Spoken like a real android user. All my iPhone friends (and especially family) refuse to download any other app, they just complain that I physically can’t download iChat.
I don’t have time to respond to everything, so I’ll just respond to the first one- which is that it’s tankie copium. I don’t deny the Signal Foundation might be taking money from government groups- I believe it is. But looking at the groups its pretty clear what it is, Radio Free Asia, as in the Asia branch of Radio Free Europe. Aka, their goal is to make people living in US adversaries rebel. The US does not censor private communication, it would be very quickly found out if I sent a text to my friend and they couldn’t receive it, or I was sent to jail for the content of that speech.(That’s not to say its not spied on though.) However, in many(most?) US adversaries there is active censorship of opposition communication, the US generally(although not always) supports the opposition by nature of them being the opposition- this is why(if you believe the narrative that everything is a cabal of the powerful) US tech companies supported the Arab Spring. This is why Radio Free Europe broadcast in support of Dubček and the Prague Spring, why they also supported the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. All that is just to say the US can follow the narrative of being 100% power seeking while still supporting open communication platforms. (After all, the US government also either directly created or contributed to SHA-2, Tor, and Ghidra too) And, Signal is open source, read the code and network traffic yourself, they won’t remove encryption for US allies.
That doesn’t mean they’re immune to criticism, they may be able to explain it, but I personally probably wouldn’t donate to an organization that has the money to pay part time developers $450,000 according to their Form 990, but its not my money so not my place to judge how its spent.
The part about “not reading private messages” I think is mistaken, or rather, maybe amiss. I mean I don’t have evidence, so this is all conjecture. The sophistication of data surveillance and data gathering makes the content of the message rather meaningless in my view.
EDIT: Oh, I don’t think any adversaries of US, even if working together, make any meaningful threat towards it. It’s really hard to imagine, esp. considering the US has a bunch of successful coups & stuff under their belt.
I wasn’t saying the US doesn’t spy on private messages, I was saying Signal is open source so it would be hard to hide a back door. So I don’t see how any other E2E encrypted messages could be more secret then Signal. I guess obfuscating the messaging servers.
The sophistication of data surveillance and data gathering makes the content of the message rather meaningless in my view.
That’s a fair point but I don’t know if there’s any other good solution to that.
yeah i’m rethinking some stuff too, even in some utopia i think some information related to me might make life inconvenient, so the best way to protect that (e.g. not disclosing it digitally) maybe needs outta the box solutions.
related, does anyone even bother to look at physical mail for stuff? like if i put a cipher in a letter with no return address, using that pen ink that you can erase (which comes back if you put it in a freezer) and only i and my contact have the key to the cipher which we exchanged in-person; could anyone reasonably know it?
it seems digital stuff might be a carrot for surveillance people, maybe it can be made into a honeypot and physical or analog means can make a return.
I think finding novel ways to communicate with a specific person and not be monitored is easy. The difficulty is opening a new line of communication on an already monitored one, communicating to new people, and one of those new people not blabbing.
After all, if you play on a private Minecraft server and spell out text with dirt blocks, I don’t think anyone’s going to bother writing code to analyze your Minecraft network traffic.
GDPR deletion is nonexistent (it won’t delete your username or your messages, making it less effective than on Discord, let alone Signal)
… Etc.
Ironically, older federated messaging systems like XMPP might be better by coincidence. Message archiving was an optional addition and some servers, such as the popular Riseup one, do not implement it.
Yeah, fair. It can’t delete your messages to the extent a centralized system, and that’s an indication of the lack of centralized control? It’s a different threat model I think many find satisfying (though perhaps not most).
Meanwhile Matrix was built & funded by Israeli Intelligence (to which I’m sure there are anonymous donors today). It’s expensive replication model means only those with the deepest of pockets can run a server leading many to flock to the mother instance of Matrix.org centralizing, replicating the data to a single node (being decentralized in theory, not so much is practice). It’s funny to see them call out Signal, but luckily there are private, free alternatives to both.
Huh, would it be possible to provide a source? I might be bad at searching, I’m not finding anything…
EDIT: Ok I found one with some search operators. I can provide links, most were less trustworthy, I’d reserve judgement.
