This does effectively make the statement that, there probably are exploits out there for this, but even with a non-updated version, you're not at much risk unless someone with serious resources thinks they can make pretty big money from compromising your thing.

I know, Amazon isn't super cool, and are imperfect in a bunch of ways. But at least it appears to be highly configurable and cheap, and Amazon ain't gonna get bought out by private equity and enshittified, legally bullied into oblivion, generally has pretty good quality and competent support, and has plenty of experience in not handing the keys to your castle of services to any random phone caller with a sob story.

> I might know something about this topic as I'm the only person who has created messaging system that gets around that issue.

And there it is. The only person in this thread "shilling" and "trying to control the narrative" for their own personal benefit is you. I'll refrain from being condescending about it the way you have though.

You're also going into straight conspiracy theory territory here. Telegram is allegedly a FSB op, or maybe NSA or whoever, even though the current Russian government doesn't seem to like Telegram or Durov, their CEO, much. Definitely don't worry at all about Signal's leadership and funding though!

>In private messaging apps security begins with E2EE.

This may be clearer from a product point of view. Your apparent viewpoint, and that of Signal etc, seems to be that protection from the server (and admittedly whoever can coerce whoever owns the server) is the only thing that matters, no matter what other features you have to throw out to get it.

What I am calling out is that this is a fundamentally ideological point of view. You can believe that and act according to it if you want, but general readers should be aware of what they are losing in order to enact this ideology with benefits that seem to be a bit dubious in the real world.

It is well known that Meta is happy to hand over to any legitimate law enforcement agency any content they have. To the best of my knowledge, Telegram never has, and neither has Signal. The fact that Telegram potentially could someday seems more theoretical to me. Again, to the best of my knowledge, all actual leaks of messaging group content have been by various authorities compromising individual devices and/or their owners, which works equally well against Telegram and Signal.

Meanwhile, Telegram gives you a lot more practical security regarding what information to share with other users, and how to manage what other users can do in large chat groups, which seems like a much more real-world concern regarding actual dangers to users than what the company that owns it might potentially do at some future date.

I think for real security, it's better to pay attention to the business model of the company that runs it. Meta's business model is indeed to basically sell your data to advertisers. Telegram does not do this, and shows no signs of wanting to. Instead, you can pay for premium, and they allow advertising as messages in public channels, and they're doing some semi-dubious stuff with cryptocurrency. Signal seems a little weird, they are apparently funded by some sort of donations from unknown parties. It seems to work okay for now, I guess, but is their financial future any more secure?

>>so you're screwed if you lose that.

>No you can keep backups in the cloud these days to recover your account. Unlike Telegram, the backups are actually encrypted so that the service provider can't read them.

I wasn't talking about that, but about the ability to de-auth your mobile device (the one probably most likely to someday get lost) from another device, since no one device is the "primary". Yes, an attacker could potentially lock you out if they get into your Telegram on the compromised device before you get on one of your other devices. But on Signal, you're screwed if it's your mobile, and fine if it's any other device.

Though since you mentioned backups, I think Telegram's way is arguably more secure. Individual user backups, even encrypted, means all your communication security is at the mercy of whoever in your group has the weakest encryption keys and backup storage location. With a centralized system like Telegram, it's never anywhere but their servers.

It also has way more security features too, such as the ability for any session to de-auth any other session, while on Signal, only one mobile device is your "primary", so you're screwed if you lose that. Also tons of detailed permissions for who is allowed to see what information of yours and add you to groups. The only thing Signal actually does better is E2EE for groups. I think it's simplistic and short-sighted that many tech people seem to think that "security" means E2EE and absolutely nothing else.

If an AI tool could possibly replace Photoshop with a prompt and a few bucks worth of tokens, do we really need the app at all - why not just ask the AI directly to do whatever it was you were going to do with the app?

But then one step further, why should any of us have jobs at all? If AIs can do almost anything a person at a keyboard can do, maybe 85% of the quality, but instantly for anything for a few bucks or less, is there any point in paying any of us at all to do anything we could do at a keyboard?

I wonder if it's going to come to that in 10 or 20 years.

Actually, we better invert that ratio, dividing by zero doesn't work very well no matter what OS you're using.

The good of it is, you get a state-of-the-art browser, constantly auto-updated against any security vulnerabilities and locked down against any type of hacking or malware, with first-class support for audio, video, bluetooth, and things like that that have tended to be hit-or-miss with Desktop Linux on bare metal. Contrary to lots of tech community noise, UBlock Lite continues to work fine and is perfectly adequate for blocking ads. You can indeed save local files and use them fine.

