Wandering Adventure Party

@cstross Damn. If only Britain had a prime minister with communication skills

@ShadowJonathan Torstein Veblen. "The Instinct of Workmanship". Somebody is on the brink of inventing UBI here.

@tdr @independentpen @arrakeen_urbanite @briankrebs Also, tourism is an export product. If they want to sabotage their export to us, that doesn't force us to do an equally dumb thing in reverse.

@notsoloud @randahl And now that you mention it

Landing at Bornholm - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

@courtcan @jztusk @aadeacon @cdarwin That's their heritage.

@mmorschel

> it's about banking apps

It's about even being able to have a bank account.

@techglimmer Beautifully written, appreciated. I will make some footnotes.

Yes, the privacy kill switch is a good thing, but it isn't a total privacy solution. It's still an Internet-connected smartphone with lots of apps that offer a large attack surface. Linux helps, but even Linux can be hacked. And once a hostile actor is inside, it can hear and read what you say, hear, read or write. Even in Signal, which encrypts your data only in transit. Keeping the Internet connection off (what I assume the kill switch does also, both mobile telephony and WiFi) helps, but then, nobody can call you on Signal...

BTW 'You can actually see what the code is doing instead of just taking a company’s word for it.' True in a way, but the dynamic is a bit different. The thing is that _anybody_ who wants to can see and analyse the code, and many will. That helps _you_ even if you're no nerd.

Yes, this phone will draw the curtains on the corporate tech panopticon - and that is good enough for most users - but a motivated state actor? If you're a journalist, activist, or working in defence or intelligence, this phone may be just a good starting point...

@evan @pluralistic @vkc Why reverse engineering and hacking firmware should be legal, and even constitutionally protected. It's a crazy tech panopticon we live in, and legislation is blind as a bat to it.

@futurebird Yep, the textbook definition of a bad question

@panda @tzimmer_history There is indeed a risk of this. The German Baader-Meinhof group of Rote Armee Fraktion was to some extent driven by a failure to come to terms with the Nazi era, in the form of ex-Nazis making it to positions of wealth and power in the German federal republic.