Nowadays, a majority of apps require you to sign up with your email or even worse your phone number. If you have a phone number attached to your name, meaning you went to a cell service/phone provider, and you gave them your ID, then no matter what app you use, no matter how private it says it is, it is not private. There is NO exception to this. Your identity is instantly tied to that account.
Signal is not private. I recommend Simplex or another peer to peer onion messaging app. They don't require email or phone number. So as long as you protect your IP you are anonymous
Signal is private, what you should differentiate is being anonymous or not. Using your usual phone number is NOT Anonymous but is PRIVATE, as in the content of your messages being only available to you and the person you're talking to
The way you get a phone number depends on you too, so you can be very much be Anonymous even if signal requires a phone number.
People who actually care about privacy: the quality or state of being apart from company or observation (definition), wouldn't want a company knowing their phone number and thus identity tied to their phone number. Maybe you believe in a lower level of privacy than I do. That's fine but my post was for people who never thought about it but will care and those who should care.
Signal stores the hash of the phone number. So you can query them for a specific phone number, but are unable to figure out phone numbers based on the hashes (outside of brute force - trying every 12-digit phone number).
And after doing that, you learn "this person uses/used Signal", with no information about particular messages whatsoever.
You are very naive if you think that a company located un the US can provide an encrypted messaging service that can be used by anyone including terrorists, druglords and US enemies without the government being able to access the messages. Lavabit was a famous case and had to shutdown because its founder rejected to comply with an order from the US government to grant access to information. If you are using centralized communication service located in the US forget about privacy.
”Lavabit is believed to be the first technology firm that has chosen to suspend or shut down its operation rather than comply with an order from the United States government to reveal information or grant access to information.[3] Silent Circle, an encrypted email, mobile video and voice service provider, followed the example of Lavabit by discontinuing its encrypted email services.[25] Citing the impossibility of being able to maintain the confidentiality of its customers' emails should it be served with government orders, Silent Circle permanently erased the encryption keys that allowed access to emails stored or transmitted by its service.[26]"
"Levison (founder) explained he was under a gag order and that he was legally unable to explain to the public why he ended the service.[21]"
Since when is encryption dependent on the service’s jurisdiction?
The US has a law that applies to any US company operating within its borders: it is illegal to tell your users that the US government has asked your company to spy on their behalf. This is called a key disclosure law, and the US's version of it, called National Security Letters, underwent an expansion with the PATRIOT act; by 2013, President Obama’s Intelligence Review Group reported issuing on average, nearly 60 NSLs every day.
Companies that don't comply with this law are forced to shut themselves down, or remain open, and grant access to user communications to the US government. The Signal foundation is a US domiciled company and must comply with this law without being able to disclose that they have been issued an NSL letter.
Luckily we don’t yet live in that world
Comply with the government order of granting access to messages or shut down implies that we are already in that world, long ago. What makes you think that what happened to Lavavit and Silent Circle would not happen to Signal? Only wishfull thinking can make you think that, evidence tells you otherwise.
Do you understand what encryption means? Genuine question.
If a company is compelled to spy on its users, it doesn't mean hack them. (although perhaps there are same edge cases where you have to wonder the exact definition of hacking)
Obviously you are missing the point. Even Gmail is private if you are going to do the job of encrypting your messages by yourself, but that's irrelevant with what we are discussing here.
What we are discussing here is that if you are a company offering a service of encrypted communications located in the US, the government has all the power to force you to shut down if you don't give them access to what they want. And that's not speculation, they're actively doint it because they are backed by the law.
Why people are so naive thinking that the government are not going to do something to get what they want when the law is on their side, when sometimes they don't hesitate to do it even when it's blatantly illegal?
The only way to avoid surveillance is with free, open source and descentralized software. If there is a company in charge of running the software that's a vulnerability and, like the cases already mentioned, those in power are going to exploit it shutting the service down if the company doesn't comply.
It doesn't matter how much you like or trust the service, there's simply no reason why they wouldn't do it again when they already dit it successfuly. Why some people who care about privacy can't see this obvious fact is beyond my understanding.
Alright I think I know what you mean, but I'm still not sure we're actually on the same page regarding encryption.
If a company is forced to do whatever ths government commands it to do, that's only valid within certain constraints.
For example, the company cannot be forced to grow wings snd fly to thr heavens. That's physically impossible.
Similarly, it also cannot provide the decrypted messages of its users because it (like Signal) does not have the KEYS that are absolutely 100% necessary for decrypting the encrypted messages of its users. So, again, it's physically impossible to hand over either the keys or the decrypted messages.
However, there is one remedy that Signal CAN do, if somehow forced. That's changing the Signal program. It certainly can push an update that sends Signal the keys for decryption.
However, at that point, the source code at github doesn't match the compiled binary of the program anymore, and very good chance people would notice, and thereby people would lose trust in Signal.
I'm not sure about the examples you gave about the government being successful in obtaining user details of a company. Were those details encrypted as well? Was the source code publically available? Was the program popular?
Signal is free and open-source. It cannot be denied that basically everything, including minor details like usernames, is end-to-end encrypted and kept secure. The Signal protocol has been proven to be secure by many independent experts and thus it is mathematically impossible for Signal to gain access to your sensitive information (except for your phone number, obviously).
Signal is not open source, its a centralized US service, and you have no idea what their server is running. They even went a full year without publishing server code updates at one point, until it caused enough of a backlash that they started doing it again. But publishing that is no guarantee of anything, because you have no access to their server.
mathematically impossible for Signal to gain access to your sensitive information (except for your phone number, obviously).
A phone number in most countries, including the US, means your real name and address.
Your phone number alone just doesn't give any real insight: you can derive that the person behind it prefers to communicate in private and that they're probably alive, but that's about it. Also, I don't think Signal can get your name without a government to look it up. That does happen sometimes, it's just that nothing importmant ever comes out of it.
Prove it, give me ssh access to their centralized server so I can verify that they're running the code they've published. Otherwise this is a "just trust me" claim.
Also, I don't think Signal can get your name without a government to look it up.
There are 10 websites that publicly publish phone number and identity info, right now. Not even a government, but a random stranger can convert your phone number to your real identity.
Since when is encryption dependent on the service's jurisdiction? When Signal has got subpoenaed it has always been incapable of providing data that involves the content of the conversation signal.org/bigbrother/
The app is also open source with reproducible builds (and you can use Molly instead, if you prefer) and when the clients of an end-to-end encrypted system are sound, that is all that matters to secure the content of the communication. Audits are also performed as listed here community.signalusers.org/t/ov…
I don't understand where this doomerism comes from tbh, (online) privacy will cease to exist when either maths does or it becomes globally illegal to use encryption and the government's intrusion is really so pervasive that they constantly know what you're doing. Luckily we don't yet live in that world, though the pressure is real and we are the first that have to fight for this basic human right
You can't protect against emails being received in plain text.
Don't know the technicalities of the specific case you are referencing, but I know that if the government wants to they can middleman any received email before the provider can encrypt it for storage on their servers (by forcing the provider to let them).
On the other hand, if you use an end to end encrypted chat app, you can't middleman any messages from the providers side by force because the messages are always encrypted on the users device before being sent.
the phone number drives me nut since mine changes every few months; everyone i know has my voip number that gets everything forwarded to each new number.
You can also get a phone number in a number of ways without it being connected to your identity. You can use voip services or buy a phone and a SIM in cash. I still think this is a good think to point out for all the people who use signal or other services with a phone number directly connected to their identity.
Depends where you live. I'm in Australia and phone companies aren't allowed to activate a number without tying it to an ID. So criminals just use stolen IDs and regular people don't get privacy. Also YMMV but virtually every service that needs phone verification won't accept VoIP numbers anymore
lol try signing up for an email account today without tying a phone number to it or another established email account. It's incredibly difficult.
You might be able to create an account, but then all "3rd party services" (e.g. creating accounts on absolutely fucking anything) will be blocked and your account will be either restricted or forced to submit a kind of verification that doxes you to lift said block, probably.
I found a single sketchy provider that would take verifications from proton mail that allowed me to then create more accounts, but I had to try over a dozen mail providers before I found the obscure one that did not require any pre-existing accounts, phone numbers or identification documents to just create an email to simply sign up for any web forum, service or basically do anything most people do with email. Everything ends up linked to each other at some point.
There's just no privacy anymore. The ones who think there is are probably not as private as they really think they are today.
Protonmail is highly accepted and tutamail didn't ask for my number or another email. You are in a group called privacy but you think there is no privacy?
I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It's called standards, YOU must have them and you will have more privacy than most.
This group function is to help increase privacy. That's what I'm doing by letting you know not to use your phone number. If you have a defeatist ideology. You lose.
Sure, requires 3rd party email or cell phone to work though.
tutamail didn’t ask for my number or another email
The last one, run by little over a dozen people as FOSS, and easily quashed by the long arm of the law or a pricey lawsuit. What happens then?
I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It’s called standards
You still need an email that is completely associated to you for official things like medical interactions, government interactions, and stuff like sports tickets if you care about going to a sports game in a town like Boston. Hell, when you send resumes I assume you have a professional inbox for that too.
So how do you do it? Do you live in two worlds with a burner phone / never checking your 'private' stuff outside of some kind of proxy/vpn scenario where you remote into whatever box is handling your actual private online presence?
Geez. You just don't get it. You don't need your identity tied to your email. Proton mail didn't ask me for a phone or email. But I've had it for years so maybe that changed. But you conceal your personal info when you sign up. Tutamail is used by many people. And you can email any other email provider with it
Proton mail didn’t ask me for a phone or email. But I’ve had it for years so maybe that changed.
It changed. I made one in the past week. You can create an account, you cannot get any account verification emails from ANY other provider, they block them and then restrict your account until you verify with someone else.
I don't know why you think I don't get it though. The amount of metadata accessible when visiting a website is crazy nowadays. They can track things people never even imagined, like the arc of how your hand moves across the screen with a mouse, the cadence of how you type, and then tie those to profiles with any other details they have managed to scrape. Combine that with hours of activity, browser versioning addons etc, resolution and any number of other bits of metadata and suddenly someone has a shadow profile linking you to your proxy IPs or whatever else.
Sure, i'm more paranoid but I don't believe anyone with a head on their shoulders would say privacy on the internet has ever gotten better.
Sure, i’m more paranoid but I don’t believe anyone with a head on their shoulders would say privacy on the internet has ever gotten better.
I mean things are dire but it's not as if nothing has improved. Even just 10-15 years ago most websites weren't using any encryption (or if they did it was only for login pages). Anything you read or sent could be seen by your ISP or someone snooping on the network. Encrypted messaging basically didn't exist or was very niche. VPNs weren't nearly as widespread either. Go back another decade and Tor Browser didn't yet exist (publicly) so there was no easy way to hide your location or stay anonymous online. Governments and companies have clamped down, yes, but our arsenal of privacy tools has never been bigger.
The amount of metadata accessible when visiting a website is crazy nowadays. They can track things people never even imagined, like the arc of how your hand moves across the screen with a mouse, the cadence of how you type, and then tie those to profiles with any other details they have managed to scrape
You can block a lot of this dynamic tracking with NoScript. This will break some websites but it's worth the inconvenience of a messed up page or needing to find an alternate site
Tutamail is the only service I know of that still doesn't need anything but I don't expect it to last. Email providers that don't make you verify anything end up being used for spam and then websites just start blocking their domain from being used for account creation
Signal needs a phone number. Why are we dismissing this as privacy versus anonymity when governments are blocking the registration SMS?
I really don’t get why so many people are turning this into a privacy versus anonymity debate when the real problem is censorship.
Yes, Signal needs a phone number to sign up, but replacing that with an email or username doesn’t make it anonymous. The real issue is that governments are blocking the registration SMS, so people can’t even sign up for the app in the first place.
Sure, there are workarounds, but most people aren’t going to jump through all those extra hoops just to use an app. If we want to spread privacy, how do we do that when Signal's phone number requirement is actively working against us?
Instead of arguing over privacy versus anonymity, shouldn’t we focus on making sure everyone can access Signal without issues? What do you think?
So, late to the party. Me Skuzi. This comment is more targeted towards your responses to user comments, but I would extend that to your entire thesis. So I decided to make an entirely new comment.
Honest questions/comments to follow:
Yes, the US govt can 'compel' a organization such as Signal to allow them to monitor/intercept encrypted messages, The government can even 'compel' a citizen to disclose their encryption key. The cost of non compliance varies from contempt of court to short term incarceration. United States v. Fricosu et al.
However, Signal would only shrug and hand them metadata. Even Signal can't decipher your messages. There are other services unrelated to Signal that operate thusly, such as VPNs, that absolutely do not keep logs and run in RAM only. Some of those VPNs have been raided and servers confiscated by multiple governments with nothing to show for their efforts. If I recall correctly mega.nz and other storage facilities operate along the same lines.
As to the requirement for a phone number, yes they do require a phone number. However, unless they've changed something recently, you can use a free or paid for, burner phone number for verification. The caveat is that if you ever have to recover your account or future verification, you may or may not have access to that number if you used a free service. So, that might be a consideration.
Also, some free services might not work while others will. If signing up for a paid account, burnerapp.com for instance, will allow you to sign up via their website, however you can't use a VPN. WiFi can be acquired at any coffee shop. If you prefer more private methods of payment for these services, there are those that accept crypto.
So, there are 'options.' You just might have to jump through a few hoops to get there.
Secondly, Signal is open source, no? The whole shebang including the protocol is open source. Where might 'they' be putting the backdoor to intercept encrypted messages? I can tell you this, the day the world finds out that the US govt has successfully cracked strong encryption ciphers, is the day you are going to see a lot of movement on this planet. From billion dollar corporations, private entities, governments, and even ne'er-do-wells on Signal.
I'm no 'fanboy', tho there is a lot to be a fan of. I'm not getting any kickbacks, compensation, or monetary advancements. If I need to be schooled, please do share.
Signal does plan to add a paid for service as well as their free service.
Well, I'm not trying to convince you of anything, however, you can convince me if you'd like. Do you have some substantiating evidence or documentation for such claims? I am aware of improvements to AES256 down through the years, and I am aware of side channel and timing attacks. Not to be discounted, but those are largely theoretical attacks. In addition, most modern computers have mitigated the possibilities of such attacks with hardware instructions for AES to protect against timing-related side-channel attacks.
The NSA reviewed all the AES finalists, including Rijndael, and reported that all of them were secure enough for U.S. Government non-classified data. However, in June 2003, the U.S. Government announced that AES could be used to protect classified information. Now you could conspiriaze that in 2003, the govt played dumb and said that AES was good enough for classified information when they knew they could blow through it like weak toilet paper, but then again, we (America) are not the only country on the planet despite what some people think, and I am quite certain that other governments have made certain their encryption techniques are 99.999% secure for classified documentation and data.
You make good points and I can't provide any documentation. But the documentation won't exist. It would be the closest guarded secret of all time. NSA only holds the upper hand if everyone thinks it's secure. If the secret was out that that they could crack it no one would use it and the advantage is lost.
So at the very least by using Signal the government can know everyone you communicated with, at what time and where. And still is considered a private messenger. Amazing.
As clients upgrade, messages will automatically be delivered using sealed sender whenever possible. Users can enable an optional status icon that will be displayed in the detailed information view for a message to indicate when this happens. These protocol changes are an incremental step, and we are continuing to work on improvements to Signal’s metadata resistance. In particular, additional resistance to traffic correlation via timing attacks and IP addresses are areas of ongoing development. signal.org/blog/sealed-sender
In reading about the Sealed Sender protocol, as I understand, it redacts whom you've contacted. However, the metadata does include timestamps. I have no dog in this hunt as 99% of my messages are whispered into someone's ear. Still, one must implicitly trust the receiver of such whispered messages. I honestly don't care what app you use. Those choices are ultimately yours and yours alone and hopefully dependent on who you entrust with your data. This is just an interesting dissection of Signal and privacy/anonymity for the muse.
In the end, we all trust some entity whether it be your ISP who has your bank account info and residential address and can tell when you're downloading 150 gigs of Linux distros overnight even with a VPN, a bank with every last transaction you authorize, the time/date, or government to which we pay income taxes who has pretty much all the info they would need to show up at your doorstep. If your threat model precludes all the above, I would recommend whispering and disconnecting from society. I honestly do not see any other way.
In addition to the end-to-end encryption that protects every Signal message, the Signal service is designed to minimize the data that is retained about Signal users.
Signal over the past few years has been exposed for having flaws in its security integrity. Even the president's current administration has had a leak issue by using the platform, Signal.
Once again, they ask for your phone number. Anything they ask for your phone number, if your phone number is tied to your identity, can easily be revealed to reveal who you are.
This is the core of the issue, and it's wild how many people don't get it.
Your phone number is metadata. And people who think metadata is "just" data or that cross-referencing is some kind of sci-fi nonsense, are fundamentally misunderstanding how modern surveillance works.
By requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
Being able to map out who talks to whom is incredibly valuable. A three-letter agency can take the map of connections and overlay it with all the other data they vacuum up from other sources, such as location data, purchase histories, social media activity. If you become a "person of interest" for any reason, they instantly have your entire social circle mapped out.
Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It's a perfect filter: "Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto." You're basically raising your hand.
So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that it operates using a centralized server located in the US should worry people far more than it seems to.
The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data. So even if Signal's intentions are pure, we'd never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
The leak from the administration was because Pete Hegseth included a journalist in a discussion about sensitive war plans. Trying to blame that on Signal is deceptive on your part.
If you are saying that Signal does not offer anonymity then you are right. Anyone I message on there knows it's me. But Signal is still keeping my messages safe from monitoring and third-party surveillance, to the best of my knowledge.
Everyone you talk to and when you talked to them, with their real identities via phone numbers. Because signal is hosted in the US and subject to national security letters, you should assume the worst.
stores hashed phone numbers and first access / last access times and nothing else.
Even if this weren't false (otherwise they wouldn't be able to connect to your existing contacts), that's a "just trust us" claim. You give them your phone number, you should assume they have it and not "trust them" to hash it like its a password.
And the client does store these things, but also lets users delete messages and contacts. Your message deletions can propagate as well.
Not that its that important, but its yet another just trust us claim.
You literally don't understand how hashing works, got it. Please educate yourself on this topic. In short, "connecting your existing contacts" is ENTIRELY possible with hashed phone numbers; it's not even complicated or tricky. To claim otherwise, as you just did, is nothing but trumpeting your own ignorance.
As for deleting (and propagating deletion of) messages, this is most definitely NOT a matter of "just trust us". The client is open-source! We KNOW how it works. We KNOW that deletion propagates across devices when you tell it to. We KNOW that the service cannot see your unencrypted messages, and that the encrypted messages are made with AES so even quantum computers in the future can't decrypt them. This is incredibly far from "just trust us".
Who you are specifically (name etc) and the same amount of information on everyone you have talked to on signal and when you talked. Basically everything except for the actual content of the messages.
If it is tied to a phone number then any information connected to the phone account will be connected to the signal account identity. And any identifying information attached to the method used to pay for the phone account will be attached to the phone account and consequently the signal account.
Typically people pay using credit or debit cards, so the identifying information of those bank accounts become attached to your signal account.
Not only that, but self-hosting should be an option. It isn't with signal, which is based and hosted in the US, on amazon servers, and subject to national security letters .
You can use whatever app you like, but I think this adds confusion.
Signal is private because no one can see your messages except the people you are messaging. The government can't, Signal themselves can't.
Signal is not anonymous only in the sense that the government can check if you use Signal. That's it. They can tell if you use Signal. They can't link messages to your number in any way through data requests, etc.
Not forcing anyone to use Signal, but if you choose to, you can know it is private.
(So this post is confusing privacy with anonimity basically)
God damn. If you attach your phone number to it. It is not private in most users cases the identity it tied to the phone number. Signal knows the phone numbers and you better understand that they will reveal them if ever requested.
Yes, as I said, the government can tell if you use Signal or not by asking Signal (by providing Signal a phone number and asking if they have a record of it).
It's not anonymous in that sense, but it is still private because your messages cannot be revealed by such data requests.
No you all are SIMPs for signal. You all are promoting it like you work for them. All because you're too stupid (lack of having information) to understand they are a bad choice for privacy
They know who you're in contact with, who you communicate with the most due to the phone numbers being linked to your account. On their own website they say people can add you by searching your phone number in the search bar. If your phone number was not stored, this would not even be possible. A reference (like a phone but with your number on display) would have to be used in order to confirm that your account is the one that is being searched. The reference is the phone number. It is not private. I am not the one talking about anonymity over and over you are.
From the very beginning I have been speaking on privacy. If they know your number and know who your number is in communication with they now know what you're doing (talking to person x)
Evennif it is encrypted the damn app is a worst choice than SimpleX the thing I recommended. You chumps want to argue so bad you are missing the point. PRIVACY. Like the name of the damn group you're in. Why get compromised privacy when you can get comprehensive privacy (simplex)?
Answer you are a hypebeast promoing the most popular "privacy app"
They know who you’re in contact with, who you communicate with the most due to the phone numbers being linked to your account. On their own website they say people can add you by searching your phone number in the search bar. If your phone number was not stored, this would not even be possible. A reference (like a phone but with your number on display) would have to be used in order to confirm that your account is the one that is being searched. The reference is the phone number. It is not private. I am not the one talking about anonymity over and over you are.
I've already covered the phone number conundrum further in this thread.
