I’m not sure the author knows this. He points out that this is useful for post-exploitation data gathering. That is, you’ve already compromised a machine/account and are looking to gather as much potentially useful information as possible. But he puts “securely” in scare quotes, which is not honest because this is secure storage: if you’re not authenticated, the key can’t be read. The encryption key is derived from the user password, so it can’t be defeated by offline reading either.

This quote actually summarizes it:

> I wasn’t very familiar with DPAPI

Well, neither do I, but at least know the basics!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_API

Yup. It's like saying you're able to read the private key out of ~/.ssh/id_rsa because you're logged in as the user, though with more steps because you need to deserialize the key from the internal representation. If you want this to not be possible even when logged in as the user, then use a hardware token like a smart card or smart-card-capable security key.

Could still be useful for post-exploitation as the OP mentions.

Unless they are on smartcards, there's always a way to compromise keys like this.

Admin accounts have access to everything, whether that's the registry, or a subdir in your user profile dir. That's the whole point of admin rights. Whether your private key is in a file in an .ssh dir or stored in the registry, admins can always get to them.

I don't see us as having created a representative democracy to protect democracy from the masses. I like to think we are a representative democracy because the masses are supposed to have better things to do than keep the lights of government on.

https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary...

Federalist No. 10[1] is probably one of the most highly regarded of the papers, and explicitly lays out these concerns. Selected quotes:

"AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice."

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens."

"From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

Hamilton also talks a little bit about this phenomenon in Federalist No. 68, and Federalist No. 62 lays out the impetus for having an equally represented Senate (which is inherently undemocratic), part of which was to check the immediate impulses/passions of the people, as can be the case with the House of Representatives.

[1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp

It‘s people deciding stopping the spread of COVID-19 isn‘t as important as protesting for their civil rights.

You can‘t dismiss the science just because people have different priorities and decide to act against it because of that.

I also wouldn‘t say it‘s hypocrisy at least not by the protestors and scientist.

Maybe it’s hypocrisy by the media because they didn‘t state that they agree or disagree with protests because they think another issue is more or less important than the pandemic.

It’s pretty clear that these “experts” are abusing their status as supposedly objective scientists to advance a political movement. Why should anyone trust anything they say?

Additionally, enough time has now passed to assess the danger of these protests. Considering they mostly happened in the large cities of the north, there is absolutely no evidence that they had any major effect in the resurgence of the virus, which is mostly spreading in the south and west. Even there, rural areas are often hit harder than cities.

And it's obvious that these claims damage their credibility when people had loved ones die alone - it's suddenly fine for there to be crowds of thousands when gatherings were previously limited to <100.

> Twitch viewers in the Army’s channel are repeatedly presented with an automated chat prompt that says they could win a Xbox Elite Series 2 controller—an enhanced controller with customizable options and extra paddles for advanced play that costs upward of $200—and a link where they can enter the “giveaway.” It, too, directs them to a recruiting form with no additional mention of a contest, odds, total number of winners, or when a drawing will occur.

[I’m not your lawyer and this is not legal advice.]

It can have that effect. My understanding is that if you include GPL code in your software[1] and distribute it without sharing your source code, you are committing an ongoing contract/copyright violation that can be remedied either by recalling and destroying the offending products, complying with license terms by releasing your source code, or settling with the original copyright owner (effectively, paying a license).

As for a court forcing you to release the code, that is in fact what the GPL contract requires so the court is within its rights to require specific performance instead of monetary damages. Even though common law courts strongly prefer monetary damages, they will turn to specific performance if they think it's appropriate.

All of this is going to turn on some questions about when you can bring copyright infringement vs. contract actions. It's not an area I'm super familiar with, but see my response below about at least one case that suggests you could sustain a contract action for a GPL violation in some circumstances.

[1] In the way that requires you to release your own software under the GPL. Of course, there are ways to use GPL software that don't implicate that. I'm not talking about those.

Do you know of any cases with the GPL where a court has in fact done so? I'm not aware of any outcomes where code has been forcefully licensed as a penalty. Absent strange outside circumstances (like a signed contract) I'd instinctively (but without legal training) think that that a court would treat the violator as "acting without a license" rather than "had specifically agreed to the terms of a contract and then broken it".

https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/breach-gpl-... https://www.omm.com/resources/alerts-and-publications/alerts... https://www.natlawreview.com/article/important-open-source-r...

You might think you're safe today, but you'd better hope that your moments of candor stay off camera, because no one lives life carefully enough to be immune to this angry mob.

Just the other day, an out of context video embarrassed a supposed Karen on the front page of Reddit. We later learned the situation was more complex and didn’t have racial undertones. The mob still publicized a woman’s life.

