This article lost me when it counted identity verification software as "surveillance tech".

If the identity document mandated to be verified is one that allows not only private businesses but also the government to build profiles and use them against private citizens with no legal recourse in case of misuse (criminal or otherwise) and is trivial to obtain for an adversary, it very much is "surveillance tech". Please look up everything you can about the horrors of the identity scheme called "AADHAAR" in India.

I get where you are coming from, but identity is the foundation of surveillance.

I mean regardless of whether it has value in being used, it's pretty much, by definition, "surveillance tech."

If everything is "surveillance tech" then nothing is.

Certain functions like remote employee clock-in with geolocation (literally the first example company in the article) are perfectly reasonable to record the employee's GPS coordinates, in my opinion. If you're clocking in at the job site, having some record that you were actually at the job site isn't an invasion of privacy.

My location is irrelevant to my employer, in most cases. What do they care if I am at home, at the home of someone else, in a hotel, or camping out in a yurt, so long as I do the work, attend the meetings, and get my job done?

One word: taxes

That has nothing to do with my day-to-day location.

> That has nothing to do with my day-to-day location.

In some US states (and some international jurisdictions, as well) you owe income and possibly other taxes (and your employer may be responsible for withholding and reporting related to those taxes) on income from work done in the jurisdiction even if it is only a single day of work, and even if you are not a tax resident, so, yes, it has something to do with your day-to-day location.

One word: Compliance

i always think about e911 calling for enterprise VoIP software phones. In order to make sure the calls go the right 911 local call center it is required to have the user enter the address they are using the computer at. It's the law and the fines for routing to the 911 center of last resort aren't cheap. And thats just the tip of iceberg if required employer surveillance just to follow the damn law.

https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/voip_and_911_service...

I didn't say it was or was not unreasonable, I said it was surveillance by definition (i.e. based on what the world means).

Eh. Depends on how it's deployed and used, doesn't it? To me, it's like calling a bouncer at a club a private investigator.

No. I said "by definition" which means based on the meaning of the word not the context.

You also hedged with "pretty much".

Congrats on the launch! I personally am not sure I see the value in paying for a course, when (I assume) I can do this on my own by feeding a video link or file to an LLM and asking it to generate a course. I'm sure your courses are probably better, though, and there are probably a lot of people who don't want to go through those extra steps. Good luck!

It's people gathering for coffee. We can't talk about the apocalypse at the dinner table every night.

but does it have touch screen -_-

I used a Surface Pro for 6 years and and haven’t missed the touch screen once since switching back to MBP 3 years ago. I would have missed the handwriting input but that’s what a low end iPad is for.

> Closed source security software is too often malware by design.

Can you be more specific? Genuinely curious what you mean here.

Crowdstrike is closed source security software.

What's the difference between malware and what Crowdstrike has done to the world today?

We might as well reclassify Crowdstrike as malware and remove it from all computers to avoid this situation in the future.

The difference is that the intent of malware is to disrupt.

Is gasoline useless just because it explodes when you light a match next to it?

edit to add: OSS is not inherently more secure than closed source.

Gasoline is very useful. We also take a lot of precautions when using it.

We also have things like inspections and financial penalties if you were storing it in an unsafe manner.

It's clear we need to take more precautions before using Crowdstrike. More testing, ability by IT departments to not push updates, ability to rollback updates.

I understand your preference. I have two questions:

1) Do you think that an organization should have no protections in place? 2) Why not just work from the machine they provided you, and do everything else on a personal machine?

> 1) Do you think that an organization should have no protections in place?

Do you think Crowdstrike offers protection ?

I assume from your rhetorical question that you don't. I personally don't know enough about it to say whether it does or not - but, I will make what I believe is a reasonable assumption and say that all else being equal, yes, a fleet of machines with a EDR sensor installed is more "protected" than a fleet without.

If you have a point to make, why not just say what you are trying to say; it will be more effective discourse. I am genuinely curious.

They key to tools like crowdstrike is not so much protection, and being able to trace an attack through the infrastructure. They can see that your credentials were comprimised on your machine, and which systems you then connected to (or that bad process did) so they can trace the attack and make sure get it all cleaned up.

iPadOS still doesn't have a native calculator.

If Satya got hit by a bus this weekend that "pointless" board would become very important very quickly.

Don’t be crazy! All the bus drivers are at home with covid-19 symptoms....