Answer you are a hypebeast promoing the most popular “privacy app”
Quite laughable. Have fun storming the castle bro.
What data breach could there possibly be? Phone numbers are already public information and that's literally the only info Signal has. Oh no! My phone number that's publicly available already has been released in a "breach"!
It's already been mentioned numerous times but you're confusing privacy and anonymity.
Per Cambridge Dictionary:
Privacy: someone's right to keep their personal matters and relationships secret
Anonymity: the situation in which someone's name is not given or known:
Using Signal, even after giving them your phone number, fits the definition of privacy in that matters discussed through the app are secret to anyone outside of the sender and recipient. Even if Signal is told to hand over messages, they can't, there's nothing to access on their end. Private? Yes. Anonymous? No.
My neighbor knows who I am and where I live.....next door. He does not know what I do, other than observe that I ride a John Deer around in the fields and corn comes up shortly there after. Riding a John Deer in a field is observable by all public passers by. In public we are not guaranteed an expectation of privacy. He doesn't know tho, that I run a private sex dungeon and crack still in my basement.
I'm a haxor diddling some server somewhere to gain access. The server admin can see what I'm doing and indeed would have a record of what I was up to including any associated IP addresses, but wouldn't know me from Adam's house cat if I were truly conducting my activities in an anonymous manner.
He does not know what I do, other than observe that I ride a John Deer around in the fields and corn comes up shortly there after. Riding a John Deer in a field is observable by all public passers by.
So because he knows only a limited amount, that's the distinction between private and anonymous?
Signal is not your neighbor. Signal's DB stores phone numbers and knows who you are, and who you talked to, and when. Are the people you talk to considered "public", to a US-based corporation?
So because he knows only a limited amount, that’s the distinction between private and anonymous?
It is my distinction, yes. There are many other distinctions like it, but this one is mine based on my threat model. Now, if you'd supply your definition/distinction and threat model, then I can be pedantic about it as well. Or we can accept that, since we are talking about a wide swath of users, no one real definition suites all. If you'd like a similar exercise, hit Lemmy Self Host and pose the question, 'What is self hosting? Is hosting on a VPS considered self hosting or is a home lab considered self hosting'. Report back please.
Signal is not your neighbor. Signal’s DB stores phone numbers and knows who you are, and who you talked to, and when
You know the part in the Signal setup where it asks you for your phone number for verification purposes? You do know Signal does not prohibit the use of temp phone numbers. You can try as many as you like until you get one to work (if you're relying on free temp phone) One phone number not giving you any joy, tap 'Wrong number' and try again, or use a paid for burner phone service such as MobileSMS.io (which is specifically recommended for Signal), Burner, Quackr.io, Temp-Number.com, or there are reports of using Google Voice, if you dare tread those waters.
As clients upgrade, messages will automatically be delivered using sealed sender whenever possible. Users can enable an optional status icon that will be displayed in the detailed information view for a message to indicate when this happens. These protocol changes are an incremental step, and we are continuing to work on improvements to Signal’s metadata resistance. In particular, additional resistance to traffic correlation via timing attacks and IP addresses are areas of ongoing development. signal.org/blog/sealed-sender
As I understand the Sealed Sender protocol, it does redact or seeks to redact the metadata of 'whom you contact and who contacts you'. Since 2024, Signal has introduced usernames to reduce reliance on sharing phone numbers. You can set a username and hide your number from others, though it remains in the database for account purposes. Sooooooo....find you a temp burner phone number to use.
As I've said early on, I have no dog in this hunt. You can use Signal, Simplex, Smoke Signals, design a new enigma machine, whatever. My corn is going to grow regardless and my neighbor will still not know about my sex dungeon and crack still. LOL
In addition to the end-to-end encryption that protects every Signal message, the Signal service is designed to minimize the data that is retained about Signal users.
I don't consider it "private", if you were to know the real identities of everyone I was talking to, and when I talked to them. I'm not telling any US corporation like signal that especially.
Yes, we get it. You don't consider it "private" because you are using your own personal definition of the word, and getting all fucking bent out of joint because the definition you just fucking made up all on your own doesn't match what other people mean when they say the fucking word. WE FUCKING GET IT. END OF THREAD.
Dude, these are problems that people have been dealing with on the Internet for more than 30 years now. Not only do we have precise vocabulary that you have not bothered to educate yourself on, WE HAVE SOLUTIONS TO THESE FUCKING PROBLEMS. These are ANONYMITY issues, not PRIVACY issues. If you want an anonymous messaging platform, FUCKING USE AN ANONYMOUS MESSAGING PLATFORM. It's not fucking rocket science.
Please spare us the autism and read a fucking RFC.
You keep saying this. But you never offer any proof. Everyone keeps telling you why there is a distinction but you keep conflating the two, and here you are flat out bullshitting. It is in fact private.
What is your point? I am beginning to think YOU are propaganda. Or an idiot.
Started to write a long paragraph to explain the difference between privacy and anonymity but I now believe this new user is (no idea why) collecting engagement via rage bait. I won't participate in their posts anymore.
It might even come from a good place, namely trying to always do "better" and be "more private" but in practice it's just lead to confusion.
When this US service has your phone number (meaning your real name and address), then what is the point of making this distinction? Is them having my address private?
No one should have this info, regardless of how you every person differently defines "privacy" vs "anonymity"
No, it's a private and secure protocol (not corporation) thanks to end to end encryption. You can evaluate the protocol yourself with your own eyes, except clearly you cannot read, but modulo that.
Newsflash, chuckles: your IP address IS NOT ANONYMOUS. Any private protocol you use without going through Tor, i2p, or some similar anonymizing network IS NOT ANONYMOUS.
You're attacking a strawman. Neither Signal nor anyone else has claimed the protocol or the service are anonymous. Which, yes, is something that every user should know before trusting it. They should understand what it means and what the consequences are. I'm honestly not sure you're even there.
thanks to end to end encryption. You can evaluate the protocol yourself with your own eyes, except clearly you cannot read, but modulo that.
This means nothing when you have no idea what code the server is running, they even went a whole year without publishing their server code updates, until they got a lot of backlash over it. Real security doesn't require a "just trust us" claim.
Also, metadata is content. Even if they don't have the message text, Signal still has the real identities of everyone you talked to, and when. With that you can build social network graphs, which are far easier to harvest and more useful anyway than trying to read through message content and determine meaning.
simplex is shady af and literally run by some sus crypto rugpull bums. best to use xmpp and irc. they have been existing for many years and still standing strong.
If you wanted to, you could put full control of your messages even on your own server by using Simplex. Of course, this comment you're saying is a far cry from reality.
I'm ready to be called milquetoast, and while I see where this comes from, it comes off idealistic if we are to communicate with people in the present day in any practical way. Do not forget how much of an improvement it already is over the likes of proprietary messaging apps and how much effort it already is to move people to Signal. It is surprisingly difficult for common folk to grasp the concept of anything but a phone number when it comes to messaging apps.
Signal allows you to speak confidentially, therefore it is private. It is not, by default, anonymous. Yes, this plus the centralized server mean that potentially dangerous metadata, like relationship maps, can be collected. All indications are this isn't the case, but that's not something you can count on.
If you need anonymity, which you probably do at least a bit, use simplex. And yes, having more people using anonymous services like simplex is a good thing for the community as a whole. That said, I'm not going to try to convince all of my friends to use simplex. It's just too far from the mainstream, missing too many features. Signal is a sufficient compromise for most people, and it's sufficient for me for most purposes.
It is at best slightly obscured information. If your life depends on a phone number never being associated with you, and you frequently use that phone number, you're a dead person.
dw I don't. My phone number was leaked, I don't know how and it really sucks. It probably happened before I started caring about privacy. and all these phone number aliasing services either don't operate in my region or cost too much money.
This thread shows the success of Signal's PR campaigns, and how a shiny app can get people to overlook all the privacy concerns. They're just as successful as Apple at getting people to think that a US-based corporation hosted on Amazon's servers and subject to national security letters, whose privacy model is "just trust us with your phone number", is in any way secure.
Since the first national security letter (NSL) statute was passed in 1986 and then dramatically expanded under the USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of such letters seeking the private telecommunications and financial records …
precisely that's why it's become so popular and recommended and now these users are recommending it furthering the amount of people that will have their data exposed there was a leak I believe in 2022 and on signal a lot of customers had their phone numbers exposed if their phone numbers are not stored how did they get exposed? Clearly the answer is that they are stored.
Seems OP is discussing the loss of anonymity, but the below ARE privacy concerns: * Someone obtaining my number who does not absolutely need it * Someone knowing who I am, and knowing I do or do not use a service
Granted that it is difficult to completely obfuscate some aspects of your identity.
You misunderstand; regardless of what is shown to other users, the folks running the service know your number, and that you desire using encrypted chat.
Because it has become extremely popular, that's just how it goes. At one point, even Telegram was recommended for being super secure or private, but the privacy is mild on Telegram at best.
But by comparison to Instagram or Whatsapp, it's how the gram looks like Privacy Central, so it was recommended. Now, Signal is replacing that role.
Signal is more private than the sus apps like IG, Facebook, etc. Yes. But only because those apps are so bad.
No one should be recommending signal over matrix and simplex. It's probably more secure than whatsapp, but both have social network graphs of everyone you talked to, and when.
Matrix's encryption algorithm was broken for a while and when it was fixed it it took app devs years to migrate to the new requirements. It still might even be the case for a lot of them, I haven't looked in a while.
SimpleX should be secure AFAIK though, but I've heard that it may not be able to scale well to larger user bases. It seems everything has pros and cons.
2FA is an important security layer, if the service, after sending you the activating SMS with the code, delete your number (normal in serious services), it's also not an privacy problem. In big us corporations on the other hand, it is, eg.Google store tour number and also probably share it, there 2FA is not an option. Instead a number, some services also admit alternatively a second e-mail account to receive the activation code, there, if you have doubt, you can use an disposable mail, so there isn't any privacy problem.
2FA is important, but if you use your phone number for anything, you have no idea how long they retain it, how they directly use it, if they sell it, etc. A real phone number can be mapped back to you trivially.
It should be standard to offer TOTP codes that can be used via an authenticator app, hardware key, etc. Aome places do, many do not.
But at the end of the day, they typically don't ask for your phone number because they want to give you security, but rather as a proxy to ensure you have a unique identity. Most people will have only one phone number, and it will be more difficult / costly to get additional ones than burner emails, etc.
Yes, iy's always to use with a grain of salt. As said, it ads a security layer, but can be an privacy hole, despte that mail directions are easier to track as phone numbers, at least in the EU, you can't be mapped back to an user, this is only possible in crime investigations by the police with an court order. Mail adresses on the other hand are unique identifiers which are way easier th track, except you use an disposable mail or alias. Anyway, eg.in Vivaldi 2FA is safe and apart optional, as also the account itself, only needed when you want to use sync or the use of Vivaldimail, blog and other services it offers. In much other services it's also only an option.
2FA helps with security concerns, not privacy concerns. They still would have your number. Also about Google, they have one of the widest spread and utilized 2FA authentication applications out there.
what information is provided to an entity about whom.
"Content" and "Context"
Why is only message text considered "information / content / context" here. Signal has your real name and address via phone numbers, and has every other real person you talked to, and when. Why is "message text" considered context, but social networking graphs aren't?
All these definitions are highly subjective, and the above one clearly considers social networking graphs to not be "content". Basically they've re-defined privacy in a way that excludes highly sensitive information like everyone you talk to, and when.
Seriously. I'm getting really sick of OPs take, it is a fundamentally flawed and ignorant understanding of what privacy and anonymity are.
If I'm at work and I need to speak to someone in private, we can go in a room and close the door. That's a PRIVATE conversation. It doesn't mean that nobody heard me say "hey Bob, can I talk to you for a minute?" It doesn't mean nobody saw us go in there and shut the door. The conversation is still private.
It's NOT private if someone is listening up against the door, or if there's a recording device in the room (in our analogy most messenger services and protocols fit here).
Signal IS PRIVATE CONVERSATION. But there's metadata about who is talking to whom, and it's NOT anonymous for the reasons OP pointed out, even if OP is a rabble rousing idiot.
Signal is private, free, accessible, and has a good feature set. Their foundation is a nonprofit with ethical motives, and it's widely adopted worldwide because it fills a very real, very necessary niche.
Signal is NOT anonymous. If you want to be anonymous online you've got a lot, possibly an insurmountable amount, of work to do. Signal should not be a part of that because it's NOT anonymous.
Quit strawmanning a good thing because it's not what you're looking for.
That is a compromise of privacy. If those hackers used those phone number to access any account by using unique methods those users privacy would be utterly lost.
It is certainly a lack of security. I wanted to emphasize how it's also a problem for privacy. People in the thread are now having an imaginary argument about anonymity, even though this has never been something I've been confused about. However, it is something that one of the users pulled up, and now they all are harping on it over and over.
Since my phone number is one of my personal belongings, although abstract, if I hide it from you, it is private. If I reveal it to you, it is not. Since it is associated with me, revealing it to you lowers my privacy, as it is one more thing revealed that belongs to me.
These fools can't even comprehend this, literally.
New documents and court records obtained by EFF show that Texas deputies queried Flock Safety's surveillance data in an abortion investigation, contradicting the narrative promoted by the company and the Johnson County Sheriff that she was “being sea…
That sheriff has since been arrested and indicted on felony counts in an unrelated sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation case. He has also been charged with aggravated perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury. EFF filed public records requests with Johnson County to obtain a more definitive account of events.
At least his side of the story has a happy ending.
The rest of the story is bonkers, though. The headline could not possibly do it justice. This is one you need to sit down and read with a cup of tea.
There are a range of medical procedures and medicines that label can be applied to. Is “abortion” still homicide when it is used to prevent illness, death, and suffering? How about when medicine is used to remove a non-viable pregnancy as mentioned in the article?
Imagine if a person broke into your home and you kicked them out, then they died of pneumonia. Their family sues you for killing them. But you didn't kill them, you just kicked them out.
The person at fault is the person who committed the trespass.
She wouldn't have to abort if the dick-haver kept it in his pants, would she?
We need an anti-flock campaign. A city government didn't give them permission to put their cameras up and when they did it anyway, the city covered them in garbage bags before they could get removed.
Like pleading with Hector not to fight Achilles, Cassandra has been warning about ALPRs for over a decade now, possibly two, that they were too intimate a search to allow law enforcement to use them without narrowly-defined warrants.
As with the Greek wooden horse Cassandra shouted was going to burn Troy to the ground, only too late we are seeing how such power can be used.
A Resonant‑Shell Cosmology: A Reflective–Dynamic Boundary as an Alternative to ΛCDM. resonant‑shell” cosmology in which the observable universe occupies a closed Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) region bounded by a thin, timelike, nearly reflective s…
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
They have gotten money from Bill Gates foundation. Still its a pop sci YouTube and does a good job at it. Some say its spreading misinformation or that context is missing. I don't really see malicious intentions. Expecting more of a pop sci publication is kind of absurd; take a real class and study if you want more.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
While not wrong, this is now quite a bit dated. Kurzgesagt acknowledged being called out for it and addressed it via various channels. One of them here:
I feel like propping up the industry primarily responsible for one of the largest (if not the largest) crises in human history is an appropriate place to draw a line.
They've continually called for switching to renewables though, and put out a bunch of videos on how damaging climate change is and will continue to be...
It's definitely not only that. I and, from what I've seen discussed here and elsewhere online, many other people have stopped watching the channel because of many valid reasons completely unrelated to AI. I haven't watched a single one of their videos for years, something changed in their content and I just lost interest. Then there have been several controversial events throughout the years, both objective bad stuff and subjective things that made many loose interest and faith in their integrity. They definitely became one of the many channels that lost it's way because of how big it got. The animations became too "perfect" in a weird way, they lost their personality and they also got scared of having real opinions so they started doing this "all sides" shit and that's when I tapped out. I've tried to watch new videos from them about once every 6 months or so, but I can't even make it past a minute without completely loosing interest.
I mean, I didn’t watch this video because I lost interest when the channel started getting really dark around 2020. I just needed a laugh during the pandemic. I didn’t need 4 videos in a row about the end of the world, then a few about the end of the universe, followed by a future civil war. It was too much.
In that it's mostly a merch ad hidden behind a clickbait title.
So I guess it's a good test for that sort of "just read the headline" response.
It's been a rough few days and I think I may be coming around. What hope is there to parse AI misinformation if people can't parse a Reddit-like link aggregator?
I may be done with this place at this point. It's just all bad. If not the whole Internet, certainly the whole of social media.
Completely agree, their channel has changed a lot and seems to be producing videos on a conveyor belt now, while before they used to do one video or maximum two a month. Now it seems they produce a video a week, and interesting topics are more hard to come by.
When they said that they're "almost 70 full time people and a lot of freelancers on top" I almost did a spit take. I know there are big channels and operations on YT, but this seems such an unreasonable amount of employees for this type of channel and audience. No wonder it feels oversaturated and overdone, they probably feel the need to put more and more videos to keep their huge team and expences afloat.
Just find a sustainable pace and team size, don't go the corporate way of growth over all.
This whole video felt like an advertisement to me. I’d already seen it twice, was it necessary to crosspost it again? You could at least have waited a couple of weeks before reposting the same content.
Their quality going down is probably what’s killing their channel. Every video is a merch ad, and the occasional shilling for the fossil fuel industry probably doesn’t help any.
These things are to be expected when you get bought by private equity, but let’s not be dishonest and say it’s all AI slop that’s killing them.
They are owned by private equity? It's pretty common these days for the more popular YT channels. Veritasium, Astrum, Fireship, fern., and Hoog are some other examples. Basically, if it's a popular YT channel, it's either owned by PE, in negotiations to be acquired by PE, or pursued by a PE firm in the hopes that they can acquire it. Private equity is accelerating their acquisitions, actually, and they want to control everything that captures the attention of viewers.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Anyone down voting this should be ashamed of themselves.
Like deeply and personally ashamed.
The type of shame that follows them for the rest their lives, because that's how scummy you'd have to be in order downvote someone shining a light on how private equity is buying out major YouTube channels.
Something that I was entirely unaware of, and appreciate your comment regarding.
I get it. They like the channel, and don't want to think that a channel they love could do something they don't love. Or maybe some of them don't see it as a bad thing in the first place.
Me, I'm the opposite. I want to know who owns the media I consume, because I want to know who might be influencing the things I see. It's always better to have the whole truth, even if that truth hurts. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy the channel still, it just means you're better prepared to understand the context of anything that that channel might say. Even cold hard facts with empirical evidence can be propaganda, depending on how it's presented.
I never made myself out to be virtuous, nor do I care about what you think of me. I'm an asshole, and that's fine because I love me exactly how I am and don't need random strangers on the internet for validation. and I certainly don't care about what you think of them making propaganda videos. I wouldn't even still be in this thread if you guys weren't still throwing a tantrum about somebody calling out your precious favorite YouTube channel for their less-than-stellar quality and tendency to pander to billionaires.
I posted my opinion, you got butthurt over it. that's as far as this conversation is ever going to go, because I don't care about you enough to bother arguing it extensively. now why don't you take your sci-fi antisemitic trope of a username and get out of my mentions.
Bringing this general issue up in a thread about Kurzgesagt, without also providing evidence that Kurzgesagt specifically is actually part of that issue, is at best irrelevant and at worst misleading though
I didn't single out any particular YouTube channel for individual scorn. My comment was in reference to that very well sourced video about private equity buying up / investing many YouTube channels, of which they provided sources for in the description of the video.
Look, I'm sorry you got invested in Youtube channels and now feel betrayed, but that's something everyone else already understood: don't blindly trust anyone or any organisation, they can be bought, and will when it's advantageous to do so.
In the meantime, don't shit on people's work without a good reason, or you're doing the work for those who mean to control you.
It's not a matter of betrayal, it was a video revealing another area of influence in society that is now controlled behind the scenes by private equity.
Whose work was I shitting on? I was shaming people who were down voting that very well sourced and informative video, that documented private equity's quiet takeover of major YouTube channels.
Maybe you should review the comment thread and see if you meant to respond to someone else, because that's the most charitable explanation I can come up with for your responses to me.
I mean, I would probably sell the channel myself. That's a lifechanging amount of money. I would buy some land deep in the backcountry, build a little walled village, and invite my family and friends to come live there. Grow our own food, set up some solar panels and wind turbines, buy up plenty of guns and ammo, and see if we couldn't hunker down and live out the ever more likely downfall of the American economy in relative peace.
So basically you would turn yourself in a mini-me version of Zuckenberg, Musk and Bezos. Given this consideration I would reassess my life priorities if I were you
the priority would be the lives of my friends and family. that is a priority that will not change as long as I draw breath, no matter what anyone thinks.
Well, if the societal structure falls there won't be anything left to provide for your friends and family and you'll be left to eat each other in your compound as will the billionaires using their fortunes to build survival bunkers. If that's the way you wanna go, with the leg of your mother as dinner, be my guest. If you, on the other hand, want to have a positive impact on the whole process helping stop this social decline there are much better ways to use your hypothetical money. It's up to you to decide, greed over cooperation or the other way around?
my family and I grow most of our food, and we're part of the local community garden where the small town we live in also grows food that is shared with everyone.
so out of the two of us, I'm pretty sure it'll be you who is starving.
