pallas's recent activity
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Comment on Advice on Fairphone in ~tech
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Comment on Advice on Fairphone in ~tech
pallas LinkMy caveat here is that I had a Fairphone 4, and so my experiences are more about the company and their products as a whole. Overall, I found the Fairphone 4 to be disappointing, and a significant...My caveat here is that I had a Fairphone 4, and so my experiences are more about the company and their products as a whole. Overall, I found the Fairphone 4 to be disappointing, and a significant part of that was Fairphone's poor support and development around their phones. Many of the promises of the phone seemed somewhat empty, and often felt mildly deceptive. The community around the phone seemed dominated by a small group of active supporters willing to ardently defend every problem with the phone and the company with often circuitous arguments about sustainability, including arguing that repairability was not a goal of the phone, despite it being featured prominently in the marketing. Like my experience with Planet Computers, if not to the same extent as them, Fairphone felt like a company whose business model was built more around marketing toward people who wanted a particular type of product, rather than actually being built around making that product well. I'd contrast that with Framework, which, despite faults at times, really does seem to be a company built of people who want to build a repairable, upgradeable laptop.
I bought the phone directly from Fairphone, in Europe, but used it in both Europe and the US at different times of the year. This ran into the immediate problem of the back, which was illustrative to me of the dubiousness of Fairphone's claims. Yes, the battery was replaceable, easily, just by snapping off the back case, and that was also how the SIM card needed to be changed. Of course, the snaps on the back case were not actually designed to withstand many cycles of removing and replacing the back, so if you actually wanted to replace the battery frequently, or like me, needed to sway SIMs, the snaps would often end up breaking. Battery life, too, was atrocious; I often couldn't get through a single day without charging. Actually carrying spare batteries would have been difficult, as batteries, like many parts, were out of stock whenever I checked.
Meanwhile, software was terrible. Yes, the hardware of the camera technically fit the advertising, but the camera support was horribly implemented to the point that it was largely not usable for me, despite my rather minimal requirements. Fairphone didn't implement standard Android interfaces to the cameras, instead choosing to make many core features only available in their own camera app, which was quite buggy. In particular, despite nominally capable hardware, the focus was so enormously slow and unreliable that my primary use of the camera, quick reference photos, usually of text, in good lighting, would often end up unreadably blurry.
And yes, Fairphone promised some number of years of updates, but they didn't promise how timely those updates would be, or how well they would be implemented. Security updates were often so delayed that some corporate apps would stop working. Major updates could be enormously delayed, and might introduce a variety of new, significant breakages. At least at the time, Fairphone apparently didn't do any actual software development themselves, and instead used an outside contractor who was clearly trying to minimize effort; it seem like it was not something Fairphone actually cared about. Sometimes they would make bizarre choices in the updates: in one, for example, seemingly simply as the result of a suggestion from one aggressive and vocal fan of the phone on the forums (the phone worked perfectly for his daughter, as he pointed out when anyone had a support question or problem), they once changed the minimum brightness to be extremely bright.
I did use third-party ROMs at times, in part because they would often be significantly more up to date than the official one. But doing so was tricky and potentially hazardous. While I didn't have it happen myself, bricking the phone was easy to do, and while it would have been soft-bricking had Fairphone made some files available, they instead required that bricked phones be shipped to them for a paid unbricking process. My understanding is that this was likely because of enormous security flaws on the phone: the official images were actually signed by test keys, for which the private key was available, and the phone was set up to trust those test keys. If I understand correctly, the files that would have allowed unbricking would have also allowed secure boot on the phone, at least with the official image, to be entirely broken; but this was only security through obscurity.
I usually keep phones for a few years, and repurpose them when I buy a new one. The Fairphone was an exception; I ended up finding it so unreliable that I sold it after around a year or year and a half. For context, I previously had a Pixel 2XL; I still have that, running Lineage and acting as a modem. I now use a Pixel 7 Pro running Graphene.