An organization which was initially responsible for Matrix, AMDOCS, is allegedly (I say allegedly since I didn’t confirm it to a reasonable extent) an organization based in Israel which appears to have products related to surveillance
By association, Matrix is tainted, perhaps it has sophisticated backdoors along with the other myriad of issues mentioned by other commenters
To give an alternative explanation with plausible hypotheses
An organization linked to intelligence surveillance, created and discarded software, which occurs with most software, and I would imagine occurs with software developed at an organization linked with surveillance as well (if it’s publicly funded, i.e. by a government, I’d lean into this)
Though suspect in origin, the amount of time the software has been independent, and with its open codebase, means any backdoors or other nefarious artifacts can be reasonably said not to exist
An organization linked to an intelligence agency would perhaps be the one to expect to have a secure messaging platform, one could imagine said organization would develop a solution in-house as even with software audits, they may not be certain of any external software which may itself be compromised by an antagonist or have vulnerabilities which they could not control
Some food for thought. I’m not one to jump to conclusions, I think claims require proportional evidence, and obviously my judgement isn’t the same as a security researcher or clandestine operator, so settling on what ‘appears’ to be true without proper investigation isn’t something I do.
You have 6 stats, Constitution is one of them. Your class dictates what size is die you use for HP on level up.
So a fighter uses a d10 so at level 1 he’d get the max of 10 plus constitution. Let’s say 3 since he’s thicc. So he starts with 13.
Then every time you level up you roll your hit die and add your constitution. So at level 2 the fighter rolls 1d10, let’s say he rolled a 7. Then add constitution of 3 for a total of 10. So at level 2 the fighter will have 23 hp.
You start with base HP at level 1. Every time you level up, you roll a die (which die is determined by what class you are playing) and add your constitution modifier.
Each class has a specific dice they throw to determine how much health is added each level up. Thus, a wizard gets less than a fighter or barbarian. There is also a stat called constitution that impacts HP in a positive or negative way.
So Caesar, as a 10th level fighter, would get a bunch of health from levelling up over and over from the experience gained fighting.
AC is armor class. It determines how hard someone is to hit / wound. Someone with plate armor has a higher armor class, than someone in a toga. Here, Caesar is frail and old, he lost dexterity, which is a stat that helps armor class. Making him easier to hit. 9 AC is really low, basically anyone can get a hit in. Imagine if he was wearing full plate though, those senators wouldn’t be able to do anything to him.
They each need to roll a 20 sided dice, which with bonuses, needs to be 9 or higher for them. The bonuses come from someones strength, dexterity, whether they know how to use a dagger, etc. A guy who stabs people all the time will have an easier time hitting Caesar, than a senator who was peer pressured into stabbing him.
1d4 means “one dice throw of a four sided dice”. Which is a “triangular” dice with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 on it. It determines how many hit points are taken away if they hit and wound Caesar (along with any bonuses to damage they might have for being stronger, more dextreus etc.)
Each round, everyone gets to make a move, and a round represents around 6 seconds irl. So here, they calculated out the fact that Caesar has a lot of HP, so the geezers in the senate need to do a lot of damage in this first round, to instantly kill Caesar.
To put this damage into perspective, getting hit by lightning is 2d10 (two throws of a 10 sided die, maximum 10 each, maximum 20 overall). So the senate stabbed him so much, that it counts as a little over 3 lightning strikes hitting you at the same time, in the most devastating way possible. For more context, a random commoner is around 8 HP.
Each class has what's called a Hit Die which determines how much HP a character accrues per level. At level 1, the character gets (typically) their full Hit Die plus their Constituion (Con) modifier ((##-10)/2, so 8 is -1, 14 is 2, etc). From there, Hit Die can be rolled as the character levels up or you can take the average for the HD, and add Con to that. So in this case, they're suggesting that Caesar, a 10th level Fighter (d10 hit die) would have on average 60HP total, though this would require them to have 'rolled' their level 1 HP pool (average of 5, plus a Con modifier of 1)
EDIT: that'll teach me to not refresh before finishing the post lol
Simplifying the most recent scroll bar feels like a huge step backwards to me. It really is the epitome of modern tech needlessly boiling down to its basic visual aspects to emulate a “clean” environment for the users.
“Are they using the scroll wheel/directly scrolling with the touchpad, or using the scroll bar?”
They were, of course, using the scroll bar. I am now somehow responsible for design choices made at the level of the browser, because browsers have decided that the scroll bar should be nigh impossible to use. Yippee.
UIs get worse all the time, very frustrating. Who needs contrast, right? I have good eyes and know exactly where to look. My mother? Holy shit no chance.
Not necessarily for visibility but when i work I NEED FUCKING BORDERS FOR MY FUCKING BRAIN TO KEEP FUCKING STRUCTURE AND NOT EVERYTHING FADING OUT INTO …yeah thanks i lost the thread again
At least on the bright side, people are becoming much more aware of accessibility. I’d argue that old sites were accessible mainly on accident due to most being restricted to fairly straightforward CSS and HTML. The advent of Javascript was a dark time…
I don’t think it was a pure accident as some non-accessible designs would still be possible with those limitations. IIRC scroll bars were taken from the OS back then, so if the OS didn’t have accessible design, it wouldn’t be a thing for the websites either.