You also get a full Linux OS with command-line and desktop apps working fine. Pretty much everything you could want to do Linux-y works. Android apps work locally too, if that's helpful to you. So it seems, or seemed, like the best of both worlds to me.

Alas, nowadays, Google seems rather less interested in it, and Googlebooks sound much more limited to me. Meanwhile, Apple also discourages, though has not blocked (yet?) installing apps outside their App Store, and wants you to keep all your data and messaging in the Apple ecosystem. Microsoft is trying to do the same regarding apps, and apparently, at least some configurations of Windows 11 will force you to log in to a OneDrive account and then upload your files to it, delete them locally (!), and try to bill you to access them if they take up more than a gig or something.

I already decided months ago anyways that my next laptop is going to be a Framework running native desktop Linux, since it's much easier to troubleshoot in the LLM era, and it seems like every other desktop OS just keeps getting worse.

I agree that I don't entirely trust Google with all of this power. The problem seems to me to be that every other relevant player in the industry has even less interest in setting up reliable universal secure messaging. Apple is mostly interested in keeping everybody inside their walled garden. The carriers are mostly interested in figuring out new revenue streams in an attempt to get themselves out of the "dumb commodity data pipes while also forced to spend big money on constantly updating nationwide infrastructure" role that the mobile tech world has forced them into. Mobile hardware providers are basically the same, except for hating the "dumb commodity hardware provider of the 13th black rectangle" role. Nobody else's opinion actually matters in this world.

I'd be happy to see them set up their own servers and an actual federated system, it just seems like none of the other players really want to do it.

I do! I have a old-ish but up-to-date and stock Pixel phone, and I see (what appears to be) full E2EE with several text contacts in Messages, with ability to verify keys (which admittedly I have not attempted to use yet). It only works if both devices / all of the devices in a group are fully compatible with the version that adds encryption or newer, but when they do, it just starts working automatically and transparently. AFAIK, that's primarily thanks to Google's work.

I think what we've learned from the rise and fate of current alternative messaging apps and services is that, if we actually want to get the majority of the world's population on modern-quality E2EE for all of their communication, it's going to have to be done gradually and transparently through the apps they already use. Getting everyone to switch to a different app is a pipe-dream that will never happen, at least not thanks to the work of any particular person or company.

Apple is pretty good at privacy and security for people playing within their ecosystem. They seem rather indifferent to any attempts to communicate or interact with anybody without an Apple device. Better than nothing, but not great IMO. Google has many faults in many areas, but I think they're doing awesome work at a difficult and thankless job as far as developing a standard for modern and fully encrypted communications that is actually possible for everyone to switch to transparently, and dragging everyone kicking and screaming into actually using it. Apple just rolled out support for it in beta 4 months ago. Very likely in the next year or so, we may see the majority of texts and group-chats between Android and iOS be actually E2EE without the users needing to do anything besides ordinary OS updates. That will be IMO 80% Google's doing, and 20% Apple's.

> Free use comes with responsibility: whoever occupies a home must keep it in excellent condition and cover its ongoing maintenance costs. If you can’t afford to properly maintain a particular home, you can’t occupy it

Exactly who decides what constitutes "excellent" condition? Exactly what do you do with people who fail to keep their home in what whatever authority figure considers to be "excellent" condition? If I really want a property somebody else has, can I trash it right before inspection day or pay off the inspector to declare it non-excellent? What do you do with the poor hard-working family who just doesn't have the time or money to keep their place in "excellent" condition? What do you do with the mentally ill person who trashes their place every other week and can't afford to fix it?

> For desirable homes or plots, anyone can apply during a fixed period. If demand exceeds supply, the new resident is chosen by lottery, regardless of income, wealth or status

Lottery? Riiiiight. There's just no chance a simple lottery system will be able to manage the issue of to what extent particular homes or areas are desirable. There's no way a lottery system massive enough to even attempt to address the issue will actually be free of influence by wealth and status.

> The country must always keep at least 10% of homes/plots available, creating real choice and mobility

Exactly how is this going to work in practice? Which "10%" is going to be kept available, and how do we make it available? If we have a desirable city center with under 10% free, do we have to kick some people out to keep that 10%, or do we kick some people out for a while to build denser/taller buildings? Or will our "10%" only be in the undesirable areas?

If I'm a rich person, can I pay off a poor person who happens to have a nicer house to move out to a somewhat less nice house so I can move in? What if I say, I'll pay you to voluntarily move out, or I'll pay someone else to trash the place or pay off the inspector to get you kicked out?

Nobody is smart enough to dream up a new system in 10 minutes that actually covers every possible use-case and situation more fairly than our current capitalistic system that has existed and had all of its rules in practice and iterated over for hundreds of years.