Doesn’t the ESP32 module this project is using require the same thing?

It works for now on x86-64, yes. For now. As always, we are one “think of the children” crisis away from lobbyists taking that option away.

It’s not for you, it’s for them. Secure boot means it only runs their operating system, not yours. Trusted enclave means it secures their DRM-ware from tampering by the user who owns the PC.

Elerium-115?

Sure, but there’s still no excuse for “store the password in plaintext lol”. Once you’ve got user access, files at rest are trivial to obtain.

You’re proposing what amounts to a phishing attack, which is more effort, more time, and more risk. Anything that forces the attacker to do more work and have more chances to get noticed is a step in the right direction. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

No, defense in depth is still important.

It’s true that full-disk encryption is useless against remote execution attacks, because the attacker is already inside that boundary. (i.e., As you say, the OS will helpfully decrypt the file for the attacker.)

However, it’s still useful to have finer-grained encryption of specific files. (Preferably in addition to full-disk encryption, which remains useful against other attack vectors.) i.e., Prompt the user for a password when the program starts, decrypt the data, and hold it in RAM that’s only accessible to that running process. This is more secure because the attacker must compromise additional barriers. Physical access is harder than remote execution with root, which is harder than remote execution in general.

UTC is better than most, but leap seconds are still awful. Computers should use GPS or TAI everywhere. Dealing with time zones and leap seconds is for human readability and display purposes only.

CBOR for life, down with JSON.

Is this why Ian McCollum’s videos are getting altered? Over the years, he’s had many historical deep-dives featuring firearms from the Murphy’s auction house. In recent months, he’s been re-uploading those videos to cover their logo with the word “Morphy’s”. Even though the auctions are long over, I suppose Google counts them as promoting sales.

US Army logistics catalogs are organized this way. “Cookies, oatmeal” instead of “Oatmeal cookies” because it’s a lot easier to find what you need an a giant alphabetical list.

Krazam has previously documented the Facegoog microservices architecture in some detail.

Simple solution: Don’t connect it to the Internet. Hackers hate this one weird trick.

My head canon is that Tony Stark has a superpower: everything he builds works the first time.

If it’s really complicated, like an entirely new Iron Man suit, then it might malfunction once in an amusing way. Then he tightens a screw and it’s perfect. It never fails outright or bricks itself.

In my experience, this is not how hardware or software development goes. I want this power so much.

This post is horrifying, not funny.