off purchases they typically work fine

It is getting worse though. I’m getting more and more “payment processor declined card” errors while using them even on sites that used to accept them. I think in the past they’ve been kinda obscure but now they’re rising in popularity as people try to protect their privacy. And so more sites are cracking down on them

It’s kind of like VoIP numbers. They used to work for SMS verification everywhere but now it’s pretty rare to find any website that won’t detect and block them

In this day and age if you don’t see the value of a decentralised currency that no government can control, you’re very naive

It has to be a mobile device with a phone number. When I tried this out a while ago the QR code prompts your phone to open its SMS app to send a text message. It can’t be opened on a desktop

Depends on your threat model and what you’re intending to guard against. You’re running an unsupported version of macOS so we’ll address that first, if you don’t mind losing 32-bit app support I would consider upgrading to Catalina at least. 10.14 Mojave stopped receiving security updates in 2021.

If you’re worried about someone physically getting your laptop I would enable FileVault in System Preferences with a strong password (you can enable it for the boot drive and also removable drives like USB sticks), and make sure you shut the laptop down whenever you’re leaving it somewhere.

TextEdit can work for writing simple documents but LibreOffice is a good option too, but the macOS port isn’t very good (lots of bugs and it runs slow af for me but YMMV)

I wouldn’t be so sure. As more and more countries apply these laws it’ll be easier for companies to just enforce it for everyone instead of having to keep track of where it’s required

Depends what device you’re using. I’ve only done it on a desktop using apps like CamTwist