And prayvtell, where do you find your seedlings and your fertilizer? And the tools to be used to work the fields? That's the problem of people like you, you can't see how intertwined it is our life with the rest of the world and you don't know how much it sucks to be living at a subsistence level. But go off with your fantasy, it does cost anything to dream.
Also, I forgot to ask how would you fare in a draught, a hailstorm or a long winter. But these are impossible conditions in your dreamworld I reckon
And prayvtell, where do you find your seedlings and your fertilizer?
well we use the stuff we grow for seeds, we don't buy into the capitalist propaganda that you can't replant things because It'S iLlEgAl. and compost is free and easy to make. also, I'm planning on getting chickens for fertilizer as well, once I build the infrastructure for them. they are great for dealing with insect pests too!
And the tools to be used to work the fields?
my next-door neighbor is a 40-year old dude that took up blacksmithing after he watched one too many YT videos. he made me a knife for last christmas out of a rusty steel cable.
Also, I forgot to ask how would you fare in a draught, a hailstorm or a long winter
I live in the midwest, we deal with those all the time.
dreamworld
a better world is possible, and it's not a dream. get up off your ass and make it with your friends. don't let legality or naysayers tell you something is impossible, that's capitalist propaganda meant to keep you down.
Yes of course, a utopia is waiting for those who are able to grow a crop using a field inside of an apartment.
Dude, you're projecting a reality which could be applied to a very narrow set of people in modern society and in the western world. Imagining a better future is possible and good, but we need to keep it aligned with the actual realities present at this time. Being a bad crop away from death and surviving in a close anarchist encampment can work in a movie like 38 years later, not in real life
it worked for humanity for thousands of years, you pessimistic doomer. you're going to be a wage slave forever, and die unhappy, because you're obviously too afraid to even consider that life could be at all different to the way it is now. you can't even imagine that solidarity and building mutual aid networks could improve your life. what a sad, depressing, incapable, pitiable thing you are. you've got Stockholm syndrome for the system that's going to murder you.
You speak of solidarity after having decided that a possible life changing sum of money would be used to benefit you and the people you decide are worthy of your benevolence. Let me tell you brother, you need to have a look into a vocabulary as soon as possible. And to what the tech overlords are doing with their money. You'll find to be more similar than you think to Bezos and Zuckerberg
Also,he conditions described in your posts are those we had to endure during the middle ages, when citie and villages were tiny nation states and in constant war with eachother to scrap the poor resources we had available at that time, when serfdom was a common occurrence and when people were lucky to live beyond 40 years of age. Not my best pick if I have to choose a future for the whole of humanity.
Lastly you still haven't time how should people living in cities and urban areas live in this futur of yours. Does your crop grow on asphalt and concrete or do you see the problem your "vision" would bring to a huge prt
You talk about,s solidarity afeter having decided that a life-changing sum of money would be used to benefit you and those you deem worthy of yourself. Please pick up a vocabulary and look at the definition of the words you use. Also look at what Bezos and Zuckerberg are doing with their money and how they're building their compounds and you'll find to be closer to them than to an anarchist.
Humanity already went through the conditions you described in your post: it was during the middle ages, when cities were tiny nation states at constant war with eachother to scrap the poor and few resources available, serfdom was pretty common and people were lucky to live past 40 years of age. Not exactly my first choice when it comes to decide how I would like to live my future life.
Lastly I despise the system we live in as much, if not more, than you. But, differently from you, I'm not used to throwing away the baby with the bath water and I prefer to safeguard those advancements wich are truly helpful to humanity such as vaccines, democracy and human rights to cite some of them.
I almost forgot, you still haven't explained how should people living in cities and urban areas survive in this future of yours. Does your crop grow on asphalt and concrete or do you see the problem your "vision" would bring to a huge part of any population?
Keep on dreaming of a 38 years later were you're the protagonist, I'm sure it will help you and everyone else ;)
You talk about,s solidarity afeter having decided that a life-changing sum of money would be used to benefit you and those you deem worthy of yourself.
anarchism is all about mutual association. so yes, anarchist communities would be made of people who agreed to be a community together. this is basic.
Humanity already went through the conditions you described in your post: it was during the middle ages, when cities were tiny nation states at constant war with eachother to scrap the poor and few resources available, serfdom was pretty common and people were lucky to live past 40 years of age. Not exactly my first choice when it comes to decide how I would like to live my future life.
what a first-world mindset. many places in the world still operate like this, you're just so comfortable in your way of life you don't even think about them. I would encourage you to break out of that mindset, and show a little interest in the wide world around you.
I almost forgot, you still haven’t explained how should people living in cities and urban areas survive in this future of yours. Does your crop grow on asphalt and concrete or do you see the problem your “vision” would bring to a huge part of any population?
yes, crops do grow in the cities. many cities are turning to urban farming in order to feed people. singapore is a leader in this, because they have a very large population with very little area for anything, let alone farming food. with not only private citizen-grown farms, but also the worlds first commercial rooftop farming company. and it's not just rooftops, farms are appearing indoors, sometimes taking up entire floors in some skyscrapers. in cities in china, such as chongqing and shenzhen, urban farms and gardens are very common, and shoved into whatever small areas they can be put into. i've seen them in alleys, dead space between buildings, on rooftops, hanging from the ceiling, and even on top of concrete walls in the form of potted crops.
but it's not just asia, places like new york city are also mandating green spaces on top of some skyscrapers as well. those can take the form of parks, or farms, depending on the preferences of the building owners, as long as they are natural plants. furthermore, many residential apartment buildings in places like new york, chicago, and other american cities are seeing rooftop farms appear. in reality, almost everyone can grow some food for themselves, even if all you have is a single small window sill.
you seem to be very ignorant of the world. I would also encourage you to seek out information on green initiatives, and how people in cities are dealing with the problems they face in an urban landscape. there is no doubt that you are speaking on a topic you are woefully unprepared for.
Keep on dreaming of a 38 years later were you’re the protagonist, I’m sure it will help you and everyone else ;)
if the best you can do to argue against me is bring up a fictional zombie apocalypse in which everyone was infected and died, then perhaps it is time to admit you already lost the argument. we're talking about reality here and what is happening right now all across the world, not your fantasy horror worlds.
anarchism is all about mutual association. so yes, anarchist communities would be made of people who agreed to be a community together. this is basic.
Being considered worthy of living in a space you so kindly have cut out of the external world is not association if you still haven't realised that.
what a first-world mindset. many places in the world still operate like this, you’re just so comfortable in your way of life you don’t even think about them. I would encourage you to break out of that mindset, and show a little interest in the wide world around you.
And still I wouldn't want to live like that. Our goal as a specie should be to elevate those living in hellish scenario like the one I described and that you so eagerly wish for all of us. Maybe this hasn't crossed your mind since you must be very young and fairly able bodied, but not everyone is capable of living in conditions where safe drinking water is unavailable and the best health care is relying on the phase of the moon to ingest the medicine cooked up by a wannabe shaman. It's not about being comfortable, it's about making everything better for everybody, for Christ' sake. You want to see millions of people die while you gloat about your helm and your ditch sorrounding it? Go for it, but at least don't call it "solidarity"; call it for what it is: egoism and main character syndrome.
yes, crops do grow in the cities. many cities are turning to urban farming in order to feed people. singapore is a leader in this, because they have a very large population with very little area for anything, let alone farming food. with not only private citizen-grown farms, but also the worlds first commercial rooftop farming company. and it’s not just rooftops, farms are appearing indoors, sometimes taking up entire floors in some skyscrapers. in cities in china, such as chongqing and shenzhen, urban farms and gardens are very common, and shoved into whatever small areas they can be put into. i’ve seen them in alleys, dead space between buildings, on rooftops, hanging from the ceiling, and even on top of concrete walls in the form of potted crops.
but it’s not just asia, places like new york city are also mandating green spaces on top of some skyscrapers as well. those can take the form of parks, or farms, depending on the preferences of the building owners, as long as they are natural plants. furthermore, many residential apartment buildings in places like new york, chicago, and other american cities are seeing rooftop farms appear. in reality, almost everyone can grow some food for themselves, even if all you have is a single small window sill.
you seem to be very ignorant of the world. I would also encourage you to seek out information on green initiatives, and how people in cities are dealing with the problems they face in an urban landscape. there is no doubt that you are speaking on a topic you are woefully unprepared for.
Good luck feeding a city of millions with the fruits of planted pottery. You're gonna need a lot of pottery. Jesus Christ, a proper lot of pottery.
if the best you can do to argue against me is bring up a fictional zombie apocalypse in which everyone was infected and died, then perhaps it is time to admit you already lost the argument. we’re talking about reality here and what is happening right now all across the world, not your fantasy horror worlds.
If the best you can do is responding to a snarky remark I left at the end of my comment thinking that it was the main point I was trying to make while imagining cities where millions of people live able to support themselves with only a couple of trees and tomato plants and completely misunderstanding the meaning of the anarchist mindset I'm afraid we're not having an argument at all, we are displaying the level of delusion you are willing to let yourself live in. Just like those asking for a civil war do not absolutely understand what they're asking for so do you with your call for an uncontrolled fall of the system.
Being considered worthy of living in a space you so kindly have cut out of the external world is not association if you still haven’t realised that.
that exactly is what mutual association is. I suggest you read the AFAQ, because you very clearly do not know anything about anarchism. the freedom of association requires the freedom to disassociate.
as for the rest of your comment, it takes a real special sort of person to look at examples I gave you of cities literally feeding thousands of people through urban farms and go "nah, I can't conceive of that being true, so it isn't". that's MAGA levels of denial. it doesn't matter your opinion or feelings on the matter. it's a real thing, it's happening now, and it's slowly being scaled upwards. snarky bullshit remarks aren't going to change that.
I will be blocking you now. you're not interested in accepting reality, and so our mutual association is no longer mutual, and I'm taking advantage my freedom to cut closed-minded useless people out of my life. live the rest of your sad little life as a slave to capitalism in whatever depressing, dystopian way seems best to you.
Keep on disassociating from someone who is trying to make you think about the result of your actions, that's exactly how grown up people act and that's gonna make associating so much wider when you'll find yourself alone in your fiery outrage. A perfect example of a pizza cutter kind of anarchist, all edge, no point.
You talk about agricultural projects which feed thousands in cities where MILLIONS of people live. You talk about cooperation but you don't consider those who are unable to cooperate due to age, health conditions or any ithe reason. You talk about changing the system but you offer nonviable alternative other than "break it all down and hope for the best". I'm sorry, I can't be bothered with auch juvenile ideas of revolution, they would only bring death and suffering for too many people to be considered viable. I hope you'll grow up sooner rather than later and realise that we can only hope to improve the situation when we will learn everything about the positives of the current system and how we can keep them while discarding everything else.
As for myself I'll be living in this hellish capitalist system as you will until it won't collapse on itself or until I'll die, it rest to be seen what happens first. But I'll be living in it with the clear objective of improving it without needing to kill hundreds of thousands of people during that process, thank you very much
if you wanna just have boards with rusty nails and maybe a baseball bat for defense when trump takes the mask completely off and his raving followers form pogroms to round up people who aren't loyal to him, then I will say something nice in your memory when the time comes.
oh, sorry, I misunderstood your question. Veritasium and Astrum are science channels, Fireship covers programming. fern. and Hoog do what I guess you could call deep dive videos on all sorts of topics. everything from how the North Korean king travels, to how that giant hotel aquarium broke several years ago. it's pretty random with them.
Astrum makes space stuff videos? I dunno, been a while.
Fireship makes videos about programming. Has series about "(Programming language/Framework) explained in 100 seconds", for example. I think people are complaining that the channel is slipping into AI dudebroery.
Hoog is a history/explainer type channel, I think.
Do you have actual evidence for Kurzgesagt being among PE-owned channels, or are you just extrapolating? Because the video you linked doesn't mention them, and a quick search didn't turn up anything about that.
if most of your money comes from billionaires and you admit to making propaganda videos for them, you're owned by private equity. it doesn't matter how much you or they argue about how that isn't technically true because it's not officially on paper.
Like it or not, words have meaning, and black and white thinking is comfortable, but doesn't help anyone. There is still a massive difference between the gates foundation having a 0.5% stake in Kurzgesagt and them being "owned" by PE, and pretending otherwise just means you're not actually interested in any kind of productive discussion.
When you sell your soul to the devil, it’s gone forever. And I never implied I was interested in “productive discussion”. I said what I said because I’ve seen what evidence there is and have made my own conclusions. I never said I was interested in debating.
No wonder veritasium has felt "off" for me for a good while as well. A few years ago I deliberately stopped watching that channel, seems there was a deeper reason behind my superficial reasons and gut feelings
They seem to use the "shotgun" future in Youtube for titles and Thumbnails. Having the a bunch of different titles and and thumbnails and eventually sticking with the combo that drives the most engagement.
Idk about fossil fuels specifically but they been directly being sponsored by big companies and in return making propoganda for them for a few years now.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I watch that channel for years and i had no idea. I post his answer over the channels answer. Although that is 3 years old, i wonder what is now happening.
They accepted, and continue to accept a great amount of money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation owns over $11 billion in investments in the fossil fuel industry, including coal-burning utility companies.
In return, there were quite a few videos that Kurzgesagt admits were funded directly by the Foundation, that exaggerate the positive influence corporations owned by the foundation have had. Videos which the CEO of Kurzgesagt has admitted they probably would not have made if the Foundation had not paid for them.
That’s really embarrassing that we as a community have chosen, of all possible creators, to deride Kurzgesagt for taking money from The Gates Foundation. It’s 0.05% of their holdings. ZERO POINT ZERO FIVE. Which, by the way, is down from 6% in the past after public concern — yes, a whopping 6%. Scourge of the earth, locked out of heaven: The Gates Foundation. Those computer nerds strike again. And we choose to punish a great content contributor for that. Shameful display of purity politics.
Yeah. It seems like a ridiculous accusation to make. Bro couldn't even answer the question about example of shilling so they had to pivot into the crime of taking money from a foundation to produce high quality educational content.
They accepted, and continue to accept a great amount of money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation owns over $11 billion in investments in the fossil fuel industry, including coal-burning utility companies.
In return, there were quite a few videos that Kurzgesagt admits were funded directly by the Foundation, that exaggerate the positive influence corporations owned by the foundation have had. Videos which the CEO of Kurzgesagt has admitted they probably would not have made if the Foundation had not paid for them.
question answered. if you don't want to accept the CEO of Kurzgesagt word that they would not have made the videos if they hadn't been paid to, then that isn't my problem. I'm not here to convince you, and I don't mind if you don't believe him.
I said what I said to voice my own opinion on their channel, I didn't voice it as an indication that I was interested in debating the matter. I've already come to my own conclusions. read their website and their medium, or search up one of the deep dive videos on it if you're really interested. I'm not going to go too far out of my way to convince anyone, since it doesn't really harm me in any way if you believe me or not.
I also didn't say anywhere that you should stop watching their videos. you should, however, know who owns and funds every bit of media you consume, so that you can use that information to be healthily skeptical of things people are telling you, just as you are with me. I still watch fern., even though they are owned by PE, because their videos are high quality and mostly free of bias. but I keep in the back of my mind that they have corporate overlords that might want me to believe one thing or another.
I did a few searches and while I didn't find that quote from Kurzgesagt's CEO, I did find the contribution listed from a decade ago on the Gates foundation website. $570,000 paid out over four years. They also gave NPR $2,000,000 the next year.
Since I didn't find the CEOs quote you've mentioned, I can only question the context around it. Would those videos not have been made because the Gates foundation specifically tied the funding to those videos being created? Or would they not have been made because Kurzgesagt didn't have the money to do so otherwise?
Regardless, Kurzgesagt is a private company and if they wanted to conceal hidden agendas by corporate contributors, they would just keep quiet - not openly acknowledge that they made content with money given to them by some larger organisation.
If we're going to denounce any group of people that are connected via Bacon's Law to a disastrous corporate industry, the moral high ground will be unachievable for the entirety of our species.
The Hated One did a video some years ago on the matter, if you're curious then search it up because they list all their sources for everything including the quote from the CEO.
I never told anyone to be outraged by it. You just got outraged because I criticized a channel you presumably like. I've literally said several times in this thread alone that I watch channels owned by PE.
I don’t really do online fights anymore. I check in on Lemmy twice a week max for a maybe a few minutes tops. I’d suggest getting involved with your local community as a great way to channel your energy rather than reply 5m after I posted a new comment. Take care ✌🏻
the CEO of Kurzgesagt word that they would not have made the videos if they hadn’t been paid to
This on its own proves nothing bad. Some videos just require a bigger budget to make and can't be made on their otherwise limited budget. Or the topic is just lower priority due to writer interests. If they were forced into covering specific topics then that's a different story, but I haven't seen any evidence that was the case.
Does any of that matter in this situation, anyway? Exaggerating their content in exchange for money already places question on their reliability as an educational content creator.
Hint: the investment of $11 billion refers to investment of Gates Foundation in fossil fuels.
Well, considering these exact words were used:
That foundation owns over $11 billion in investments in the fossil fuel industry, including coal-burning utility companies.
What can I say but duh. If I misunderstood anything, it was the comment I replied to, which was unclear about the "0.05% down from 6%" detail, and seemed to be associating that with the $11 billion figure by context.
But hey, nice deflection, and super cool of you to be that rude about it, too.
yes, there is also some other sponsorships, including some from other bill gates owned groups/corporations. I don't think support from billionaires is necessarily good as long as it's diverse.
I'm trying to think of their 'fossil fuel shilling' video and only videos that come to mind are where they say we're too entrenched in the fossil fuel industry to make a switch to renewable overnight. It's just not realistic.
And other than fuel, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of products made from petroleum. Approximately 85% of petroleum is made into fuel. Rest is used to make things like pharma products, paint, pesticides, polymers etc.
even people who needs to use petrolatum(aka protroleum) comes from it, for thier dry skin, plus it used in many topical medications. topical ointment medication is more potent than the cream forms.
The problem is when the contributors influence what the videos say, in contradiction to data.
Kurzgesagt's video on +2° / +3° / +4° over the global mean isn't going to be so bad video was conspicuous to me, and is in fact, based on fossil-fuel industry rhetoric, rather than climatology estimations (which tell us over +1.5° is going to fuck us, and is).
It's allegedly a documentary, not fiction. It should make sense from beginning to end.
Sounds like you feel the need to defend Kurzgesagt for sentimental reasons, and since they're presenting themselves as a source for accurate information, that just won't do.
They link all their sources. So regardless of where their funding comes from I'd rather have a good source of information instead of a non-existent perfect source.
for context, our buddy null here got banned from c/leftymemes because he just kept spamming "ok tankie" to everyone. what he doesn't know is that I'm banned from .ML and Hexbear, and run an anti-tankie comm, so him saying this to me is very amusing and I'm thinking of adopting him.
It’s important to have a coalition of support and so I won’t single anyone out, hence I used the word “we”. I have to assume others share their opinion about Kurz. But the larger point is that this is classic left infighting and, ironically, it stalls actual progress. Before we can be good at something, we have to be bad at something.
I don't care if it's 80% or 0.8%. if you take money from billionaires to produce specific videos for them as propaganda, then that is shilling for them. there isn't any way you can spin that to make it not true, but I'm sure you'll do your very liberal best.
that's not how i read it at all. no misinformation here.
see, the fact they took money to publish critical misinformation about climate change is not a joke. it should take more than an "i'm sowwy" to fix their reputation.
I'm unsure we are talking about the same comment. The misinformation is the claim the Gates foundation is continuing to fund Kurzgesagt, when that clearly isn't the case. This incorrect information is veiled by beginning the statement with the truth of the 2015 grant.
Insofar as the reputational damage Kurzgesagt has incurred, I'm not sure there's much meat on that bone. Sure, you might believe they have fallen from grace or some such, but as I pointed out in another comment here, we can't just connect everything under the sun and say 'group A is bad because groups B through Y are all next to one another and with group Z doing all those injustices, group A is complicit in those crimes'.
To me, the question of whether Kurzgesagt is a Gates mouthpiece is pretty cut and dry. A few reasons for this, but the most glaring is simply that the money didn't keep coming, and it wasn't much money to begin with. I wouldn't be going out of my way to talk up my employer to clients if my last bonus was a decade ago and didn't even cover my rent for the month I got it.
Secondly, if you take money from billionaires to make propaganda videos for them, then you’re owned by them. You sell your soul to the devil, you can’t undo it later because you get called out for it.
The video gives an elaborate description on their evaluation of "AI" and it's influence on the Internet at large. And then they conclude with "we'll continue like before" directly contradicting the title.
Feels disingenuous. And ironic after they talked about their extensive investments into fact checking.
The channel hat always been disingenuous. It's not the first video they have where they develop a well written essay that has conclusions that make no sense with the information presented. It's the theater of research without any of the substance. The editors just do whatever they want, under the expectations that the writing team will support their preconceived notion.
They're an entertainment channel, not a science communication channel. They have said some awful, totally not fact supported stuff in the past.
Climate change whitewashing for corporations with awful conflicts of interest. Others have posted the links to the videos elsewhere in this comment section.
As far as science channels go, you've got SpaceTime for college students, Veritasium for high schoolers, and Kurzgesagt for newborn infants or maybe a smart dog. It's probably at about the right level if you want to explain science to an Australian Shepherd.