#MeToo had several examples of people’s career being thrown out for offenses that were basically round objects being pushed into a square hole (Aziz Ansari, Al Franken, there were a few more).

I understand the need to use a chainsaw to cut a birthday cake, it highlights the desperation of the lack of tools to do a very basic thing. We now know, and quite frankly, we need to replace the chainsaw with a table knife sooner or later. Someone’s going to get hurt.

To keep the parallel, it’s important to see that the mob becomes the authority figure.

To be clear, this was after it was filmed that the couple was pointing guns at peaceful protestors who were protesting on the street. The woman in particular had her finger on the trigger and was pointing it at black people walking by. (EDIT: I don't know if you're familiar with gun handling, but this is considered extremely poor "trigger discipline", which is a term describing how to handle and hold a gun safely. This is comparable to driving drunk in its reckless endangerment. One should never point their gun at a person unless they intend to shoot that person. One should never put their finger on the trigger of their gun unless they intend to fire that gun. This woman, in violating both, is expressing her intent to shoot people.)

"#MeToo had several examples of people’s career being thrown out for offenses that were basically round objects being pushed into a square hole (Aziz Ansari, Al Franken, there were a few more)."

Aziz Ansari totally, 100% owned up to not recognizing how his fame affected the social dynamics in which he now functioned and how that in turn affects consent. He apologized and his career is ongoing.

Al Fraken took photos of himself groping a female soldier while she slept in her uniform, so there's definitive proof he was doing these things. He was in a position of power where he could access women and he chose to have photos taken of him groping people who are serving their country.

I see no round objects being pushed into square holes, here? What should be done with Al Franken, who groped soldiers in their sleep?

(EDIT: I should also note that character flaws ruin lives all the time. Someone who is more prone to recklessness or thrill seeking can get themselves or others killed. Someone who is more prone to addiction becomes addicted to a life-ruining dependency. Someone who is too arrogant can ruin their professional network. Someone who is too complacent in a setting where stuff can be made out of date quickly can swiftly find themselves out of work. I don't take it to be a large leap that someone with the character flaws of "threatens to kill innocent bystanders" and "gropes women in their sleep" might not also be negative in their lives.)

https://nypost.com/2020/06/09/tamara-harrians-husband-blames...

What she did was indefensible, but her husband and his business is also having to reconcile this.

I believe Al Franken took a juvenile photo of a reporter friend. I don’t think he was a senator at the time, I could be wrong.

I think we will enter ‘full blinders on’ mode if we accept that the axe being wielded is not a catch all. We have to accept that the axe came out of desperation, but we need to find the solution where the axe is no longer necessary.

If there’s anything to debate, it’s only how long the guillotine should be necessary. Certainly we can’t have the guillotine forever. The guillotine was used to make it pretty freaking clear things have changed, and don’t even try to think things will go backward. I understand and accept it as a necessary strategy.

You still have to create the post-guillotine society.

In poetic terms, Robespierre was given the guillotine he created. Things go too far, often.

Regarding the Tamara Harrians situation I don't know anything about it, could you link to another media besides NYPost?

Look, patterns are important. The same way we failed in jailing people for modest drug possession, is the same way we are going to fail in measuring reciprocity, or more clearly, exact legal justice on sexual harassment, racial discrimination.

I’m interested in fixing patterns.

I’m not going to die on the Al Franken hill. Frat boy behavior in professional context is unacceptable, it will get you over time. In his particular case, I didn’t see any escalation into rape or abuse of power (fuck me or you won’t get this job or promotion - Harvey Weinstein).

We will be accurate in our words, accusation, and judgement, henceforth. We will cut cleanly and carefully, no more chainsaws, we will visit all crime sites, and assess. No more games.

It’s not reasonable to me for someone to suffer outsized social justice beyond the price paid at the moment of sentencing. You take someone like Louis CK, he paid the public shame, and career loss (financial loss). If the transgressions were beyond, such as underage sex (for example), I expect the law to quantify the retribution. Beyond that, I expect him to pay nothing more on a social level.

Name your price, I guess, and nothing more. Let it be paid, and move on. We are not gods that dole out eternal shame.

That is a terrible plan. There's no restoration there, only retribution. We can do better than an eye for an eye.

The dysfunctionality of regular politics creates its own escalation. People are used to being given a sticky door, or a button that doesn't work. They're used to shoulder-charging the door of power being completely ineffective. So when it actually gives way it's a surprise to everyone.

I commend your efficiency.

As for this guy calling himself a conservative, somewhere along the way, libertarians in America began calling themselves conservatives and forgot what the term really means. Conservatism isn't knee-jerk ideological opposition to any rules.