I think super-apps are the way to go, only way to prevent one company from monopolizing click-stream data for advertising.

some apps already do this and their users don’t suffer from the same issue (granted, they have different issues)

i think one small addition

1. decrease influence of bribing lobbying

Hi, could you touch on why F-Droid is less safe? Is it because they package (I think that’s the term?) stuff themselves?

I think they wanted to be, they were advertising themselves!

I have a newer Redmi Phone and I can install an app at least twice. There’s the ‘second space’ as well which is like having a cordoned off user. I use a different fingerprint or PIN and it takes me there.

SimpleX looks neat.

Yeah, fair. It can’t delete your messages to the extent a centralized system, and that’s an indication of the lack of centralized control? It’s a different threat model I think many find satisfying (though perhaps not most).

I think most of your criticism makes sense.

The part about “not reading private messages” I think is mistaken, or rather, maybe amiss. I mean I don’t have evidence, so this is all conjecture. The sophistication of data surveillance and data gathering makes the content of the message rather meaningless in my view.

EDIT: Oh, I don’t think any adversaries of US, even if working together, make any meaningful threat towards it. It’s really hard to imagine, esp. considering the US has a bunch of successful coups & stuff under their belt.

Huh, would it be possible to provide a source? I might be bad at searching, I’m not finding anything…

EDIT: Ok I found one with some search operators. I can provide links, most were less trustworthy, I’d reserve judgement.

1. An organization which was initially responsible for Matrix, AMDOCS, is allegedly (I say allegedly since I didn’t confirm it to a reasonable extent) an organization based in Israel which appears to have products related to surveillance
2. By association, Matrix is tainted, perhaps it has sophisticated backdoors along with the other myriad of issues mentioned by other commenters

To give an alternative explanation with plausible hypotheses

1. An organization linked to intelligence surveillance, created and discarded software, which occurs with most software, and I would imagine occurs with software developed at an organization linked with surveillance as well (if it’s publicly funded, i.e. by a government, I’d lean into this)
2. Though suspect in origin, the amount of time the software has been independent, and with its open codebase, means any backdoors or other nefarious artifacts can be reasonably said not to exist
3. An organization linked to an intelligence agency would perhaps be the one to expect to have a secure messaging platform, one could imagine said organization would develop a solution in-house as even with software audits, they may not be certain of any external software which may itself be compromised by an antagonist or have vulnerabilities which they could not control

Some food for thought. I’m not one to jump to conclusions, I think claims require proportional evidence, and obviously my judgement isn’t the same as a security researcher or clandestine operator, so settling on what ‘appears’ to be true without proper investigation isn’t something I do.

Thanks for the info though!!

I use signal as well, might be worth looking into these two links to better manage expectations.

First here and second here.

Related post by Matrix here

Solaris! Summa Technologiae!!

Yeah, maybe not talking about more of what happened during the Cultural Revolution? I thought he did a good job, portraying the awfulness without getting off-topic. Or the reader may have been expecting something less banal? I’ve read propaganda works with a strong bend against a country’s before, like Heart of Darkness, or in a more light-hearted manner, Catch-22. I’d be curious what the OP felt was too pro-china, as it was something that went completely by my radar.

I thought Liu Cixin portrayed the US quite favourably in the second book, I was pleasantly surprised. Really took a ‘equal but different’ approach to other cultures I feel.

Trisolarians suck though, except for that one cool one.

t-shirt for me

prices are lower, piracy is nearly free for most, no?

oh whoops, the audience or readers of harry potter. slavery is sorta a normal thing (as in, people are aware it is and was a thing) where as nose-less magic villain is more novel

ah ok thanks for the clarification! wish i read this before replying to DragonTypeWyvern

i’m gonna be completely honest with you, almost everything you said after ‘graduates’ went over my head. i have no clue what an auror is, did you mean the aurora like the thing in the sky?

no i don’t think they were “the original”, where i see it now, they are in academic institutions (like the philosophy dept at my school, a few in women’s studies) and publications (here’s one from radical philosophy, she wrote for the london review of books which i really like and i thought the title was interesting, i thought it was a good piece that i’ll have to revisit at some point.

you’ll note there isn’t really any provocative language. you mentioned female dating strategy, that’s not a pleasant place to be. i browsed it a bit then noped out when all the acronyms started to come out, i checked the sidebar and thought yeah this is not a place which wants me…

i think the notion of ‘convincing’ is the issue. it really needs to be done by men, it’s not as though what women are saying is factually incorrect or the content is off, it’s often the opposite i find. when i say what women or feminists i respect say i always seem to get a better response than if a woman said it or the original author said it.

it’s such a shame, there’s already a ton of work done by a sizeable proportion of the population and it’s ignored or misconstrued :/

i think the cool stuff the suffragettes did would be labeled way more negatively now. the civil disobedience was rad.