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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: September 28th, 2023

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  • The fact of running an OS and other software that spies on you is proof against being ‘privacy focused’. And many cybersecurity professionals use Windows at home, have dozens of devices with always-on microphones all throughout their house, use a host of cloud-based home automation, etc. It’s just not true that working in cybersecurity means you do much to preserve your privacy.

    And in practice today, privacy and security are in tension when it comes to desktop OS choice. macOS has a more destructive security model than most Linux distros, better suited to running proprietary software from untrusted sources. But compared to *BSD along with many Linux distros, macOS is also absolutely teeming with telemetry and cloud-centric functionality. In a word, macOS is more secure but less private. That many cybersecurity professionals would take that tradeoffs doesn’t at all show that macOS has better privacy than Linux.


  • Depends on to whom. If you’re explaining to your grandma, a small child, a co-worker, or a student under your tutelage, you probably don’t want an explanation that relies on reference to a porn site.

    And if you’re explaining to a novice developer or to an IT person who sometimes might have to work with Git, they deserve an explanation that leaves them with a basic understanding (or at least the names) of the kinds of things Git and GitHub are (VCSes and SCM forges, respectively), not just an inkling that GitHub is not unique in being ‘a place to host (some?) Git, whatever that is’.

    So… if you don’t mind that it suggests ‘GitHub is for uploading Git(s)’, that line is an okay way to teach ‘the difference between Git and GitHub’ to non-technical, non-elderly adults who don’t really need to know what Git is (and don’t work with you or study under you).

    That’s an explanation of pretty damn narrow usefulness, to put it generously.

    It is pithy and memorable, though.