Google, Apple, and rest of big tech are pregnable despite their access to vast amounts of capital, and labor resources.

I used to be a big supporter of using their “social sign on” (or more generally speaking, single sign on) as a federated authentication mechanism. They have access to brilliant engineers thus naively thought - "well these companies are well funded, and security focused. What could go wrong having them handle a critical entry point for services?”

Well as this position continues to age poorly, many fucking aspects can go wrong!

1. These authentication services owned by big tech are much more attractive to attack. Finding that one vulnerability in their massive attack vector is difficult but not impossible.
2. If you use big tech to authenticate to services, you are now subject to the vague terms of service of big tech. Oh you forgot to pay Google store bill because card on file expired? Now your Google account is locked out and now lose access to hundreds of services that have no direct relation to Google/Apple
3. Using third party auth mechanisms like Google often complicate the relationship between service provider and consumer. Support costs increase because when a 80 yr old forgot password or 2FA method to Google account. They will go to the service provider instead of Google to fix it. Then you spend inordinate amounts of time/resources trying to fix issue. These costs eventually passed on to customer in some form or another

Which is why my new position is for federated authentication protocols. Similar to how Lemmy and the fediverse work but for authentication and authorization.

Having your own IdP won’t fix the 3rd issue, but at least it will alleviate 1st and 2nd concerns

Before settling in Foster City, California, in 1977, the Thiel family lived in South Africa and South West Africa (modern-day Namibia). Peter changed elementary schools seven times. He attended a German-language school in Swakopmund that required students to wear uniforms and utilized corporal punishment, such as striking students’ hands with a ruler. He said this experience instilled a distaste for uniformity and regimentation later reflected in his support for individualism and libertarianism.[20][21] The German community in Swakopmund that Thiel grew up in was known at the time for its continued glorification of Nazism.[22][23]

Thiel and Muskrat cut from the same cloth of trustfund babies and apartheid benefactors, m8

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

Peter Thiel is one of the many money men that want to privatize everything, dismantle federal government, hand keys to “network states” (company towns but somehow worse).

Goal is none or self regulation. Maximize profits. They want to shape the world into this hyper capitalistic society and surveillance state. Palantir is just one of those companies in a massive portfolio to fulfill this stupid dream shared by many industrialists.

Adult man children run this country while many people struggling day to day or living paycheck to paycheck. Food and water supply poisoned with “forever chemicals”. Plus a myriad of other issues that remain unaddressed (climate change).

Their bickering is news worthy because it’s “entertaining”. We prefer to be medicated with entertainment rather than deal with real issues. The billionaires have us fighting a culture war with ourselves rather than having a class war against the billionaire class that run this country.

This president and administration is a hot mess.

TACO

I say this as an American.

I hope tourism to USA plummets to nil or near 0 while orange man is in office. Have already seen a vast majority of conferences move their venues away from US. The few that have stayed in US had low participation/attendance.

This country only understands $$$, unfortunately. The people that voted for this idiocracy are very much likely the same people impacted negatively by orangutan administration policies.

It’s a bit of extra work but worth it to setup in my opinion. Especially when dealing with multiple creditors.

I don’t see any issue with this - using Wallet to manually initiate payment. It’s not wrong or right. More of a matter of preference.

I prefer to limit access/storage of routing numbers/account numbers to very few people and entities as possible. And prefer to avoid risk of mistake on creditor end withdrawing more than agreed.

—-

I don’t know about you. But I have many other lines of credit (mortgage, multiple CCs, auto) and deal with many services (utilities) besides AC. Have even used bill pay to issue checks to apartment complexes and landlords.

Using my banks bill pay feature gives me a single view into outgoing debits to creditors/services.

Right - why not call it what it is? State is employing military against civilians.

State Sponsored Genocide.

apple these days is acting more and more like Microsoft with these shitty updates

There’s artificial intelligence, then there’s apple intelligence. Going to start calling dolt responses like this as “Apple Intelligence”

Maybe I can gaslight ChatGPT algos: “That’s such an apple intelligence response. Re-do X”

I like basic CarPlay and the ability to unlock the vehicle with just NFC (apple car key?).

This extra junk is more for the car manufacturers.

My increasing distrust for big tech has soured me on “deep integrations” like this. I feel this is just laying the foundation for subscription based cars.

• “Sorry, you have not paid for Apple CarPlay Ultra Plus Max, we are reducing your max speed to 50 mph (~80 km/h)”
• “To enable, AM radio for 12 hrs please authenticate on iPhone or use fingerpick on start button for iDNA authentication and 10% off!”
• “Sorry, to unlock back doors you must add Aston Martin Ultra Premium Accessibility. Alternatively, just shove passengers through front doors”
• “You are currently on the freemium plan with advertisements enabled. Prior to vehicle starting, you will be subjected to 30 minutes of tailored advertisements”
• “Credit card on file has expired. Car is disabled. Please contact Aston Martin + Apple support for further assistance.”
• “Oopsie woopsie, car cannot connect to telemetry system. Cannot operate vehicle while system is unable to connect to internet.”

Fediverse to replace stackoverflow would be something I am interested in.

I am not optimistic. Elon and his brother own majority in the board.

This is all smoke and mirrors. Board opens search for a replacement. Go through the motions of finding a replacement. Delay. Delay. Delay.

Then on a particularly active news cycle, report search has failed, and it gets buried beneath the bullshit that Orangatuan administration did that week.

Is it really bitter if IPO is successful? Citron and other cofounders likely setup to get a massive payout when it IPOs.

Humam isn’t someone that will look after the company for many years. He is brought in to cook the books, and get it to an IPO.

Bro got replaced by some ex-Activision-Blizzard MBA zombie. Humam got 86’d/golden parachuted from Blizzard after only <2 years as “Vice Chairman”. Then a 1-2 yr gap.

Humam about to get another massive bag once labor force is cut, platform further enshittified, and corp books are sufficiently cooked/prepped for IPO.

Amazon really going hard on the bribes to get government cases dropped.

The next 4 years are going to be the Wild West in terms of big business regulation. If country survives the next 4 years, the next administration is going to be fighting an uphill battle to clean up this gigantic mess.

If we somehow have any allies at the end of this, I would be very surprised.

Hypocrisy is the platform of the modern GOP.

No logic. Using this as distraction as rest of administration does atrocious things. Flood media with enough bullshit and the most egregious shit gets unnoticed.

No due process for deported migrants.

People getting picked up off the streets to never be seen again.

Orange man floating the idea of US citizens getting sent to foreign prison.

Oh, and the genocide going on with Israeli govt hardly getting any notice. Have to follow UN directly and parse through their reports.

We are only 3-4 months into this shit stains presidency/“leadership”.