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Wire comes with a short-fall by virtue of the fact they store a lot of metadata about you.[1]

Obviously your threat model informs this.

[1]: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/862394778331361281


I was wholeheartedly expecting an article on the history of the Test Anything Protocol (TAP[1]).

Mildly interesting all the same.

If you are looking for a history of the protocol, it's also mildly interesting.[2]

[1]: https://testanything.org/ [2]: https://testanything.org/history.html


I think the world of secure messaging is in an odd-way at the moment. It feels a bit like competing standards at this point[1]. I'm personally still using signal as the metadata shared by Wire is way too much imho.

Even more interestingly the EFF has stopped trying to recommend the best one and instead is encouraging the users to do their own reasearch (even redirects old urls[2])

1. https://xkcd.com/927/

2. https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard


Signal is great; except there's also tonnes of metadata.

If I'm trying to talk to someone anonymously, having to give them my phone number somewhat defeats that anonymity. Even having it installed is potentially dangerous; it scans your phone book and suggests other signal users (thereby outing you as a user in the first place).


I'll defend Signal here. This is all about your threat model:

My threat model includes:

- kids in my house

- Facebook selling my data to insurance companies

- future employers googling me

- etc

It does not include:

- NSA

- local police (in 2018)

I'll still try to give away as little as possible as while I trust local authorities now I've no reason to be sure I can trust them in 5, 10 or 20 years (see Turkey).

In my case Signal seems reasonable for some things and for now.

Personally I'm also annoying all crypto experts here by using Telegram for some communication and I might even use postcards for other communication (and there might even be communication channels I use but never talk about).


I believe you can deny the request for contacts list access. You can certainly add a Signal contact within the app by typing in their phone number.

I realise this doesn't solve your issue with having to share your phone number with them, or people with your number seeing you use Signal, but if you want anon communication XMPP+OTR+burner accounts is still the way to go, AFAIK.


Just as some feedback, it saw that I was based in London, auto-selected Heathrow as my base airport and the first trip it offered me was a $800 trip to London. Don't think I'll be taking you guys up on that offer.


And I would also like to see the code LON for all airports around London. If I am to take a GBP 5k trip to Fiji, I don't really mind if it starts from Heathrow or City of Gatwick :)


Had a similar experience where I live. It looks like the algorithm decides you don't need a flight to where you live, just a hotel, so the overall amount ends up cheaper. Switching from Flight + Hotel to Flight Only gave me a more meaningful result.


Weird. "You don't need a flight to the place you already live" makes sense, but why would you need a hotel?


Same for Montreal


The article and comments are overtly confrontational with zero objectivity and even less research. This is clickbait.


Seriously Bloomberg, automatically playing a video? I just woke up my wife by accident thanks to your poor UX.

I like the idea of more democratic film-making but am apprehensive about this as it seems just like crypto is hitting fever pitch and people are trying to make it fit in every paradigm they can think of


I use a Chrome plugin called "HTML5 Content Blocker" which allows me to selectively block JS, CSS, Images, Objects, or Media.

I generally run with only the "Media" switch on, and I haven't seen autoplayed videos in an age. They annoy me mightily.


If media.autoplay.enabled is set to false (is that the default these days?), it does not automatically play with Firefox.


Thanks! I have no idea why this would ever default to true.


I had no idea. Thanks so much for showing me this.


Wow, thanks for this one


Well in case of DRM and inventory tracking it's a good implementation.

I was not even remotely disappointed when that's not what they were using it for. And instead just making another tulip bulbs fiat currency.


Anyone know of any extensions that automatically (and reliably) quash auto-play videos or automatically mute them?


This one automatically mutes new tabs until you explicitly unmute them: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-mute/


I prefer Advanced MuteList:

Advanced Mute Links (MuteLinks fork) makes use of the Firefox's built-in mute tab functionality and automatically mutes a tab based on its URL.

Every time a new tab loads or a tab URL changes, Advanced MuteLinks will check the URL and if it matches a link or criteria of the Blacklist, Whitelist the tab will be muted, in case a tab is muted and its URL changes to one not on the Blacklist the tab will be un-muted.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/advanced-mute...


I just don't let JavaScript run by default. In Chrome I just went into preferences and flipped the switch. Now I have to turn it on site by site, which is a little annoying. But once it's on for a domain, it's on forever, unless I turn it off again.

JavaScript not only runs things, it's what most sites use to bulk themselves up. That is to say, if a site chooses to embed advertising, it doesn't embed all the CSS, JavaScript, images, videos, iframes, and so on. Instead it just adds a script tag or two. Then that script tag, once it runs, goes out and fetches more JavaScript, stylesheets, images and videos.

In other words, turning off JavaScript not only squashes pop-ups and autoplaying videos, it reduces the size of the page by 90%.


