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Cake day: January 2nd, 2026

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  • Not all hierarchies are bad. For instance, in a judicial system, there need to be different tiers of courts as otherwise, if courts had universal authority and made conflicting decisions, it would complicate the law more so than it is already.

    Similarly, in a large society that needs unity, if people make all decisions, the results would be catastrophic as most people don’t have the time or energy to focus on every mundane decision. In such a case, elected representatives becomes mandatory, creating a hierarchy.

    Yet another example is cases where fast decision-making is required (e.g., to respond to an emergency). In such a case, there needs to be a central authority who holds others responsible and coordinates response.

    Ultimately, if you consider a hierarchy where accountability is possible i.e. one party may have more power over the second than the second over first but the second still has some power over the first, then it makes accountability possible in hierarchies. Hierarchies are only wrong when the power gap increases, a small power gap is alright provided it doesn’t widen with time.

    You could make the argument that a chain of accountability is better (X->Y->Z->X), but even such chains may include hierarchies (i.e. X itself is a hierarchy). Similarly, authority diffused among different people also suffers from potential shifting of blame. Truly neutral relations between different parties are impossible and ultimately, a power difference exists between any two parties, though it may be minute, and this power gap must be acknowledged.

    In conclusion, there are a lot of disadvantages of hierarchies but there are some domains where hierarchies are good. There is no system of distribution of power that is without flaws.


  • Enable Administrator password on the menu screen, create a persistent storage (if it doesn’t already exist), download the Flatpak file from the website, and run

    torify flatpak install /path/to/file
    flatpak run io.github.softfever.OrcaSlicer
    

    Using an AppImage is not a good idea because they have a tendency to give errors if proper software and version are not installed on Tails (on my Tails USB, this was because of GCC) unless you compile your own AppImage. Using Flatpak is better as it allows you to run software on your system even if the versions of GCC etc. are not up to date.

    Please keep in mind that I have not confirmed whether this method is secure and would advise that you consider whether this is secure or not depending on your threat model.


  • TL;DR: not possible with random cookies, too much work for too little gain with already-verified cookies

    There is no such add-on because random cookies will not work. Whenever someone has been authenticated, Google decides the cookie the browser should send out with any subsequent requests. Google can either choose to assign and store a session id on the browser and store data on servers or choose to store the client browser fingerprint and other data in a single cookie and sign this data.

    Additionally, even with a verified session, if you change your browser fingerprint, it may trigger a CAPTCHA, despite using a verified cookie. In the case of a session token, this will occur because of the server storing the fingerprint associated with the previous request. On the other hand, if using a stateless method, the fingerprint will not match the signed data stored inside the cookie.

    However, this could work with authenticated cookies wherein users contribute their cookies to a database and the database further distributes these cookies based on Proof of Work. This approach, too, has numerous flaws. For instance, this would require trusting the database, this is a very over engineered solution, Google doesn’t mind asking verified users to verify again making this pointless, it would be more efficient to simply hire a team of people or use automated systems to solve CAPTCHAS, this approach also leaks a lot of data depending on your threat model, etc.



  • The DKTB is a personal app. It is therefore assumed, that the User will not share it with other people, and that only the User can access and control their personal DKTB. Ultimately, this means that all attestations in a DKTB are expected to pertain to and only be presented by the same User. This is enforced by requiring the user to authenticate using biometry or PIN-code when using the app and only allowing the DKTB application to be installed on one device per user. (from the PDF)

    This is a false assumption: PIN codes can be bypassed by sharing them with others. Devices can be faked unless using hardware attestation, which prohibits any modifications to the device which may be undertaken by those interested in rooting or installing a custom OS.

    Users can initially acquire a DKTB on their smartphone or tablet via Google Play or the Apple App store. (from the PDF)

    This method requires the use of a vanilla, unmodified device, effectively prohibiting modifications to devices that one might wish to alter.