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Comment on Automotive repair costs on modern vehicles. Any horror stories? in ~transport
pallas (edited )LinkOne of the difficulties for cars with modern electronics is that mechanics and manufacturers often simply won't do component-level repairs, and enough functions are combined that simple component...One of the difficulties for cars with modern electronics is that mechanics and manufacturers often simply won't do component-level repairs, and enough functions are combined that simple component failures can result in repairs with enormous, needless replacements. On a not-so-new, but heavily electronic car, I once had the temperature control stop functioning properly because of a malfunctioning temperature sensor. All information on the somewhat common problem was that a board with a number of functions needed to be replaced, at something like a $500 cost, and that this would be the only repair anyone professional would be willing to do.
Doing the actual repair myself instead involved replacing a single, obvious, easily-accessible, easily-obtainable through-hole thermistor with a broken lead. The cost was essentially nothing.
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Comment on Crossdressing Garbage in ~creative
pallas (edited )LinkGiven the other comments here, I feel like there should be at least one comment pointing out that it's also perfectly reasonable to wear "women's clothes" as a cis man, or otherwise not fit...Given the other comments here, I feel like there should be at least one comment pointing out that it's also perfectly reasonable to wear "women's clothes" as a cis man, or otherwise not fit mainstream gender norms, just as it is perfectly reasonable for a trans woman to wear "men's clothes". I think it is important to not let a repressive, normative culture with a narrow set of gender norms demand that people look a certain way unless, in some sense, they are seen as some 'special exception' that is wholly outside of those norms. In some inclusive places, I actually know a fair number of men who wear skirts and dresses, and look good in them. It isn't a fetish for them; it is simply part of their wardrobe.
Meanwhile, in less inclusive places, particularly in Europe, I am often dismayed at how nominally inclusive cultures can be so hostile to the smallest deviations from their particular sense of masculinity or femininity, sometimes coming from the same people who would, at least overtly, enthusiastically express how progressive and inclusive they are.
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Comment on EU country grouping cleared to build sovereign digital infrastructure in ~tech
pallas Link ParentIt is basically just a Kubernetes-based setup of well-known individual services, maintained by a German state organization.I'd never heard of this platform before. Anyone have any experience with it?
It is basically just a Kubernetes-based setup of well-known individual services, maintained by a German state organization.
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Comment on Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking in ~tech
pallas Link ParentThat is true, with some caveats. From a legal perspective, in some places, for example, the UK, the risk is that you can simply be imprisoned until you provide the password, a particularly...Even so, legally obliged to provide a password doesn't make it so they automagically receive one. A fingerprint will be taken, a password must be given. Law be damned.
That is true, with some caveats.
From a legal perspective, in some places, for example, the UK, the risk is that you can simply be imprisoned until you provide the password, a particularly unsettling law considering that you may legitimately forget passwords, or random data may be interpreted as encrypted data.
From a practical security perspective, I have become a bit concerned about the idea that, in the age of ubiquitous cameras, repeatedly typing passwords in many settings may leak information about the password. This could be the case both for someone secretly recording you (I have heard that there are known cases of this attack with mobile phone pins, by scammers), and from CCTV footage. It is worth noting, for example, that CCTV footage in the EU can often be subject to GDPR requests from individuals, and while the data protection officer is supposed to ensure that the privacy of others is preserved when providing that footage, they may not realize the extent to which typing, rather than faces, might be leaked, especially when combining poor or blurred footage of many entries and developing a probabilistic model of likely passwords.
It is particularly frustrating to me that parts of the Linux community still insist on what is now seems like the security theatre of not showing any visual feedback when entering passwords; an attacker secretly watching you type your password wouldn't be trying to get the minimal information on password length from your screen, they would be secretly recording video and audio of your fingers.
As a result, I have taken to using biometrics more often for 'routine' password entries (simple screen unlocks, sudo when already logged in, etc).
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Comment on Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking in ~tech
pallas Link ParentThat is specific to the US (and I think only for criminal cases). In a number of other countries, you can be legally obligated to provide your password. I know this is the case in several European...You have no obligation to provide a password to anyone.
