purple_elephant's comments

To preempt the unevitable comments blaming COVID vaccines for this: please note that most of the sources used in the article predate the pandemic.

> While reading it it felt like the author of this article had an axe to grind.

In the last sentences of the article, the author shows his true colors and advocates for a "multipolar world", which is basically a politically-correct way of saying "we should get closer to Russia".

And indeed, if you look him up, you might learn that he signed a petition calling for an end to support for Ukraine[1] and he frequently speaks out against NATO and defends Russia[2][3]

[1] - https://voxukraine.org/en/russian-disinformation-narratives-...

[2] - https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/svet/3439336-valka-neni-v-rusk...

[3] - https://tass.com/world/1460895

The rules aren't "unenforced". Sweden, and the other non-eurozone countries without an opt-out, are complying with the rules. There's no rule requiring the EU members to meet the convergence criteria.

Instead of accussing me of lying, you could've just looked up the relevant treaties.

Here's an abridged summary: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...

And this is about ERM II, it explicitly says that it's voluntary: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...

The full treaty on European Union is here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

There are many uninformed comments in this thread saying that the UK would have to join the Eurozone if it returned to the EU.

No. You only have to adopt the euro if you meet the convergence criteria. One of the criteria is joining ERM II. There's no mechanism that can force a country to join ERM II. This is why Sweden, although theoretically obliged to join the eurozone, still has its own currency.

But you don't say these things out loud. Swiss bank ads don't look like this: "Genocidal dictators, we will help you hide your money!"

Releasing a barebones MVP is an odd move when there's an established competitor that isn't lacking in features.

Not launching in the EU was also a big mistake. If they have trouble complying with EU regulations, they should have eaten the loss and temporarily disabled the ads and tracking in that market.

>In 2023, the way to use AES is AES-GCM. Anything else is very unlikely to make sense.

Encrypt-then-MAC remains the most conservative and theoretically secure option.

Leaving aside the (very serious) nonce reuse issue, the cracks on non-committing AEADs in general (such as AES-GCM) are already showing. Partitioning oracle attacks affect all of them: https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/88716/understandi...

There are also other minor GCM-specific issues (weak keys etc.). None of the issues are cypher-breaking, but I wouldn't say that AES-GCM is automatically the best choice for everything.