Sure, as long as the device doesn’t automatically connect to open networks, and if it does, you don’t live in an apartment, or moderate density area with available open wi-fi networks in range.

“I keep overcooking my steak, any advice?”

“I haven’t had meat in 40 years, have you considered simply going vegetarian?”

Edit: FYI the key to cooking a good steak is salt, butter, and to flip it every 30 secs, until you’ve reached your preferred level of doneness. If you’re really trying to impress, and don’t care about a heart attack, you can also baste with butter in between each flip.

Now, learning how much time it takes for each different type of cut and the variations within, that mostly comes with experience.

If there are open wifi networks near your TV that you can’t lockdown, you’ll want to confirm it your make/model is known to automatically connect to those, and then take whatever mitigation steps are justified for your own use case.

For example, if you have multiple TVs, maybe you can swap models around based on their capabilities and location, or look up the schematic for the TV and see if it’s easy to block it’s internal antennas.

Or maybe that seems like too much of a hassle and you just say fuck it, and don’t worry about it. Which is always an option, because given how much data already gets sucked up by surveillance capitalism, my evening TV viewing habits have to be some of the lowest value data points, as I already block ads and avoid all ad supported services.

I pirated for a long time, and even though I had(have) large media libraries and the home server capacity to manage everything just fine, I stopped.

Not sure when, or why, I’m guessing a service broke and I just said fuck it, I already have Prime+Netflix, and that was years ago at this point.

Netflix’s password policy and Amazon showing adds had me spin them up again, and even migrate over to Jellyfin because Plex is just another enshitified privacy nightmare.

Which was a pleasant surprise, because the last I tried Jellyfin years ago, it was not worth the hassle. Also, Plex wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now.

To swing this back around to this article, I’m betting eventually they’ll force their TVs online by disabling features, capabilities, or even the device itself, if it’s not phoning home.

I think you’ve confused my previous comments as some sort of moral equivocation, which they really weren’t meant to be, but since you brought it up…

You may believe that America’s intelligence agencies, on balance, are more moral than Russia, and you’re probably right, but that is damning by faint praise.

Espionage is literally the act of committing crimes on behalf of a government. It’s not altruistic and it’s not used to fight the good fight of corruption, or the mafia. In fact, it’s often done in conjunction with those actions and organizations, because that is what the job often requires.

Either way, Russia doesn’t need Kaspersky to run its domestic surveillance network or it’s myriad of police state apparatuses.

FYI oftentimes terrorism is blowback from actions taken by intelligence agencies years, or decades, prior. That is, the groups and ideologies they fund, train, and use, for their own ends, don’t cease to exist just because they’re no longer useful, or needed, by those agencies.

Retail generates the most margin, while enterprise generally the most revenue.

At least, that’s how it works at most vendors that operate both B2C and B2B sales and product channels.

But no, Kaspersky is a major legacy player in the B2B security market with both mature and cutting edge products/solutions.

A better question might be, which companies in America were still using Kaspersky up until this month, and why.

My guess that is a mix between budgetary constraints, incompetence, and weighted risk analysis.

Imagine you’re a Midwestern ice cream wholesaler, it’s been a bad few years, and your 200 Kaspersky licenses were renewed with deep discounts.

You’re not likely to lose any contracts for using Kaspersky, nor be a target of state sanctioned espionage, but spending $10,000 between new licensing and man hours, to rip, replace, and configure a new solution, now that could cause real issues for you.

So, between a rock and a hard place, you just wait it out as long as possible and hope that when the other shoe drops, it doesn’t wreck your budget.

No problem, happy it helped.

Your summary is mostly accurate, but I think a better way to understand it would be like this:

Low level security software, by nature, is the ultimate attack vector, if compromised.

Assume that all countries that have both a domestic tech sector, and a well-resourced national security apparatus, have some version of on demand government initiated supply chain attack capabilities.

So it’s not like I believe that all Kaspersky installs include a RAT piped directly to some GRU/FSB unit, just the ability for a malicious payload to be inserted - just as the NSA can do with American tech companies.

Not every risk can be mitigated, but some risks just shouldn’t be taken.

That is so wrong that it’s actually impressive.

Either you’ve never worked in this space, or because it wasn’t present in the few IT departments you’ve worked in, you extrapolated that to mean it wasn’t present in any large organization.

