Technically, if your hardware is backdoored, they could potentially be using a way of communicating without being connected to the wifi etc. I'm thinking, potential hidden sim cards, however this would be easily verified by checking the hardware of your computer. Honestly, it should be a part of everyone's security practices to take a look at what's under the hood to make sure there's no unexplained parts or modified components, at least obviously modified. The chip itself is likely compromised, there's been several accusations in the past, but as far as I know there's been no real evidence showing backdoors.

Personally, I don't like recent developments in the CPU with the ME engine, and AMD equivalent. Opens up a ton of attack vectors, so a CPU that doesn't have that capability is definitely preferable. The issue is; often it's no longer supported, and therefore there's no way of updating the interfaces that interact with it.

In terms of phones; it's much less likely someone's checked their hardware on a phone, due to the nature of how they're manufactured. However, I'd probably trust the latest versions of Android more than the older one's, for one they have much better isolation implementations, which the older Android versions didn't even have any isolation if you go back a while.

Yeah, he has the potential to be a clean sweep, get the finish early on. However, I honestly think people put too much emphasis on the name, and just expect them to steam roll. Said, isn't Khabib, and definitely has shown several weaknesses. Now, I don't know if Jonathan Martinez is the man to put him to the sword, but he's got a decent record, and it should be at least a challenge. Also, I find Said a lot more risky than some of the others with an association of Khabib.

Ariane Lipski has the chance, but if I was to bet on her, I'd have to with the decision, hoping that she puts out enough volume. I don't she'll be finishing the fight, but there's a lot more value in the decision.

I've yet to whitelist anyone, although I looked at whitelisting a few, but they were already whitelisted, so I assumed you got to them first. Most of my conversations fizzle out, although I don't like getting back to users straight away. I won't be checking every day, I'll be doing it once or a couple times a week. I've only had about 100-150 requests since this thread was opened.

Unfortunately, out of most of those I've only been interested in whitelisting probably around five of them, which were already whitelisted as I said by the time I considered them.

Yeah you'd think the surprise factor is gone, which is what we had in the previous games, but Liverpool's pressing when on point is the best around, and I think it'll catch anyone out at the best of times. So, I'm somewhat confident in getting a win like I said, but not conceding is going to be the hardest part. However, if Real Madrid come out, and sit back deep. We might have a chance as they might get stuck in their ways, and we can get a few goals, and then that forces them to change their tactics, but changing your tactics mid way through a game is often difficult. I think it's definitely possible, I just think it'll be our defense that'll let us down.

That's a good point you make though, Barcelona did have something to prove after losing by that amount against Roma, wasn't it something like 4-0? Then, had something to prove against us, and ultimately messed that up. Real Madrid have been caught cold before as well, so it's not like it hasn't happened. I mean, we scored 2-0 goals against them in quick succession, and really had them on their heels. Though, yet again our defense couldn't hold out.

Ideally, I'd like to get the high press going from the start, and score within the first ten minutes, that's when we're at our most effective, and that gives us the most chance to actually beat this deficit.

I'm a massive fan of Tyson, I've got his books, watched his documentaries, and I watch every single fight of his. The issue I have is, he always portrays that he doesn't care about his legacy or money, when that's obviously a blatant lie. I wish he was just a little more honest at times, and I don't doubt that the Joshua vs Fury fight was cancelled due to Fury, since from that point on there's been multiple accusations thrown by a couple of different people that he's the one that holds the fights up.

I used to think it was the promoters trying to milk the cow a little, and not wanting the riskier fights. However, I think my view of that has changed, at least when involving Fury. I don't know if it's confidence with Fury though, I think he's rather confident going into the fight against Usyk, I just think he's trying to get as much money as possible knowing he won't be doing this forever.

Although, he already has a ton of money that I could happily retire on tomorrow. I just wished, he'd do the fans a service take a 60/40, and deliver what the fans want to watch. I love him as a boxer, I love the banter he brings, but I certainly don't like his business practices.

Honestly, I wouldn't doubt yourself over my picks, I've included some risky one's in there. Harris probably does it, but I'm not betting so I've been a lot more risky than I would if I were betting. If I was betting this weekend, Harris would likely be included, as I often do different bets to my actual predictions. Since, I sometimes go for the safer options in the bets, despite feeling that a fight will go another way.

I do think it's a risky fight though, and think it'll be rather close. Closer than the odds suggest at least.

UFC definitely encouraged the drama outside of the ring to sell tickets, and then publicly criticized everyone who jumped in the ring, and out of the ring at the end of the fight. I'm not sure boxing could get away with something like that, UFC still has that sort of attitude which actually prevents a lot of people from watching it. Personally, I avoided the UFC for a while due to me thinking it was too violent, and all it was about was hurting people. Obviously, I know better than that now, but I feel Dana's attitude to a lot of things doesn't exactly help its reputation.

