You believe that? You believe that it won't be any faster in three decades? Or you believe it'll be faster without any changes to any of the wires, cables, connectors, et cetera? Or you believe it won't supply any more/different electricity?

Remember, usb has an entire computer in the connector itself.

I can't believe any of that, having watched the last 30 years go by. usb isn't even that old!

No sense in arguing about it. Wait and see. Glad there's someone out there who'll consider me prophetic.

This sounds like a wonderful solution to something that I don't believe was ever actually a problem for anyone.

Sure, it's a fantastically fun thing to complain about twice a year -- like a lot of things. But as a set of easily-complained, zero consequence "problems", none of them is worth solving.

It's a great way to distract people from all sorts of other things. "Your problems in life are your phone chargers! We'll fix it for you, and then your life will be amazing -- you'll be rich!"

And honestly, is the plan to be stuck with 2022 charger technology forever? Of course not. Every decade they'll update the law. So you'll still be buying a new charger for each device every decade. Today it's usb-c. For the last ten years it's been micro-usb. Before that it was mini-usb. And if you were an apple person, it's been lightning for twenty years. For all of the consumers with zero brand loyalty, maybe they bought an extra charger or two. I'll cry about it for you.

It's not the guns, it's not the violence, it's not the racism, it's not the systemic inequalities in every sector of society. It's the chargers; damn them; damn them all to hell!

That is my claim.

And I point to intrusive governments such as East Germany and Russia as law enforcement that sucks. But you've not linked that suck-age[?] to that intrusive-ness[?] (that sucking to that intrusion). I'm going to guess that they sucked first, and as a result desperately need to lean on the intrusion.

I'm further claiming that a good government needs to have the ability to readily intrude, and the definition of good government is one that doesn't wind up needing to utilize it very often. I'll put most things on that list. Yes we should have capital punishment, but only need it exceedingly rarely.

It worth noting that most of my perspectives on this have changed drastically over the last ten years. I started spending time on community committees and social club executives, where most are volunteers, everyone just wants to keep things running smoothly, and sacrificing the equivalent of civil rights is simply the result of we-can't-do-everything-perfectly-all-the-time; as such, the ability to make exceptions, in both positive and negative directions, means that scenarios get resolved without grinding the entire committee to a stand-still -- which would mean that one problem would stop everything else.

Before those experiences, my opinions always matched the more don't-limit-by-access, don't-restrict-my-rights, don't-inhibit-my-freedom. That made, and still does make sense from my personal perspective as a member of society. But from above, wow are there a lot of bad apples out there with the desire to ruin my life from below. It takes a strong administration to keep those stupids away from my freedoms.

And I guess that's what I mean when I say that I trust my government and local police more than I trust my local criminals.

I like the half-page of "mass-shootings" over sixty years. I think you'll agree that the contrast in metrics warrants my exaggeration.

I'm not sure about the guns per individuals. I was told (in a documentary) that they were comparable. Based on your numbers, perhaps that documentary wasn't Canada-wide?

...and yet, you did. I like how you think when two people disagree, you must be the only correct one. Whatever action you take, your ex-wife could be taking too. That's the purpose of laws and law enforcement, to settle disputes between two both-correct parties.

Different country I guess. I can't imagine how you must feel to live in a country where you don't trust your own protectors -- or don't have any protectors.

Your ex-wife is a perfect example. If your property is in-dispute, then she isn't an intruder. If you're drunk and walk into the wrong house, she isn't an intruder.

You can't just call someone an intruder, and just be right because you think you are. Your ex-wife can be doing the same at the same time.

Alas, you're likely in a very different country than I am. Mine looks at yours, and laughs. Every time yours has a mass-shooting, and then spends a year arguing for better laws, and changing nothing, we spend two weeks, and then further-tighten our gun laws. Interesting, we don't have mass-shootings. More interesting, we have more guns per capita than you do. Even more interesting, the vast majority of us couldn't even tell you where to get a gun at all.

Enjoy your five-hundred-year debate. You've got actors telling you how to write laws. It's okay, we have problems too. We tend to solve them on a go-forward basis, but maybe that's just a culture difference. We have many cultural differences. For example, we've never fought for our freedom, we just asked for it, and it was given to us. In fact, the only time we've ever had to fight for our freedom was when you tried to invade us. You lost by the way.

Remind me again -- you don't want any government nor any law enforcement? Or you just aren't happy with the one that you do have? Maybe you ought to try to fix things, instead of just repeating the same arguments for centuries at a time.

"Most of the time, we don't have sex in the car, we don't shit in the car, we don't sleep in the car."

You say "most of the time" as though you're talking about one person. In fact, "most of the time" all of those are being done by someone.

"Most of the time" a crime is being committed, or would be. "Most of the time" your local police are busy protecting you from something.

If you live in the country that I think you live in, then "most of the time" your local police are desperately trying to stop mass shootings, and "most of the time" they miss one of the many.

So yes, "most of the time" law enforcement is very necessary. If your local law enforcement sucks, maybe you should fix that.

Mine's really really good.

Totally agree.

So are you saying we shouldn't have ANY law enforcement? Because my argument was simply that in today's society, VPN removes absolutely ALL law enforcement.

