That probably depends on which state you're talking about. The FDA's reputation isn't great in a lot of places these days.

Selfishly, I'm not thrilled to see used CDs regaining popularity. It's driving the prices up. But it's a good thing overall.

There's an unusual amount of the "ends justify the means" mindset amongst the dev set associated with Silicon Valley these days, particularly in the genAI crowd. Fortunately, it's not nearly as common overall.

True, but I'd be very hesitant to trust such statements/contract clauses.

Why would a company that is not in the same line of business risk the lawsuits and brand damage?

This belief you hold doesn't make sense from any logical perspective

The lawsuit risk isn't huge. First, most people probably wouldn't be able to discover this has been done. Second, most people wouldn't be able to afford to sue, and the company can just settle with those who can.

I'm also not sure that the risk of brand damage is that compelling. A whole lot of companies misbehave and don't suffer enough to stop their behavior because of it.

genAI companies particularly. Overall, the things they have already said and done strongly indicate to me that they are not trustworthy. That's the main source of my doubt. Why would I expect them to be any different tomorrow than they were yesterday?

I'm in the US. At least half of the people I know own shortwave radios, although most don't think of them as "shortwave radios". They're more often called "world radios" or some other such synonym. I could run out to a consumer electronics store right now and buy one.

The younger people I know tend to own such a radio in the form of the Baofeng UV-5R or the like.

It's interesting because I wasn't aware of these "world radios" either. Maybe because I'm 34 and they lost popularity before I came of age? I have a ham radio license but I wouldn't consider those radios to be aimed at the ordinary consumer.

A Baofeng UV-5R cannot receive shortwave, it's in the VHF/UHF range for receive/transmit and can receive commercial FM broadcast.

Ah, true. My mistake.

The broadcast locations aren't really secret, and don't need to be.

Known locations can be taken out, no ?

Yes, but the locations of the big transmitters are in well-defended areas and smaller transmitters are easy to replace.

Nothing much in Iran is well defended from air I suppose.

Assuming, of course, the hypothetical that it's a signal emanating from Iran. The current fix seems to indicate Germany, in which case you would be correct.

Radios capable of receiving shortwave bands aren't exactly rare among normal people. They're not really "special hardware". Just owning one would not be inherently suspicious.

What would be suspicious is being in possession of the one-time pad needed to decode the messages, regardless of which media those messages are transmitted through.

For the record, "numbers stations" can be found in nearly every communication medium, including the web. The advantage of using shortwave (range, primarily) are large enough that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

> What would be suspicious is being in possession of the one-time pad needed to decode the messages

Would it though?

All you need is something with sufficient entropy. I reckon you could do a "good enough" job with any plausible-looking data you have lying around on your hard disk right now. Say for example if you took a couple of sha256s of any random image you might post on social media, you'd have quite a lot of key right there.

That is a book cipher, not a one-time pad.

The US absolutely could produce all the food needed for its own citizens (and more). That it currently doesn't is a result of business decisions, not because it's impossible. Different decisions could be made.

I wouldn't trust that guy, or any agency he's in charge of, any further than I could throw him.

To each his own.

For me, these tools take the fun part away and replace it mostly with the parts that I don't find fun. If I wanted to just direct others (machines or not) to do the implementation, I'd be a manager. There's a reason I've spent my career trying to avoid that fate.