Considering the USA is way ahead of us, I’d say it’s just a long long way until a country reaches rock bottom as desired. There’s some ideas on how to expedite doom. But it’ll also take some more time to get Skynet up and running.

Hehe, yeah we, the people who are legible to vote in Germany and/or the people who have to face the consequences 😅 Idk every time I look around in my neighbourhood, there’s a lot of really nice people. The well-off ones seem to be able to do the maths on the heat-pump thing and they don’t even need any stupid laws about heating. We also have some nice things. Especially on a local level. Not only where I live. But there’s definitely some brain-dead people as well. A lot of morons who can’t operate their car, bicycle… I’m a bit split on the general intelligence level of the population. I personally think there’s (still) a broad majority of people with functional brains. But it’s complicated…

Hmmh. Now that I know what you do, I’m less worried. But maybe you should phrase your advice the other way around. 2FA shouldn’t come as the last thing buried in “tips”. It’s like well >90% of what you rely on. So I think proper 2FA should switch places with your advice for the passwords. Keep them around. And I’m not a big fan of what banks do with the 4-digit PIN protecting the card. But it’s also not like that you absolutely need to focus on a super strong password with that. At that point it’s more the safety for your 2FA. Better is better. But it’s not the decisive factor any more.

Yeah, what next is either a storm comes and your roof comes off in one piece. Or there’s no storm where you live and you’re fine.

If you make sure to always(!) combine the password with a second factor, you should be safe. It’s usually some relatively secure design. The keys should be locked away in some hardware backed storage. Or at least encrypted by some other password. That’ll be very good protection.

Though I wonder… You probably store your 2FA tokens in some app? What makes you trust that app but not the other one which does the same thing? (Store an authentication factor.) It’s literally the same thing as a password manager. Just that it does some clever trickery so every password is just valid for 30s. And it forces you to have a different authentication token for each service. (Which is a bit like using many different passwords.)

And you’re right of course. Losing a password manager isn’t an option. That’ll compromise everything. And if you forget your master password and didn’t take care of it, you’ll be logged out of your digital life. It needs to to the job properly. I think as of now we have a few options with a pretty much spotless track record. Same for 2FA algorithms. Just phishing is hard either way.

I’m not going to kill my wrist by typing in my password, either.

I think the issue will be, you’ll likely be using too few passwords because you don’t really use any tool designed for the job. At least your suggestion reads a bit to me like you’re suggesting one nail will hold the roof if it’s a really good one. And that’s doable with bare hands.

Yeah, though if you re-do your roof, you kinda want to use the nailgun, or your wrist will be sore after two days. Or you’re skipping half the nails to make it work and the next big storm will take away your home.

Or on their cleverness. There’s tools to do that job, no effort or memorization needed. And I’d say changing them is further down the list. Makes sense to do it proactively. But it’s the least important thing to do.

You remember your master password? Or your singular password you use for all the services and once any internet service gets hashing and salting wrong, or gets compromised like the two or so big internet platform that get breached every year, you want to experience that tingly feeling that all of your digital life could be accessed by some hackers?

Edit: In case it’s the latter and you don’t change your password every week: Try https://haveibeenpwned.com/ enter your eMail address and if it comes up with anything, up your security. At least for the important stuff. It’s worth it.

Based on Merz’s approval ratings, I’d say Sabine and Michael know.

Dunno why politics always has to be like that. Even before electing him, we already knew he has a certain kind of personality. And he was going to take away money from the families and working class. Don’t invest in a brighter future, just some right-wing populism. And maybe build a dozen or so new power plants of the stupidest and most expensive sort to deal with energy. Came a bit of a surprise to me, they also actively sabotage the healthcare system… But I mean everyone is invited to board a train, visit the doctor’s and see how it’s like. Or have a look at their energy bill. All of this isn’t really a secret.

Glaub damit ist landläufig gement, dass die Großkonzerne die Plattformen gezielt so gestalten, dass man da möglichst viel Zeit verbringt. So kann man mehr Werbung verkaufen. Algorithmen und gezieltes Ausnutzen menschlicher Psychologie macht’s möglich. Ich glaub wenn dir jemand 'ne Märklin-Bahn für den Dachboden verkauft, ist das eher nur sehr vage Manipulation. Zumindest verkaufen sie dir direkt was du willst und das ist nicht nur nen Vorwand für was Anderes. Und die Märklin-Bahn macht auch niemanden zum politischen Extremisten, oder legt nahe dass man ne Schönheits-OP braucht und nix mehr essen darf. Rumhängen auf den falschen Internetplattformen schon.

Well. Maybe some time we should elect someone who fixes the structural problems. And not just make it worse every year.

By the way, I don’t know if that’s what a normal German protest looks like. I mean I’ve seen the news as well, it’s definitely a thing. But we’ve also had protests in my city and they didn’t look anything like that. No violence or vandalism from the protesters, and no police brutality or chasing people either. Just saying your mileage may vary, depending on where you live.

Sounds like that. We also had the trains being sabotaged where I live, and allegedly there was some open letter by the climate activists. Dunno if those like every commuter to take their fossil powered car to get to work for two days, but hey… Guess identity politics and cheap propaganda doesn’t necessarily have to make sense.

An electricity substation […]

Wasn’t that all alleged and suspected? And in reality nobody knows who they are and if they even did that? Last time I checked all these claims were completely unclear whether that’s the leftists, anarchists, a psy-op from the right or even Putin’s henchmen?!

And what’s with the younger people? Are they having a good time with the spambots here and the AI narrated Slop TikToks and fake dog videos?

Pasta Al Forno is nice. Minced meat, (canned) tomatoes, pasta, grate an entire cheese on top, then let do the oven do the work, chill for half an hour and there’s enough to eat for 2 and a half days. I think it has quite a nice effort/tastiness ratio.

It’s a very involved discussion to be had. There’s the difference between what should be, and the reality of what people do. And I’ve been trying to convince people for decades now. And it’s hard to impossible across the board. I’ve seen how we slowly moved from blogs, Linux forums, more open messengers to WhatsApp, asking Linux questions on Reddit and just not writing genuine personal blog articles any more. I think it’s been a constant decline for like 15(?) years now? And that’s across generations. Even the boomers enjoy WhatsApp for example. It’s hard for me even to convince anyone to move to Signal, which isn’t that different from user perspective. They’re already all comfy within a silo. Yeah, and now -for some reason- the youngest people don’t even own a laptop anymore. They kinda need the apps. And they’ve been taught to be at the receiving end of consumerism.

Also kinda hard to find allies to start some kind of revolution. I like how PieFed for example expands on the concept we have here. MBin as well. But mainstream opinion here is something alike a Reddit clone. The majority of the audience wants(?), needs(?) that.

Good luck! Sad how things often come with strings attached. They kinda do nice things, and you seem to be willing to buy their product… But then there’s politics and business decisions and several silly hoops to jump through… Could be easy, but it’s not 🤗

And I feel “for free” regularly isn’t a good point to lead with. From the average person’s perspective this isn’t about cost, they’re not even aware internet platforms cost money. As Google, Meta or X or the Chinese don’t take money from the average user either. Nevertheless, they provide them with all kinds of features. So in my opinion we need to advertise with other distinguishing features and sort out cost some time later.

I think easiest option as of now is to have some friends or family in one of the neighbouring EU countries and ask them to order it. If you have any.