I don’t think that’s how it works? It’s the client application that has the key for the end to end encryption, not the server. I don’t think you need to trust the matrix server you use? I could be wrong, I don’t know matrix particularly well.

Yeah, that’s fair enough, though I’m not sure it’s very different from malicious instances creating normal user accounts?

You can see when users from an instance are all suspiciously voting the same way at the same time regardless of whether they are usernames or IDs.

There’s lots of legitimate users that only vote but never post so doing it based on that doesn’t seem very effective?

The second problem is solved using public key cryptography, the same way that you can’t impersonate someone else’s username to post comments. Votes and comments are digitally signed (There would need to be a different public key for voting to maintain pseudonymity though).

How about pseudonymous as a compromise? Votes could be publicly federated but tied to some uuid instead of the username. That way you still have the same anti spam ability (can see that a user upvoted these things from this instance at this time) but can’t tie it directly to comments or actual user accounts without some extra osint.

It might be theoretically possible to correlate the uuids with an account’s activity and dox the user in some cases, especially with some instances having a single user, but it would be very difficult or impossible to do on larger instances and would add an extra layer. Single user instances would be kind of impossible to make totally private anyway because they can be identified by instance.

I’d add to this to say that redis as a key-value store often sits alongside a relational database like postgres etc. to act as a cache for it.

Basically, requests to be sent to the relational db (like postgres) get turned into a key and the results stored as a value in redis. Then when the same request comes through again, it can pull the results quickly out of the key-value store without having to search postgres by running a long SQL query again. There’s a few different caching strategies to keep things up to date or have the cached data expire regularly, etc. but that’s the gist of it.

Important to note that not all applications need something like that and not all queries would even benefit from it (postgres is pretty fast and can even do that kind of thing itself) but if there’s a lot of users running the same slow query over and over, caching the results can help immensely.

It does sound very strange. What kind of anti-China content would ever help a student’s application process? Most of the application documents are about things like English language competency, visa requirements and prior qualifications, not political opinions.

Haha, the internet did not fit on a 1.44mb floppy in 1998. Curious to know what was on this‽

1998 was well into the CD-ROM era and the internet was full of .mp3s and .isos by then.

They ruined Linux!

Best is very subjective.

.world is a good general purpose instance for just about anything. I think it has the biggest population at the moment, so communities there are likely to get at least some engagement.

For “general discussion” it doesn’t really matter. The instances are federated so you’ll likely get general discussion in comments from lots of people from lots of instances anyway, wherever your community is based.

Some people get almost nationalistic about their chosen instances or have grudges against people from certain other instances. There’s sometimes inter-instance politics with some servers defederating with others or threatening to for various reasons. It’s kinda fun to watch in a popcorn drama kind of way. For the most part, the instance doesn’t matter.

That’s pretty cool!

Although that’s probably what op is actually asking for, I don’t think it’s a modem. It’s a router with an access point.

It does have SFP for a fibre connection and pcie and USB for you to potentially add a modem or whatever else you want.

I’m guessing OP is just looking for a wifi router? Otherwise we’d need to know what kind of modem they’re looking for, like Cellular? VDSL? HFC? Satellite? It depends on the internet connection. Different parts of the world need very different kit.

It’s a hard K sound and the i and a are “uh” (ə) sounds. Like “Ark uh pel uh go” (at least in my accent).

True! It’s not just a Latin thing and Slavic languages have it too. I wonder where it came from originally. Probably one of those Proto Indo European things. Though it’s in some Indigenous Australian languages too (though not all) so might be even older?

Yep. Most Latin languages have gendered nouns. Italian, Spanish, German etc. All have masculine/feminine objects.

Eg. In Italian a fork is feminine (la forchetta) but a spoon is masculine (il cucchiaio). A table in your living room is a boy (il tavolo) but a table that you’re eating lunch on is a girl (la tavola).

It’s bizarre.

What was the original text‽

They’re not files, it’s just leaking other people’s conversations through a history bug. Accidentally putting person A’s “can you help me write my research paper/IT ticket/script” conversation into person B’s chat history.

Super shitty but not an uncommon kind of bug. Often either a nasty caching issue or screwing up identities for people sharing IPs or similar.

It’s bad but it’s “some programmer makes understandable mistake” bad not “evil company steals private information without consent and sends it to others for profit” kind of bad.

I think the idea is that he thought she was confused by what he had said.

“What are they called?” meaning “what are the words for them?” Not “what are their names?” Like he was quizzing her on her English or something.

He was a about to correct her like “no no, I meant what are their names?”

Totally agree on all points!

My only issue was with the assertion that OP could comfortably do away with the certs/https. They said they were already using certs in the post and I wanted to dispel the idea that they arguably might not need them anymore in favour of just using headscale as though one is a replacement for the other.

Tailscale isn’t an exposed service. Headscale is

Absolutely! And it’s a great system that I thoroughly recommend. The attack surface is very small but not non-existent. There have been RCE using things like DNS rebinding(CVE-2022-41924) etc. in the past and, although I’m not suggesting that it’s in any way vulnerable to that kind of thing now, or that it even affected most users we don’t know what will happen in future. Trusting a single point of failure with no defence in depth is not ideal.

it’s more work and may not always be worth the effort

I don’t really buy this. Certs have been free and easy to deploy for a long time now. It’s not much more effort than setting up whatever service you want to run as well as head/tailscale, and whatever other fun services you’re running. Especially when stuff like caddy exists.

I recommended SmallStep+Caddy.

Yes! Do this if you don’t want to get your certs signed for some reason. I’m only advocating against not using certs at all.

Are you suggesting that these attack techniques are effective against zero trust tunnels

No I’m talking about defence in depth. If Tailscale is compromised (or totally bypassed by someone war driving your WiFi or something) then all those services are free to be impersonated by a threat actor pivoting into the local network after an initial compromise. Don’t assume that something is perfectly safe just because it’s airgapped, let alone available via tunnel.

I feel like it’s a bit like leaving all your doors unlocked because there’s a big padlock on the fence. If someone has a way to jump the fence or break the lock you don’t want them to have free reign after that point.

there’s an argument that HTTPS isn’t really required…

Talescale is awesome but you gotta remember that Talescale itself is one of those services (Yikes). Like all applications it’s potentially susceptible to vulnerabilities and exploits so don’t fall into the trap of thinking that anything in your private network is safe because it’s only available through the VPN. “Defence in depth” is a thing and you have nothing to lose from treating your services as though they were public and having multiple layers of security.

The other thing to keep in mind is that HTTPS is not just about encryption/confidentiality but also about authenticity/integrity/non-repudiation. A cert tells you that you are actually connecting to the service that you think you are and it’s not being impersonated by a man in the middle/DNS hijack/ARP poison, etc.

If you’re going to the effort of hosting your own services anyway, might as well go to the effort of securing them too.

No, that’s “Monk”

A manc is a place where you can go to deposit your money and get home loans and stuff.