Yea, nah, it absolutely is. They often sneak in bad information and poorly interpreted data to fearmonger (see their nuclear power "educational" videos where they instill fear) and other such things. They're just like some other science channels. Like veritasium, which shilled out for Waymo. Just because the animations are very very nice doesn't mean you shouldn't confirm the information they present, and quite often it's wrong on purpose to butter up the right people. If you don't believe me, that's okay. They're not dangerous like pseudoscience channels. Most things they present are good. I just hate that they mix in BS.
You're using a lot of weasel words and zero sources for someone arguing we should all fact check things.
I'm not even saying your wrong, but your going to have to do a lot more than that to convince me that "they're known for" everything you just said, because that sounds like you have a very specific beef with them that overshadows everything else they've ever done (in your estimation) and your projecting that as a universal truth, when really it's not.
I respect your opinion, but there are certainly far more worse channels than there are better ones, and they're known for being one of the better ones.
That + entertainment over information quality. I'm not here to convince anybody, my goal was to make y'all think twice about just blindly trusting theor videos. They're the Linus Tech Tips of the science channel world.
Right so you say everyone should source all their work but then claim very specific things about the channel and then refuse to provide sources.
Interesting.
But I guess as long as you're not here to try and convince anyone that what you're saying is true it's okay for you to just say anything regardless of validity. That's very political of you, well done.
I literally never said everyone should source all their work. You're reading between the lines. What I said is that SOME science channels sneak in misinformation and shilling in their videos which are otherwise educational and most of the time very accurate.
The video gives an elaborate description on their evaluation of “AI” and it’s influence on the Internet at large. And then they conclude with “we’ll continue like before” directly contradicting the title.
You missed the entire point of the video.
The claims are simple:
in order to make this type of videos, they need to be able to reliable fact check
data on the internet is increasingly polluted by AI slop, making it harder to distinguish fact from slop
for now, they have no choice but to continue while being extra vigilant... but eventually, if things do not change, they will be unable to perform
It's the exact same situation about climate change... we need to act now, most of us will suffer otherwise but for now we continue on living while trying to adjust where we can (recycling, reusing, less/no meat, etc) even if we know that will not be enough long term.
Not the guy you're answering to, but I kind of agree with him, the point is fuzzy and the title is clickbaity. With sucha title I expected they would present numbers and figures.
well, it may be a matter of context and tolerance here but I find the concept they are presenting is axiomatic and as such would not require any further explanation:
They use the internet to research their videos... the internet is getting more and more polluted with false narratives... ergo, it is becoming harder to research for their videos. Without good source, there are no videos.
If I tell you plants need water to exist but each season brings less and less rain year after year... would you say a title such as "drought is killing the plants" clickbaity?
I assumed they don't do their research using random crap on "the internet", but reliable experts, peer reviewed papers and such. No specific claims about topics, funding, time or anything. And again, no numbers, so hard to argue objectively.
I assumed they don’t do their research using random crap on “the internet”, but reliable experts, peer reviewed papers and such
Yes, that is what they claim. But I am sure you have seen how hard it is now to find something even if you know exactly what you are looking for. It's not like there are 2 libraries online for anything you need, right? You start researching about topic A and read that Dr XYZ did a study on this so you look for that study... just to find out Dr XYZ does not and has never existed.
No specific claims about topics, funding, time or anything. And again, no numbers, so hard to argue objectively.
So you want a specific number as to how many bad sources they are now forcing to discard because they turned out to be AI slop?
Those metrics aren't any more trustworthy than their own subjective word anyway. If they wanted to say they took more time then they could delay at their whim anyway. If they said their production costs increased, then again, they could spend the money to fit the narrative. On those particular points objective evidence is so susceptible to being gamed that it isn't really more valuable than their subjective reporting.
Numbers of subscribers/views could be a bit more informative, but then people inclined to disbelieve would claim it's because of any number of other reasons not because of AI slop.
Killing in this case sounds like the content is becoming harder and harder to create, which they lay out the subjective case for, but that wouldn't be exactly something they could use figures to present, since it's so subjective.
The one point they might have been able to show with numbers would be the emergence of AI slop 'infotainment animations' diluting the audience, but that wasn't exactly the biggest point of the video and it might be a bit early to be able to demonstrate statistically credible evidence on that one.
Also, presuming they are sincere and put in all that effort, they are competing with other sources that have no such discipline and they are able to flood the field and grab eyeballs faster than they could.
Propagating feel-goodism about climate change while taking money from the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation and saying that eventually climate change will be solved by technology, whitewashing carbon capture technologies and overselling their potential, taking money from Templeton Foundation when making videos about consciousness, using the "Israel fighting Hamas" narrative in a 2025 video regarding wars...
I didn't say they have to like it, that would be silly.
I'm criticising them for making an incorrect statement, being corrected on it, then acting extremely proud of being ignorant of the facts, and committing to not informing themselves.
They have been doing this animation style since 2013.
Why do you think they use AI?
I think your AI senses are broken, you see AI everywhere where there is not. You're like the extreme opposite of AI Tech Bro. Like you have paranoid AI-phobia or something.
I watched this with my son last night. Quite enjoyed it. I find the cadences of the narrator's voice oddly soothing, although ironically it sounds very like an AI voice.
I mean there's been some controversy surrounding a number of their videos. Some were under fire for poor research or demonstrating a singular, not widely-held view on certain topics. And I think for one video they were accused of plagiarism iirc. This was when it was still somewhat early days for the channel, haven't followed them since so not sure what the state is now.
In the video you're literally commenting on they explain how they fact check their videos and how they work with professionals in the field at matter.
You can always complain that something wasn't as good as you personally wanted it to be but that may very well be bias. The people making the accusations may have a bias. All we can do is take the totality of their output and cast judgement on that.
The point was that they haven't always held themselves up to those standards and have sometimes only used professionals espousing a single viewpoint (where multiple exist).
I should mention this isn't bias, iirc the channel did release a video apologizing for some of the issues (though not all), so it wasn't even up to their own standards by their own admission.
Looking things up now, I see that the plagiarism case was slightly different: they had published a video on addiction, which was fairly explosive in its claims. Turns out it was citing basically just one fringe researcher who was also accused of plagiarism. The claims did not seem to hold up to scrutiny.
When another channel doing a series on how pop-sci influencers can sometimes spread misinformed ideas asked some questions to Kurzgesagt, they were immediately a bit apprehensive but agreed to do some interview questions, though with the caveat that they were busy with other things and needed a few weeks before it could take place. Then before the interview took place they suddenly put out their own apology video and took the addiction video down. At no point was it mentioned that another channel prompted this action, it was presented as some kind of inward reflection that they had come to themselves.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
You can't really call it slop just because you disagree with their views and representations of things.
Their stuff is carefully researched and sourced, human crafted and open to critique. Whether they're correct in their assessments or not is of course up for debate, but it's good craftsmanship and they show their work.
Eh, there's a lot of blending of conjecture, opinion and fact all presented as truth, and their handling of mistakes could be better - they've openly said if they consider a mistake to be minor then they don't even issue a correction or update.
I personally think that attitude towards production pushes it towards slop, as for things like entertainment one of the key defining things that separate slop from quality media is passion, but if you don't care about making accurate content then are you any better than just getting AI to write a script?
A huge blocklist of manually curated sites that contain AI generated imagery for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist. - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist
A huge blocklist of manually curated sites that contain AI generated imagery for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist. - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist
Then other day I was trying to find out how to get just one AD account not to sync through to Azure without disabling it. And the AI came up with this complicated instruction set that didn't work and was totally made up from nowhere. Now what on earth was the point in doing that?
At one point it told me I had to triple click on something. Because that's totally a thing.
It's so fun when it's so specific about some detail with casual confidence that is based on absolutely nothing at all. I know ultimately it's architecture is more akin to a predictive word generator, but it seems so much better.
Saw a clear demonstration and it is wild that the output is consistent, but at least in the model I saw being run, every word is generated without it having considered what the word after would be or what the general concept it is going for. For a human one has to already know the concept before he/she starts putting words to it, but at least the models I've seen explained with detail, it manages to assemble it word by word without knowing where it is trying to go in advance.
I get the frustration, but it does actually cost money to make content, especially high effort content like this.
Add on top of that the fact that the people involved need to be able to eat, have a home, provide for their families, have a life.
People would complain if they were sponsored by some shitty VPN provider or the like, and also complain about them trying to sell merch. I certainly wouldn't work for free, so I don't see why they should have to.
It's not really that hard to do a couple of key presses to skip ahead, either. It's what I do.
I dont think its AI Slop thats "killing the channel" if that statement is even remotely true its due to more and more of their videos being slop sci low information videos. The target audience must be stoners who want to watch something that is visually appealing and feels educational
terrible animations, and its worst than other "education science channels" the least they could do is use actual footage or pictures of the things hes discussing.
Honestly, it isn't the AI so much as it is the suspension that rules that apply to us should also apply to AI. They are barely legal companies getting away with murder due to the residual power of a corrupt empire in decline.
Much the same as blockchain - it could have been exciting and fun, but it was immediately put to work to exploit people, and in the end that's what the tools effectively were.
Yeah, and if it weren't for the techbro nonsense, it would be tossed onto the pile of mathematical curios that don't have nontrivial uses.
The thing is - we often do find uses for those curiosities years later.
In the mean time, I wouldn't mind if a decentralized video game came along where game assets were decentralized, distributed by bittorrent, and player assets were decentralized and tracked by blockchain.
You'd be surprised how valuable these technologies can be when they're not only being developed to create new financialized services to overcharge people for. Manufacturing and shipping has huge capital and logistic buffers created by information gaps, production shortfalls, fraud, etcetera, and cryptographic ledgers are excellent for ensuring accurate production and inventory information is relayed to clients in realtime. What's more, it has the potential to mediate international transactions without relying on Swift or global banking institutions that are an extension of US authority.
Notice how nothing I said was about fucking NFTs. The western financial system completely lost the plot doing super cocaine and became convinced they could just ask the rest of the world to stay slaves forever. They don't even care about its potential! They want TrumpCoin.
Kurzgesagt is annoyingly techno-solutionist but now that they are a big target of AI slop (their artistic style being heavily copied), they complain. That's good I guess.
If you actually watch the video that's not what they're talking about. They are talking about how it's difficult to fact check information in a world of AI misinformation.
I always find it's easier to know what a video is about if I actually watched the video. It's just this little life hack I've come up with.
Watch the video? Duh. Thanks I watched it, and I know they don’t talk about how AI steals their art style (even though it’s really happening). I just pointed out the irony. The video also says they are usually enthusiastic about new tech but not this time.
I know this channel well enough to have seen countless videos praising fake tech like carbon capture and that’s why I have a problem with them. Am I allowed to have an opinion?
You are allowed to have an opinion but when it's a stupid opinion expect to be ridiculed for it.
Carbon capture is an actual technology it's real and it works. There's not a lot of it about yet but there's also not a lot of fusion reactors yet but they're also real technology.
What is the problem with techno-solutionism? Is it just that under capitalism techno-solutionism often results in corruption? Is the development of lemmy not techno-solutionism (to the enshittification of reddit)?
Tangential, but thats what disgusted me about the Osaka world expo. The theme was sustainability so you had fossil fuel companies presenting wildly impractical "solutions" and art projects. The message was "things are under control, continue sleepwalking into oblivion"
There's nothing helpful about giving up though is there.
And we could stop climate change, it's entirely possible, presumably people don't want to die so they will take action but they probably not going to start to act until climate change becomes more apparent, that's depressing but that's human nature. Humans have a long history of making radical changes at the last minute, e.g the cold war.
We like to go right up to the cliff edge but we tend not to take the final step.
After all even China is cleaning up its act and they're the least likely to be cooperative so if even they're doing something about it there's hope.
“with effort, we can solve climate change, or minimise its effects.”
The issue is not the claim that with effort we maybe can minimise the effects, it's the techno-utopia angle. We will solve this by changing nothing about the underlying economic system driving climate change, but Bill Gates and other smart billionaires will make some fantastic technology that will save us!
We will not solve it, it's way too late for that. Still, every 0.01°C additional warming counts. People not born yet will suffer more from everything we don't do now. So, rolling on our backs and giving up is not helping at all. Going vegan is a easy first step to make a difference. Start blowing up pipelines after that. 😀
Large YouTube channels usually try different titles and thumbnails during the first few hours after upload, so the title OP posted was probably accurate at the time of posting.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Definitely informative and depressing. Honestly kinda just confirming what a lot of people have suspected all along I think; everything's a monopoly, companies are good until they lock enough people into their platform and then they're too big to care. Lots of really good examples and depressing fun facts weaved into it lol. One thing that makes it so interesting to me is that over the last couple of decades we've all been watching the enshittification of everything in real time. This book makes sense of it. That said, idk what his solutions are 100% but I gotta believe he offers some kind of clarity or way forward by the time I finish it. I have a little ways to go still.
Enshittification will keep happening under capitalism, that's a feature of the system. You can try to regulate it with strong government, but that is a pipe-dream and not a permanent solution in the US. The cards are too stacked against reform at the moment. (Would need to abolish the Electoral College, equal voting rights, remove gerrymandering, implement strict campaign financing laws, remove lobbying, etc.)
That's awesome! I'm in Ohio and he's not coming anywhere near here on the tour lol but I did order the hardcover copy. I'm trying to hold off on the audiobook now so I can finish it as the actual book.
Adam Conover has the smarm of Alton Brown with the deep knowledge of James Corden. Truly the Joe Rogan of the Left. But he has had some good guests on his show lately.
I presume it’s a mix of things, there are near daily changes making services worse for consumers in one way or another, which fuels the relevancy of Doctorows writing on the one hand and the desire of people to be agreed with on the other.
La settima puntata di Matrimonio a Prima Vista 15 — in onda su Real Time mercoledì 15 ottobre 2025 in prima serata — riunisce per la prima volta le tre coppie. La reunion accende vecchie ruggini e nuovi equilibri: se Roberta Murano e Luca Merlo proseguono spediti, Dario Del Vecchio e Roberta Bordonaro sembrano arrivati al capolinea. Ma i momenti più duri sono, ancora una volta, quelli tra Melissa Cicciari e Matteo Conca.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
The micromirror arrays are the wildest of the bunch to me. That is just such a prima facie batshit insane idea and it's astonishing that it actually works.
"Yeah, we need to be able to individually display and shut off these pixels, so we're going to go ahead and design a chip with 6,220,800 tiny mirrors that physically tilt when you poke them with electricity. Rather than, I don't know, literally any other solution that presents itself."
It sounds insane, but the array that drives it is functionally not that different from the array that individually causes LCD crystals to shift.
I have DLP parts sitting around because they're cool.
Edit pics:
Edit2 explanation: A white light is focused onto the DLP mirror chip through a kind of kaleidoscopic lens, I'll spare you the details on that. The individual microscopic mirrors are aligned with charges to bounce light. The mirror array pulses synced frames through the spinning color wheel to create a composite image. It's a fucking insane idea that barely works... and people like me, with low persistence of vision, are not fooled very well and we see color banding and all kinds of weird artifacting lol
Woah that color wheel... You can see the cyan, magenta, yellow light reflecting but red, green, blue light passing through to the table, respectively. Such a great example of complementary primaries
There is no way that the pictures I've snapped can produce the colors accurately. When I look at that small section, it reflects forest green light back to my eye. The light that passes through seems to be muddy yellowish
I tried to find something on the internets. It says something about additional color spaces - in that regard the yellowish color makes sense. and reducing color flickering. 🤷♀️
My assumption was it had something to do with luminosity, but I'm at the end of my technical expertise for this implementation of insane technology lol
There was an idea I read about, sorta along the same crazy track, (might have been Popular Science or something like 25 years ago) where they came up with an idea for a jet that didn't use traditional control surfaces like ailerons, but rather line the wings and fuselage in thousands of tiny flaps that would all be precisely computer controlled. It would be able to basically mold and shape the airstream around itself to make precise movements.
RGB flashing sequentially is the wooooooorst. Most people can't see it but holy shit i can and it's like random colored strobes flashing everywhere. Bleh
The reason it works better with CRT is because of the phosphors. They continue to glow, long after the signal has passed over. Check out a CRT slow motion.
Everything to do with display technology involves tricking the eye and relying on persistence of vision which is innate.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I still see it in even the most modern projectors, but I'm also able to see the flicker in phones that use pwm dimming which only a very small percent of people can see, so sucks to be me. My eyes seem to work at a much higher image capture rate than most people, which has no apparent benefits, only problems
Interestingly enough crts didn't seem to cause a problem, my guess is because the pixel phosphors don't actually flash off, they fade out. But that's just a guess
We had one in an auditorium where I work. Only problem is it was underneath an MRI scanner. Every time they'd open the door to the MRI, the magnetic field would knock the projector tubes out of alignment.
The technician who came out to work on it said it was hopeless. He told us he had a customer whose projector would get out of alignment if he moved a speaker in the room.
I was so happy when we finally replaced it with an LCD projector.
The safety warning about CRTs is no joke. My dad used to work appliance repair in the 80s. These guys were all well trained in that shop. They had a shelf of tvs with dates on them. No tv was to even be looked at until at least 3 days from dropoff, then they discharged the capacitors. They hated the tvs most, because they ran test after test before plugging them back in. I miss the free crap Dad would drag in due to missed payments or abandoned electronics. We had a 24 in industrial microwave that I miss to this day. I could be lazy and microwave anything in that damn thing, regardless of metal content, and could defrost a small turkey.
I was a kid, so don't remember everything as my Dad explained it, but it used a more powerful magnetron with a pulse system and used a fan to blow the heat. It also cooked hot pockets without leaving the outside cold and lava inside. Moreso than that, I don't remember as it was a tech geek dad talking to a 12yr old teenager that only cared to listen to the first half. I was a shit, and I regret ignoring the trove of knowledge that man had.
Also, most microwaves won't do much with silverware as is, this just kinda went a level higher. It was from a restaurant that never paid up, and the shop always sold the leftovers for cost of parts to make up the difference. Our vcrs, vacuums, audio receivers, and other things came from that shop (also scratch and dent from some store I can't remember the name of, it had a weird shopping procedure. They had display items and cards, and at checkout you handed the cards over and the items were brought down a conveyor belt from the storehouse in the attic. The broken things were sold cheaply in a room in the back)
Edit: looked it up, the name of the store was Service Merchandise
It might have had something that can shift its frequency.
What happens in most microwaves is you get a standing wave. The high and low parts of the wave are always at the same spot. You then get a hot spot at the peak (and trough) of the wave, and a cold spot when the wave is near the zero node.
By shifting the frequency, even just a little, you can shift the hot spots around and more evenly cook the food.
This is obviously more expensive, and these days you can get it in higher end residential microwaves. Way back when, though, it was only something you'd see in industrial models.
If I'm thinking about it correctly then either the standing wave is intentional or the oven is designed badly. You know the wavelength so you can make sure the oven is not an integer multiple of it and the hot spots move around on their own, no fancy frequency shifting required.
Metal is only a problem if it gets near the sides/top/bottom. There are even microwaves that come with a metal rack for the middle that's suspended by plastic tabs.
Bigger size makes it easier to stay away from the sides.
I repaired TV's in the 80's and 90's. I worked on many of them right after they came in. It was easy to discharge any caps without damaging the units. I respected the potential for getting shocked and the voltage a flyback transformer can produce so I never did get shocked by one.
I used to have one of these. Traded an electric guitar for it, then never set it up, while it sat like a beast in my basement taunting me. As cool as it was, I should've never traded that guitar. 🙁
Gallego confronted Johnson, demanding to know why Grijalva's swearing-in had been delayed, and if the delay was connected with the release of the Epstein files.
“This has nothing to do with Epstein," Johnson shot back, adding that Gallego was being "absurd."
Arizona Senate Democrats Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego clashed with Speaker Mike Johnson in the hallways of the Capitol on Wednesday, over the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva.
The IRS is sending mass furlough notices to employees and shuttering most of its operations, now that a government shutdown has extended beyond its initial contingency plan.
The agency posted on its website Wednesday morning that, “due to the lapse in appropriations, most IRS operations are closed.”
The IRS, which is preparing for next year’s filing season, kept all its employees on the job for the first five business days of the shutdown. Its contingency plans, however, didn’t specify what would happen if a lapse in funding extended beyond Oct. 7.
According to the agency, an “IRS-wide furlough” began Wednesday, “for everyone except already-identified excepted and exempt employees.”
It’s not clear which employees will keep working at this point. The IRS hasn’t posted an updated contingency plan yet.
Another edition of LinuxDays took place in Prague last weekend – the country’s largest Linux event drawing more than 1200 attendees and as every yearm we had a Fedora booth there – this time we also representing CentOS.
I was really glad that Tomáš Hrčka helped me staff the booth. I’m focused on the desktop part of Fedora and don’t follow the rest of the project in such detail. As a member […]
that's for sure and especially so that the american gov't is now controlling who can and cannot join the linux kernel developer's group; it's easy to see them expend a tiny bit more energy to add people to the watch list
A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.
News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.
Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.
Republicans have been eager to challenge mail-in ballots, with Donald Trump centering it in his attacks on the electoral process. Mike Bost, a Republican representative from Illinois, filed the suit to argue that the Illinois law allowing ballots to be counted up to two weeks after election day if they are postmarked by the deadline unconstitutionally allows an extension of the election period.
Lower courts threw Bost’s suit out, ruling that the conservative congressman in his fifth term did not suffer an injury and had no standing to sue. The appeal argues that the cost of staffing a campaign past election day is a financial injury giving him sufficient standing to challenge the law.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.