It’s really depressing how often I have to turn off CSS entirely just to view a webpage. I could of course always go into the inspector and turn off the bad CSS, but Gecko-based browsers fortunately have “View -> Page Style -> No Style” which is must easier and faster.
And seriously, whoever invented the font-weight CSS property can burn in hell. Ditto for whoever decided that we should only be allowed to read light grey text on slightly lighter grey background.
Its the epitome of technology that as it improves some things become obsolete.
Pretty much every mouse has a scroll wheel on them now. I very seldom click on a scroll bar now. So the design has changed with that consideration in mind.
There is still a need to indicate progress when scrolling even with a mouse wheel. So scroll bars are designed with that in mind. And there is still occasion that you may want to use it to brag the bar to a specific part of a page. But this is fairly rare, because how do you know what part of a page you want to go to before you’ve seen it?
Currently on my Firefox there is indeed no scrollbar displayed. If I use my mouse wheel a thin version appears to indicate progress while scrolling. If I move my mouse to the edge of the screen a wider version appears which is easier to interface with on the rare occasion I want to do that. This is an optimal interface given the hardware I have available.
On a phone or table the scrollbar will not be interacted with my clicking on it. It only appears to indicate progress.
The old scrollbar design is obsolete. Doesn’t make any sense on touchscreens and is a waste of screen space on desktops since people have scroll wheels now.
Obsolete doesn’t mean it no longer works, a horse and carriage still functions after all. Obsolete simply means there’s more optimal options available because of improvements in technology. The scrollbar on Firefox right now is more optimal because of newer technology. The scrollbars pictured are obsolete no matter how much nostalgia you might feel for them.
My friend, obsolescence as a concept can apply to a functional necessity. Obsolescence doesn’t apply to a design choice like a texture on a window element.
If your entire point is that scroll bars aren’t necessary anymore, fine. If you’re going to type up a long winded response as to why scroll bars shouldn’t have the little lines on them anymore, you’re just being pedantic.
I’ve explained to you the decision making process that’s used when changing UI elements. If you’re so dedicated to being a curmudgeon to learn about why technology changes, that’s your decision.
What I’m telling you is that it’s literally a visual element. I already said, it could be optional. Professing it as some sort of inevitably of ui change is just as stubborn.
Frankly, you’re coming off quite hostile about what is literally a texture. Equating this whole line of reasoning to “this is why technology changes” feels like grandstanding to justify defending an obscure ui decision for no other reason than you just prefer it.
Which by itself is fine. You’re allowed to prefer modern design ui. It starts getting ridiculous when you decide to tell other people why their preferences are wrong.
Frankly, you’re coming off quite hostile about what is literally a texture.
So it’s acceptable for you to call me a pedant, but I’m crossing the line when I say you’re being a curmudgeon? Ok.
What I’m telling you is that it’s literally a visual element. I already said, it could be optional.
It could be, but maintaining multiple designs isn’t free. To keep them all involves additional QA and bugfixes for every release and designing an interface to allow a selecting different designs. There’s a cost to this, and why bother? As you say it’s literally a texture, not a big deal. What’s your justification for a development team to put time and effort to maintain some old designs that are no longer optimal?
And this is a microcosm of all interactions with technology. Some people simply don’t like change, even when there’s good reason for the changes. Every technological improvement no matter how big or small comes with reactions similar to yours. It’s best not to impede technological improvements to please curmudgeons, because there’s no pleasing them. You can decide to be angry over every minor improvement in technology, but that’s just deciding to be angry for petty reasons. It’s best to try to understand technological changes rather than always being angry over them.
I mean you’re still upset over a change in the look of scrollbar, even after the reasons for the changes were explained. There are much bigger changes in technology coming, not sure how you’re going to handle it if a scrollbar change bothers you.
This conversation is really stupid. You win, the march of technology advances endlessly and changes will be made.
The beginning of this thread was a small vent that didn’t mean anything on a meme. Way to completely overblow your response there, captain verbose.
So it’s acceptable for you to call me a pedant
And lastly, yes.
Pedantic is an insulting word used to describe someone who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about minor details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some narrow or boring subject matter.
You are being the literal dictionary definition of pedantic. If I had known you were going to write several paragraphs over how a visual preference is irrelevant because of technological advances, I wouldn’t have engaged you.
On that note, I’m done engaging you. You beat me, I’ll eventually shrivel and die preferring something you don’t agree with. I hope this incredibly unnecessary conversation gives you satisfaction, and thanks again for wasting my time to tell me that my preference doesn’t matter.
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