nostalgk's comments

I once visited Moscow for a AI coding jam sponsored by the Russian state, and while I was there, there was a Telegram group for all of the students to use to communicate during the jam. This Telegram channel was set up by the state officials.

A small section of Russian students were floored, and responded that they thought Telegram was banned in the country at the time (circa 2017-2018). The state officials laughed and responded that it wasn't any concern because they could read everything in any chat they wanted.

I've avoided the app ever since. I can't say how, why, or when the app became compromised, but anecdotally, I was told that it was and that it was no longer a concern in Russia.

Maybe it was some dry joke, maybe those students were woefully misinformed, who knows. But it certainly broke any confidence I had in the security of any existing messaging app.

I personally use Signal, but that's mostly just because I have personal friends who use it and it's convenient to use on my PC.

Edit: Kinda funny, I only just logged into this site again, and some of my last previous comments were about the same thing.

We even had a speaker advertise a telegram channel for everyone I was there with to talk to each other, and the Russian audience laughed to his amusement. I didn't get the joke; kind of funny now.

I still never ended up using it, have too many messaging apps as it is. It's really sad how much that can limit staying in touch with international friends though.

Yup, and it's a tragedy. A boss cares about the work being delivered, and wants the end product as a valuable piece of the business.

It's not like school where if one is late, one might as well not even turn it in; even if it's late, it's still valuable, and school doesn't teach that.

It is also not true across Android -> iOS, as I just made the switch and experienced the same thing.

> To my knowledge, that's not true. But even if true, that doesn't mean e2e encryption isn't in effect.

It's not true. I just recently switched phones. If you activate your phone on the app, you can't use the app on your previous phone without authenticating again, and it only shows your local history. I lost all my history when moving phones, as I chose not to back up my messages (who would?).

"Telegram is banned in Russia"

Really? I just went there recently, and nearly everyone used Telegram as their primary messaging application (other than Instagram)

Unfortunate name too

My speculation is that it maybe tries to crack the hashed value and input that to the phone instead, rather than interfacing with the password screen.

in other words: the encryption/wipe code may be a function of the password screen, but the phone may accept a hashed key as a valid unlock attempt through a different interface that does not contribute to the failed attempts limit.

From what I can tell, it simply tries to brute force the password (perhaps with some informed suggestion). It does appear to have access to an exploit that bypasses/disables the encryption lock that wipes data off the phone after failed attempts, but it does not appear to utilize an exploit/backdoor to gain access to the device; it gains access the "legitimate" way.

This. I recently worked with a company that produces drones among other things, and spoke with the head of research there.

More or less, they said they had given up on putting money into drone R&D until battery technology caught up, as they had plenty of ideas that they believed in but were unfeasible due to battery life.

All the French bakeries I went to actually had a huge amount of fresh baguettes, absolutely delicious and 35 cents each. Maybe they were bad compared to gourmet baguettes, of course, but they were great compared to the American variants

As well, is this really something that harmful to the environment? I get that people driving > people not driving when it comes to climate harm, but I don't want to live in a city and I feel like there are much larger climate concerns (in manufacturing, for example) that outweigh passing the blame onto suburban commuters.

Yup, it's certainly a punchline in seemingly every office job I've ever worked. I've worked a lot of retail and cooking jobs though too, and I think a lot of people come from these fields as well and have trouble distinguishing intellectual work from physical, utilitarian work.

I think it's rougher for people to understand that aren't in this industry, and there are so many jobs that _do_ benefit from this in a numerical way, i.e. more parts per hour, more accounts created, sales made, etc.

Any update on the whole adblock thing that was popular here a little bit ago, with them deprecating the ability to drop web requests? Seems kinda paramount to this initiative.

It probably bends, but I think most of the issue is with the actual finish of the card which seems to be flaking off or discoloring.

I do agree that comparing the US culture of gun ownership + the second amendment (which, although may have been written as though to apply to all people regardless of national identity... doesn't) to the situation going on in Hong Kong is incredibly shortsighted and demonstrates a lack of understanding in cultural differences.

My point on the "few thousand insurgents" is more specifically referring to Afghanistan, but I think both apply similarly: that the US has been unable to contain and combat relatively small insurgency movements via direct action, be that boots on the ground or through mechanized warfare. I think if a similar insurgency happened here in America, if say a percent or even less than a percent of Americans engaged in sympathetic action, that it would be nigh impossible to contain given our military's past performance against similar combatants, not even taking into account the nuances of fighting one's own citizenship and the likelihood of disobedience among the state.

Arguments that a scenario could be contained at local, civic levels are valid, but a full-scale conflict between citizens and military would be catastrophic not only for the population but for the administration as well (who wants to blow up all the infrastructure they've built?). The state has a vested interest in not provoking this scenario, which is why I imply the second amendment is important and alive in the US even today although the tides have changed.

In regards to HK, a previous comment above mentioned they have a much more comprehensive "bottom-up" structure of monitoring and enforcing compliance with their citizens. Even if they had a theoretical second amendment, they can still initiate a massive crackdown and have the infrastructure to contain and control their citizenship. Which is frankly terrifying, of course, but the solution isn't necessarily just "give the citizens guns", nor would this ever work on a cultural level.

China does actually have the resources and is in a position to contain civic revolt in nearly all cases, from my point of view. This is vastly different to America, and can't really be easily compared.

1. Because they are cool aesthetically

2. Because they appear to be more durable (see thread, unfortunately).

Why has the US military machine failed to wipe out a few thousand foreign insurgents (generally less well equipped than American civilians) using drones then? Why did many of my peers, troops, die?

I have severe doubts that the US could contain a civil uprising scenario, especially given international pressures. About 42% of Americans *live in a household with guns according to Gallup, with approximately 30% owning them. If even 10% of those people decided to revolt, that would be approximately 9 million people.

I'd wager that's vastly more than the insurgent military forces we've lost to in the past few conflicts we've had.

Yeah, agreed. Even places I've worked with wonderful internal IT still have problem users who can't figure videoconferencing, or have damaged/misconfigured their device in a way that prevents it.

It often comes down to the one person who actually knows the specific flavor of videoconferencing walking around and fixing everything for everyone, and everyone remote just mumbling and leaving the meeting.

As I work at an Apple shop, I wish Apple would come up with some decent videoconferencing application that would work with our Apple TVs and MacOS (no, Facetime does not count, neither does Zoom and it's glaring vulnerabilities)