She calls it “the final mission.”
But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.
Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students.
Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of public schools as we know them.
Mass mobilizations have been a feature of Claudia Sheinbaum’s first year presiding over Mexico, and to finish her first “accountability” tour of Mexico and mark one year of governance, she had her biggest yet. More than 400,000 people came out to watch her speak for nearly an hour on Sunday, October 5, reflecting on her and the party’s achievements in the first year of her term, and the continued “fourth transformation” of Mexico.
In recent weeks, Sheinbaum has visited all 31 states of Mexico, outlining her administration’s current projects, plans and results in each state.
The communication strategy of MORENA, the governing party, is very front-facing, with both Sheinbaum and her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador hosting daily press conferences from Monday to Friday, and then generally traveling to one or two parts of Mexico over the weekend. This has proven extremely effective in countering the narratives from the large press corporations that own and operate the majority of Mexican media outlets, as well as of course maintaining closer communication and accountability with the people of Mexico.
Sheinbaum has faced significant challenges in her first year, most notably due to relations with the administration of US President Donald Trump, with problems ranging from tariff threats even to members of his administration suggesting unilateral military intervention against Mexico. While Trump has threatened Mexico with tariffs at every turn, Sheinbaum’s firm but open stance has proved effective in negotiations with Trump and today the country has managed to achieve important exceptions to the aggressive tariff regime.
Sheinbaum arrives at one year in charge with historic levels of approval, depending on the poll you choose your approval rate is somewhere between 72% and 79%. While other countries around the world aren’t as comprehensive in approval polls as Mexico, this likely makes Sheinbaum the most popular leader in the world.
So, how did she get to that level of popularity and what are her challenges in maintaining or growing it? Here are some of the points mentioned by Sheinbaum in her speech and the highlights from her first year governing Mexico.
Reiterating economic achievements
Sheinbaum began by reiterating some of the economic achievements, both that MORENA has accomplished since 2018, and some of the present moment.Between 2018 and 2014, 13.5 million Mexican, Mexico is now the second least unequal country in the Americas, behind only Canada, and the income gap between the richest and poorest was reduced from 27 to 14 times over.Annual inflation has settled at 3.7% percent, unemployment is at 2.7%, a record level of foreign direct investment was reached and annual economic growth is expected at 1.2%.
Sheinbaum’s initiatives from her first 12 months.
Sheinbaum created three new social programs. One is Salud Casa por Casa, a door-to-door free healthcare system for the elderly, where healthcare professionals come into their home for regular check ups. Another is Pensión Mujeres Bienestar, which gives women their pension from 60 years of age, rather than 65, to recognize unpaid work in the home. The final is Beca “Rita Cetina”, which is a universal scholarship for all secondary students in public schools, this is a payment every two months of 1900 pesos (USD 103) to cover schooling costs.The constitutional recognition of several rights, such as the right for women to live lives free from violence, the right of access to the internet, the right of access to housing, the right to social programs and more.Mexico has served more than 86,000 deported Mexicans who have been deported from the US in special comprehensive care centers, under a program called ‘Mexico embraces you”. This includes registering them into Mexicans social security systems to assist them with access to housing, employment and transportation to their area of origin, as well as food and shelter in the meantime.Sheinbaum said the “4T is bringing back the trains”, with many rail projects underway, after they were previously privatized in the late 90s. These make up more than 3000kms of railway across the country, including two trains from Mexico City, to Pacucha and Queretaro respectively, and further expansion of the Interoceanic train, which is a key part of Mexico’s attempt to create an alternative trade corridor to the Panama Canal.Sheinbaum emphasized the administration’s goal to “promote equality and the recognition and just development of women in Mexico.” The current government has created The Secretariat for Women as an official government ministry, opened a national support line for women, has opened the first 678 free centers for women that focus on comprehensive care for women, but the administration is aiming to build 2,500 in total. The government is also aiming to build 1,000 early education and childcare centers, which will provide free childcare to children from 40 to 1,000 days old.Sheinbaum has also made access to water a key feature of her first year in charge. About four billion cubic meters of water have been de-privatized, a new agricultural irrigation technology program is being developed across 13 states, and there are 20 new strategic drinking water and sanitation projects.The Sheinbaum administration will build 1.7 million homes, 400,000 of those for Mexicans without social security, and the rest with accessible loan offers for those who earn less than two minimum wages.Another key feature of her first year in charge has been more scientific investment and projects, with funding for scientific research projects increasing by 193%. These include the production of an electric car, a project for Mexico to make its own semiconductors, the production of observation satellites and more.
Security
A challenge moving forward for Sheinbaum will be continuing to manage the security situations, although her early strategies have proved effective.
52% of Mexicans rank insecurity and drug trafficking as the most important issue affecting the country, and 63% of Mexicans living in urban areas consider it unsafe to live in their city. This figure rose from the previous year, but in fairness, levels were historically low before.
Sheinbaum and Omar Garcia Harfuch, her secretary of security, have taken a different approach to security than AMLO had. Sheinbaum and Garcia Harfuch also worked together when Sheinbaum was the mayor of Mexico City, and homicides dropped 50% in the six years they worked together.
The results have been swift, with Sheinbaum reporting a 32% reduction in homicides over her first year. Between September 2024 and July 2025, there was an average of 64.9 homicides per day. While these numbers are stark, it is a marked improvement from the 98.5 per day that Mexico was experiencing in 2018, when MORENA first came to power.
In 2007, before Felipe Calderon’s aggressive, US-backed security strategy, Mexico was experiencing 24.3 daily homicides.
Mexico also recently managed to get the United States to sign an agreement to attempt to limit the inflow of weapons from the US into Mexico. This is a huge point for Mexican security as even the US itself has recognized that 74% of weapons used by organized crime groups in Mexico arrive illegally from the United States.
However, Mexican political commentator and editor of Mexico Decoded, Viri Rios makes the point that this agreement focuses only on increased border surveillance and inspection, and misses the core problem of dangerous weapons being too easily acquired and severely unregulated in the US.
In theory, the US agreeing to this new policy will give them more accountability for the guns that continue to arrive in Mexico.
Early results are extremely promising, but Sheinbaum’s grapple with security and US relations will be critical moving forward.
Tallis Boerne Marcusis an Australian journalist currently based in Mexico City.
probably the best politician that this world has ever seen and i was surprised at how much american propaganda that i had unknowingly swallowed over the decades about mexican politics until i forced myself to learn about her.
the people of the united states could learn A LOT about mexico because it too was ruled by a two-party duopoly for almost century; just like the united states is right now; but the mexicans have managed to vote 3rd party and it's making their lives better meanwhile the americans can't get past the culture wars that keep the democrat-republican duopoly in charge.
you're behind the times; publications like the guardian and the new york times have labeled her efforts to overhaul the legal system to remove the united states' control over it as "authoritarian" almost a year ago.
Assuming good faith, I guess this is about the hypocrisy of everyone acting extremely morally righteous when it comes to the sexual exploitation of animals and then tolerating, accepting and celebrating all other forms of exploitation of animals. I really hope it is not going the other way around.
In dairy, cattle are sexually exploited. Cows must be preggers to give milk, so they wank a bull to get his semen, then a farmer will inject that semen into a cow while holding her cervix with his hand up her arse. Then when she gives birth, the calf will either become a milker like her mum, or become veal if he's a boy.
But we don't talk about that. It's only wrong if you stick your peepee into a cow.
Not true at all, they've been able to make cows produce milk with artificial hormones for decades now, which is also why veal isn't as widely available as it used to be
To be fair, I read it correctly the first time and didn't occur to me that it could be interpreted in any other way until I went into the comment section.
More than one hundred academics, lawyers, imams, journalists and campaigners have signed a statement condemning what they describe as an “escalating campaign of harassment” by British authorities against Fahad Ansari, an Irish Muslim solicitor known for his work on national security and human rights.
Ansari was detained on 6 August 2025 under the Schedule 7 powers of the Terrorism Act while returning from a family holiday in Ireland through Holyhead port. Police held him for nearly three hours, interrogated him about his religious practice, including how regularly he attends mosque, his views on Palestine, and seized his work phone, which contained legally privileged information. His family, including his wife and children, were made to wait in their car throughout the ordeal. The detention of Ansari is said to be the first known case in which Schedule 7 powers have been used against a solicitor in this manner.
Ansari is a senior solicitor known for his legal work on national security cases, including challenging government actions in the courts. Earlier this year, he persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that the UK government had acted unlawfully by denying citizenship to the child of a man whose own nationality had been stripped. In April, he submitted a formal application for the deprescription of Hamas, invoking Section 4 of the Terrorism Act 2000 — a legal provision allowing banned organisations to challenge their status.
It sounds... very odd, and I'm interested in knowing the reasons for apparently breaking the law, especially in what seems to be a clumsy and legally difficult way. What did they hope to achieve? I note from the Guardian's article that Ansari has already started legal proceedings against the home secretary and the chief constable of north Wales police.
More than one hundred academics, lawyers, imams, journalists and campaigners have signed a statement condemning what they describe as an “escalating campaign of harassment” by British authorities against Fahad Ansari, an Irish Muslim solicitor known for his work on national security and human rights.
Ansari was detained on 6 August 2025 under the Schedule 7 powers of the Terrorism Act while returning from a family holiday in Ireland through Holyhead port. Police held him for nearly three hours, interrogated him about his religious practice, including how regularly he attends mosque, his views on Palestine, and seized his work phone, which contained legally privileged information. His family, including his wife and children, were made to wait in their car throughout the ordeal. The detention of Ansari is said to be the first known case in which Schedule 7 powers have been used against a solicitor in this manner.
Ansari is a senior solicitor known for his legal work on national security cases, including challenging government actions in the courts. Earlier this year, he persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that the UK government had acted unlawfully by denying citizenship to the child of a man whose own nationality had been stripped. In April, he submitted a formal application for the deprescription of Hamas, invoking Section 4 of the Terrorism Act 2000 — a legal provision allowing banned organisations to challenge their status.
There's not a single news story on google news landing page or the front page of reddit. I don't think anyone who isn't directly impacted really gives a shit.
For as long as 55-year-old Hopi Chairman Tim Nuvangyaoma has been alive, high-voltage power lines have cut across Hopi lands in northeast Arizona, carrying vast amounts of power long distances throughout the Southwest.
But residents of the Hopi Reservation have never been connected to that grid. Instead, tribal members have relied on a single power line that runs roughly 30 miles east and west across high desert punctuated by three distinctive mesas, home to 12 distinct villages, including some of the oldest inhabited communities in the United States.
Those who live more than a mile away from that line — nearly 3,000 people — have no access to electricity. Families need to rely on generators to power everything from refrigerators to medical devices.
The rest of the reservation is connected to the grid, but the power is unreliable and outages can sometimes last days.
"If you have a power surge or any kind of power outage, you're definitely going to lose that power to that equipment that somebody's life might be reliant on," Nuvangyaoma says.
The tribe thought those days without reliable electricity were about to change.
Nicole Kidman amplia la sua già ricca filmografia televisiva con Discretion, nuova serie Paramount+ prodotta da A24 e ispirata a un’idea originale della scrittrice Chandler Baker. Accanto a lei, nel cast e in produzione, ci sarà Elle Fanning. Un progetto che conferma la centralità dell’attrice australiana sul piccolo schermo dopo titoli come Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers e The Perfect Couple.
Shortly after flour disappeared from the market in November 2023, it began to circulate again in the sacks originally intended for distribution by UNRWA. This sudden appearance was the result of an act of mass looting by crowds of hungry people, which we only heard about afterward: they had stormed the UNRWA warehouses, some breaking down the doors while others scaled the walls, and emptied them of their supplies—not only flour, but also tinned sardines, corn oil, milk powder, and dried lentils and chickpeas—in a matter of minutes. Apparently, they’d even taken wooden desks, shelves, and the agency’s archives—all of which could be used as firewood. I bought a sack of looted UNRWA flour for more than four times the usual price and made my way home as if bearing priceless treasure. My wife Ula and her sisters were jubilant, and we were all seized by a dark joy amid the wasteland of fear and grief that grows vaster and more desolate by the day as the war continues to escalate. We felt momentarily comfortable and safe; we could bake our own bread now, instead of waiting under the hot sun for hours in the uncertain hope of finding some at the bakery. But another problem stood in our path: to turn the thin rounds of dough into bread we needed an oven, and all we had in the apartment was a gas canister that barely sufficed to cook our regular meals. We would have to find some other way.
Mud ovens, which are what rural Gazan families have always used for cooking and baking, are dotted across the green patches that lie between the apartment blocks in Hamad City. The women they belong to are generous and volunteer their help when other families turn up needing to bake something, only asking them to bring enough paper and cardboard for fuel. But we didn’t have any paper or cardboard in the house—only my books.
Ula looked at me timidly. “Let’s use one or two for now, and when the war’s over you can replace them,” she said, as gently as she could. “The kids need food more than they need to be read to.” The ugliness of it was devastating. In all the years I’d spent amassing my modest library, it had never occurred to me that I might one day have to weigh a book against a piece of bread for my children. I was stunned by the cruelty of the choice, paralyzed by the question it raised: How had things gotten this bad, this fast?
Ultimo appuntamento per Lezioni di Mafie: Nicola Gratteri, Procuratore Capo di Napoli, torna mercoledì 8 ottobre 2025 in prima serata su La7 con “Camorra Social Club”, un viaggio che parte dai vicoli di Napoli e arriva fino al carcere minorile di Nisida. Al suo fianco Antonio Nicaso e Paolo Di Giannantonio per illuminare come la criminalità organizzata campana si sia evoluta nell’era digitale, sfruttando social network e nuove tecnologie per promuoversi, reclutare e cercare consenso.
Ultima puntata di Lezioni di Mafie, anticipazioni 8 ottobre 2025: “Camorra Social Club”. Gratteri con Nicaso e Di Giannantonio analizza camorra e social.
This isn't news, nor is it politics. But given networks' actual competition these days, tech seemed a safe home to share.
To: Bari Weiss
RE: Good luck, babe!
I honestly cannot believe you’ve willingly decided to go into the worst kind of job that exists: management at a dying company.
Managing sucks! It sucks even when you like the people you’re managing and it’s a low-stress position! And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you: running CBS News is not a low-stress position. You are going to get blamed by everyone above you for decisions that are made by people below you, and you are going to get blamed by people below you for the decisions that are made by people above you. You’re also going to get blamed for your own decisions, just for kicks. You have elected to take a job where the primary purpose is for you to eat shit and own the death of broadcast TV news, a thing that is going to die no matter what you do. Nice work!
This is the glass cliff to end all glass cliffs. You’re Marissa Mayer at Yahoo without the Googler street cred. You’re Nancy Dubuc at Vice without the string of hit TV shows. You’re Linda Yaccarino at Twitter without the advertiser relationships. You have been hired as a sop to a Trump administration that is actively hostile to the actual free press, and you will be made to oversee wave after wave of layoffs until you quit or get fired and the entire news division is shut down in a final spasm of cost-cutting after the next inescapable media merger.
This is a pretty brutal assessment of the state of the media ecosystem.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
The song "Ween el Malayeen," in English "Where are the Millions" was written by the Libyan poet Ali alKilani during the First Intifada (~1987 - 1993). He wanted it to be in classical Arabic with well-known words that could be understood all across West Asia and North Africa. It was aimed at the leaders of these nations to condemn and question their silence on the Palesinian cause. Their silence, as we all know, has only gotten worse since then due to continued Western imperialism, Zionist divide-and-rule tactics, and US regime change operations.
Omar alJaffori, the composer and melodist, intended for the song to be performed by three singers from different West Asian and North African countries, symbolizing borderless unity and solidarity.
These are the three female singers we see here:
Sawsan Hamami from Tunisia, Julia Boutros from Lebanon, of a Christian background, and Amal Arafa from Syria
The song itself references verses from the Qur'an, specifically Surah Al-Fil (The Elephant). The verses recount the story of Abrahah's Abyssinian army attacking Makkah to destroy the Ka'bah using war elephants, but flocks of birds carrying stones of baked clay came and defeated the invaders.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
"The guy at the epicenter [is] basically starting to do what all ultimate bad actors do in the final inning," Morgan Stanley's Lisa Shalett tells Fortune.
Timeline of Operation Midnight Hammer – Public Domain
With the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow, the United States risked becoming “plugged … into some of the fiercest conflicts in the world,” according to veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn. The ceaseless refrain—repeated by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his latest tirade at the UN General Assembly, “the curse of Iran’s terror axis”—“constitutes the most awesome threat not only to Israel, but to U.S. interests in the region, means that Trump is now directly involved “not only against Iran, but in interlinked conflicts” against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various Shiite paramilitary groups aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iraq. Should the Islamic Republic choose to retaliate against American troops stationed in the vicinity of its reach, the U.S. will not interpret it as an overdue moment of reckoning for its years of nihilistic endeavors—it will treat it as yet another unprovoked offensive. Key to the expansion of their power and territory, violent states are largely in the business of exploiting pretexts, manipulating or even fabricating threats that justify intervention and subjugation. The new phase of the conflict against Iran thus carries all the foul trappings of a “forever war,” in which the stated objectives admittedly cannot be attained, and withdrawal is considered a humiliating capitulation that haunts electoral success. Trump’s patented volatility could prevent this outcome, but that would require a decoupling of Iran from the conflicts raging in the Arab states.
The timing was telling. As Iran’s Foreign Minster Araghchi met with European leaders in Geneva, who counseled the Islamic Republic to call off the bombing of Israel and accept U.S. demands to relinquish all uranium enrichment, Israel was pummeling Tehran. Pressure was being exerted on all fronts, but the professed goal of preventing the Iranian regime from developing nuclear weapons suffers from a fundamental incoherence: the more violent these preventive efforts become, the more likely it is that Iran will move to weaponize its nuclear energy. Although current assessments, from the IAEA to Tulsi Gabbard, conclude that it has been over two decades since Iran pursued such a program, figures in both Israel and the U.S. insist on a repetition of previous debacles. “The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all,” wrote Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld in August 2004. “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.” A 2012 article by the late Kenneth Waltz that caused quite a stir proposed that, “Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, Iranian policy is not made by ‘mad mullahs’ but by perfectly sane ayatollahs who want to survive just like any other leaders.” If the regime “desires nuclear weapons, it is for the purpose of providing for its own security, not to improve its offensive capabilities (or destroy itself).”
“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe,” Trump said during the Geneva proceedings. “They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.” Consistent with U.S. positions taken in the past, European involvement in this region can serve only two purposes: one, to effectively communicate U.S. demands in its stead; and two, to provide a veneer of multilateral legitimacy, assuaging the world community whenever it feels that the U.S. is exercising outsized influence in negotiations. One 1999 EU resolution following the Wye Memorandum negotiations, for example, lamented that “despite the fact that it continues to be the leading supplier of economic and financial assistance to the region, the European Union was not involved in the political discussions which led to the resumption of dialogue nor in the undertakings entered into”—a historical pattern that a handful of European states profess to have put behind them by recognizing the State of Palestine.
Iran’s exchange with Israel was largely a predictable culmination of the events stimulated by October 7, when Israel, in league with its ascendant American backers, seized upon “the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust (Jonathan Greenblatt)” and began implementing their contingency plans for Gaza. From the U.S. and Israel’s point of view, Tehran constitutes the final domino required to fall in a series of four: first, the leadership of Hamas, having orchestrated the bloody 2023 break-out from the Gaza Strip, what senior Israeli national security official Giora Eiland labeled in 2004 as a “huge concentration camp,” the kill-list of Deif, Haniyeh, and Sinwar graciously prepared by the International Criminal Court in the form of arrest warrants; second, the leadership of Hezbollah, whose subsequent intervention on behalf of the Palestinians led to the decimation of its own leadership and command structure, while producing a deep trepidation among fellow Lebanese to become embroiled in more war with Israel; third, the rapid undoing of the Assad regime in Syria, ending not only the gross depredations of that family’s dynasty, but also the primary land-route through which Iran could militarily bolster its Arab allies.
Posing as the arbiter of maturity and wisdom, The New York Times’ editors recently opined that, before “being dragged into another war in the Middle East,” which would entail “committing American blood and treasure,” Trump and his retinue of extraordinary legal scholars mustn’t forget to “put the issue to a vote in Congress,” so as not to violate the canons of domestic checks and balances and hence repeat the mistakes of our past. After all, “Our laws are explicit on this point.” To declare war “is not the decision of Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Trump. Under the Constitution, Congress alone has that power.” With this prudent admonition, the editors confess that, of course, “Iran’s government is a malevolent force in the world and that it has made substantial progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapon,” but “thanks partly to Israel’s humbling of Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah,” there may be another way by which the beast can be subdued. No mention is made, as part of this liberal civics review, of the flagrant illegality of Israel’s bombing of Iran, its ongoing genocidal project in Gaza, the conduct of its “humbling” of Arab foes, or of U.S. complicity in it all, the last of which proceeds with a multi-dimensional criminality designated only for the most powerful international gangsters.