That's not at all what I said.

If you're in your home, and an intruder breaks in, and you call police, and they show up at your door...they can't come in without violating the intruder's rights?

The intruder never consented to being filmed by police.

And remember, the intruder isn't an intruder until they are verified as an intruder. Just because you think they are an intruder in your home, doesn't mean that they are.

I didn't say nothing to hide, nothing to fear. What I said was there is a tonne to fear, and some fears are much much bigger and more frequent than other fears.

If you're asking what I fear more, my local police or my local criminals, that's really going to be based on who I am and where I live. I'm in a very safe neighbourhood, with lots of very small crimes. I'm a homeowner. So I'm going to lean towards trusting my police over my criminals.

It's funny.

Long ago, we invented these things called laws -- ways to act, so we could all know what to expect and what was expected of us. And this worked with most people.

Then we invented these things called law enforcement. Now you were punished for not following the laws. Now laws could work with nearly everyone -- because they had no choice.

Then we noticed that the laws allowed for broad enforcement, far beyond the spirit of the laws. So we invented these things called the legal system. Courts and judges and tribal elders and lawyers and counsels, to ensure that laws were being enforced smoothly.

This quickly let to laws on the enforcers, so certain types of enforcement were disallowed, even when they were beneficial. We called these things civil rights.

And now, we pull and push on that pendulum every year, what's considered plain-sight, freedom, rights, privacy.

Security products are wonderful. Of course we don't want thieves to be able to open our front doors. But locks are terrible. Of course we want fire and medical rescue teams to be able to open our front doors.

I can't envision a country/state/government of any shape/size/worth would ever be able to be successful in meeting the safety concerns of its citizens, without being to able see what those citizens are doing.

We used to do most things "in actual public", which is to say that we left our homes, walked on public sidewalks in full view, drove on public streets in full view, went to commercial stores in full view. Most "crimes" couldn't be done from home. Most "crimes" were done out in public -- where the laws and law enforcement are.

But today, that's no longer true. We work "by wire", we shop "by wire", entertainment is "by wire". And hence, most "crimes" are done "by wire".

You'd need to be immensely stupid to rob a bank in-person; by-wire would be much better. Why would you break into my home to steal my tvision off the wall, when you can far more easily just steal the money from my credit card.

Similarly, why would you travel to another country, with guns and tanks and bombs, when you can just turn off their electrical grid remotely?

So, someone needs to explain to me how you can have a society with laws and law enforcement, while still maintaining the VPN-promised privacy of the wire. Seems to be that the wire itself has become the public corridor. It's always been illegal to overly tint your car windows (the front ones at least). That's packet-sniffing. You needed a licence plate, and emissions testing, and road-worthiness. We have by-law officers and inspectors and child wellfare checks and police searches and drug raids and road blocks and traffic stops and mass-roadside breath testing and tip lines.

I don't think we can have a civilized society without those things. And VPN is the death of all of those societal checks and safety nets.

"It assumes people don't change..."
That's not the problem. The problem is that people don't know that people change.

Having software that "measures" something that changes isn't a problem. Quite frankly, it's a would-be solution to scenario at-hand.

The issue is that we've never taught people -- in this case, employers -- to accept the measurements as past-values and not (necessarily) current values.

Alas, we've long-ago stopped teaching people to consider the present above the past; and we never taught people how to understand numbers to begin with; and we don't know how to teach anyone to correct comprehension errors.

That's the definition of a tool. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a kitchen gadget, or a power tool, or a software tool, or a household decorative element.

All tools work exactly as promised -- in exactly one very specific set of circumstances.

This screwdriver works with this type of screw, in this large a space, with this size of hand, in this type of glove.

This kitchen knife cuts this type of food perfectly and easily every time. If you know how to hold a kitchen knife (if you said "by the handle", you're wrong, by the way). And if you try it on this other type of food, the knife breaks into a dozen pieces. Oh this unbreakable professional chef's knife? The one they use in restaurants? That one needs sharpening each and every day.

This jack-hammer can easily break up your driveway. Look how easy. But you probably didn't notice that the gloves are the most important part -- without which, the jack-hammer will break up your hands just as quickly.

That metal art is gorgeous. We could put three pieces in our living room. It's not even expensive. Alas, it looks kitschy when you do it, because you aren't a decorator, and you didn't know that one more element was needed to make it look expensive.

Every single tool in life works perfectly, the way it was intended to be used. Apparently, my ceiling fan's remote, which the manual says can be used "through a 100 feet thick wall" (best mis-translation I've seen in a while) is absolutely wonderful at controlling my neighbour's ceiling fan ~50 feet and two brick walls away.

...and wouldn't that then mean that your indexes are effectively unencrypted? I mean, if my million contacts are indexed with enough information to be used, then there's enough data gleanable from it too.

Having watched their lovely, and a little-too-fast animated diagram, it is indeed always encrypted at the db, with the decryption done elsewhere. So the security problem isn't at the db, it's at the elsewhere. Great.

...that would be the "encryption" from world war 2. It worked great back then. It's not considered to be encryption anymore -- since common statistical characteristics of a given language are enough to decrypt so much of the data that it becomes completely meaningless for security.