France to beat England at 1.72 is looking very nice, I wouldn't have thought we'd get those odds. England, as I said before haven't looked great for a few seasons now, and against a really struggling Wales side. Italy, obviously with the 1.80 against Wales also looks good, I mean this weekend is probably some of the best value bets you can get in the Six Nations. Also, Scotland against Ireland is 3.60, I think that's the most risky bet to make, but that's also very good odds. You chuck an accumulator on for all three of those, and that's 13.36.

Obviously, I'll never bet against Wales, but if I was a neutral that looks like a very good accumulator to me, the only real risky one is Scotland, but on their day they can beat Ireland. France, I think will find it easy, Italy, and Wales will likely be a close game.

Right, onto the predictions. It's a tough night, and I'm fancying quite a lot of the underdogs this time around, and because I won't be watching the event, my predictions will be a lot more risky, since I'm not betting.

Jared Gooden
Tyson Nam
Tony Gravely
JJ Aldrich
Mario Bautista
Sedriques Dumas
Davey Grant
Karl Williams
Vitor Petrino
Said Nurmagomedov
Ricardo Ramos
Ryan Spann
Alexandr Romanov
Petr Yan

I haven't got any massive favourites; Said I'm actually pretty worried despite his name, and reputation. Romanov I'm hoping gets the win, and Petr Yan always starts slow so he's a massive risk, even in a five rounder.

I think you will keep it going personally. The thing about teams struggling, as long as there's passion there, you'll always recover from a period of bad form, and looking at those Chelsea players after the game, there's was definitely passion there. So, while there's been rumours of the manager losing the dressing room, and various other things; that didn't look like the players didn't want to play for the manager, quite the opposite.

Liverpool, losing the first leg convincingly, against a Spanish club, and needing to overcome impossible odds? I've heard this before, right? Alright, I don't expect it to happen again, but we've quite regularly gone behind quite convincingly, and then managed to crawl right back into it. Dortmund with the Lovern header, Barcelona with the quick corner, and obviously Istanbul if you want to go that far back. So, I definitely don't doubt we're capable of it. I just think Real Madrid will know this, and they know how to manage Champions League games to make sure they progress.

The pound for pound title is probably the most subjective title going, so I wouldn't read into it too much. However, I would say that Jon Jones is one of the most talented fighters to have ever competed inside the UFC. So, I can see why we would be in the running for pound for pound. However, I always feel weird giving heavyweights that title due to the fact they have some of the physical advantages that other weight classes don't.

Anyway, I'll get my predictions out tomorrow of the next event, since I don't think I'll be watching this one, as I've got other things planned.

I don't know how many, I tend to prefer the vanilla variants which don't add any additional customization or toggles as you say, and just remove the Google related stuff. These are much less common unfortunately, as every custom ROM has gone down the path of trying to add as much customization as possible.

Generally, if a custom ROM has a ton of customization features, there's more room for error, and they very likely implement a lot of the customization via hacky ways, which go against the core Android security principles. So, ideally you want a custom ROM which hasn't added too much to the code, but instead removed the Google services, and dependent applications. There's a security risk with this also, as obviously Google claims to protect your device with these services.

There's a list of a collection of various GSI's (Generic System Images). There's also others out there that aren't included on that list. There's also the potential that you do it privately for yourself also.

Although, custom ROMS are better for improving privacy, rather than security since there's likely a trade off of removing the Google applications in the first place, due to them being tied in intrinsically to the Android operating system.

One example, of a popular custom ROM that claims better privacy, and security features is GrapheneOS. However, to achieve that it's heavily modified, and you'll ideally review the code yourself to see how they've implemented those features. Plus, this only works on certain hardware, which is typically the most used phones, therefore that could be an additional risk too. Hence, why a lot of users that haven't got mainstream phones opt for GSI's.

For example, here they strongly recommend Google devices:

Which, for me suggests they're ignoring the possibility that Google doesn't compromise your security or privacy via their hardware, which is a little bit hard to believe when they're so against the software of Google. So, there's a ton of different options out there, and ultimately everyone has to make their own decision, since as above one of the most popular custom ROMS suggest something that I don't entirely agree with. Although, we're getting to the tinfoil stage here (I think we've been there for a while to be honest, most users aren't worrying about this soft of stuff).

I've neglected this for a while, so announcing that I'm now making this a part of my schedule, and should be reviewing these much more frequently. So, if I haven't got back to you in the past; send us an email again.