Sentiments such as this, rich in both entitlement and fatuity, elicit ridicule in other, civilized intellectual cultures better acquainted with the injurious nature of Washington’s aggressions. Even in countries on the immediate periphery of those discussed above, having been (by and large) spared the tonnage of F-35 payloads and Abrams tanks, observers perceive new waves of U.S. bombing as little more than another stage in a trite imperial pattern, with perhaps still more devastating consequences than its previous incarnations. Aasim Sajjad Akhtar writes in Pakistan’s leading daily, Dawn, that, “There is no secret to what the Empire and its Israeli outpost want—to eliminate the one challenger to their power in the Muslim world,” all others having been effectively cut down or coopted. “If today the argument is that the repressive, theocratic regime that rules Iran must be removed, yesterday the same was said about the Afghan Taliban, Saddam Hussein, the Assad dynasty and Muammar Qadhafi.” Incidentally, at least three of those governments were destroyed under concocted pretexts that metamorphosed into loftier concerns over state repression. In the case of Pakistan, Akhtar explains, “Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf immensely damaged Pakistani society by aligning with Washington to prosecute wars in Afghanistan,” the “enduring legacies” of which are “wide-spread influence of the militant right-wing, and the ‘Kalashnikov culture’” that has fueled Islamist insurgencies in the Balochistan region. Discussion of this prevailing maelstrom will remain vexingly absent from Western arguments favoring Iran’s destruction.
News reports claim that both Hezbollah and the Houthis have been ordered by their paymaster in Tehran to stand down for the time being, to be reactivated in the event of another U.S. escalation. Parties to the Axis of Resistance, however, understand well the illusory nature of such a stasis. Should Israel find itself itching for a fix, it will simply provoke a conflict with a target of its choosing, confident in the ability of the great revisionists of chronology in Western media to properly assign blame. Already, the media are warning of Iranian efforts to rearm its Axis, with numerous shipments of weapons reportedly intercepted en route to Lebanon and Yemen. All the while, Prime Minister Netanyahu has accused the al-Sharaa regime in Syria of crossing “red lines,” that is, inside Syria, one of which is sending troops to areas on the outskirts of the Golan Heights, illegally annexed to Israel. The utterly laughable pretext is the protection of the Druze minority of Syria, as if Israel has suddenly decided to balance its genocidal impulses in Gaza with purely altruistic ones in Syria. In fact, this “pledge to defend the group is giving [Israel] an opportunity to display military dominance over its weaker neighbor and assert more control over their shared border,” according to TheWall Street Journal.
President Obama’s special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, summarized Israel’s current strategy to Adam Shatz as “the regionalisation of the ‘mow the lawn’ strategy practised in Gaza and Lebanon.” In Syria, he added, “it has gone beyond ‘mowing the lawn’ – it’s ‘mow the hell out of whatever dirt may still be there.’ Even without any evidence of a Syrian intent to attack, even in the presence of clear conciliatory signals from the al-Sharaa government, Israel has continued to go after supposed weapons caches and to occupy parts of southern Syria. They did this because they could, because Syria was in no position to lift a finger in response.” In this respect, Syria is the ideal punching bag, enduring abuse while clamoring for legitimacy.
This drive to provoke is tendentious in Israeli strategic operations, and the associated apologetics that define mainstream commentary likely affect the measurement and care with which rivals conduct their retaliatory maneuvers. In other words, in a thoroughly captured media environment, unprovoked strikes can be sold as acts of defense. A Chatham House analysis of last April’s Iranian bombing of Israel, retaliation for the latter’s attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus that killed a senior commander of the IRGC, along with 15 others, found that, “Had Iran’s intent been to hurt Israel, it wouldn’t have violated a core principle of military operations – the element of surprise. But it did. It telegraphed its intentions to Washington and several Arab and European capitals, and assured them that its strike would be relatively limited,” resulting in minimal damage. Efforts to sell Iran’s later bombing of Tel Aviv and Haifa as more unprovoked aggression have fallen flat in most of the world, resulting in a worrying deficit of sympathy for Israel.
Historically, widely publicized atrocities have prompted Israel’s most ardent supporters to greatly accelerate their white-washing efforts. The first major debacle with which the lobby contended was the Qibya massacre of October 1953, when David Ben Gurion’s forces, led by a young Ariel Sharon, killed some 70 Palestinian civilians. The fallout was unexpectedly difficult, drawing rebuke from Washington. Isaiah Kemen, the Abraham Foxman of his day, conceded privately that the killings “undermined the moral position of the Jewish people … discredited the premises of our propaganda and has given the color of truth to Arab propaganda.” Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and, later, Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 resulted in similar international isolation.
Israel’s image as a blameless sanctuary for the Jewish people, surrounded by “human animals,” in the forthright phrase of Israel’s former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, once benefited from a buoyancy rarely seen in world affairs, certainly for a state of its size. This was not achieved through standard techniques of Congressional lobbying. What cannot be denied is that the operative networks of the “Israeli Lobby” extend far beyond AIPAC, the ADL, or even the Christian Broadcasting Network. In fact, they encompass practically the whole spectrum of elite Western institutions, including the news media, scholarship, politics, the corporate sector, high-tech, entertainment, and finance. So awesome and reflexive are their defenses (and promotions, in the case of the American Evangelical community) of Israeli violence that widespread cynicism thrives as to whose bidding the U.S. government is actually doing.
Horrifying images of mothers holding withered children and mobs of incalculable Gazans struggling for food aid has evidently turned the tide of public opinion against Israel, once again. A July 2025 Gallup poll shows that, by now, only a minority of Americans approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, and a majority disapprove of its bombing of nuclear sites in Iran. The time is now ripe for the kind of reappraisal required to extend this disapproval. We need not accept the notion that U.S.-Israeli terror is the sole determinant in the remaking of the Middle East. Its obvious unpopularity can help give rise to an educational restructuring, in which all roads no longer lead to Iran. The task, of course, is a tall one.
Iran as Boogeyman
Svante Cornell, a Swedish scholar long known for his predilections for the Azeri dictatorship, bemoans the Iranian “arc of domination” in the neighboring Arab World, as it takes advantage of what he feels are the honest miscalculations of the U.S., particularly in Iraq. He alleges that the Bush administration, for example, bet on the wrong horse, falsely expecting that empowering its Shia majority would translate into democratic dividends and gratitude for having toppled its chief enemy, Saddam Hussein. “But,” Cornell says, “the U.S. Iraq war did not go according to plan, and the missteps of the U.S. opened an opportunity for Iran to step in and work not only to counter the U.S. presence in Iraq, but to assert its own influence in the vacuum created by the United States.” How utterly nonplussed Bush and his planners must have been at the frigid welcome they received in Iraq, one of many dramatic twists in the epic, Why Do They Hate Us? The real story of our “failure” in Iraq is therefore the industrious cunning of the mullahs, who thwarted another democratization effort. Bone-headed accounts such as this read much like the internal assessments of the Reagan era, couched in the purity and virtue of its own foreign policy. A 1983 intelligence memo declared that “Moscow has chosen to allow its relationship with three successive US Administrations to deteriorate in substantial measure because of its refusal to moderate its aggressive pursuit of Third World opportunities.” Like Russia before it, Iran today is not to cultivate allies, only obedience, and fold whenever the legitimacy of its power projection comes into doubt.
In one of the few in-depth studies of the event, Ervand Abrahamian writes in his history of the U.S. and Britain’s 1953 overthrow of Iran’s parliamentary regime that “the coup left a deep imprint on the country—not only on its polity and economy but also on its popular culture and what some would call mentality.” Governments the world over suffered similar fates throughout the 20th century, many of whom are yet to fully recover even after obtaining a degree of independence. Materially, continues Abrahamian, “the coup set back by at least two decades the whole process of oil nationalization throughout the world—especially in the Middle East and North Africa.” Along with converting the country into a vicious dictatorship that amassed one of the worst records of torture and political repression in the world, Iranians were not granted reprieve from the scramble for its oil resources. Eventually, the era of decolonization saw one victim after another begin to retake, or at least reorient the control of, its foreign-owned resources. Major producers slowly “took over their oil resources, and, having learned from the past, took precautions to make sure the oil companies would not return victorious.”
In the wake of the October 1973 war between Egypt and Israel, and the ensuing oil embargo, Henry Kissinger pioneered the method by which the excess petrodollars of the region’s major oil producers would be recycled into expensive capital-intensive projects procured by the West. The aim was to establish a multinational counter to the price-setting powers of the producers by setting up what analyst David Spiro called an “oligopsony,” or a “cartel of consumers.” “Large scale development projects and other projects will put the Shah, for example, in a position where he must sell oil in order to sustain the commitments he has made,” Kissinger told a group of congressmen in June 1975. Diplomatic historian Jacob Darwin Hamblin’s review of the record finds that “Nuclear power generation became a key part of that petroleum strategy” primarily to free up oil for lucrative sales on the international market. Assistance from Western institutions was crucial. Eager to begin feeding from the trough, “French negotiators convinced Iran to build its enrichment facility in France, and the decision turned out to be a serious blunder for Iran, tying up considerable sums of capital.” It ultimately proved “particularly good for France, which was able to secure its own enrichment future with external money, and have the facility at home, in the southern provincial village of Pierrelatte. Most importantly, the project absorbed an enormous amount of Iranian capital and gave France some leverage in its negotiations with Iran in any future oil crisis.” The arrangement quickly bore fruit. “We may have broken OPEC,” Kissinger positively reported to President Ford in March 1975.
Before long, Iranian authorities grew skeptical of this scheme and sought more independence in its quest for peaceful nuclear energy. Having ratified the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970, Iran was legally entitled to produce on its own soil, access, and dispose of its nuclear energy as it saw fit, granted that it was for peaceful purposes. Breaking free of external control became a key rallying cry for the young protestors who eventually spearheaded the removal of the Shah. “The behavior of the United States reinforced Iranian desires for diversification in partnership,” says Hamblin, and, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, to no one’s surprise, “Russia has been particularly helpful in picking up where Europeans left off,” providing technology and know-how on drastically different terms. In light of other changes in international political alignment, China has also become the primary purchaser of Iranian oil, particularly worrying because it “is too big for Trump to bully now,” as Bloomberg Businessweek has recently noted.
Little wonder why editors in the business press seem to want nothing more than to restore the pre-1979 system. Trump has wondered aloud why Iran would want to produce nuclear energy while in possession of so much oil, and many commentators now look forward to an agreement which would see it again import its enriched uranium, ostensibly from Western sources. Put differently, Iranian energy-independence would prove disastrous for U.S. control.
Throughout the 1990s, the reformist government of President Khatami suggested a track for negotiations aiming to resolve all the most pressing areas of antagonism, including “weapons of mass destruction, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the future of Lebanon’s Hizbullah organisation and cooperation with the UN nuclear safeguards agency [IAEA],” as reported in the Financial Times in 2006. The EU urged that it be pursued, but was forced by the Clinton administration to fall in line and retreat. A similar situation followed the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the U.S. similarly rebuffed Iran-EU efforts. In May 2010, with encouragement of the Obama administration, Turkey and Brazil offered to help mediate the growing impasse, proposing that Iran would export close to 1,2000 kg of its low-enriched uranium to France and Russia for conversion into civilian-grade fuel, after which it would be returned for its domestic industries. The next month, the U.S. killed it at the Security Council in the form of Resolution 1929, opting for more sanctions.
In a 2013 profile on the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, specialist Akbar Ganji outlines a solid rationale that Iran could easily adopt, in light of the preceding 46 years of antipathy towards the Islamic Republic: “Khamenei suspects that even if all of Iran’s nuclear facilities were closed down, or opened up to inspections and monitoring, Western governments would simply pocket the concessions and raise other issues—such as terrorism, human rights, or Israel—as excuses for maintaining their pressure and pursuing regime change,” citing Libya’s Qaddafi and Saddam’s Iraq, who were still invaded after having relinquished their weapons of mass destruction. The regime still chose the path of negotiations, concluding with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, subject to the most rigorous sanctions regime in the world, hopeful sign for anyone worried about a threat from Iran. The E3, flouting Russian and Chinese efforts to salvage diplomacy, reimposed severe “snapback” sanctions in September that will further strangle the Iranian economy, in what is billed psychotically as another effort to kickstart negotiations. As the documentary record reveals, Iran ought to be praised for the supreme restraint and patience it has exercised in the face of these absurd machinations, wherein threats, sanctions, cyberattacks, and outright bombings are marketed as peace inducements.
The power wielded by the U.S. in certain areas has since grown significantly since the pre-revolutionary period, particularly in the sphere of economic warfare, otherwise known as international finance. Authors of a 2022 article in the American Journal of Sociology find that the financialization of U.S. warfare has greatly expanded its ability to instill submission to its commercial designs abroad. They argue that the policy “works like a virus by requiring infected corporate giants in high-risk countries to act as if they were U.S. legal persons and therefore to always follow U.S. law over other rules,” subordinating them to a U.S.-dominated “surveillance capitalism.” In the case of Iran, the U.S. began by targeting smaller, defenseless firms, then gradually enlarged its bullying operation to include several juggernauts of global capital. “[S]tarting with a few nondescript companies dealing with Iran’s shadow economy, now the largest European banks, the world’s largest telecom equipment providers, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, the world’s largest oil companies, and the world’s largest rolling stock manufacturers have all seen their inner rules reconfigured by U.S. sanctions law, forcing them to pull out of global markets if not complying with U.S. sanctions law.” Keeping Iran’s economy dependent on oil sales operating in an international market would therefore keep it in a realm in which the U.S. still wields tremendous leverage.
Much the way during the Cold War the USSR was the ubiquitous specter used to justify U.S. intervention throughout the world—invoking political and military links, both real and fabricated—Iran has been assigned a similar role in the Middle East, presented as a near omnipotent boogeyman that has implanted its links deep in Arab states. This presentation greatly benefits U.S.-Israeli efforts to expand its warmaking in a region still considered critical for international power. October 7, it can be argued, handed Israel its own 9/11—an act of terrorism so severe that it can implement its most wide-ranging contingency plans while above suspicion.
In 2009, Anthony Cordesman wrote that during previous, bloody sojourns in Gaza, dignified as “operations” in Israeli parlance, the IDF “did not go to war with plans to conduct a sustained occupation [of Gaza], to try to destroy Hamas or all of its forces, or to reintroduce the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, although such contingency plans and exercises may have existed.” The past 24 months reveal that they certainly did exist, and would be implemented if given an adequate pretext. Internal plans likely stretch back much further, but one of the early articulations came from dovish Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who famously admitted to reporters in 1992, “I wish the Gaza Strip would sink into the water, but I cannot find for it such a solution.” His extremist statement did not spare him from the bullets of an even more extreme assassin three years later, but the depth of the sentiment he expressed endured in Israeli politics across a wide spectrum. In July 2014, the ultra-right Knesset member Moshe Feiglin wrote a seven-point prescription for Gaza, which reads like an exact playbook of what Israel has implemented since October 7. After issuing one official “ultimatum,” Israel’s army will seek to destroy the “enemy population” of Gaza, allowing those who wish to leave an outlet into the Sinai, hence Israel’s current need to control the Rafah. “Sinai is not far from Gaza and they can leave. This will be the limit of Israel’s humanitarian efforts,” he asserts. “All the military and infrastructural targets will be attacked with no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage,’” he continues, after which the IDF will oversee a complete siege of the enclave. Then, “the IDF will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.” Occupied Gaza will finally be absorbed into Greater Israel, as it is “part of our Land and we will remain there forever,” also helping to ease the burgeoning housing crisis in Israel. Feiglin is confident that the few wretched Arabs that remain can be paid to leave, or accept the supremacy of their new Israeli wardens.
The Arab delegations assembled in Cairo know full well that their efforts amount to political theater. A trivial point, worth reiterating, the U.S. and Israel have not spent the last two years destroying Gaza to simply institute a ceasefire, allow in massive humanitarian aid, rid it—somehow—of Hamas, spend upwards of $100 billion to rebuild an entire civilization, and then return it to the Palestinians, all of whom are still cut off from the West Bank. No, the infinite credit line required for such an effort is earmarked to convert the area into another province of Israel. Capitalizing on the recent killing of six Israelis in Jerusalem, Smotrich also announced his plan to annex 82% of the West Bank, in the process slandering the Palestinian Authority with the same hysterical rhetoric typically reserved for Hamas. In other words, there are no more “good Arabs” anywhere, and Israel must exert its control directly. He added that “the villages from which the terrorists came should look like Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” i.e., completely flattened and emptied of its current residents, paving the way for Israeli seizure.
Soon, the Egyptians will come to realize that the only appropriate humanitarian act left is to begin accepting droves of hapless Palestinians through the Rafah. The refusal to comply with Israel’s ethnic cleansing will therefore be superseded by the need to ensure that all Gazans do not simply die off amidst the rubble of their former environs. September’s Israeli bombing of Doha, meant to murder more of Hamas’s leadership as it considered peace proposals, was yet another stark warning to negotiating parties: Try as you might, our plan is already in full swing. Qatar responded: “As has happened before, the Israelis sabotaged hopes for peace, further prolonging the war and complicating efforts to bring back the hostages.” Cairo would surely be next, pending U.S. willingness to completely scrap the 1978 Camp David Accords, but Israel’s alleged discovery of new tunnels underneath the Philadelphi Corridor have not proven a sufficient ploy. Given that the members allegedly killed in the attack had arrived in from Turkey, with whom Israel does not have a security treaty, Ankara should also be on high alert.
Breach of the Genocide Convention aside, the lesser crime of targeted assassination is hardly discussed. Six UN special rapporteurs condemned the Doha strike, saying it “violates the human right to life, the UN Charter prohibition on excessive use of force, and Qatar’s sovereignty.” In response to the killing of Saleh Al-Arouri just south of Beirut in January, two of the same UN special rapporteurs observed that, “Israel was not exercising self-defence because it presented no evidence that the victims were committing an armed attack on Israel from Lebanese territory,” a key requirement of the UN Charter. One would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli assassination that is not befitting of such a characterization.
Relief for Gazans
After the April 2024 murder of seven aid workers working with the World Central Kitchen, B’Tselem published a report entitled Manufacturing Famine: Israel is committing the war crime of starvation in the Gaza Strip, finding that Israel’s begrudging permission of paltry international aid into the enclave is “clearly too little, too late, and attests to Israel being chiefly responsible for the humanitarian crisis that has, since the war began about six months ago, spiraled into the catastrophe we are witnessing now.” Israel is waging war not only on Gaza’s physical infrastructure, having destroyed cement factories, religious institutions, schools, hospitals, agricultural land, and sewage treatment facilities, but on the future of the very civilization that occupies it. Systematic starvation, when employed as a method of war, is doubly devastating; it not only consumes its immediate victims, like the ill and the elderly, it also severely impairs the development of children, particularly in their first two years of life. As is well-known, half of Gaza is composed of children, ensuring that, long after the current assault has ceased, Palestinians will continue to mire in its hideous effects.
At the end of last February, for example, Israel made its first foray into overseeing direct aid administration in Gaza since the October 7th attacks, in a context Amnesty International characterized as an “already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the entire Gaza strip.” After escorting up to 30 aid trucks to the Nabulsi Roundabout, just southwest of Gaza City, “The events illustrate how a power vacuum in the Gaza Strip, particularly in its bombed-out biggest city in the north [Gaza City], has created a combustible mix of starving people, soldiers and militants that humanitarian experts and military analysts said was destined to blow up sooner or later.” Israel then decided to partake in the aid distribution process more directly, but not without its patented murderous touch, somewhat placating citizens who had worked to disrupt the dispatch of any aid. Instead, crowds of recipients were shot at indiscriminately, and aid workers, by mere virtue of aiding the intended prey, truly court their own demise. “The U.N. and international aid groups have scaled back their missions to the north in recent weeks because of the intensity of the conflict and widespread lawlessness,” TheWall Street Journal reported, resulting in conditions that resemble an archetypal Haitian disaster. More recently, when hospital beds, medical equipment, and medicines dried up, parallels were drawn to famines seen in Darfur and Somalia.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition of humanitarian, volunteer-crewed boats, which set sail for Gaza in the wake of Israel’s criminal attack on and seizure of the larger Global Sumud Flotilla, has already been attacked in international waters. The flotilla was some 150 nautical miles away from Gaza, with at least eight of its boats already invaded and crews kidnapped – the Abd Elkarim Eid, Alaa Al-Najar, Anas Al-Sharif, Gaza Sunbird, Leïla Khaled, Milad, Soul of My Soul, and Um Saad. The Conscience, one of the few powered boats in the flotilla, kept sailing longest despite being under attack by an Israeli military helicopter, but has now also been seized and its crew abducted.
Footage from one of the boats show an Israeli soldier attacking a mast-mounted camera:
A statement from the flotilla organiser calls on governments of those attacked to act urgently. Shamefully, the UK government has already said that Israel’s criminal attacks on humanitarians in international waters is a “matter for the Israeli government”.
A statement from Palestinian legal group Adalah condemns yet another flagrant violation of international law by the occupation regime as it continues to starve Gaza:
Adalah condemns Israel’s assault and unlawful interception of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s flagship vessel, the Conscience, and eight sailboats of the Thousands Madleens — a coordinated humanitarian initiative sailing together to confront Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza amid the ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
Before losing all communication early this morning, participants aboard the Conscience — primarily doctors, nurses, and journalists — reported being attacked by an Israeli military helicopter, while Israeli naval forces simultaneously intercepted and boarded the Thousands Madleens sailboats. The vessels were located approximately 120 nautical miles from Gaza, deep in international waters, when the attack took place. According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the military is transporting participants to an Israeli port.
