Oh boy, years after years, after everything we went so far, there are people in the world who believes that Big Tech invests billions dollars into AI (including data centers and infra) with only socially good intent and we should not at all touch anything Big Tech do …
Readit Newsvld_chk commented on The Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT wired.com/story/arati-pra... · Posted by u/belter
Idk, subjectively it feels as end of Apple we all know.
Clear stagnation in terms of innovation; no new fundamental interface (no smart glasses, AVP looks too expensive and too narrow); abandon on car project; AI for Apple is nowhere close to others; sales decrease; Apple Watch sales ban; Epic Games court; DMA — after taking a leading position at the market, Apple clearly fails to offer anything new and instead invest too much resources into protecting their market position.
Wonder what will replace Apple. Will we see a slow stagnation here or radically new interface for human-to-technology interaction is around the corner?
vld_chk commented on Could Modified Gravity Kill Planet Nine? nautil.us/could-modified-... · Posted by u/dnetesn
Whenever I read about Planet Nine search, I have a very naive (as a non-physicist) childish question: if we detect anomaly in our Solar System just less than a decade ago and can’t find anything visual which explains it, assuming there is giant planet/piece of ice floating somewhere at the edge of Solar System, how we are sure that there are not a lot of such objects and real space is not as “empty” as we think it is? Simply, what is the probability that let’s say space between us and Alpha Centaurs is not filled with objects like this? Invisible and leaving a tiny gravitational trace at the edge of our ability to detect it?
vld_chk commented on Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames signal.org/blog/phone-num... · Posted by u/Josely
I didn't know a lot of this. I thought Telegram was mostly funded through Durov's Bitcoin and VK money? It feels strange that he'd be so "in bed" with the Russian govt when the whole reason he left was because of his staunch opposition to taking down Navalny's VK page.
But I haven't done extensive reading on this.
Durov was indeed an opposition to Russian govt for some time and TG was banned in Russia for some time.
But then “SEC-incident” happened. He and his brother wanted to build TON and fund it by kind of ICO (without naming it ICO). SEC decides enough is enough and blocked launch of TON with charging Durov for selling unregistered securities.
At the end, issue was settled, Durov returned all money and settle the deal with SEC, but it shrinks his finance by a lot and he ran out of money for TG.
Then he was seen in Russia and issued bonds for $1 bln. According to Russian financial press [1], bonds were underwritten by Russian banks closely affiliated with government or directly stated-owned (all of them are in sanctions list now), and even some money was invested by Russian Fund of Direct Investments [2]. Last summer he again issued bonds for TG for $270 mln. You can buy TG bonds at SPB stock exchange where they were listed 2 weeks after the issuing [3].
Surprisingly (repeating my comment below), around same time, Russian govt withdrew all their claims to Telegram and started to use as the official communication channel.
Not to say that other “transformations” happened like Duriv publicly denounce US declaring it is a “police state” [4]
All links in Russian, sorry:
[1] https://www.rbc.ru/finances/15/03/2021/604f11019a79478034130... [2] https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-56501991.amp [3] https://www.forbes.ru/finansy-i-investicii/424665-shirokiy-k... [4] https://te.legra.ph/7-prichin-ne-pereezzhat-v-Kremnievuyu-do...
vld_chk commented on Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames signal.org/blog/phone-num... · Posted by u/Josely
It was also banned and blocked in Russia for several years. It was only unbanned when they agreed to cooperate with security services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia
More to this “lucky coincidence” it was unbanned exactly when Durov failed in trouble with SEC and raised Russian-state money to solve his problems. Around same time almost all official Russian institutions open TG accounts and Russian Parliament (if we can call that silly thing like this) representatives was saying like “we solved all problems with them”.
When war started, and Russia banned a lot of services like FB, they created list of communication platforms they have questions about loyalty and cooperation with Russian government. TG was not on that list and through the whole war the only issue was about Telegraph — supplementary platform to publish long notes. AFAIK there was 0 questions or criticisms to TG in those 2 years.
As for me, it says a lot
vld_chk commented on Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames signal.org/blog/phone-num... · Posted by u/Josely
You're significantly misunderstanding the changes.
> now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium.
And before that you just weren't able to restrict that at all, there was no such feature. They didn't remove this feature for free users - it never existed. They just added it right now only for paid users.
> premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online”
That is absolutely not what the feature is. If you hide YOUR OWN last seen time, you won't be able to see last seen time of other users, even when they have it public. Now, premium users will be able to see public last seen times of other people if they hide their own. But they obviously still can't see last seen time of people who set it to private, that would've been very dumb.
Thanks for the clarification on last seen, I certainly misread it. About messages: hm, I was sure it existed before but maybe again my brain just lags.
As someone who for some time created and moderated fairly popular chat (200+ people) for anti-war Russians, I have very long and complicated history of relationship with this service and have a lot of different grey-zone stories where it is hard to understand whether it is a mistake from users and whether it is a leak from the service.
Hence I have a little low expectation and overreact on their recent changes
vld_chk commented on Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames signal.org/blog/phone-num... · Posted by u/Josely
If I understand correctly it’ll still not be possible to create an account without entering a phone number?
For me this is a requirement to call a service a private service because in Germany at least every phone number is connected with a persons identity. To get a phone number you need to connect it to an identity using a identity card
This is a fundamentally different problem for a fundamentally different audience.
If we take privacy issue, it can be divided into 3 segments:
* Privacy of user data. The basic level. When you use Google or Apple, they collect data. Even if you minimize all settings — data is still collected. This data is used to train models and models is used to sell ads, target you or do anything else you have no clue about (like reselling it to hundred of “partners”).
* Privacy against undesired identification. Next layer of privacy. When you want to have some personal life online without sharing much about you. Like Reddit, anonymous forums, or Telegram (to some degree).
* Privacy against governments. The ultimate boss of privacy. When you want to hide from all governments in the world your identity.
Signal was perfect at first layer strong but not perfect at 3rd layer (e2e encryption, no data collection to share nothing with governments who seek for data, good privacy settings, always tell you if your peer logged to new device to protect from cases when government operates with telecom companies and use sms password to make a new login), and almost non present at 2nd because they have no public features except group chats where you share your number.
Now they in one move close gaps at 2nd layer — you can hide phone number and stay fully anonymous, and strength their positions in 3rd layer, leaving the last piece open: government still will know that you have some Signal account.
As for me, this setup solves 99,999% cases for regular people in democratic and semi-democratic countries and address the most fundamental one: privacy of data and actions online.
Yes it is not perfect but barrier for government to spy on me is that high that I reasonably can believe that in most cases you should never be worried about being spied, especially if you live in some places which are named not as Iran or Russia.
The only scenario, in my perspective, you can want to have a login without phone (with all sacrifices to spam accounts, quality of peers and usual troll fiesta in such places) is when you want to do something you don’t want ever be found in your current country.
But in this case, IMO, Signal is the last worry you usually have on your mind and there are a lot of specialized services and protocols to address your need.
Wow..