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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2021

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  • greed incentivizing unethical contraptions.

    Crypto is a tool, just like anything else. Is the internet a greed incentivizing unethical contraption? Because the internet spawned Google, Instagram, Facebook, 4Chan, and various other shady and illicit sites and services. Should we hate the internet because of this?

    Crypto isn’t inherently bad. It’s the people trying to take advantage and duplicate the “success” of Bitcoin that make crypto bad. I’m telling you this as a person who used to believe in “crypto” and was an early adopter.


  • There’s no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated

    NOFX wrote about the rise of ignorance in America and the song “The Idiots Are Taking Over” is more appropriate now than ever before.

    full lyrics below. link to song for anyone not familiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sNWDfryyMk


    It's not the right time to be sober
    Now the idiots have taken over
    Spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?
    Mensa membership conceding
    Tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
    Watson, it's really elementary
    The industrial revolution
    Has flipped the *removed* on evolution
    The benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized, what a bummer
    The world keeps getting dumber
    Insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason
    Darwin's rolling over in his coffin
    The fittest are surviving much less often
    Now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
    Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool
    Now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
    And I'm starting to feel a lot like Charlton Heston
    Stranded on a primate planet
    Apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
    With generals and the armies that obeyed them
    Followers following fables
    Philosophies that enable them to rule without regard
    There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
    Political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
    Majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
    Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions
    What are we left with?
    A nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
    Who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
    Pass on traditions
    How to get ahead religions
    And prosperity via simpleton culture
    The idiots are taking over
    


  • Call me when there’s a serious OneNote…

    OneNote works on the web, but there’s also Notenook if someone is looking for similar features with an app for offline access + End-to-end encryption and open source alternative. I’ve got it syncing to my Android, Windows, Linux and Mac clients without issue.

    …or even more importantly, Excel competitor.

    There’s OnlyOffice which has a spreadsheet. Yeah it’s not Excel which has existed for a million years, but it should work for the vast majority of users’ basic needs. It may not work for your specific use case, but it is a viable alternative that exists today. If you want more online collaborative features (like the o365 version has) you can use CryptPad, which provides an end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite, including the web version of OnlyOffice Spreadsheets.

    Or even a standard shell on Linux…

    What does this even mean? Nearly every major Linux distro sets bash as the default shell, and if not the default, is probably already installed and called if needed. Not sure I understand the problem here.

    …or the same set of tools built in

    Stick to a single OS and you get the same set of tools built in? This is a strange statement to be making against a system that not only thrives on diversity but has lots of niche systems that require a myriad of default tools.


    I do completely agree about not using any browser’s built-in password manager.



  • Signal, originally known as TextSecure, worked entirely over text messages when it first came out. It was borne from a different era and and securing communication data was the only immediate goal because at the time everything was basically viewable by anyone with enough admin rights on basically every platform. Signal helped popularize end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and dragged everyone else with them. Very few services at the time even advertised E2EE, private metadata or social graph privacy.

    As they’ve improved the platform they continue to make incremental changes to enhance security. This is not a flaw, this is how progress is made.



  • It’s a terrible move, especially to make it default.

    Subjective, but lets see what you bring to the table.

    It’s just as bad a protocol as SMS in its own way: It’s still tied to a phone number/sim, so you can’t just login to the service via a browser or an app.

    That’s how text (SMS/RCS) messaging works. Did you expect something different? Did you expect the SMS replacement to not require a phone number?

    It has lots of failures, worst of all, SILENT FAILURES, where you don’t even know your messages aren’t being sent - just look at the communities around here discussing it.

    I’ve been using it without issue for quite a while now, but that’s just one data point. If you have stats to back up your claim, I would love to see that.

    There’s no common protocol here really, …

    “The GSMA’s Universal Profile is a single, industry-agreed set of features and technical enablers developed to simplify the product development and global operator deployment of RCS” Source: https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/networks/rcs/universal-profile/

    lots of parts work only by decree of each host (e.g. iOS won’t have E2EE with anyone not on iOS, because that requires every cell provider to agree to the config they’re going to use.

    This is how distributed/federated systems work and this is one of their cons. They won’t always be 100% compatible as each component is independent but the goal is to eventually reach feature parity. See Matrix chat clients that didn’t all have encryption (or other features) on day 1 or XMPP which has lots of clients, none of which support all features.

    This is the 21st century, and this is the best they can do - a protocol that fails with no notice? Without standardized encryption? That’s tied to hardware?

    Please post evidence of this. Again, I’ve had zero issues and every Android user is using RCS by default now - have heard zero complaints.

    I had a better experience in 2009 running Pidgin on my phone and my laptop using XMPP. That didn’t require a phone number - I could login and see my messages in both places simultaneously… 15 years ago.

    Correct! XMPP is not an SMS replacement and thus it doesn’t need a phone number. In fact, you can’t “text” an XMPP user, so I’m not sure what you’re complaining about here?

    No, RCS is a way to make the plebes think they’ve got a new and better system while still delivering garbage.

    RCS vastly improves over SMS with the following features:

    • High Quality Multimedia Messaging: Unlike SMS/MMS, which is limited to text and potato sized image/videos, RCS allows sending and receiving photos, videos, and other files at significantly higher quality.
    • Rich Content Sharing: RCS supports sharing richer content formats like GIFs, location sharing, and contact cards.
    • Improved Group Chatting: RCS provides a more feature-rich group chat experience with features like group chat names, adding/removing participants, and seeing who has read messages (with read receipts).
    • Typing Indicators: Similar to many messaging apps, RCS lets you see when someone is typing a message.
    • Improved Message Reliability: RCS messages are sent over data networks, so unlike SMS, they shouldn’t get lost due to network congestion.
    • End-to-End Encryption: RCS can offer end-to-end encryption for chats, providing an extra layer of security for your messages (availability varies by carrier).

    But keep spreading FUD and hating on something that actually moves the needle forward.

    Love you downvoters that don’t know enough to argue, just drive by and downvote.

    I think they’re downvoting you because you’re wrong - plainly wrong - and in this day and age its much easier to bury (downvote) blatantly wrong information than to reply to it. So I’m replying for everyone else but I will not be downvoting you. FUD should be fought back with evidence, but MAAN is it tiring.

    ONE person had the guts to say why he disagreed with me.

    It’s not about guts, its about wasting time, effort, not giving a shit. I slightly give a shit and want people who are less educated on the subject to see the other side of it.

    Nevermind that BorgDrone explained what’s wrong with RCS better than I care to. You drive-by downvoters can’t even be bothered to learn about RCS.

    Nothing to comment on here.

    RCS is garbage. Plain and simple. I will never allow it on my devices, …

    At the end of the day RCS is objectively better than what exists today in the world of carrier messenger services (SMS/MMS). Is it better than iMessage? I don’t think anyone would agree, especially not if you only message other iPhone users. Is it a better out-of-the-box experience for interoperability? Absolutely! And you’re being disingenuous if you disagree, but I’m happy to hear you out.

    just like with Whatsapp, Facecrap, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

    We can agree to these being garbage ✊

    All that said, am I actively going to ask people to use RCS? Never! The same way I wouldn’t ask someone to use iMessage if I had an iPhone. They’re both products developed ultimately to push users into their respective ecosystem to the benefit of Google/Apple/Carriers.

    I’ll stick to Signal and Matrix until something better comes along.