Unfortunately at the moment I don't have the time to respond point-for-point against the astonishing number of words that have been she's on this subject in a desktop screenshot thread, so I will point out some facts to you which you have neglected.

1. Part of the NSA mandate is to secure American information systems. This includes contributing to cryptographic standards where possible, and even contributing to open source software on that basis. Should their contributions be suspect? Absolutely. But for every evil computer janitor at the NSA who is reading your emails, there is a cryptographer at the NSA who is working to make his job harder.

2. Your argument presupposes that the NSA is a skilled and surreptitious organization when all evidence points to them being clumsy and thuggish, relying more upon their ability to seal court records than to keep any real secrets. They even let low level computer janitors have free run of their records. Look at what's actually been leaked: they crippled a particular standard, which they had to use government regulation to mandate the use, and bribe companies to make it the default. Brute force. You really think the same people who thought of this brilliant plan are inserting subtle security faults into OSS?

.

The patch that caused Heartbleed was authored by one of the two core maintainers. The core maintainers are extremely poor engineers who do not adequately test their code, do not use the commercial tools they are offered for free because they are too lazy to set them up, and are generally speaking unskilled programmers. You can think whatever dumb thing you want, but now that actual adults have started looking at the mess they've created the consensus is that it's unsalvagable, and son, it ain't because the NSA haxxord it.

NSA Operation SCRUBLORD: conspire to make the worst open source projects keystone technologies.

Orrrr maybe these sorts of problems have been happening for decades, and it's only now that the projects are important enough to warrant adult supervision?????

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NSA Operation SCRUBLORD-2: conspire to force the industry to adopt Netscape's garbage technology SSL. This will be extremely difficult as the industry has been highly resistant to Netscape's other garbage technologies, like JavaScript and CSS.

This will follow from NSA Operation SALTEARTH, which conspired to make email headers basically impossible to parse.

I don't think you're pulling this out of your ass. Someone else's ass, maybe.

The NSA has done a lot of really creepy stuff. Creepy, ineffective stuff, because their creepy branch is also staffed with the moron dregs left over after the actual smart people get jobs that don't require secret treason under order of the executive branch. c.f. noted drop-out and mediocre computer janitor Edward Snowden, who they still had to pay mid-six figures, and who was still given unrestrained access to everything the NSA has. These are not intelligent hard-working people we are talking about.

Everything you're talking about is certainly possible, but I've never seen anything that would cause me to weight it more than I do Ken Thompson's ACM award speech. And at least that guy had the chops to pull it off.

I remember reading that a bunch of the original internet programs (like Sendmail) that came out of Berkeley were written by grad students, most of whom apparently didn't know a whole lot about writing secure C programs.

And on the subject of grad students, when you realize how much trust you're placing in people basically no matter what you do, you pretty quickly stop caring if the NSA makes our computer crypto security theatre slightly worse than it already is.

You're trusting that Ken Thompson didn't put a back door in the first C compiler.
You're trusting that no company put a back door in any chip used to compile a C compiler, or in any chip used to design those chips.
You're trusting the mathematicians who prove cryptographic algorithms produce the correct output.
You're trusting mathematicians' hunches that the computational problems of decrypting are sufficiently hard. Hunches, because it's not formally proven.
You're trusting that academics are honest when they say they don't have proof that those problems are easy.
You're trusting that academics quickly publish new attacks that reduce the expected compute time.
You're trusting that other people storing your secrets are using reliable algorithms.
You're trusting that future you will remember when all of your old weakly encrypted secrets become mathematically public.

Here is the reality for you. All computer systems are compromised. All cryptography has an expiration date and any secret will eventually become public. The only thing cryptography gets you is time, and even a one time lad is just a wrench to the knees away from becoming public. You cannot hide anything and you have never been able to hide anything.

one time lads, mm​

Phonepostin

I was listening to a radio interview with some senior NSA guy right after the Snowden thing blew up, and he was trying to make it out like Snowden was some kind of terrifyingly smart computer genius to have pulled off what he did, and that it was a problem endemic to always hiring the very best and brightest. Not, you know, that NSA had a massively incompetent implementation of data compartmentalization. I can't find it, but it was painful.

What happened to desktops and butter

this is better

No, Kroko ranting on about why "eating pizza in Ibiza" is not a valid rhyme would be better.

Is that meant as an insult to this thread, or are you just using this opportunity to take a jab at Sir Krokodile XVIII?

Yes.

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Just in case this thread can still be used for its original purpose, I just finished making a new wallpaper.

LIAR, THAT'S A PAINTING BY GEORGES SEURAT

True enough. But adding in the Maersk Bogor was not done by Seurat originally (a forgivable oversight on their part, I think).

I... didn't notice that. But the perspective is wrong! UNFORGIVABLE

I think I need more ram

But you have over 10 million memories. Isn't that enough?

All these... memories... will be lost...

in TIME.

Like tears...

... in rain.

Time to die.

It's too bad she won't live!

But then again, who does?

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How often do you all change your desktop backgrounds? I ask because I rarely do, and I'm curious if I'm abnormal in this or not among Massassians.

I haven't changed mine in years.

My background is also fairly static.

I change backgrounds every few weeks - just depends on what I'm into at the moment. Just finished rewatching Justice League and Justice League Unlimited last week...

I miss the old Justice League.

I used to change my wallpaper once a month. But I ran out of exploding planets and whatnot so now I'm reusing classic ones that I've used before, changing them whenever the need arises.

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Coincidentally, I also used to change my underwear once a month. But I ran out of exploding pants and whatnot so now I'm reusing soaked ones that I've used before, changing them whenever something else arises.

I have the default Windows 10 background and I don't expect to change it anytime soon.