Yes, but the first part makes no sense. If the 128-bit key is indeed chosen at random for each file (as it should be), the probability that the same key will be chosen again for a second upload of the same file is effectively zero (1/2^128).
Exactly. Read: There is no real deduplication of data. So if 1 file is reported, there's no way to track all the other copies, or automatically ban a specific file hash.
Then it's easy for law enforcement to force Mega to remove all known versions of certain copyrighted material as they can now prove that Mega are hosting copies of that particular bit of copyrighted material, .e.g.
If they find a ripped version of a movie/ebook/whatever they can just encrypt it using Mega's scheme (which would now derive the key from the data) and get a single version of the file out. They then tell Mega to remove any files that match that encrypted file.
If all files are encrypted with a random key there's no way for law enforcement to do this.
That has a good practical benefit (deduplication of files that most benefit from deduplication), but it doesn't actually solve the security problems at all, it's just choosing to make the trade off one way for large files and a different way for smaller files. If you have a legitimate reason to want privacy against data confirmation attacks then you need what you need regardless of file size.
The whole thing with deduplication is a little bit overblown anyway. You don't want a hundred copies of the same big file, but is that what really happens? Nobody wants to upload the same file a hundred times, especially if the file is very large. Once there is already a copy, passing around a link to it is much easier than uploading it again. So the most common cause for it to happen is when two totally unrelated people upload the same bit-for-bit identical file, which happens, but not so often as to be prohibitive.
And in many cases file-level deduplication is difficult or impossible anyway because users make changes to the files (like editing embedded metadata or pointlessly encapsulating a single already-compressed file into a .rar archive), so the benefits you get from deduplication are not nothing, but there are situations where it is or isn't a reasonable trade off to make against privacy.
They don't seem to do that, though. Note that they claim that it's a random key and that deduplication is "much more likely" to happen when files are copied. If they would derive the key from the data in a deterministic way, they could always dedup and the previous statement (deduplication of copied files is more likely) could not be true.
I used the following heuristics (some parts added afterwards):
1. Helvetica has level edges, Arial is angled (as ef4 said). Particularly important were "t", "e" and "a", "S", "G", C".
2a. For capital letters, if there is an "R", the Helvetica one is curved in the bottom right part while Arial uses a straight line.
2b. For a capital "Y", the Arial one has the same length in all directions while the Helvetica one is shorter at the bottom. (Alexx indicated a difference).
2c. The jags/gaps in the capital "M" extend further to the top for Arial. This can be used to figure out MATTEL.
3. Otherwise, the one that looks fatter is Helvetica.
It's not "not nice", I like the design. What I didn't like was the loading and that reminded me the era of full-flash sites. Maybe the loading took much longer because the site is overloaded and it will be OK later.
The question is "Should whiskey be prohibited or not?" but he takes it to be "Is there anything good or bad about whiskey?" or "Do I think whiskey is good or bad?".
It would imply that she was called in front of a grand jury to testify against Aaron Swartz. I presume she initially refused to do so on the grounds that it might incriminate her - as is her right under the Fifth Amendment. Therefore the government gave her a letter of immunity, something they can do without her permission. Once she was immune to prosecution, the government could compel her testimony.
I assume she didn't want to go to jail (she does have a daughter, after all), so she testified. I can't say I'd hold that against her. You have very little rights in front of a grand jury.
The comment you replied to was certainly not a reference to Nazi Germany at all. Germans understand that a privacy-related reference to german history is usually a reference to the former state of East Germany which was famous for massive surveillance.