I was going to go through a lot of the requests that I haven't read since I wasn't actively checking this email since it's a throwaway, but checking a few it seems that LoyceV or one of the other users have already whitelisted most of the substantial requests.

I don't have any criteria, it's based on how the conversation goes, basically. I'll then make note to keep an eye on the account from a period of time after the whitelist has been made.

So, again send your whitelist requests via:  
If you're a already established user on the forum, and you'd like to request that someone you know to get whitelisted you can contact me via personal message instead.

I'm not entirely sure, I've never really taken enough notice on how the unread posts work, and can't verify it right now due to recently marking all posts as read. I'll keep an eye out in the following days. Since, the forum has to keep track of unread posts somehow, I'm wondering to what extent does it log to keep track of that. Whether, it's done page by page or not.

Possibly, obviously the information on that page is rather vague. Doesn't really say exactly what's being recorded to the database, and what isn't. I imagine the forum hasn't been altered too much from the original Simple Machines in this regard. Obviously, it has been heavily modified, but I'm not sure if theymos would've made changes to this specific behaviour compared to the default, so we could potentially take a look at how SMF does it by default. Whether, it records each individuals access to each page.

However, the other entry is obviously easy to identify what sort of information is stored, which is pretty standard on most forums.

This suggests it does:
This pretty much confirms it:
From my interpretation (especially the part I've made bold within the quote), the second quote confirms that it keeps track of each user viewing a thread, since it suggests you can kind of obfuscate this via marking all existing threads as read. So, while it doesn't record in to a text file in the example you've given, it does record each thread a user has visited. The forum isn't doing anything with that, and you're quite right if you were too display who has visited a thread along the lines of what the OP was suggesting, it would quickly rack up the storage required since you'd need to store it for a lot longer than the forum current does. Since, the logging that is done currently, gets cleared after a while, so it's not a big deal:

Liverpool will smash Real Madrid don't you guys worry about it. Alright, I admit, I can see us scoring a few goals, but unfortunately I just don't see us conceding which is the difficult part to overcome in my opinion, even against United where we were clearly the better team, we still looked rather fragile at the back in that first half. I distinctively remember our defenders causing absolute chaos, and Alison nearly giving them a tap in.

So, while that result against Man Utd, and the fact we kept a clean sheet is absolutely brilliant; doing that against Real Madrid away from home? That's more than a tall order, I think that's astronomically tall order. Although, Klopp turned me into a believer, and I'm not going to start doubting the boys now.

Anyway, onto the fixtures this weekend:

Liverpool vs Bournemouth. Obviously, I'd going to say we'll wipe the floor with Bournemouth. I think Crystal Palace has the potential to take points off of City, and hopefully that's the case. Arsenal haven't got the easiest game in the world against Fulham, which could potentially make it hard work. Although, I'd fancy the gunners to extend their league further this weekend. The other key game has to be Chelsea vs Leicester. I'm not sure what you guys are going for there, it's hard to judge considering how good Chelsea looked midweek. I reckon a 1-1 could be on the cards. 

Right, ideally you want to be using a custom ROM tailored for security, and privacy, that doesn't go against the security practices of Android. They tend to have some nice features about them, but ultimately you're trusting the developer, however usually you'd want to use one that has published their modifications to the AOSP. A lot of the newer custom ROMS support over the air updates also, which wasn't really a thing for a long time.

However, there's are some additional risks with custom ROMS, and you'd be sacrificing the Google protection if you remove the Google applications, make that what you will though. However, even some stock android that comes with the your phone could potentially be going against the security practices of Android, since they're typically modified by the manufacturer, and there's no guarantee that they implement everything correctly. Unless, they ship with 100% stock Android, which they typically don't.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I personally don't use a phone for accessing my Bitcoin, however if you must I'd consider all the above personally. Although, a lot of it can probably be safely ignored. However, the privacy cocnern is definitely worth highlighting.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd ever be comfortable with generating a private key on a online computer, honestly. If I wanted a hot wallet, I'd use a hardware wallet. It just prevents a lot of the issues you can come across when accessing your Bitcoin on a online computer.

The more I read about Coinomi wallet, the more I'm worried about its users. What does the manual backup do? Does it present you with the seed, and then ask you to write it down or is it trying to store a local backup, via storing it on your device? If it's the latter there's a whole lot wrong with that. The final straw is they've specifically stated they recommend both backup options "to help loss of crypto", but I honestly believe the way they're recommending to do it, puts it at even more risk.

Obviously, the fact that's closed source should be enough to deter most users from using their wallet, but I've seen it getting mentioned more, and more recently.

