I hate AI, hate advertising, and strongly believe that the track-everything technology powering Google and virtually every other business ought to be illegal. Also I like privacy, so this article about Signal intrigued the heck out of me:
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| #449 [archive] AUG. 30, 2024 |
Signal is more than encrypted messaging. It's out to prove surveillance capitalism wrong.
I read every word of the article, then searched for a little more info about Signal, then installed what seems to be a cool app I'll probably never use, because you can only chat with other Signal users.
No regrets, though. Setting it up wasn't difficult, and I'm happy it's there in my toolbar. Just, everyone I know in the real world is on Facebook and X or not even online. None of my friends or family are going to sign up, so it's a shrug so far.
Anyone out there on Signal?
California officials get aggressive on harassing the homeless after Supreme Court ruling
Zuckerberg's spineless surrender: rehashing old news to enable false Republican narratives
My wife and I, choosing to be childless, heard rude comments and impertinent questions sometimes, but nobody ever went at us like this guy Vance. Does he see women as nothing but birthing machines? Does he have a pregnancy fetish?
How a federal court in New Orleans is driving the conservative agenda
Ford joins list of companies walking back its (always bullshit) claims to diversity and equality
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Florida school board pauses chaplains-in-school plans when Satanic Temple wants to participate
Ignoring the climate emergency:
• Deadly typhoon Gaemi made worse by climate change, scientists say
• Surging methane emissions could be a sign of a major climate shift
• Bees 'starving' for pollen as native flowers fail to bloom
• Heat deaths have doubled in the US in recent decades, study finds
• Exxon doesn't think the world is serious about reducing emissions (and of course, they're right)
• The signs of a warming planet are everywhere in Grand Teton National Park
• As wildfires intensify, the taxpayer burden is growing
• The corals that survive climate change will be unrecognizable
• Greece tourist port flooded with hundreds of thousands of dead fish
• You just lived through the most humid summer on record (so far)
... but there's money to be made, so la di da, la di da.
Oil and ink mix as Chevron reports the "news" in Texas, New Mexico
New York Times "both sides" Trump's desecration of "hollowed ground"
The Lord works in mysterious ways:
• Feds charge Catholic "vow of poverty" friar with fundraising under multiple false aliases
• Catholic school safe environment coordinator fired after arrest for possessing child porn
• Mormon church broadens restrictions for transgender members
• Pastor gets 18 months for $3.5-million COVID scam
• Doctor says accused rapist priest has dementia, trial date set
• Brazilian priest abused young girls, forced one to have abortion
• Former youth minister is charged with 30 counts of sexual battery
That's terrorism, if that loaded word means anything.
And this is fascism:
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I hate Donald Trump more than I hate anyone, even people I know personally, but it ain't possible to hate Trump as much as he deserves.
• Trump, without evidence, blames Biden and Harris for assassination attempt
• Trump: In 6 states you can kill the baby after it's born
• Trump goes full fascist in Truth Social posting spree
• Trump pushes nonsense theories about climate and nuclear weapons during bizarre interviews
Bad guys wear badges:
• Border Patrol agent arrested for allegedly forcing women to undress during processing
• Chicago police officer accused of beating another officer
• Former Inglewood police officer recorded by FBI making drug deal with stolen evidence is sentenced
• Long-time West Virginia deputy is sentenced to 20 years in prison for producing child porn
• Chicago PD hid nearly 200,000 traffic stops from city oversight in 2023
• Former NYPD officer sentenced to 27 years for shooting her ex-girlfriend and the ex's new partner
• Abuse of migrants rampant at Louisiana ICE centers, report finds
• Paleontologist discovers the world's oldest-known penis
⚡ LINKS FOR THINKS ⚡
• Country singer Patrick Haggerty was a stranger to me — yet attending his memorial meant everything
• Malcolm describes the difference between the "house Negro" and the "field Negro"
• Phil Donahue (1935-2024) – Greatest champion of free speech for the peoples' interest of the 20th Century
by Ralph Nader
⚰️ DEAD PEOPLE ⚰️
Berney Doyle
dad
Karla Dana
Viking tourist
Medo Halimy
blogger
Jack Kirby
cartoonist
Denise Prudhomme
office worker
8/30/2024
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. All opinions fresh from my ass. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.
Tip 'o the hat to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Atomic Raunch, Bleepity-Bleep, Breakfast at Ralf's, Dopplegänger Rental, Ensalada de lengua de pajaritos, A Sudden Violent Jerk, Mr Souza's Happy Place, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo emeritus, Jeff Meyer, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn't always shitty.
I have Signal on my phone, and have a few people on it (it looks for mutuals in your address book) but other than "Hey so you're on Signal too huh" there wasn't much to say and we went back to text messaging.
ReplyDeleteI just looked at it now and there's a message saying I'm no longer registered, "likely" because I registered on a different device, which isn't true. So if any of them or other contacts texted me over Signal, I will have never gotten it. Like most apps it probably just stopped updating when I didn't open it for like a year.
Also, at some point Moxie Moxinwater or whatever the name of Signal's founder is tried injecting crypto into it as a form of "mobile payments" that would be handled in-app. People were annoyed. I don't know what the current status of this is.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments
The page is still active on signal.org, so I gotta think it's still active.
DeleteIt's possible, I suppose, that some corner of the crypto fad isn't a scam, but it's all smelled fishy to me from the start. Of the world's myriad problems to be solved, 'money' isn't very high on my list.
My impression is that Signal is kinda cool for people who need/want it, but I'm not sure that's me.
And downloading it cost me my phone's virginity. First app I've downloaded. First time my phone's been connected to the internet, just for the download. For me, it's only a phone, and I'm adamant about that. I like having the internet at home on my laptop, but I don't want it in my pocket everywhere I go.
