JubilantJaguar

Not to disagree with your general point, but I think it would be progress if we got away from labelling low GDP growth as "bad". GDP is one measure among many others, with plenty of weaknesses, not least that the competition for it is zero-sum and unsustainable. But it has become a fetish because economists. IMO if we're going to obsess over a single metric, HDI is a much better candidate.

If serious, that is a cynicism verging on the pathological. How much did you pay for journalism this month? And yet you expect it to be professional and ethical and to "respect your attention".

Agreed. The zipper on My Samsonite roller case has been abused beyond belief and generally tested to breaking point over and over, and yet it resists and basically feels as good as new. Of course, I paid top dollar for that thing. You do get what you pay for.

Mainly I use them as a easy way to recognize German tourists. Never seen them on sale anywhere but I guess they must be sold in Germany because Germans sure love them! French can be recognized by Quechua backpacks BTW tho less reliably. And in the past, Italians by Invicta and Swedes by Fjallraven.

It saves you from having to channel suggestions through MEPs

By this logic we might as well just get rid of the parliament and interact directly with the Commission via opinion poll.

Literally "always", like every single time you open a website or app? No password manager can make SMS 2FA not a PITA. As for your second point, I addressed that. What if you literally don't care about keeping data in question private? Individuals have different threat models, different priorities and all of this is a trade-off. It's not absolute. That's all I was saying. Anyway, I'm done here.

Yes this clarifies things. In summary, without 2FA:

• use a strong password unique to that site (i.e., via a credentials manager) - safe except on that site if absolute morons are running it
• use a weak password unique to that site - safe elsewhere
• use weak passwords and recycle them - you are in trouble

So it's a trade-off. If everyone was in the first category, then the obvious inconvenience of 2FA would just not be worth the benefit.

If the password is unique, there's no risk!

Incidentally: not re-using passwords should be the only responsibility of the user. It's impossible to brute-force a password through a login form, you need full access to the disk. So when sites complain about poor password strength, effectively they are saying "We don't trust ourselves to keep our server safe". Pretty insulting to blame the user for that.

It doesn't help everyone equally. It assumes you (a) re-use passwords, (b) don't protect them properly. That's the case for most people but not all.

And I’m not tied to Firefox if, for some reason, I want to stop using it.

Not gonna happen.

It’s that same mistake textbooks often make of burying the lead in an otherwise obscure reference the reader may or may not pickup on.

Exactly. Thanks for clarifying.