cherti

Physicist, likes simulating and automating things. Checking is preferrable over assuming (this only sometimes escalates, mildly, blog name is absolutely completely unrelated…).
Interested in privacy tech and eInk devices.

#physics #eink #privacytech

lang: de, en
blog: https://insanity.industries

Last Notes

2025-03-13 09:58:59 UTC

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the sentiment even on Fedi is that Matrix' UI is apparently meh and the encryption breaks more often than it should ("could not decrypt message"). To maximise rate if longterm success I would go with Signal, both for smoother user experience as well as higher chances that also other people they know are on it already, so it's not just single-person/single-group for them.

2025-02-15 21:25:36 UTC

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(and consequentially, without acknowledging that reason, it will not get fixed and the federated solution will have the same deficiencies again next time, leading to the exact same result.)

2025-02-15 21:24:32 UTC

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I think if you frame it as ursurption, you make it sound like Bluesky and Signal came in and took what was the Fediverse's to have.
However, that's not quite what happened: what really happened is that users choose Signal and Bluesky over federated alternatives.
Framing this as ursurption will only achieve one thing: that when the next time it happens, the federated alternative will loose again, because it was not acknowledged that there was a reason users chose differently.

2025-02-08 23:23:01 UTC

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because Signal's UX works and everyone else's is a serious step down. So Signal works as a quick switch, everything else needs an interest in messenger tech on its own to be interesting (and then has worse privacy properties).
Or in other words: by experience getting people onto Signal works much much better than getting people onto anything else, and people go with the things that work.

2025-02-03 16:15:28 UTC

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… for most people, centralized and decentralized services are functionally identical: in neither case people know the people running their instance personally. in a decentralized system you can pick between that one person you don't know or that other person you don't know. And your data is then shared with more instances whose operators you don't know.
In a centralized system, it is at least clear who's running the entire thing, there is a structure that can be made transparent.

2025-02-03 16:13:33 UTC

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That's why Signal is deliberately designing their entire system as a trustless system. The client verifies everything it can, distrusts the server, and the server systems know only the bare minimum they need to relay information. It's quite an elegant design.
While I share your feeling, the flipside of the coin is that so far decentralized services have not scaled up. Mastodon was first, Bluesky is still larger. XMPP was first, Signal and WhatsApp are still larger, because ultimately…

2024-12-06 14:38:22 UTC

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It is operated by a profit-driven company that has previously given data to the police that has lead to incarceration of women seeking reproductive healthcare, and its CEO has already been at lunch with Trump in Mar-a-Lago. Plus the parent company is known for (best-case due to neglect only) supporting genocides, for example in Myanmar.
So this is just another layer of risk mitigation without sacrificing much, given that Signal and WhatsApp do a very similar job.

2024-09-18 20:44:24 UTC

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propose it to them, sit down with them installing it and then make it worth their while by sending them stuff there, or making a family group or something like this. has worked pretty well for me. :)

2024-09-18 14:49:49 UTC

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… not that desirable.
They are doing quite a bit of cool stuff behind the scenes to really not only minimize the metadata they get and don't store, but to actually minimize the amount of metadata that they actually get in the first place.
It's a pretty beautiful design of a system, where the trust the client needs to have into the server systems is as minimal as they can make it.

2024-09-18 14:47:58 UTC

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… sufficiently high traffic overall that your IPs are not obviously connected, yada yada, but especially with mobile providers sharing IPs between users, this might contribute to obfuscate this connection a little actually and make tracking even harder).
If you use a proxy, especially one that only you are using, you are having both streams come from the same public IP, and Signal might be able to track the connection easier. A worthwhile tradeoff if Signal is blocked, but generally…

2024-09-18 14:46:06 UTC

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fun fact, little technical fanboying, I'll admit, running a proxy service for yourself actually decreases your privacy, because Signal has separate domains for message reception and message delivery. And with sealed sender, you are not authenticating to the service with your own credentials for delivery, but with a token cryptographically derived from the recipient's key. So the message delivery endpoint cannot actually connect your sending to yourself. (that is of course assuming …

2024-09-18 14:39:27 UTC

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you normally don't want to do that, and you also cannot typically do that, the option is greyed out if there is a connection to the Signal service.
These proxies are for situations in which this connection is impossible, like it's currently the case in Russia or Venezuela. If that is not a situation at play, there is no need for a proxy.
But Signal is generally putting in a lot of thought into censorship circumvention. They have been doing domain fronting in the past, but their…

2024-09-18 11:10:27 UTC

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but suddenly I need two tools on all machines involved instead of just one that happens to be installed anyways for other things already. I even have that self-hosted if I wanted, but it's just so much more cumbersome for simple notes or files or pictures than Signal's note2self.

2024-09-18 11:07:17 UTC

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Upgrade: set a disappearing messages timer in the note2self of maximum duration, then it eventually cleans up after itself automatically! (Unless you use note2self as persistent storage)

2024-08-26 13:24:15 UTC

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… While we shouldn't get complacent, I am carefully optimistic that we might manage to steer clear of any obvious legal constructs forcing more invasive measures from communications providers.
But the legal requirement of moderation has been there forever, and Telegram's design is such that it would in principal be possible. Telegram just ignoring anything in that regard might not have been the smartest approach.
That's of course just my superficial read on the situation.

2024-08-26 13:22:18 UTC

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… their messenger accordingly, knowing they have to, which is a smart move.
Telegram's legal strategy, from what I remember, seemed to be to just plainly ignore any government requests, the consequence of which might just have happened to Durov now.
So I think Signal has already a pretty smart response to legislatory forces.
Of course there could always be a more authoritarian environment, but that would require a very straightforward mask-off approach in legislation. …

2024-08-26 13:19:43 UTC

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For the moment it might not be quite the challenge, because Signal just set up their system smarter than Telegram did, from what I remember.
Signal's legal strategy when it comes to government requests is to first fight it tooth and nail, but when they eventually have to cooperate, they do, via "ah well, there you go, take this bit of nothing". It's a consequence of their messenger design, but it means they are legally cooperative when required, and they have designed…

2024-08-12 21:12:06 UTC

If you or someone you know need a signal proxy, DM me or get in touch in other ways.
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