I hear Kyle Rittenhouse is also coming on board as a junior associate.

Brilliant move.

The transition of the major social networks over the last 10-15 years -- from being a space for friends to interact to being a space to consume content produced by "unconnected" entities like influencers -- has created a huge opening for someone to claim the friends and family network. There is no one better positioned (at least in the U.S. where iPhones are the majority handset) than Apple.

Zabit | Staff or Principal Mobile Engineer | REMOTE (Europe preferred) | Full-time

We're a small behavioral health + AI startup looking for a seasoned mobile engineer with specific expertise building local-first apps using Expo / React Native, who also has has strong native iOS / SwiftUI chops and can stretch across the stack into the backend and database layers. Strong product + UI/UX talents a big plus. Hit me (Roddy, CEO) up at: hello αt zabit.com.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yzsZ2KuUXYMUyzPAuVTYueYX...

Nice work! Can you export for multichannel playback or is it binaural / stereo?

Keep in mind this is just the lobbying that requires disclosure, which is a tiny sliver of the overall policy effort. There's a whole constellation of consultants, think tanks, industry groups, "grasstops" organizers, push pollsters, etc. that are the real (undisclosed) iceberg under the surface.

For example, here's an example of an effort to persuade Congress not to update copyright laws to account for model training, which was only revealed because of metadata accidentally included in a PDF file. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/23/tech-lawyer-ai-lett...

For me outright deletion just led to other issues like missing out on events / family photos / chats with people I otherwise wasn’t connected to. The target for most people is probably low-moderate use. <shamelessplug> Personally I struggled to achieve balance with my social media usage for years and spent the last two years building out a coaching service to help people like myself keeping social media under a daily time allowance…think of it as a personal trainer (with real accountability and all) for social media and other everyday habits. We just launched this week at zabit.com if anyone wants to check it out.</shamelessplug>

Zabit | Staff or Principal Mobile Engineer | REMOTE (Europe preferred) | Full-time

We're a small behavioral health + AI startup looking for a seasoned mobile engineer with specific expertise building local-first apps using Expo / React Native, who also has has strong native iOS / SwiftUI chops and can stretch across the stack into the backend and database layers. Strong product + UI/UX talents a big plus. Hit me (Roddy, CEO) up at: hello αt zabit.com.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yzsZ2KuUXYMUyzPAuVTYueYX...

As someone who's worked in the wireless messaging / telecom industry, the "Salt Typhoon" news came as absolutely no surprise. The major U.S. carriers don't have the capacity or talent to deal with the more mundane threats of spam and scam calls / texts on their network, much less attacks by state-sponsored actors. For instance, there are only a handful of people (i.e., fewer than 5) who work in the wireless messaging (SMS, MMS, RCS) group at each carrier, and while well-intentioned individuals, there is a profound mismatch between their skills and capabilities and the responsibility of managing these telecom channels with massive consumer penetration (compare the 1000's of highly compensated engineers working at WhatsApp, FB Messenger, etc.)

And there's no incentive for the carriers to care. Sure, they get yelled at by Congress and the FCC every now and again, but since they're all roughly in the same boat there's zero competitive advantage for them to invest the tens of millions of dollars+ it would take to build out their security capabilities. Their lobbying arm, the CTIA, is funded by tens of millions of dollars in short-code messaging fees and they have bought an iron grip on the FCC and relevant Congressional committees that ensures any enforcement effors are only a wrist slap. Consumers also largely don't seem to care.

So until something dramatic happens, you should assume that voice and messaging traffic flowing through the U.S. wireless carriers is completely exposed.