By all means, I don’t disagree that American firms should not be using Kaspersky, just as Russian firms should not be using Sophos (UK based), but to pretend that they aren’t one of the oldest and most well-established brands in the space is misinformed at best.

I think you confused the fact they have a retail product presence, to mean that they don’t have serious enterprise solutions, but they do: NDR, XDR, agentless for hypervisors, etc.

Yes… no… sorta…kinda… but no different than how most, if not all, large American security and tech vendors have either overt, or covert, links to the the American Security State.

Kaspersky is a long established credible actor and leader in the threat research space, hands down one of the best track records over the long run, and you should take their reporting and disclosures seriously.

I’m not saying that to dismiss the very valid concerns about installing Kaspersky on sensitive private sector and government systems, but to contextualize my answer.

On a sort of related note, earlier I said that the American security state has both overt, or covert, links all across the American tech sector.

What that means is that, even if a company holds their principles not compromising their customers or their product, the US government can either get a court order to force it, or they’ll be targeted by something like the Pentagons Signature Reduction program and have sheep dipped employees worked into their organization.

Point is, Kaspersky is one of the few remaining Russian brands and entities still holds a lot of credibility in it’s field, but again, that doesn’t mean the concerns of Western government’s aren’t valid, just that they should be viewed in the proper context.

Read the article. Despite its headline, it goes on to say that the most likely explanation is that the shoddily built truck, that is known for breaking down all the time, probably broke down, as opposed to being remotely disabled.

This is an accounting trick as well, a way to shed profit, and maximize deductions, by having different units within a parent company purchase services from each other.

I realize that my sentence long explainer doesn’t shed any light on how it gets done, but funnily enough, you can ask an LLM for an explainer and I bet it’d give a mostly accurate response.

Edit: Fuck it, I asked an LLM myself and just converted my first sentence into a prompt, by asking what that was called, and how it’s done. Here’s the reply:

This practice is commonly referred to as “transfer pricing.” Transfer pricing involves the pricing of goods, services, and intangible assets that are transferred between related parties, such as a parent company and its subsidiaries.

Transfer pricing can be used to shift profits from one subsidiary to another, often to minimize taxes or maximize deductions. This can be done by setting prices for goods and services that are not at arm’s length, meaning they are not the same prices that would be charged to unrelated parties.

For example, a parent company might have a subsidiary in a low-tax country purchase goods from another subsidiary in a high-tax country at an artificially low price. This would reduce the profits of the high-tax subsidiary and increase the profits of the low-tax subsidiary, resulting in lower overall taxes.

However, it’s worth noting that transfer pricing must be done in accordance with the arm’s length principle, which requires that the prices charged between related parties be the same as those that would be charged to unrelated parties. Many countries have laws and regulations in place to prevent abusive transfer pricing practices and ensure that companies pay their fair share of taxes.

No, he’s a cryptocurrency analyst, with a focus on cryptocurrency related hip-hop artists.

If you’re buying off eBay, I would seriously consider looking into a finding an established and equitable extended warranty program and doing the math.

Also, lookup guides on how to properly inspect and receive large fragile items for delivery. Maybe it won’t matter because it didn’t require a signature and you’re not there to receive it personally, but still, worth knowing when it’s possible to refuse delivery of damaged merchandise, and how to CYA if needed.

Pretty sure booting into DOS before loading Windows and playing the Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe both count as command line experience.

I also think that as smug as a lot people feel about this, it doesn’t seem far off to think that physical keyboard typing skills could be substituted with newer technologies, or refined versions of existing tech. At least in terms of performing most office job functions.

I’m not saying it’ll be more efficient, or better, just that it wouldn’t be a surprising next step given the trends being discussed here.

If that happens, I have no doubt that smugness will turn into self-righteous indignation and a stubborn refusal to abandon the tactile keyboard for older generations, myself included.

I just hope that if that transition occurs during my lifetime, it’s an either-or situation, and not a replacement of the keyboard.

Edit: added a fair amount of information to my original response.

Sorry, like I said it’s been a long time since I spent any real amount of time researching/reading about post-Soviet political economies of eastern bloc countries.

I can tell you that most of what I was reading was in peer-reviewed journals, which I’m sure are still available with the right keyword searches on LexusNexis…or Library Genesis.