That is specific to the US (and I think only for criminal cases). In a number of other countries, you can be legally obligated to provide your password. I know this is the case in several European countries.
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Comment on A 'death train' is haunting south Florida in ~transport
pallas Link ParentI think some editing to the comment ended up not being saved: the point was that regulations and culture need to change in order to allow safety to improve without being blocked by NIMBYism and...I think some editing to the comment ended up not being saved: the point was that regulations and culture need to change in order to allow safety to improve without being blocked by NIMBYism and the cultural primacy of cars, and that spending money to that end is probably the better option than wasting it on planning the necessary safety improvements, fighting to put them in, and then losing.
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Comment on A 'death train' is haunting south Florida in ~transport
pallas (edited )LinkThroughout, when concrete points against Brightline are made in this article, they seem much more dubious when examined. The added photos, likewise, seem designed to push a 'scary' narrative...Throughout, when concrete points against Brightline are made in this article, they seem much more dubious when examined. The added photos, likewise, seem designed to push a 'scary' narrative rather than honestly support the points. The overall conclusion – that level crossings and higher-speed trains are a bad combination – is reasonable, but the narrative sometimes ends up reading more as a hit piece against Brightline specifically. In some sense, it feels like exactly the sort of hypocritical NIMBYism that so often appears in the US: alternatives to cars should be lauded, except when there is any attempt to actually build one.
Consider the comparisons. The article argues that Brightline has particularly horrendous statistics for Florida. It points out that Brightline has almost seven times the number of fatalities as Amtrak, which "operates through many of the same urban areas as well as some additional ones", and merely "serves fewer passengers." Yet that number seems much less surprising when considering that it appears Amtrak's service in Florida consists of one daily train and one thrice-weekly train, while Brightline appears to run ten round trips per day now, and may have run more previously (Wikipedia lists 24 daily round trips in 2023). When comparing to SunRail, "another commuter train that operates around Orlando", the article uses the rate-per-million-miles that would have made the Amtrak comparison much less compelling to the narrative, but doesn't mention that SunRail, according to Wikipedia, has an average speed of 30 mph.
Or consider the argument that the track cuts "through the landscape at strange angles and in unexpected places". The accompanying photographs enhance this by using strange camera angles and crops, rather than showing the places the article describes. If they were to show a satellite image of one of those "unexpected" places they give as an example, the little league field in Delray Beach, you might be confused: it is a straight segment of track, parallel to a road, and appears to be fenced on the little league side. In what way is this "unexpected". Was it an example of a "strange angle"? All the nearby level crossings, while I might argue they should not be so near other intersections, are almost perpendicular.
Or the examples? A pedestrian walking on a spur path over an active train track, argued to be the 'logical' choice? A driver who pulled around a stopped car and closed gate, was high, and was directly told not to by a passenger, but is argued to be an example of a dangerous environment regardless of all those details? A couple who turned off their car and sat on an active train track with an active signal? One might suggest that an encouragement to not care about crossing tracks, whether on foot or by car, comes from an encouragement of car culture: "they're probably old tracks that aren't used much" is a common suggestion I've heard when seeing tracks.
Yes, level crossings are dangerous, especially at higher speeds. Yes, more fencing would be an improvement. But looking at the route, where the most dangerous segments seem to be along a previously-existing route, it seems clear that no amount of expenditure alone would allow for a major safety improvement, as any attempts would face an enormous NIMBY backlash. There's a certain argument that the encouragement of dense, especially residential development right next to historical rail routes was perhaps linked to a cynical attempt to make any future use of the right of ways difficult and unsafe, ensuring cars remained the only viable transport mechanism in the area. Adding fencing in many places seems like it would be an inconvenience to nearby houses. Elevating the rail in many places seems like it would significantly affect nearby houses, and potentially need land purchases, voluntary or otherwise. None of this is going to be acceptable to local property owners.
