The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.

First, I don’t like calling proprietary software “official”. Proprietary software is just software with closed source code. What makes something official is someone deciding “OK, this is what we are going to use” or that it definitely came from a particular source. Getting Docker directly from Docker repositories rather from a distributions repository for example.

My general take is if FOSS can do the job, I use FOSS. If FOSS can’t do the job I need, then I will go with the best proprietary solution to my problem. If I go with FOSS, I tend to prefer using the repository of the project in question rather than my distributions repository. The projects repository tends to be more up to date and there are fewer opportunities for ba actors to play with the code. Downside is that these repositories may introduce changes that may bork your OS when/if you upgrade to a newer major version. FlatPacks and AppImages help to mitigate this.

Hope that helps.

Fax isn’t encrypted. What keeps it alive is just inertia.

As for why your insurance company won’t take emailed photo, that probably has more to do with whatever system your insurance is using for their backend.

Email content can be end to end encrypted by GPG and S/MIME as well as through a few other standards. Email in transit can be (but not always is) encrypted via TLS.

The reason encryption is not default is because (I think) of backwards compatibility. E-mail originated at a time when almost nothing electronic was ever encrypted, including the username and password you used to log into a system with. Most of the encryption we use of today has simply been “bolted on” to standards that were already in place at the time and it did take a few tries to get it right.

When the internet was first getting started, few people, if anyone, thought it would become as invasive (possibly the wrong word) as it has become. Everyone on the net knew each other. They were friends, why would they ever need to hide anything from each other. /s

That and the early systems couldn’t really spare the processing power for encrypting and decrypting things.

Sounds like you’re more loyal to your “boss” then “the boss” is to you.

I once gave my loyalty to a company. I was laid off 7 months later. Now it’s “You want my work? You’ll pay my rates or you can take your business elsewhere.”

TANSTAFL. If the load don’t pay, don’t haul it. If a job doesn’t pay enough, find another job. Or starve. Their choice.

Sounds like they are more devoted to the company in question than the company is to them.

The Teamsters seem to go on strike as.frequently as the US has a vehicle accident involving a fatality. It’s not news at this point, it’s business as usual.

As a truck driver myself, my only thought is, “Good, perhaps freight rates will go up again.” Otherwise, don’t care. What are they striking about this time? Not enough coffee in the break room? Vending machine out of Mt.Dew?

Seriously though, I’ve never (knowingly) met a Teamster who wasn’t a complete and total asshole. I am sure such a creature exists, just haven’t met them yet.

The Teamsters Union is the only Union of which I have an entirely negative view of. They make the UAW look like a bunch of really intelligent, well organized, team players.

Well, first thing, you should read “allow list” as “federate ONLY with these instances”. Block list is the opposite of that, “DO NOT federate with this instance “.

Try removing everything from your allow and block lists and see what happens.