I'd rather input my password regularly, especially if it's a hot wallet, since that can be changed if you suspect that you've been compromised, compared to a private key that can't be changed, and therefore once compromised, will forever be compromised.

Although, if you suspect you've been compromised, I'd probably set up a new secure environment, and transfer to Bitcoin to the new securely generated wallet.

Right, if you have your physical wallet file you don't need to input the private key, same goes when you import your seed to generate a new wallet. Usually, you don't even need your password or biometrics since it's like creating a new wallet with the same private keys.

It's one of the reasons I always suggest installing custom ROM on it, which remove the bloatware, and Google applications if you wish. I personally, have a phone that doesn't have Google installed on it. I use Aurora store or F-Droid to get the applications I absolutely need, which quite honestly isn't many at all. Usually, Firefox, and a few open source applications from F-droid.

At the very least, use adb to remove some of the bloatware if you don't want the instability which sometimes comes with custom ROMS.

It's also a rather dangerous assumption, knowing that manufacturers have installed bloatware in their modified android operating system, which they almost always advertise as stock Android. Here's just a few examples:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/android-phones-hiding-pre-installed-malware
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/android-malware-that-comes-preinstalled-are-a-massive-threat/
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/android-malware-phones-infected-samsung-galalaxy-s7-nexus-5x-models-before-sale-a7626726.html

Anyway, that's just a few examples that a quick search yielded.


A few questions;
- Can you be sure that those old devices haven't already been compromised
- Can you be sure that the disks/flash cards are secure
- Are you generating them offline, because I'd be more confident with an updated operating system if it was going online, however again probably better offline in the first place

I know for a fact that some forums do store this information, since I've dabbled in forum software before. However, I can't remember the default implementation of Simple Machines software. Although, that doesn't matter, as I pointed out the privacy page suggests that this sort of information is stored, albeit not for very long. While it's not specific, I suspect the two entries:
Suggests this information is stored, but not what the OP was requesting, i.e a view counter for each post made in a thread.

That's why it's removed periodically from the database, likely pruned automatically for the most part.

Yeah, I did see some of them were captured, hence why I said about scrapers potentially not having scraped all of them yet. I found a few posts which were sort of duplicates, and very low quality. So, I knew the type of posts most of them were, even though there was no edit history scraped on quite a lot of them. Also, not sure how they went amiss at the time of being posted, because that's a lot of threads being posted in a rather short period of time. However, it was also at one of the time's the Altcoin section was at its busiest, so that probably contributed. 2017-2018 was by far the biggest spam wave we've ever seen.

Yeah, the edited posts are very likely in the backups, and the admins probably have a fairly easy way of looking at the edited posts history. However, normal moderators don't. I'm not sure, if Global Moderators have more access to this sort of information, but I don't think they do. Maybe, it would be useful if all moderators could check this information though, it'd allow us to make more informed decisions.

Generally, I don't tend to rely too much on web scrapers, because there's potential for issues there. However, I don't personally see the significance of a lot of these threads, when they were likely all low quality to begin with. Although, this might be a conversation to be had behind the scenes, and potentially change our view points in order to have more cohesion. Like I said, I don't take complaints as being hostile, I just see it as a opportunity to evaluate, and look at other perspectives.

I think it varies, there's too my knowledge no guidance on not deleting of old posts, to me if it's spam, it's spam, and will be removed. However, I can see why other moderators might think different. Personally, I just want my sections to be as clean as possible, and a lot of what I'd consider significant, i.e having a decent amount of history are covered in "great project!" type posts, which I always remove.

Generally though, reports of recent posts are much more valuable, than older one's. I think theymos has said at one point, that not all reports are of the same quality. So, while some users may have 2k reports of older, less seen posts they're not the same quality as someone who has 1k reports of more frequently exposed posts. However, my point of view is they're both valuable. I revisit old threads from time to time, and I imagine a few users do with old Altcoin threads.

This is likely already done too some extent. A lot of forum software tends to log what users have looked at. Whether or not theymos has that enabled still or if it was disabled when the other statistics were disabled, I'm not 100% sure, but they likely do get wiped periodically due to the storage issues that could arise, since for the most part it would be useless information.

It speaks about page, and thread views in the privacy page. They're only kept for a few weeks though, obviously to prevent unnecessary storage usage. Plus, there usefulness is likely diminished past a few weeks anyhow. Thread views are kept for Log of all viewed topics as far as I know means viewing threads though, so that could stay on the database until deleted.

So, yeah this information is already captured, but isn't publicly released. Do note though, determining whether a individual post within a thread/page has been viewed isn't possible with the languages that SMF uses, unless significant changes were made.