What is needed here are regulatory and cultural changes to make it so that safety improvements can actually be made; unfortunately, this is something where spending money on lobbying and marketing is probably better than spending it on trying to build infrastructure projects that will end up blocked.
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
pallas Link ParentI may be extending my view of Los Angeles to the entire state, sorry (I don't usually drive in the Bay Area); there are a number of prominent left exits there, and no one drives in the leftmost...I may be extending my view of Los Angeles to the entire state, sorry (I don't usually drive in the Bay Area); there are a number of prominent left exits there, and no one drives in the leftmost lane under the speed limit unless there is congestion.
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
pallas (edited )LinkAs someone who lives in both the US and Europe: some European countries are frustratingly dishonest about inclusion, fairness, and equality, and often the same people who will deride the US for...As someone who lives in both the US and Europe: some European countries are frustratingly dishonest about inclusion, fairness, and equality, and often the same people who will deride the US for the more overt discrimination and bad but honest policies there are themselves complicit in the more covert discrimination, bad practices, and dishonest policies. More frustratingly, it feels like the discrimination in the Europe is often facilitated and justified through arguments around fairness and equality that end up being discriminatory in practice, and is often masked by self-congratulatory, largely meaningless expressions of support.
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
pallas (edited )Link ParentWhen considering very different states, and very different roads and traffic, the difference might not be one of culture, but of the roads themselves. Using the far-left lane only for passing on...When you have a great idea but nobody is abiding by it, you have a culture problem, not an idea problem.
When considering very different states, and very different roads and traffic, the difference might not be one of culture, but of the roads themselves. Using the far-left lane only for passing on major highways in California, for example, is not only not a rule, but is not possible. There are numerous places where there are left-lane exits, and some places where there are left-lane entrances. In some cases, the left lane (or lanes) may be restricted to only certain vehicles, and in some cases those vehicles (eg, buses) are relatively slow. In many cases, highways might have 4, 5, or 6 lanes in one direction; in some cases, these might split such that using only the left lane for passing might leave only one lane going in a particular direction, or such that the left lanes will be moving much slower than the right lanes.
There are also rarely instances on major California highways where passing is particularly important, such that it should have a lane dedicated to it. If there is no congestion, there will be almost no cars, outside of special circumstances, that are travelling below the speed limit, and in most cases, most cars will be travelling significantly above it. There would rarely be a circumstance where passing by using the left lane would make sense legally. If there is congestion, all lanes will move below the speed limit and at the maximum speed possible given the congestion, speeds will tend to roughly equalize, and encouraging passing would, by increasing lane changes, worsen the congestion and be a detriment to everyone.
This is likely why the rule on California highways is not that the left lane is for passing, but that specifically slower vehicles should stay in the right-hand lanes when possible.
By contrast, on rural roads with two lanes in a direction, and where there may be vehicles that travel at significantly different speeds, having the left lane primarily for passing both makes sense.
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Comment on Global Anglicanism split in two today in ~humanities
pallas (edited )Link ParentMy understanding, from following the disagreements for a while and reading about the current announcement, is that it's a bit more complicated. GAFCON is a collection of groups that are allied by..."Archbishop of Canterbury is a chick? Ewww gross!"
My understanding, from following the disagreements for a while and reading about the current announcement, is that it's a bit more complicated. GAFCON is a collection of groups that are allied by their social conservatism but are quite theologically different and have different social priorities. Not all of evangelical parts (of which the most significant are likely some of the Churches in Africa) have problems with the ordination of women, and some may ordain women as priests or even as bishops (the Church of Rwanda ordains female priests, for example), but they tend to see the new Archbishop of Canterbury's pro-LGBT views as unacceptable. The more Anglo-Catholic parts are anti-LGBT, but not to the same extent as the evangelical and particularly African parts, and see her as unacceptable because she is a woman.