If you aren’t already, I would recommend checking out Vlad Vexler. Who is a Soviet-born, political philosopher/academic, outspoken Putin critic, and one of the better English language sources for intimate and nuanced explanations and analysis of the Russian political system, including the competing power structures and political dynamics of Putin’s court.

He also provides some of the most thoughtful and considered arguments and analysis in support of Ukraine.

Edit (hope this helps):

Here’s a keyword to jump start your search:

Silovik

That’s the term for an elite within the intelligence community (FSB), or close ties to it (ex-KGB).

I asked Llama for examples of Siloviki who tried to amass power and influence outside their domain, and it provided me with this response:

Examples of siloviki who have tried to amass power in different fields and faced consequences include:

• Mikhail Khodorkovsky: A former FSB officer who became a successful businessman and politician, but was eventually imprisoned and exiled after he began to challenge the Kremlin’s authority.

• Boris Berezovsky: A former KGB officer who became a wealthy businessman and politician, but was eventually forced into exile after he began to challenge the Kremlin’s authority.

• Alexander Lebed: A former KGB officer who became a politician and governor of Krasnoyarsk, but was eventually killed in a helicopter crash under mysterious circumstances.

It’s worth noting that the Kremlin’s tolerance for siloviki accumulating power in different fields can vary depending on the individual and the circumstances. Some siloviki may be allowed to build significant business or political empires, while others may be subject to strict limits or even persecution.

To be fair, I haven’t double checked the veracity for the people cited above, but only because even if their hallucinations, it aligns with how I understand their system of checks and balances to operate.

The system is setup this way, to give Putin the ability to play mediator when disputes arise and be the bridge between rival factions. So, he remains up top, and no one is capable of amassing enough power or influence to seriously challenge him.

It also means that Putin is not the arch-puppet master pulling all the strings as he’s often portrayed in Western media. He sits a top the food chain, but his power over the elite comes from how he can exert, or finesse influence e.g. mediate disputes, not because he can slam a gavel and make everyone ignore their own self interests.

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But the concept isn’t just about fast food, it’s about the system that produces pink slime based chicken nuggets, and the people who sit up top of that system.

So they’ve correctly identified systemic problems that hurt people, and that those actions are done with intent, either maliciously or with indifference.

They’ve just confused capitalism working as intended, as being a Jewish conspiracy.

Also, “white apps” is just really bad racial propaganda. Whoever coined that term needs some new blood in their marketing team.

Regardless of who coined that phrase, I think you’re confused about WASP’s. It means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant i.e. the largest demographic group within America’s version of old money.

This is one of those things where the concept is entirely appropriate and accurate, except for that one teeny tiny minor issue…

It’s not the Jews, it’s the WASPs and whatever weird Catholic sect/cult that Justice Barret was raised in…okay, and yes, there’s probably some Jews in the mix as well.

Because those are the main demographic groups of the .01%

So what’s the WASP equivalent for goy? Heathenslop?

Edit: I’m having a hard time imagining left-wing Jews being upset at this observation. I’m guessing at least some of these down votes are done in solidarity for people of Jewish heritage… like myself.

So…thank you and lol.

Not a gamer, but I will watch the occasional GN video just for the appreciation of their brand of investigative journalism.

The opening seconds of this video show this is at least in part, a Serbian company. That makes me assume there is probably additional financial grift and embezzlement tied directly to local organized crime groups.

It’s been at least a decade since I’ve done any academic level review on the political economies in the post-Soviet bloc, but organized crime is pretty systemically entrenched in those countries. Unless something dramatic has changed the last 5-10 years.

My favorite was the Bulgarian Thick Necks, purely because of the name. They were organized crime groups that formed from former USSR top level athletic programs i.e. wrestlers. As far as I know, that wasn’t their official name, just a colloquial term for that type of post-Soviet mafioso.

There is some good reading to be had that explains the specific roles that different groups of former Soviet elites were allowed to fill within the corrupt power vacuum that followed the collapse. A lot of the Putin era assassinations were people who tried to branch out e.g. oligarch businessman who tried to gain political power, or vice versa.

Doesn’t rhyme, no self-awareness, but does mention the Moskova…

…no self-awareness…

Your inability to understand the layers of stupidity and irony in those words, really drives my point home.

Thank you.