But during the ten minutes it was connected to the internet, it 'updated' the phone, the texting, and my contacts list, uglifying all of them, and reset all my settings so the phone rings again, and beeps when a text comes in. Took another ten minutes to re-silence everything, and re-deny access to the 38 'standard' apps I never wanted in the first place.
To be clear, it wasn't Signal that did this, it was Google/Android. And it's only a slight complaint, but it certainly reinforces my desire to never have an internet-enabled phone.
And yes, I know this is all weird, and I'm weird.
I'm not much different, I think the only apps I have that weren't factory installed are a couple todo-list type things (essential for the modern procrastinator) and Night Sky, so when I wonder "What is that star/planet?" I can hold up my phone and answer it. This occurs about once a year, probably a waste of time? It plays pretty ambient music as it sucks down my battery like grape soda, though.
DeleteNight Sky sounds cool. My flatmate has an app sorta like that — he points it at a tree's leaves, and it tells him what kind of tree it is. Me, I'm content knowing it's the kind of tree that has leaves.
DeleteYou're about the closest anyone's come to "getting it" on phones, man, so thanks for that.
I don't want to be another guy in the restaurant, or on the sidewalk or on the bus, scrolling through the internet. Freaks me out when I see it. I'm *totally* that guy at home, which is why I haven't really written anything for the website in a week, but when I'm out in the world *I want to see the world.*
There's probably a decent point of compromise. My phone is just a phone, but Martha does use Night Sky (she hasn't noticed excessive battery drainage) so when we sit on the front steps on a warm night, she can identify stars and planets and the occasional nebula. Martha's a birder, and she also has a birdcall app that will identify what species of bird is singing.
DeleteSeems to me that those apps interact with the world around us rather than detract from it. I've never seen her walk and click simultaneously.
John
Sounds lovely, like your wife. And I really hold no grudge against anyone scrolling their phone, any time, any place, except a movie theater after the lights have dimmed.
DeleteIf smart phones and the miniature internet had come first, and the full-size internet had come later, maybe I'd have the opposite opinions.
“To give the appearance of something holding up, like, say, the US economy, when there is actually nothing underneath. Nothing real, that is.”
ReplyDeleteNot to be contrarian to this statement but I can only report on what I see. I work in the development field and in my community there are numerous residential subdivisions that are quickly being built out with new $650K homes. People still seem to have plenty of money to buy over priced homes at 6% interest resulting in a monthly mortgage payment of $3,000.
Our industrial sector is cruising. New businesses are moving to town and building new structures on currently vacant sites.
The highways are crowded with new cars, semi trucks loaded with building supplies, and other work type trucks.
If you want to go to Hawaii or Cancun you have to book a year in advance. Even the hotels that charge $4K per night are booked solid.
Disneyland and Disneyworld are still ever popular.
WWE Smack Down and NFL games are still selling out.
People are still buying $100K Ford F 350s to pull their $120K fifth wheel and $75K toy haulers with two $50K UTVs and still have enough money to gas them up, pay insurance on them and cover the costs of registrations.
Taxes are still going up and people are still paying them.
Movie trash like Wolverine & Deadpool are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.
I keep hearing that the economy is doomed, built on nothing, but when I look around all I see is EVERYONE living the good life.
It causes me significant cognitive dissonance. I know in my gut that things are amiss in the good ole democratic USA but I’m not seeing it in my fellow man. Inflation hasn’t stopped anyone.
I read once that it takes a lot to bankrupt a Republic. Took Rome 400 years. I don’t think we are there yet. We are getting there but we have a fair distance to go still.
There are so many contrary signals right now that it's just a mess. Certain reports indicate that invoices are being paid slower and late. Purchase of cheap proteins like sausage and eggs are up and beef and chicken are down. One way that I've read about is that we're not taking into account a vast underclass which began to swell in the early '00s and exploded post-2008 — that these things are existing in parallel. The underclass was able to keep pace, at least in terms of identity, for some time owing to cheaper items that used to be considered luxury goods (huge TVs, computing devices, even luxury fashion brands have developed cheaper lines of products for what they — no kidding — call "aspirational consumers"). On the surface there is little to tell one from the other. The major difference is one has an enormous net worth and the other has nothing. There seems to be something to this at least in my place and time (rust belt, today).
DeleteThat paragraph describes exactly what's going on, although I'm not fond of the passive mood. Examples help. An example of an aspirational consumer is a 25-year-old with a state-of-the-art phone, a snazzy car, designer clothes (all highly leveraged) and a $50,000 a year gofer job that won't exist in a year. This person shares a two bedroom apartment with three other people and is one bad cold away from losing their leveraged assets (yeah, I don't like "their" either, but the professors won't let me use my preferred "his/her"). Nice job capturing the economic dynamic.
DeleteWe stop, look at one another, short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation: a moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new-told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes
jtb
Whoa, this is all some heady stuff. Gotta actually stop and think for a moment, not just bang out a wisecrack.
DeleteI pay no attention to the economic 'stats'. The numbers must reflect something for someone, but they're calculated for people who aren't me, using data from people who aren't me, aren't anyone I know. We are the vast underclass Granville is talking about, and the lucky few like John talks about are the economically doomed who don't know it and think they're doing swell.
"Economy on the upswing," says a headline, while everyone I know is struggling to make the rent, one stubborn infection from bankruptcy, and always has been.
Anonymous, you see people taking cruises and buying appliances and visiting Disneyland and "living the good life" because lots of people still do, and lots more scrimp for 50 weeks for a better two every summer. My take on it is, most people teeter on the brink, everything's been hollowed out, and the balsa-wood-firm economic indicators are mostly bullshit. And you know that. You're one of us, I think.
Always love a good "Hair" reference, btw. The profundity of that song, we should all sing along.