I don’t like being misinterpreted.

Also how is durovs arrest can be justified by saying “telegram aint e2ee”?

No one here has said or implied that.

I think the distinction here is that if your phone provider, WhatsApp, Signal or mail carrier is informed that someone is engaging in illegal activity using their service, these entities would comply and give the information they have on you-- be it a lot like SMS or a little like Signal (phone number, registration date).

In the case of Telegram, they’ve been informed countless times that specific individuals are engaging in blatantly illegal activity and unlike the previously mentioned entities, Telegram is refusing to comply with any legal requests.

I believe that’s the situation but if I’m wrong, by all means correct me because this is a very interesting subject.

I use a VPN 24/7 and I haven’t had any issues with Lemmy for posting/commenting. I know reddit fully blocks my VPN with some IP addresses unless I use old.reddit, which is part of why I’ve just had it and left.

Yeuup

Jokes aside, I’m a firm believer that upvotes/downvotes should be private and I think it’s very unfortunate that they aren’t. I’m fine with people downvoting me and me not knowing who they are.

Every app from the Play store requires GCM though, and Signal functions even if a user disables GCM. It pertains to a phone’s ability to notify a user of a new message. But again, users can disable GCM and the app itself will continue to work just fine.

For what it’s work, the APK on Signal’s website (obviously) doesn’t have the external Google dependencies. Personally, I really don’t see this as an issue at all.

How significant is it that the server code is open-source or not? It’s possible for Signal to publish their server code while running completely different software on their servers. The point of the client is being open source and audited on a regular basis by the community, which is why it doesn’t make sense to trust the server-side software.

The entire point is that we don’t have to trust the sever at all. The client is open source and regularly audited by the community. As long as the client stays fully open source, everything’s fine. Also, the closed source dependencies are part of a spam reduction effort which IMO is well worth it. Prior to this, Signal had a spam problem and the client itself remains fully open source.

Signal could have very well not even told people that they added a closed source dependency on Google to its servers and just lied by publishing fake server code that omits the closed source dependency., but instead they were very transparent about the spam problem. In terms of they “why?” regarding the closed source dependencies, their argument is that making it open source would almost immediately result in all anti-spam measures being thwarted. Frankly I’m inclined to agree and again, as long as the client is fully open source and regularly audited, the server code is irrelevant to user privacy/security.

https://community.signalusers.org/t/spam-scam-on-signal/26665

https://signal.org/blog/keeping-spam-off-signal/

Assuming you’ve audited Signal, can you tell us what your findings were and why you think Signal must be up to something pretty bad? I’m very curious and would love to be enlightened by someone as knowledgeable as you.

Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.

But now? Now it’s one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.

Clearly I’m not bitter…😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn’t even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.

Pfft, speak for yourself 😏I’m too poor to afford a TV.

In all seriousness, I can’t afford a TV but wouldn’t buy one if I could because the dual monitor setup I have + a mini projector > modern TV nonsense. My projector isn’t anything fancy-- just a 720p bulb projector but I’m convinced that 4K, maybe/probably 8K laser projectors will be the endgame for many people, simply because at that point the resolution to screen size ratio for most people will be where the law of diminishing returns really starts to kick in.

In 2024, nearly 60% of Steam users are still using 1080p monitors-- myself included. The shift for the average person from 1080p to 4K is taking considerably longer than the shift from 720p to 1080p. 1080p came out in 2007, 4K came out in 2012. Only a 5 year difference but 1080p remains king for the time being specifically because 4K is too expensive for the average person and harder to justify, particularly for computer monitors.

For TVs, I think there’s always going to be the core chunk of people who just mindlessly buy smart TVs without putting any thought into privacy but I really do think that long term, we’re going to see a shift towards laser projectors that just accept video inputs from whatever source a person’s using, i.e. a Kodi box, PC, etc. Part of why I think this is because laser projection even during daytime is amazing.

I’m rambling away but yeah, I think at a certain point between the ads and the fact that most people don’t care that much about 4K over 1080p (especially considering the enormous price difference), people are going to tap out soon.

People still use Tasker? That makes me smile. I remember using it way back in the day and it was just incredible seeing the things other people came up with. Tasker allowed for so many features that took iOS and Android years to implement.

Newpipe works for me right now?

Bitwarden on Android, particularly if you have biometric unlock enabled, is extremely simple to setup and use.

That’s because it’s Wired. Basically a big ass advertisement.

Easy way to get arrested by one of said weirdos/perverts. Self-defense isn’t particularly straightforward if you aren’t straight and white.

Alternatives constantly break, like NewPipe. There’s something really nice about using offline media with no chance of connection buffering issues.

Download a channel’s entire video list with yt-dlp and create offline YouTube?

No… I don’t. I can’t stand when this clickbaity article gets reposted because as is the case of most articles, the headline is read and the nuanced discussion within the article isn’t. For many people, a VPN is more suited to our needs than Tor Browser.

I feel like TV shows offer a greater amount of room for a story to be fleshed out. Movies jam pack content into 1.3 to 3 hours.

In fact, I think your comment perfectly demonstrates my point:

• 1000 films at an average length of 130 minutes is about 2200 hours worth of viewing time.

• 100 TV shows at an average length of 42 minutes per episode, 20 episode per season, and 5 seasons per show, works out to be about 7000 hours worth of viewing time.

I think it says something that when it comes to the top 1000 movies and top 100 TV shows, audiences are willing to invest far more time into well written TV shows than well written movies, because more detail and content can be expanded on in a TV series format.

I’m not saying movies are an inherently bad format, I’m just saying they’re a more limited format in terms of how detailed a story can be told. And as such, I believe movies are a more limited medium for storytelling. A book format limited to 100 to 150 pages is inevitably going to have its limitations versus a book format that is limited to 1000+ pages. There’s a reason why books are typically regarded as higher than their movie equivalents by fans who have experienced both mediums.

Also if we’re talking about capitalism… films have and continue to be considerably more profitable in the short and long run than TV shows. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to look into this. One reason for this is that films tend to better among international audiences compared to TV shows. TV shows tend to be a little more culturally niche in terms of how they’re produced/written, whereas movies typically are about broader themes that require less of a heavy reliance on regional pop culture the way TV shows do.

Translation-wise, it’s far less of a headache to have a single 130 minute movie translated for 15 languages than it is translating 14 hours (average TV season length) of an English TV show to 15 other languages, especially if that translation involves things like pop culture/political references. Censorship is another huge factor that is harder for companies to deal with in TV shows than movies because there’s a lot less moving pieces. There’s a good reason why Marvel focuses so much more on movies than TV shows-- the ROI is considerably higher and the risks are far lower.