You might love umatrix, give it a try!


I've been using a combination of automute (chrome) and scriptblock (also chrome) to make browsing the web tolerable again.

The first takes care of anything autoplaying on a whitelisted domain, and the second allows me to whitelist the javascript that plays the videos.


1) NoScript

2) Put sound off (F10 on MBP)

I go for option 2. Option 1 leads to an annoying browsing experience (if you go for option 1, all the power to you). Option 2 just means you only have sound on when you need it to.

Bonus points: gf can't troll me with Spotify.


Been using no script for about a year and it's amazing.


I thought I saw this was built into Safari with the new High Sierra update. Haven't dl'ed yet.


uMatrix can just let you block it all by default and set your own permissions.


This is so annoying I always have volume set to 0 or a headphone plugged in..


We are working on a similar project to democratize original film making. If interested, please see an introduction at https://www.lights.tech.


I was under the impression that lineage doesn't come with this anyway and you had to flash whatever google binaries you wanted. This just seems like they've removed one step. See bullet point on Step 1. on the wiki: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/cheeseburger/install


https://lineage.microg.org/#faq3

LineageOS works without the GApps, but you lose lots of (fundamental) things, like network location and GCM (push notifications). Moreover lots of apps require the GApps API to work (often the Maps API) and crash if the GApps are not installed.


I've been trying to install onto a flash drive for a week now. Neither a 2015 MBP or a custom pc with an nvidia card seem appropriate intermediarys for what I've been assured is a "Simple process"


Very handy tool. Might I suggest indexing some values too. Searching for gradient returns nothing, but a suggestion for background-image might make sense.


Limiting access to porn is a parents job, not a governments. As long as we keep allowing an Orwellian government to do things like this, then things won't change.


Sadly this is the current UK Government's approach to many things. Drugs are bad, so must be banned (no chance of following the rest of the Western World's route to legalisation any time soon). Porn is bad, so must be banned. Never mind anyone who wants to access either of those things can get them easily, and banning them is hugely expensive and criminalises people who would probably benefit much more from some form of help or counselling. Such is our way.


It is more along the line "we like drugs, let's not plebs have it. we like porn, let's not plebs have it" and so on...


Any possible considerations of the substantial arguments against your view seem to escape you. Moreover you pull the straw man trick by putting arguments in the mouth of dissenters to your view. This is an immensely difficult issue with strong arguments on either side; please don't trivialize it with airy condescension towards those seriously taking on board the consequences of decriminalization (for instance: http://www.dea.gov/pr/multimedia-library/publications/speaki... and there's tons more). They are not idiots.


Our government's drug policy is not informed, it is not considered and it is not reasonable.

Exhibit A is the sacking of Professor David Nutt, who was the most senior government advisor on drugs. His scientific advice contradicted government policy, so he was replaced with someone who would toe the party line. The Home Secretary did not consult the Science Minister on this decision. After Nutt's sacking, five other members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned in protest.

The government has shown utter contempt for evidence on the harms of drugs. They have consistently rejected scientific evidence when it contradicts their political ideology. Their reasoning for criminalisation is facile and circular. An examination of the relationship between the Home Office and the ACMD shows this with absolute clarity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt


In a short comment I don't have time to present much of substance, but I get your point. Different communities have different problems with drugs, and are affected in subtly different ways. Different measures have different effectiveness in different situations (if supply can be controlled easily for example, banning drugs outright makes much more sense). I don't think legalisation is the perfect solution, but as far as we know[1], it's the least bad solution so far, and the current 'ban it, and criminalise users' is doing more harm than good. There are many other factors such as education to take into account too. I am not suggesting legalisation is a silver bullet.

[1]: https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decr...


It's hard because very few people know these things are going on. I'm in the UK, and I don't think I've seen this story (or similar stories like Snooper's Charter) being discussed on any TV news outlet.


The news is still full of Trump-related stuff, so it's a good time to slip these things under the radar.


That's a major source of anxiety I've had this past week. I have on three separate occasions had to let tech-savvy folks know it has passed. They have also shared my absolute disgust and want to protest.

Based on the HN thread about the snoopers charter last week, I was spurred on to try do something about it. I searched and read so much about activism but I honestly feel, without a semi-large scale protest in the streets, all this is a) going to proceed unheard of and b) be trivialised by the media.

Any pointers on effective social change at scale? Particularly the scale part.


Join ORG. Invite your friends to join ORG:

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/


See people keep saying things like this but please let me be the first to ask - how do we stop things like this? Petitions do sweet f-a and that's about all I got in the ideas department.


What makes you think parents are more reliable at this job than the government?


> What makes you think parents are more reliable at this job than the government?

It's not about reliability. The government could be more reliable at telling you and you children how to dress, does that mean it should be able to?


Why does that matter?


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