These differences have caused tensions in GAFCON in the past. For example, the ACNA agreed that, while someone should not be called a "gay Christian", someone with "same-sex attraction" who was celibate could certainly be part of a congregation. Despite it seeming to me like this would be difficult to disagree with from a conservative side, given the basic tenets of Christianity around sin, the head of the Church of Nigeria decried this position as meaning that the 'deadly virus of homosexuality has infiltrated ACNA', and appeared to argue that anyone who is gay is fundamentally irredeemable.
I suspect that GAFCON will struggle as a church on its own. The constituent groups seem defined more by what they oppose, and by the people they hate, than by what they believe in. As a Communion of their own, forced to define what beliefs they share, and without the Anglican Communion to rally against as a common enemy, they seem likely to split into smaller and smaller groups and to struggle to remain relevant.
And for the Anglican Communion, or at least the progressive parts, I have to wonder if this will eventually be a good thing. The communion has struggled with the division of views along national and cultural lines such that embracing more progressive views could only be done through rejecting the voices of larger, predominantly African churches in favor of smaller, richer, predominantly European and North American churches, a problem made even worse by many of those African churches having their roots in European colonialism. If the African churches leave of their own volition, it seems likely that the remaining conservative parts of the church will be a small minority, and without the racial division.
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Comment on ‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder in ~tech
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Comment on I am angry at Google and wanted to share (rant) in ~tech
pallas LinkThe wonder of the normalization of dishonesty online means I can't easily see your post about Google's dishonesty, as Imgur does not like my IP address, and thus lies and says "Imgur is...Suddenly I understood why no one else had posted the fix. My post was flagged instantly for 'content policy violations'. Specifically it said "Failed to post. Content violates Community Policy."
The wonder of the normalization of dishonesty online means I can't easily see your post about Google's dishonesty, as Imgur does not like my IP address, and thus lies and says "Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later".
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Comment on Data removal services? in ~tech
pallas (edited )Link ParentNote, though, that the risks potentially extend beyond you and how high profile you see yourself, and the probabilities can be higher than you might suppose, given the low cost of automatically...Just run through the potential risks, probability, and so on, which can change depending on how "high profile" you are.
Note, though, that the risks potentially extend beyond you and how high profile you see yourself, and the probabilities can be higher than you might suppose, given the low cost of automatically scanning and exploiting information from multiple sources.
I have been harassed by real estate agents for years at this point attempting to buy some very valuable land I don't own, presumably as a result of them buying information from data brokers that combines current property record mailing address data (a public record) with decades-old data breaches, thus linking my mobile number with a PO Box that was never mine (but that I did use for shipping in some instances), and which as a result of number reuse is now the PO Box of the completely unrelated owners of a completely unrelated property. These are likely automated, but I receive them, along with other scam calls, usually with specific information, with such frequency that my main phone number is now largely unusable.
More disturbingly, my grandmother recently had a call on her phone combining multiple data sources that was likely automated in selecting her as a target, but done manually. What was likely a combination of property record scanning and data broker information on her and her daughter, along with what was likely a synthesized voice from her daughter's voicemail greeting (relatively simple these days) allowed scammers to call her and tell a story of her daughter being arrested in a serious hit-and-run accident in plausible location with plausible information, with audible confirmation from a convincing voice on the call (but only brief and without conversation, most of the call being with the supposed lawyer), and tell my grandmother that she needed to immediately withdraw $15k in cash to pay for bail. (Unfortunately for them, my grandmother defaults to assuming everything is a scam. The bigger problem was convincing her, given the voice, that the scam was not a conspiracy orchestrated by her children.) Neither my grandmother nor mother are 'high profile', though property records would indicate that my grandmother is likely to have cash balances from rental properties that would make her likely to be able to withdraw $15k.
Automated processing of data likely makes it easy to find targets like this, though I have to say that I was quite impressed by the scam attempt. We've responded by my trying to educate my family more about what is now possible (eg, knowing your relatives' names, ages, contact information, and even social security numbers is not particularly unusual, being able to produce superficially convincing voices and photos of them is not difficult, etc), but the experience was quite unsettling.