This new mission, which set sail with around 145 participants from around the world, sought to challenge Israel’s illegal and deadly siege of Gaza.
Israel’s assault on unarmed civilians at sea and its seizure of humanitarian vessels constitute a grave breach of international law and highlight the impunity with which Israel continues to act.
Adalah wrote to Israeli authorities to inform them that it will represent all flotilla participants and has demanded immediate access to them upon their arrival in Israel. Adalah will challenge the unlawful detention and the confiscation of the ships and aid.
Below are pre-attack videos from some of the national delegations, including UK, participating. Individuals have also recorded their own personal versions.
Pensando che fosse una semplice rappresentazione, ho partecipato a una serata in cui tre membri (due ragazzi e una ragazza penso di poco più giovani di me che ho 36 anni) di una compagnia teatrale hanno in realtà fatto una sorta di laboratorio in cui (è più complesso di così ma non voglio farla lunga) ci hanno fatto ad esempio camminare scalzi avanti e indietro nel salone in cui eravamo, a volte con sottofondo musicale, per trovare il ritmo nei movimenti, la coordinazione, riappropriarci della nostra fisicità, imparare la coordinazione guardandoci costantemente gli uni gli altri, spesso entrando in contatto. Ad un certo punto la ragazza pesca me per provare a farmi fare certi movimenti e dovevo seguirla guardandola spesso dritto negli occhi, cose tipo sorreggerle le braccia. Poi ad esempio per due volte mi si è lasciata andare addosso e io ho dovuto cercare di accompagnarla fino a terra - io faccio il magazziniere e di pesi ne sposto anche a manina, e vi assicuro che lei (lo dico perché lei per prima ci faceva ironia sopra, fa sollevamento pesi) non era esattamente una piuma.
Ora. Io, per quanto una parte del mio carattere non sia esattamente estroversa, non ho normalmente problemi col contatto fisico o visivo (per lo meno con le persone amiche strette), ma quelli sono stati i minuti più... non voglio dire imbarazzanti perché non è quello, potrei dire 'interiormente scioccanti' che io abbia mai vissuto nella mia intera esistenza. Non solo la parte di attività con la ragazza (e non in quanto donna, penso mi sarebbe successo anche con gli altri due), ma considerando tutto l'insieme.
Mentre tornavo a casa, mi sentivo talmente agitato che ho dovuto fermare l'auto, spegnerla, prendere fiato e ho cacciato un urlo sfogatorio talmente forte che ho sentito male nella gola.
Una volta rincasato mi sono fiondato a letto ma per molto tempo non ho preso sonno, il mio cervello voleva dimenticare tutto, avevo continui scatti con le braccia.
Il giorno dopo al lavoro ogni tanto mi tornavano in mente dei momenti della serata e mi mancava il fiato, dovevo fermarmi e respirare forzatamente, e qua e là altri scatti inconsulti alle mani, che spesso mi portavo alla faccia. Tornando verso casa ho avuto una crisi di pianto.
Adesso, il giorno ancora successivo, sto cercando di tornare alla normalità, ripetendomi che era una situazione che non faceva per me e che quindi non devo farmi troppi problemi per come mi sono sentito.
Sembrerà esagerato da dire, ma mi sento esattamente come il testo di Somewhere I belong dei Linkin Park, pressoché parola per parola.
A posteriori avrei potuto dire che volevo interrompere perché mi sentivo a disagio, e sono sicuro che l'avrebbero fatto, ma tant'è.
Non fraintendetemi: il laboratorio in se è stato molto carino e coinvolgente, loro tre molto bravi, niente da dire.
Vi è mai successa una cosa simile?
Come accennavo prima, io non ho problemi con la mia fisicità, di per sè nemmeno con gli estranei (tipo se sono in fila al supermercato e uno mi tocca il braccio per chiedermi qualcosa non mi dà fastidio), ma quello che è successo due giorni fa... quello mi ha scosso. E non mi spiego il perché. Se mi direte che ho dei problemi lo accetterò, forse ho bisogno di sentirmelo dire.
Greetings, I need MFA and a few other things for work. I'd like to swap to a dumb phone on my off times. I don't want to constantly swap out a SIM as it eventually damages the card itself.
What are my options? And is there a dumb phone you recommended?
I don’t see why you couldn’t have two separate devices - a basic smartphone that has only the apps you need for work (and no other personal information on it such as photos, contacts, etc.) and a “dumbphone” for personal use.
You can use the smartphone without a SIM card if you don’t need to receive calls or texts (some authenticators only require you to enter a code in their app instead of calling or texting you). There are also VOIP and virtual numbers you that you can use on that device if you need call and text features without giving away your personal number.
I like the rugged CAT dumb phones and believe Nokia still makes decent ones.
Can you talk with the IT team? I was able to switch my MFA to a Yubikey. They rolled out the MFA policy quite recently and I immediately sent an email like "Hello. I do not have a smartphone. What are my options?" They also had the option for SMS verification, but I had been looking at getting a Yubikey for myself anyway so might as well get work to pay for it.
I mean, that's on the IT department in most countries. Like if you don't have a smart phone, you don't have a smart phone. If they want it for the job usually they would need to either provide an alternative or provide the device.
do you call much. tracfone its easy to pick up cards or up your minutes online. their unlimited is fine to but honestly I find the minutes more useful as I don't even like being on the phone.
My goal is minimalism. I'm not sure if I will stick to it. But I want a distraction free life. No ads. No TV. No time durdling on my cell phone. No corporate overlords.
My wife and I realized how distracting a phone can be and I just want some good quality time away from it. But I work in tech in tech need authenticatorsamd on-call functionality. I want to separate my work and personal life as much as I can.
Get a Pixel, put Grapheme OS on it. Set up a work profile. The work profile can be turned off manually or on a schedule, blocking any app within it including Google and any other stuff.
On your personal profile, use only Fdroid & Accrescent for your basic needs.
The problem I have is pixels are really expensive. I just use base model phones. I know the used market is a thing. But really I just don't want as many distractions at times.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has said that the United States must "understand the depth and severity of the consequences" should it decide to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
German police will soon have the power to shoot down drones, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced Wednesday, following a wave of suspected Russian surveillance flights over military sites, airports, and key infrastructure.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Trump’s second term escalates as federal troop deployments in Oregon and Illinois test the limits of presidential power and America’s democratic restraint.
Let's say I want to bridge from WhatsApp or telegram to Matrix, have I gaibed something in terms of privacy? In which case would it make sense? Public group chats? Direct chats?
PSA Help others escape WhatsApp using Watomatic auto reply (and how to write it)
watomatic.app
Example
🤖 Automated Reply
💬 I reply faster on example.org
⁉️ WhatsApp is anti-libre software. We do NOT control it. It withholds a libre software license text file, like GPL.
Explained
I reply faster on
Deleting the only way to reach someone online breaks your influence.
example.org
A link and only one link, so (1) they see it's an app, not some random word or typo, (2) they can download it without searching, and (3) they don't have multiple choice–they don't need to do any thinking or research. Remove everything stopping them.
anti-libre software.
Never say privacy, they've heard it all before (from you, no doubt). Say something different.
We do NOT control it.
Make it simple and direct. Think of the most retarded person you know and break it down in a way they would understand. Think about every angle it could be misunderstood.
It withholds
Libre software is normal, default. Anti-libre software is cringe, weird, dangerous. Act like it. Also, humans care less about getting and more about losing stuff.
libre software license text file
Show them what to check for, for themselves, easily, obvious. Later, show them how to spread these ideas. Then, show them how to show others how to spread these ideas, make more of you.
GPL
A keyword for them to web search for more, with better results than more complex terms like AGPL or misleading terms like 'open source'.
Don't waste a word.
Lastly, make yourself someone everyone wants to talk to.
It isn't really opposing the network effect, because you enable who is on the platform you want to avoid to keep using it and staying in touch with you, so they have no incentive to try your platform, if most of their contacts remain on theirs. As you said, an automatic response is a thing that would make a difference, there is something at stake and the contact either tries your proposed platform or sees you as too extreme and drops the conversation altogether
Using a bridge can sidestep telemetry that comes with official apps/clients. The services will also see a ping from your bridge server rather than, say, a direct ping from your mobile device. Make sure to self-host if you want to avoid introducing new parties to your communication stack.
Esperanto-Ligo en Israelo (ELI) diskonigis novan deklaron pri la milito en Gazao. Unuafoje deklaro de ELI pri la temo aperis en novembro 2023. Libera Folio publikigas la tekston.
I'm very sorry this is a link to reddit. All the YouTube versions have cut the moment he says "plenary authority" and it seems that reddit hasn't purged it yet.
In case it's not recognized at first, this is what we call a "big fucking fuckup"
La Festa del Cinema di Roma 2025 affida a Ema Stokholma un ruolo di primo piano: sarà lei a condurre le due serate simbolo della ventesima edizione, l’apertura e la chiusura. Una scelta che conferma la vocazione del festival a intrecciare cinema, musica e linguaggi contemporanei, dialogando con un pubblico sempre più ampio.
Quinta edizione per La Prima Estate 2026, il festival della Versilia che porta sul palco del Parco BussolaDomani tre headliner internazionali: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (venerdì 26 giugno), Gorillaz (sabato 27 giugno) e Twenty One Pilots (domenica 28 giugno). Per la formazione australiana e per il duo statunitense si tratta dell’unica data italiana. Confermata la formula dei due weekend di giugno: 19–21 e 26–28.
La Prima Estate 2026 al Parco BussolaDomani: 26–28 giugno con Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Gorillaz e Twenty One Pilots. Pre-sale 8–9 ottobre, prezzi e pass Early Bird.
L'autolimitatore di sicurezza Il nostro cervello instintivamente ci protegge per molto cose, è conservativo sempre. Ogni persona ha un limite, alto basso ma tutti l'anno e il nostro cervello lavora per non soffrire troppo ma stare sempre in controllo in modo da non soffreire troppo, in fondo il nostro cervello non vuole avere problemi, anche se è pronto. Mentre il fisico vuole esplodere tirarsi al limite vedere dove vuole arrivare. Trovare l'equilibrio tra mente e corpo non è facile ma quando poi la mente capisce che forse il limite ora è spostato deve ricalibrare tutto per poter trovare un nuovo equilibrio.
15 suspicious drones were sighted over a Belgian military base in Elsenborn, on the border with Germany. The Defence Ministry is investigating the incident.
15 drones have been spotted flying above the Belgian military base at Elsenborn, in the East of Liège Province. The office of the Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken (Flemish nationalist) confirms that the incident occurred.
shaytan
in reply to Lunatique • • •Signal is private, what you should differentiate is being anonymous or not. Using your usual phone number is NOT Anonymous but is PRIVATE, as in the content of your messages being only available to you and the person you're talking to
The way you get a phone number depends on you too, so you can be very much be Anonymous even if signal requires a phone number.
like this
giantpaper likes this.
Lunatique
in reply to shaytan • • •sidebro
in reply to Lunatique • • •Lunatique
in reply to sidebro • • •shortwavesurfer
in reply to sidebro • • •SteleTrovilo
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •Signal stores the hash of the phone number. So you can query them for a specific phone number, but are unable to figure out phone numbers based on the hashes (outside of brute force - trying every 12-digit phone number).
And after doing that, you learn "this person uses/used Signal", with no information about particular messages whatsoever.
shortwavesurfer
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •corvus
in reply to shaytan • • •You are very naive if you think that a company located un the US can provide an encrypted messaging service that can be used by anyone including terrorists, druglords and US enemies without the government being able to access the messages. Lavabit was a famous case and had to shutdown because its founder rejected to comply with an order from the US government to grant access to information. If you are using centralized communication service located in the US forget about privacy.
”Lavabit is believed to be the first technology firm that has chosen to suspend or shut down its operation rather than comply with an order from the United States government to reveal information or grant access to information.[3] Silent Circle, an encrypted email, mobile video and voice service provider, followed the example of Lavabit by discontinuing its encrypted email services.[25] Citing the impossibility of being able to maintain the confidentiality of its customers' emails should it be served with government orders, Silent Circle permanently erased the encryption keys that allowed access to emails stored or transmitted by its service.[26]"
"Levison (founder) explained he was under a gag order and that he was legally unable to explain to the public why he ended the service.[21]"
dasgewisseextra
in reply to corvus • • •daemon and utilities for an anonymizing network
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)corvus
in reply to dasgewisseextra • • •Companies that don't comply with this law are forced to shut themselves down, or remain open, and grant access to user communications to the US government. The Signal foundation is a US domiciled company and must comply with this law without being able to disclose that they have been issued an NSL letter.
Comply with the government order of granting access to messages or shut down implies that
we are already in that world, long ago.
What makes you think that what happened to Lavavit and Silent Circle would not
happen to Signal? Only wishfull thinking can make you think that, evidence tells you
otherwise.
Home
Privacy GuidesPowerCrazy
in reply to corvus • • •Ok government here are the messages i'm legally required to provide you.
like this
giantpaper likes this.
corvus
in reply to PowerCrazy • • •dysprosium
in reply to corvus • • •Do you understand what encryption means? Genuine question.
If a company is compelled to spy on its users, it doesn't mean hack them. (although perhaps there are same edge cases where you have to wonder the exact definition of hacking)
like this
giantpaper likes this.
corvus
in reply to dysprosium • • •Obviously you are missing the point. Even Gmail is private if you are going
to do the job of encrypting your messages by yourself, but that's irrelevant
with what we are discussing here.
What we are discussing here is that if you are a company offering a service
of encrypted communications located in the US, the government has all the power
to force you to shut down if you don't give them access to what they want.
And that's not speculation, they're actively doint it because they
are backed by the law.
Why people are so naive thinking that the government are not going
to do something to get what they want when the law is on their side,
when sometimes they don't hesitate to do it even when it's blatantly illegal?
The only way to avoid surveillance is with free, open source and
descentralized software. If there is a company in charge of running the software
that's a vulnerability and, like the cases already mentioned, those in power are going to exploit it
shutting the service down if the company doesn't comply.
It doesn't matter how much you like or trust the service, there's simply no reason why
they wouldn't do it again when they already dit it successfuly.
Why some people who care about privacy can't see this obvious fact is beyond my understanding.
dysprosium
in reply to corvus • • •Alright I think I know what you mean, but I'm still not sure we're actually on the same page regarding encryption.
If a company is forced to do whatever ths government commands it to do, that's only valid within certain constraints.
For example, the company cannot be forced to grow wings snd fly to thr heavens. That's physically impossible.
Similarly, it also cannot provide the decrypted messages of its users because it (like Signal) does not have the KEYS that are absolutely 100% necessary for decrypting the encrypted messages of its users.
So, again, it's physically impossible to hand over either the keys or the decrypted messages.
However, there is one remedy that Signal CAN do, if somehow forced. That's changing the Signal program. It certainly can push an update that sends Signal the keys for decryption.
However, at that point, the source code at github doesn't match the compiled binary of the program anymore, and very good chance people would notice, and thereby people would lose trust in Signal.
I'm not sure about the examples you gave about the government being successful in obtaining user details of a company. Were those details encrypted as well? Was the source code publically available? Was the program popular?
Mensh123
in reply to corvus • • •Signal is free and open-source. It cannot be denied that basically everything, including minor details like usernames, is end-to-end encrypted and kept secure. The Signal protocol has been proven to be secure by many independent experts and thus it is mathematically impossible for Signal to gain access to your sensitive information (except for your phone number, obviously).
A phone number alone just won't do much.
Dessalines
in reply to Mensh123 • • •Signal is not open source, its a centralized US service, and you have no idea what their server is running. They even went a full year without publishing server code updates at one point, until it caused enough of a backlash that they started doing it again. But publishing that is no guarantee of anything, because you have no access to their server.
A phone number in most countries, including the US, means your real name and address.
like this
Maeve likes this.
Mensh123
in reply to Dessalines • • •Signal's server is open-source. Of course, they could do something else in secret, but the openness of the client (here's the client) is enough to verify that E2EE exists.
Your phone number alone just doesn't give any real insight: you can derive that the person behind it prefers to communicate in private and that they're probably alive, but that's about it. Also, I don't think Signal can get your name without a government to look it up. That does happen sometimes, it's just that nothing importmant ever comes out of it.
GitHub - signalapp/Signal-Server: Server supporting the Signal Private Messenger applications on Android, Desktop, and iOS
GitHubDessalines
in reply to Mensh123 • • •Prove it, give me ssh access to their centralized server so I can verify that they're running the code they've published. Otherwise this is a "just trust me" claim.
There are 10 websites that publicly publish phone number and identity info, right now. Not even a government, but a random stranger can convert your phone number to your real identity.
QuazarOmega
in reply to corvus • • •Since when is encryption dependent on the service's jurisdiction? When Signal has got subpoenaed it has always been incapable of providing data that involves the content of the conversation signal.org/bigbrother/
The app is also open source with reproducible builds (and you can use Molly instead, if you prefer) and when the clients of an end-to-end encrypted system are sound, that is all that matters to secure the content of the communication.
Audits are also performed as listed here community.signalusers.org/t/ov…
I don't understand where this doomerism comes from tbh, (online) privacy will cease to exist when either maths does or it becomes globally illegal to use encryption and the government's intrusion is really so pervasive that they constantly know what you're doing. Luckily we don't yet live in that world, though the pressure is real and we are the first that have to fight for this basic human right
Government Communication
Signal Messengerlike this
giantpaper likes this.
dogs0n
in reply to corvus • • •Email is a very different thing.
You can't protect against emails being received in plain text.
Don't know the technicalities of the specific case you are referencing, but I know that if the government wants to they can middleman any received email before the provider can encrypt it for storage on their servers (by forcing the provider to let them).
On the other hand, if you use an end to end encrypted chat app, you can't middleman any messages from the providers side by force because the messages are always encrypted on the users device before being sent.
eldavi
in reply to shaytan • • •like this
giantpaper likes this.
IncensedCedar [comrade/them, any]
in reply to Lunatique • • •like this
giantpaper likes this.
freedickpics
in reply to IncensedCedar [comrade/them, any] • • •like this
giantpaper likes this.
Prove_your_argument
in reply to Lunatique • • •lol try signing up for an email account today without tying a phone number to it or another established email account. It's incredibly difficult.
You might be able to create an account, but then all "3rd party services" (e.g. creating accounts on absolutely fucking anything) will be blocked and your account will be either restricted or forced to submit a kind of verification that doxes you to lift said block, probably.
I found a single sketchy provider that would take verifications from proton mail that allowed me to then create more accounts, but I had to try over a dozen mail providers before I found the obscure one that did not require any pre-existing accounts, phone numbers or identification documents to just create an email to simply sign up for any web forum, service or basically do anything most people do with email. Everything ends up linked to each other at some point.
There's just no privacy anymore. The ones who think there is are probably not as private as they really think they are today.
Lunatique
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •Protonmail is highly accepted and tutamail didn't ask for my number or another email. You are in a group called privacy but you think there is no privacy?
I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It's called standards, YOU must have them and you will have more privacy than most.
This group function is to help increase privacy. That's what I'm doing by letting you know not to use your phone number. If you have a defeatist ideology. You lose.
Prove_your_argument
in reply to Lunatique • • •Sure, requires 3rd party email or cell phone to work though.
The last one, run by little over a dozen people as FOSS, and easily quashed by the long arm of the law or a pricey lawsuit. What happens then?
You still need an email that is completely associated to you for official things like medical interactions, government interactions, and stuff like sports tickets if you care about going to a sports game in a town like Boston. Hell, when you send resumes I assume you have a professional inbox for that too.
So how do you do it? Do you live in two worlds with a burner phone / never checking your 'private' stuff outside of some kind of proxy/vpn scenario where you remote into whatever box is handling your actual private online presence?
Lunatique
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •Prove_your_argument
in reply to Lunatique • • •It changed. I made one in the past week. You can create an account, you cannot get any account verification emails from ANY other provider, they block them and then restrict your account until you verify with someone else.
I don't know why you think I don't get it though. The amount of metadata accessible when visiting a website is crazy nowadays. They can track things people never even imagined, like the arc of how your hand moves across the screen with a mouse, the cadence of how you type, and then tie those to profiles with any other details they have managed to scrape. Combine that with hours of activity, browser versioning addons etc, resolution and any number of other bits of metadata and suddenly someone has a shadow profile linking you to your proxy IPs or whatever else.
Sure, i'm more paranoid but I don't believe anyone with a head on their shoulders would say privacy on the internet has ever gotten better.
freedickpics
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •I mean things are dire but it's not as if nothing has improved. Even just 10-15 years ago most websites weren't using any encryption (or if they did it was only for login pages). Anything you read or sent could be seen by your ISP or someone snooping on the network. Encrypted messaging basically didn't exist or was very niche. VPNs weren't nearly as widespread either. Go back another decade and Tor Browser didn't yet exist (publicly) so there was no easy way to hide your location or stay anonymous online. Governments and companies have clamped down, yes, but our arsenal of privacy tools has never been bigger.
You can block a lot of this dynamic tracking with NoScript. This will break some websites but it's worth the inconvenience of a messed up page or needing to find an alternate site
freedickpics
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •irmadlad
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •Autonomous User
in reply to Lunatique • • •lemmy.world/post/35730511
Autonomous User
2025-09-10 18:00:11
irmadlad
in reply to Lunatique • • •So, late to the party. Me Skuzi. This comment is more targeted towards your responses to user comments, but I would extend that to your entire thesis. So I decided to make an entirely new comment.
