Tech

[EDIT: 09.01.2023]: Threema has reacted to the publication in bold terms: The [research] paper is based on an old protocol that is no longer in use. The presented findings do not apply to Threema’s current communication protocol “Ibex” or have already been addressed. None of them ever had any considerable real-world impact. See how the story develops. Threema is a Swiss encrypted messaging application which has been widely advertised as a secure alternative to Signal, WhatsApp or Wire....

## web0 is the decentralised web ## web3 = **decentralization** + blockchain + NFTs + metaverse web0 = **decentralization** - blockchain - NFTs - metaverse web0 = **decentralization** In other words, web0 is web3 without all the corporate right-libertarian Silicon Valley bullshit – Aral Balkan1 Head over here and sign the web0 Manifesto. This will probably not change the world overnight but let these different voices be heard. Thank you....

Nice pun Mailfence: the Peugeot 404, the first car I remember as a child. With red leather seats. What a beauty.

– Cover of The New Yorker, Oct. 23 2017

All wars are won or lost due to either side’s ability to secure supply lines, logistics, transportation, provisions, military hardware, and communications. And the ability to pay for all of them. Just as any business which can’t finance its plans goes belly up so, too, does any army. Now, imagine an army with the ability to decentralise all of these elements. This army is actually technologically and economically backward. This doesn’t sound threatening until you realise that:...

Free software is software that respects users’ freedom and community. It’s not about price. It’s libre, not gratis. With any program, there are two possibilities: either the users control the program, or the program controls the users. When the users control the program, that’s free software—they control the things they do with it, and thus it respects their freedom and their community. If they don’t have full control over it, then it’s user-subjugating, non-free proprietary software—the program controls the users, and the program’s owners control the program, so it becomes an instrument of unjust power for the owner over the users....

Facebook does not connect people together; Facebook connects people to Facebook, Inc. Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons Abstract: Facebook’s business model is to be the man in the middle; to track every move you, your family, and your friends make, to store all that information indefinitely, and continuously analyse it to understand you better in order to exploit you by manipulating you for financial and political gain. Facebook isn’t a social network, it is a scanner that digitises human beings....

Google as a fortune teller Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. The company is creating a wholly new genus of capitalism, a systemic coherent new logic of accumulation we should call surveillance capitalism. Is there nothing we can do? Google surpassed Apple as the world’s most highly valued company in January for the first time since 2010. (Back then each company was worth less than 200 billion....

… or why it’s useless to have the most secure crypto system in the world, when using non-free and untrustworthy tools and libraries to implement it. tl;dr: There is a “backdoor” in Signal nobody cares about, only Google can use it. – ~ larma/blog

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is driven by a vision of “connecting the world” and, though he has said a compromise is necessary in the case of countries like China where free speech is restricted, it is hard to see how that vision fits with kowtowing to a law that has gotten Thai people jailed for Facebook comments, or even merely receiving a message on the social network. Facebook is blocking content from a number of users following an apparent request from the government....