Unfortunately, as you point out, there is a significant amount of data that is simply unavoidable, partially as a result of governments, and individuals, not understanding how digital records and automated data processing completely change the risks involved. I can recall the illustrative example of one large county in the US: one agency had digital property record data, but they pointed out that in order to protect privacy, they listed property owner names, but not contact information. Another agency, similarly, listed property owner contact information, but not property owner names. Clearly a good way to protect privacy!
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Comment on Donald Trump Department of Justice is looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns, sources say in ~lgbt
pallas (edited )Link ParentJust to preemptively bring up something about this that I often see confused in conversations including the NRA and gun control (for example, throughout the linked thread): while Reagan crafted...They used legislation to try and disarm the black panthers not all that long ago in our history.
Just to preemptively bring up something about this that I often see confused in conversations including the NRA and gun control (for example, throughout the linked thread): while Reagan crafted the Mulford Act as racist legislation aimed at disarming the Black Panthers, the NRA supported it because, prior to the 1977 Revolt at Cincinnati, the NRA was essentially a different organization with different priorities, primarily focused on hunting and marksmanship, and generally supported gun control. It wasn't inconsistent or unusual, it was simply coming from an organization with completely different leadership and views than the NRA we know today.
The pre-1977 NRA supported most of the major federal gun control legislation of the 20th century, up until 1977, including the creation of the FFL system, putting the F in ATF, regulation of machine guns, and so on.
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Comment on Greek-American musician George Smaragdis dies tragically in Manhattan in ~music
pallas Link ParentI'm not sure it really is a preventable interaction in the context it occurred. Looking around where it occurred, the streets are a mess. The intersection is of two busy one-way streets. It's not...Man, what a tragedy, and he was killed in one of the most preventable interactions between bicycles and cars
I'm not sure it really is a preventable interaction in the context it occurred. Looking around where it occurred, the streets are a mess. The intersection is of two busy one-way streets. It's not quite clear where street parking is legal, but there is a combination of just-off-street back-in parking, in-street restaurant seating, cars seemingly parked legally and illegally, construction equipment blocking parts of the side of the road, and some bike lanes on the cross street that seem to appear and disappear, are at times cut off from visibility to drivers, and seem to end by suddenly appearing to drivers and then immediately being cut off by a one-way to one-way left turn. Some of the photos in Street View have cars crossing the intersection in both directions, and pedestrians crossing in all directions all simultaneously in the intersection. If the article's statement that the cyclist was thrust into oncoming traffic is correct, given the one-way streets, the situation seems like it was even more complicated. But in any case, opening a door in this context seems like it would require looking in all directions at once at all times, and being aware of potentially hundreds of different moving objects, not all of which might be visible from any one glance.
Too often, bicycle policy in many cities around the world is built around creating conditions that require humans to always have perfect, superhuman awareness, consistency and reactions, and then blaming whatever human is unlucky enough to make a human mistake, rather than actually developing infrastructure that makes dangerous situations less likely despite humans being imperfect. That leads to arrangements where accidents will happen, at some rate, simply because there will be some rate of people making mistakes.
I'd compare it to developments around aviation safety with the "pilots are responsible for watching for traffic and avoiding collisions" concept. When it was realized that increasing traffic, speeds, and plane type differences meant that following this rule effectively wasn't always within human capabilities, rather than continuing to simply point to the rule, there were policy, control, and equipment changes made to actually reduce the likelihood of collisions.
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Comment on European Commission internally recommends Signal with disappearing messages in ~tech
pallas (edited )Link ParentTo be honest, I feel like there is an inherent need in many contexts for communications that are not fully recorded, and this is perhaps particularly the case for governance. It is very difficult...To be honest, I feel like there is an inherent need in many contexts for communications that are not fully recorded, and this is perhaps particularly the case for governance. It is very difficult to have open or thoughtful discussions or negotiations knowing that every word you say can be scrutinized years later, often by parties specifically trying to hurt you by interpreting them in as misleading a way possible. That even well-meaning people end up trying to find ways to have those sorts of communications is perhaps evidence of this need. That is perhaps because our culture has not yet adapted to the technological ability to record and have so much information available, and can't reasonably handle exploratory and conversational speech that is given the permanency of carefully-considered text. In my personal experience, when I have been in positions where records of everything were the norm, it tended either to stifle discussion and harm processes, to lead to unofficial communications methods, or to result in later, arguably bad-faith 'gotcha' attempts causing varying amounts of damage.