Honest questions/comments to follow:
Yes, the US govt can 'compel' a organization such as Signal to allow them to monitor/intercept encrypted messages, The government can even 'compel' a citizen to disclose their encryption key. The cost of non compliance varies from contempt of court to short term incarceration. United States v. Fricosu et al.
However, Signal would only shrug and hand them metadata. Even Signal can't decipher your messages. There are other services unrelated to Signal that operate thusly, such as VPNs, that absolutely do not keep logs and run in RAM only. Some of those VPNs have been raided and servers confiscated by multiple governments with nothing to show for their efforts. If I recall correctly mega.nz and other storage facilities operate along the same lines.
As to the requirement for a phone number, yes they do require a phone number. However, unless they've changed something recently, you can use a free or paid for, burner phone number for verification. The caveat is that if you ever have to recover your account or future verification, you may or may not have access to that number if you used a free service. So, that might be a consideration.
Also, some free services might not work while others will. If signing up for a paid account, burnerapp.com for instance, will allow you to sign up via their website, however you can't use a VPN. WiFi can be acquired at any coffee shop. If you prefer more private methods of payment for these services, there are those that accept crypto.
So, there are 'options.' You just might have to jump through a few hoops to get there.
Secondly, Signal is open source, no? The whole shebang including the protocol is open source. Where might 'they' be putting the backdoor to intercept encrypted messages? I can tell you this, the day the world finds out that the US govt has successfully cracked strong encryption ciphers, is the day you are going to see a lot of movement on this planet. From billion dollar corporations, private entities, governments, and even ne'er-do-wells on Signal.
I'm no 'fanboy', tho there is a lot to be a fan of. I'm not getting any kickbacks, compensation, or monetary advancements. If I need to be schooled, please do share.
Signal does plan to add a paid for service as well as their free service.
like this
giantpaper likes this.
hereforawhile
in reply to irmadlad • • •irmadlad
in reply to hereforawhile • • •Well, I'm not trying to convince you of anything, however, you can convince me if you'd like. Do you have some substantiating evidence or documentation for such claims? I am aware of improvements to AES256 down through the years, and I am aware of side channel and timing attacks. Not to be discounted, but those are largely theoretical attacks. In addition, most modern computers have mitigated the possibilities of such attacks with hardware instructions for AES to protect against timing-related side-channel attacks.
The NSA reviewed all the AES finalists, including Rijndael, and reported that all of them were secure enough for U.S. Government non-classified data. However, in June 2003, the U.S. Government announced that AES could be used to protect classified information. Now you could conspiriaze that in 2003, the govt played dumb and said that AES was good enough for classified information when they knew they could blow through it like weak toilet paper, but then again, we (America) are not the only country on the planet despite what some people think, and I am quite certain that other governments have made certain their encryption techniques are 99.999% secure for classified documentation and data.
hereforawhile
in reply to irmadlad • • •corvus
in reply to irmadlad • • •irmadlad
in reply to corvus • • •In reading about the Sealed Sender protocol, as I understand, it redacts whom you've contacted. However, the metadata does include timestamps. I have no dog in this hunt as 99% of my messages are whispered into someone's ear. Still, one must implicitly trust the receiver of such whispered messages. I honestly don't care what app you use. Those choices are ultimately yours and yours alone and hopefully dependent on who you entrust with your data. This is just an interesting dissection of Signal and privacy/anonymity for the muse.
In the end, we all trust some entity whether it be your ISP who has your bank account info and residential address and can tell when you're downloading 150 gigs of Linux distros overnight even with a VPN, a bank with every last transaction you authorize, the time/date, or government to which we pay income taxes who has pretty much all the info they would need to show up at your doorstep. If your threat model precludes all the above, I would recommend whispering and disconnecting from society. I honestly do not see any other way.
Technology preview: Sealed sender for Signal
Signal MessengerSteleTrovilo
in reply to Lunatique • • •like this
giantpaper likes this.
Lunatique
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •Signal over the past few years has been exposed for having flaws in its security integrity. Even the president's current administration has had a leak issue by using the platform, Signal.
Once again, they ask for your phone number. Anything they ask for your phone number, if your phone number is tied to your identity, can easily be revealed to reveal who you are.
like this
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ likes this.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to Lunatique • • •This is the core of the issue, and it's wild how many people don't get it.
Your phone number is metadata. And people who think metadata is "just" data or that cross-referencing is some kind of sci-fi nonsense, are fundamentally misunderstanding how modern surveillance works.
By requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
Being able to map out who talks to whom is incredibly valuable. A three-letter agency can take the map of connections and overlay it with all the other data they vacuum up from other sources, such as location data, purchase histories, social media activity. If you become a "person of interest" for any reason, they instantly have your entire social circle mapped out.
Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It's a perfect filter: "Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto." You're basically raising your hand.
So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that it operates using a centralized server located in the US should worry people far more than it seems to.
The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data. So even if Signal's intentions are pure, we'd never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
SteleTrovilo
in reply to Lunatique • • •The leak from the administration was because Pete Hegseth included a journalist in a discussion about sensitive war plans. Trying to blame that on Signal is deceptive on your part.
If you are saying that Signal does not offer anonymity then you are right. Anyone I message on there knows it's me. But Signal is still keeping my messages safe from monitoring and third-party surveillance, to the best of my knowledge.
Dessalines
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •Maeve likes this.
SteleTrovilo
in reply to Dessalines • • •Are you talking about the client app, or about the service?
Much of what you said doesn't apply to the service, which stores hashed phone numbers and first access / last access times and nothing else.
And the client does store these things, but also lets users delete messages and contacts. Your message deletions can propagate as well.
Dessalines
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •Even if this weren't false (otherwise they wouldn't be able to connect to your existing contacts), that's a "just trust us" claim. You give them your phone number, you should assume they have it and not "trust them" to hash it like its a password.
Not that its that important, but its yet another just trust us claim.
like this
Maeve likes this.
SteleTrovilo
in reply to Dessalines • • •You literally don't understand how hashing works, got it. Please educate yourself on this topic. In short, "connecting your existing contacts" is ENTIRELY possible with hashed phone numbers; it's not even complicated or tricky. To claim otherwise, as you just did, is nothing but trumpeting your own ignorance.
As for deleting (and propagating deletion of) messages, this is most definitely NOT a matter of "just trust us". The client is open-source! We KNOW how it works. We KNOW that deletion propagates across devices when you tell it to. We KNOW that the service cannot see your unencrypted messages, and that the encrypted messages are made with AES so even quantum computers in the future can't decrypt them. This is incredibly far from "just trust us".
https://forum.guncadindex.com/u/unexpected
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •SteleTrovilo
in reply to • • •https://forum.guncadindex.com/u/unexpected
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •If it is tied to a phone number then any information connected to the phone account will be connected to the signal account identity. And any identifying information attached to the method used to pay for the phone account will be attached to the phone account and consequently the signal account.
Typically people pay using credit or debit cards, so the identifying information of those bank accounts become attached to your signal account.
SteleTrovilo
in reply to • • •airikr
in reply to Lunatique • • •Suburbanl3g3nd
in reply to airikr • • •hereforawhile
in reply to Lunatique • • •SteleTrovilo
in reply to hereforawhile • • •winkerjadams
in reply to SteleTrovilo • • •dragospirvu75
in reply to Lunatique • • •Dessalines
in reply to dragospirvu75 • • •like this
Maeve likes this.
1XEVW3Y07
in reply to Lunatique • • •Lunatique
in reply to 1XEVW3Y07 • • •dogs0n
in reply to Lunatique • • •You can use whatever app you like, but I think this adds confusion.
Signal is private because no one can see your messages except the people you are messaging. The government can't, Signal themselves can't.
Signal is not anonymous only in the sense that the government can check if you use Signal. That's it. They can tell if you use Signal. They can't link messages to your number in any way through data requests, etc.
Not forcing anyone to use Signal, but if you choose to, you can know it is private.
(So this post is confusing privacy with anonimity basically)
Lunatique
in reply to dogs0n • • •dogs0n
in reply to Lunatique • • •Try looking up "privacy vs anonimity" (or a similar search query). You may find that your post is talking about anonimity, not privacy.
Signal is private.
Lunatique
in reply to dogs0n • • •dogs0n
in reply to Lunatique • • •Did you look it up?
Yes, as I said, the government can tell if you use Signal or not by asking Signal (by providing Signal a phone number and asking if they have a record of it).
It's not anonymous in that sense, but it is still private because your messages cannot be revealed by such data requests.
Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to Lunatique • • •Lunatique
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to Lunatique • • •dogs0n
in reply to Lunatique • • •How are you still unable to differenciate privacy and anonimity.
And you are calling us stupid for using Signal...
Seriously, use whatever you are comfortable with, but don't spread misinformation and panic.
irmadlad
in reply to Lunatique • • •Privacy: You knowing who I am but not what I'm doing
Anonymity: You knowing what I'm doing but not who I am.
Lunatique
in reply to irmadlad • • •They know who you're in contact with, who you communicate with the most due to the phone numbers being linked to your account. On their own website they say people can add you by searching your phone number in the search bar. If your phone number was not stored, this would not even be possible. A reference (like a phone but with your number on display) would have to be used in order to confirm that your account is the one that is being searched. The reference is the phone number. It is not private. I am not the one talking about anonymity over and over you are.
From the very beginning I have been speaking on privacy. If they know your number and know who your number is in communication with they now know what you're doing (talking to person x)
Evennif it is encrypted the damn app is a worst choice than SimpleX the thing I recommended. You chumps want to argue so bad you are missing the point. PRIVACY. Like the name of the damn group you're in. Why get compromised privacy when you can get comprehensive privacy (simplex)?
Answer you are a hypebeast promoing the most popular "privacy app"
irmadlad
in reply to Lunatique • • •I've already covered the phone number conundrum further in this thread.
Quite laughable. Have fun storming the castle bro.
Lunatique
in reply to irmadlad • • •Jack_Burton
in reply to Lunatique • • •What data breach could there possibly be? Phone numbers are already public information and that's literally the only info Signal has. Oh no! My phone number that's publicly available already has been released in a "breach"!
It's already been mentioned numerous times but you're confusing privacy and anonymity.
Per Cambridge Dictionary:
Privacy: someone's right to keep their personal matters and relationships secret
Anonymity: the situation in which someone's name is not given or known:
Using Signal, even after giving them your phone number, fits the definition of privacy in that matters discussed through the app are secret to anyone outside of the sender and recipient. Even if Signal is told to hand over messages, they can't, there's nothing to access on their end. Private? Yes. Anonymous? No.
Dessalines
in reply to irmadlad • • •like this
Maeve likes this.
irmadlad
in reply to Dessalines • • •Dessalines
in reply to irmadlad • • •So because he knows only a limited amount, that's the distinction between private and anonymous?
Signal is not your neighbor. Signal's DB stores phone numbers and knows who you are, and who you talked to, and when. Are the people you talk to considered "public", to a US-based corporation?
like this
Maeve likes this.
irmadlad
in reply to Dessalines • • •It is my distinction, yes. There are many other distinctions like it, but this one is mine based on my threat model. Now, if you'd supply your definition/distinction and threat model, then I can be pedantic about it as well. Or we can accept that, since we are talking about a wide swath of users, no one real definition suites all. If you'd like a similar exercise, hit Lemmy Self Host and pose the question, 'What is self hosting? Is hosting on a VPS considered self hosting or is a home lab considered self hosting'. Report back please.
You know the part in the Signal setup where it asks you for your phone number for verification purposes? You do know Signal does not prohibit the use of temp phone numbers. You can try as many as you like until you get one to work (if you're relying on free temp phone) One phone number not giving you any joy, tap 'Wrong number' and try again, or use a paid for burner phone service such as MobileSMS.io (which is specifically recommended for Signal), Burner, Quackr.io, Temp-Number.com, or there are reports of using Google Voice, if you dare tread those waters.
As I understand the Sealed Sender protocol, it does redact or seeks to redact the metadata of 'whom you contact and who contacts you'. Since 2024, Signal has introduced usernames to reduce reliance on sharing phone numbers. You can set a username and hide your number from others, though it remains in the database for account purposes. Sooooooo....find you a temp burner phone number to use.
As I've said early on, I have no dog in this hunt. You can use Signal, Simplex, Smoke Signals, design a new enigma machine, whatever. My corn is going to grow regardless and my neighbor will still not know about my sex dungeon and crack still. LOL
Technology preview: Sealed sender for Signal
Signal MessengerJerkface (any/all)
in reply to Dessalines • • •Dessalines
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •Maeve likes this.
Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to Dessalines • • •Yes, we get it. You don't consider it "private" because you are using your own personal definition of the word, and getting all fucking bent out of joint because the definition you just fucking made up all on your own doesn't match what other people mean when they say the fucking word. WE FUCKING GET IT. END OF THREAD.
Dude, these are problems that people have been dealing with on the Internet for more than 30 years now. Not only do we have precise vocabulary that you have not bothered to educate yourself on, WE HAVE SOLUTIONS TO THESE FUCKING PROBLEMS. These are ANONYMITY issues, not PRIVACY issues. If you want an anonymous messaging platform, FUCKING USE AN ANONYMOUS MESSAGING PLATFORM. It's not fucking rocket science.
Please spare us the autism and read a fucking RFC.
NewNewAugustEast
in reply to Lunatique • • •You keep saying this. But you never offer any proof. Everyone keeps telling you why there is a distinction but you keep conflating the two, and here you are flat out bullshitting. It is in fact private.
What is your point? I am beginning to think YOU are propaganda. Or an idiot.
utopiah
in reply to Lunatique • • •Started to write a long paragraph to explain the difference between privacy and anonymity but I now believe this new user is (no idea why) collecting engagement via rage bait. I won't participate in their posts anymore.
It might even come from a good place, namely trying to always do "better" and be "more private" but in practice it's just lead to confusion.
Evotech
in reply to Lunatique • • •Dessalines
in reply to Evotech • • •When this US service has your phone number (meaning your real name and address), then what is the point of making this distinction? Is them having my address private?
No one should have this info, regardless of how you every person differently defines "privacy" vs "anonymity"
like this
Maeve likes this.
Evotech
in reply to Dessalines • • •Just because you know where I live doesn't mean you know what's going on in my house
See the difference?
Words have meaning
Dessalines
in reply to Evotech • • •Signal knows the real identities of everyone you talk to, and when. Is that not "knowing what's going on in your house?"
like this
Maeve likes this.
Evotech
in reply to Dessalines • • •Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to Dessalines • • •because they are completely different things
Dessalines
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •like this
Maeve likes this.
Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to Dessalines • • •No, it's a private and secure protocol (not corporation) thanks to end to end encryption. You can evaluate the protocol yourself with your own eyes, except clearly you cannot read, but modulo that.
Newsflash, chuckles: your IP address IS NOT ANONYMOUS. Any private protocol you use without going through Tor, i2p, or some similar anonymizing network IS NOT ANONYMOUS.
You're attacking a strawman. Neither Signal nor anyone else has claimed the protocol or the service are anonymous. Which, yes, is something that every user should know before trusting it. They should understand what it means and what the consequences are. I'm honestly not sure you're even there.
Dessalines
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •This means nothing when you have no idea what code the server is running, they even went a whole year without publishing their server code updates, until they got a lot of backlash over it. Real security doesn't require a "just trust us" claim.
Also, metadata is content. Even if they don't have the message text, Signal still has the real identities of everyone you talked to, and when. With that you can build social network graphs, which are far easier to harvest and more useful anyway than trying to read through message content and determine meaning.
like this
Maeve likes this.
nullptr
in reply to Lunatique • • •Lunatique
in reply to nullptr • • •monovergent
in reply to Lunatique • • •sqgl
in reply to monovergent • • •spinning_disk_engineer
in reply to Lunatique • • •Signal allows you to speak confidentially, therefore it is private. It is not, by default, anonymous. Yes, this plus the centralized server mean that potentially dangerous metadata, like relationship maps, can be collected. All indications are this isn't the case, but that's not something you can count on.
If you need anonymity, which you probably do at least a bit, use simplex. And yes, having more people using anonymous services like simplex is a good thing for the community as a whole. That said, I'm not going to try to convince all of my friends to use simplex. It's just too far from the mainstream, missing too many features. Signal is a sufficient compromise for most people, and it's sufficient for me for most purposes.
titanicx
in reply to Lunatique • • •pineapple
in reply to titanicx • • •Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to pineapple • • •pineapple
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •My phone number was leaked, I don't know how and it really sucks. It probably happened before I started caring about privacy. and all these phone number aliasing services either don't operate in my region or cost too much money.
Lunatique
in reply to titanicx • • •Dessalines
in reply to Lunatique • • •National Security Letters
Electronic Frontier Foundationlike this
Maeve likes this.
Lunatique
in reply to Dessalines • • •NewNewAugustEast
in reply to Lunatique • • •Matt
in reply to Lunatique • • •sonofearth
in reply to Matt • • •HotChickenFeet
in reply to sonofearth • • •I'd say the two are different but related.
Seems OP is discussing the loss of anonymity, but the below ARE privacy concerns:
* Someone obtaining my number who does not absolutely need it
* Someone knowing who I am, and knowing I do or do not use a service
Granted that it is difficult to completely obfuscate some aspects of your identity.
anamethatisnt
in reply to HotChickenFeet • • •HotChickenFeet
in reply to anamethatisnt • • •anamethatisnt
in reply to HotChickenFeet • • •Lunatique
in reply to Matt • • •Because it has become extremely popular, that's just how it goes. At one point, even Telegram was recommended for being super secure or private, but the privacy is mild on Telegram at best.
But by comparison to Instagram or Whatsapp, it's how the gram looks like Privacy Central, so it was recommended. Now, Signal is replacing that role.
Signal is more private than the sus apps like IG, Facebook, etc. Yes. But only because those apps are so bad.
Dessalines
in reply to Matt • • •Maeve likes this.
girsaysdoom
in reply to Dessalines • • •Matrix's encryption algorithm was broken for a while and when it was fixed it it took app devs years to migrate to the new requirements. It still might even be the case for a lot of them, I haven't looked in a while.
SimpleX should be secure AFAIK though, but I've heard that it may not be able to scale well to larger user bases. It seems everything has pros and cons.
Zerush
in reply to Lunatique • • •HotChickenFeet
in reply to Zerush • • •2FA is important, but if you use your phone number for anything, you have no idea how long they retain it, how they directly use it, if they sell it, etc. A real phone number can be mapped back to you trivially.
It should be standard to offer TOTP codes that can be used via an authenticator app, hardware key, etc. Aome places do, many do not.
But at the end of the day, they typically don't ask for your phone number because they want to give you security, but rather as a proxy to ensure you have a unique identity. Most people will have only one phone number, and it will be more difficult / costly to get additional ones than burner emails, etc.
Zerush
in reply to HotChickenFeet • • •Anyway, eg.in Vivaldi 2FA is safe and apart optional, as also the account itself, only needed when you want to use sync or the use of Vivaldimail, blog and other services it offers. In much other services it's also only an option.
Lunatique
in reply to Zerush • • •Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to Lunatique • • •Dessalines
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •Why is only message text considered "information / content / context" here. Signal has your real name and address via phone numbers, and has every other real person you talked to, and when. Why is "message text" considered context, but social networking graphs aren't?
All these definitions are highly subjective, and the above one clearly considers social networking graphs to not be "content". Basically they've re-defined privacy in a way that excludes highly sensitive information like everyone you talk to, and when.
like this
Maeve likes this.
pishadoot
in reply to Lunatique • • •Seriously. I'm getting really sick of OPs take, it is a fundamentally flawed and ignorant understanding of what privacy and anonymity are.
If I'm at work and I need to speak to someone in private, we can go in a room and close the door. That's a PRIVATE conversation. It doesn't mean that nobody heard me say "hey Bob, can I talk to you for a minute?" It doesn't mean nobody saw us go in there and shut the door. The conversation is still private.
It's NOT private if someone is listening up against the door, or if there's a recording device in the room (in our analogy most messenger services and protocols fit here).
Signal IS PRIVATE CONVERSATION. But there's metadata about who is talking to whom, and it's NOT anonymous for the reasons OP pointed out, even if OP is a rabble rousing idiot.
Signal is private, free, accessible, and has a good feature set. Their foundation is a nonprofit with ethical motives, and it's widely adopted worldwide because it fills a very real, very necessary niche.
Signal is NOT anonymous. If you want to be anonymous online you've got a lot, possibly an insurmountable amount, of work to do. Signal should not be a part of that because it's NOT anonymous.
Quit strawmanning a good thing because it's not what you're looking for.
Lunatique
in reply to pishadoot • • •support.signal.org/hc/en-us/ar…
That is a compromise of privacy. If those hackers used those phone number to access any account by using unique methods those users privacy would be utterly lost.
Zeon
in reply to Lunatique • • •Lunatique
in reply to Zeon • • •It is certainly a lack of security. I wanted to emphasize how it's also a problem for privacy. People in the thread are now having an imaginary argument about anonymity, even though this has never been something I've been confused about. However, it is something that one of the users pulled up, and now they all are harping on it over and over.
Since my phone number is one of my personal belongings, although abstract, if I hide it from you, it is private. If I reveal it to you, it is not. Since it is associated with me, revealing it to you lowers my privacy, as it is one more thing revealed that belongs to me.
These fools can't even comprehend this, literally.