I feel like it might be a reasonable alternative, instead of pushing people to expensive (in-person discussion) or unsafe (phone, texts, WhatsApp) methods of unrecorded conversations, to accept that it is beneficial despite the problems, encourage safe methods, and try to reasonably limit what conversations are acceptable in those spaces.
On the other hand, pushing this while also pushing to make these communication methods illegal for individuals is very hypocritical.
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Comment on European Commission internally recommends Signal with disappearing messages in ~tech
pallas Link ParentSeveral sources (eg, https://fightchatcontrol.eu/) claim that there is a 'professional secrecy' exemption that would exempt politicians. But actually, looking at the closest thing I can find to an...Several sources (eg, https://fightchatcontrol.eu/) claim that there is a 'professional secrecy' exemption that would exempt politicians.
But actually, looking at the closest thing I can find to an actual text, the exemption is broader-reaching and arguably worse. Essentially, only individuals in their personal lives would be spied on; corporate and government communication would be exempt out of respect for the privacy of confidential communications and trade secrets, and because those spaces would have 'less risk' of CSAM:
In the light of the more limited risk of their use for the purpose of child sexual abuse and the need to preserve confidential information, including classified information, information covered by professional secrecy and trade secrets, electronic communications services that are not publicly available, such as those used for national security purposes, should be excluded from the scope of this Regulation. Accordingly, this Regulation should not apply to interpersonal communications services that are not available to the general public and the use of which is instead restricted to persons involved in the activities of a particular company, organisation, body or authority. (page 11 here)
It seems that the regulation sees any company as more trustworthy than a private individual, and sees any trade secret as more worthy of respect than an individual's personal privacy.
Of course, elsewhere, the regulations will keep that personal information perfectly safe, but here, the regulations apparently won't. And CSAM purveyors who will know that what they are doing is illegal, and that these regulations and exclusions exist will of course not think to use the entire class of corporate communication systems that will be exempt. There's no need to justify this contradiction; it simply exists. That, and the example of "classified information" and "national security purposes" in the motivation turning into any employee of any company and any corporate trade secret in the conclusion is typical of the European hypocrisy around rights and 'fairness' that increasingly frustrates me.
Yes, I should point out: I have heard that the situation improved with later phones. The FP4 was perhaps Fairphone at its worst, for example, with the ridiculousness of the audio jack removal and non-replaceable-battery earphone accessories. I have also heard that they may have brought software development back in house.
But I don't really feel like I have time to give scummy companies a second chance, and with the FP4, Fairphone was quite scummy. I also tend to use devices in unusual ways, to tinker with them, and to expect that they are at least somewhat reasonably made by people who, in some Ruskinian sense, take pride in making good things. Fairphone clearly was not that, at least at the time I interacted with them. The publicly available private keys were particularly ridiculous and telling: I realize I sound a bit like the typical "this device is useless and terrible because of this one problem I had" person, but the FP4 was actually horribly implemented. And with companies like Fairphone and Planet Computers, the defence they have is always that their next device is better.
Meanwhile, I'm typing this on a laptop I originally purchased as a first-gen Framework 13; yes, it had some problems initially, and sometimes the company disappoints, but the employees actually take pride in their products, the CEO actually deeply understands them, rather than just being a salesperson. At this point, only the case of the laptop is original, but most of other parts are being used for other things. I'm glad that I bought it, after being so burned by Fairphone: I just wish that there was a phone that was similar.
Unfortunately, right now, the best phone arrangement for people who want to tinker and have something reliable is to have a Pixel with a third party ROM, which involves supporting a company actively trying to prevent exactly the sorts of uses that those phones allow.