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Cake day: Feb 08, 2024

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Because some TVs will scan and connect to an access point, such as one your neighbor temporary enables. Then it uploads years of data that it collected on you in less than a minute.


its really really save

Edit: sorry I misread it as XMR.

XMPP can be very unsafe. It depends on the client you use. Its best to use a protocol that doesn’t allow unencrypted messages to be sent at all. Like Wire or Signal.





Another VPN exit. Just keep switching until you land on one that happens to have less people watching YouTube from it at any given moment.




Basically if they can’t link your account to a gmail or something where they know who you are, they will force you to add a phone number so that they know who you are.

The reason they have this service is to build a profile on you and sell that. They will not let you use the platform anonymously, hence the phone number requirement when they can’t figure out who you are by your fingerprint.



Most people live in countries where they cannot legally buy phone numbers that are not traceable to them

Check your privilege.


No, it gives usernames in addition to phone numbers. They refuse to remove the phone number requirement. How else could they help the feds identify your account?


Omg thank you. On Lineage, its under Buttons -> Volume Buttons -> Control Playback


See, this is the benefit of stem cells. I was able to cut off my face a few years back and now I have several copies of it that I grew and surgically attached to my doubles.



Wire is the best for security (it literally won’t let you send messages unencrypted), cost (its free), privacy (no phone number required), and usability for the masses (Foss client on all the platforms, messages sync between each client like you’d expect)

I haven’t found anything that checks all those boxes other than Wire (though I do wish we had other options that came close)

https://Wire.com


Fortunately we have folks like Freedom of the Press Foundation, who provide trainings to journalists


It doesn’t exist. The devs said they won’t make clients sync by design. And that means I will never use SimpleX because its a required feature for me (and most other people).



How do you turn that off? Its so fucking frustrating when I’m really digging what I’m listening to, so crank up the volume – only to have it skip to the next track!!

Ive searched the app settings and can’t find how to disable this. Its maddening!


You could also add telemetry. If >50% of your users all skip in the same spot, its an ad break


This doesn’t affect non-profit companies, who legally cannot have anyone who takes profits away from the company.

For profit companies should be illegal


I mean, usually when I download podcasts there’s just 5 or so ads that get injected over-and-over. I don’t think it would be too complicated to have some software recognizes the length of an ad, and that it occurs >2x in a file, and then just mark that section as “ad” and auto skip over it


Lol OK. Every US company has to legally provide their private keys (or a subordinate CA) to the US government if asked, due to NSL laws. We have examples of the US doing this historically, only because some companies broke the law and spoke out publicly.

So go ahead and remove all CAs issued from US companies. Verisign, cloudflare, akamai, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

Now 80% of the Internet is broke.


DigiCert isn’t the only one. There’s a bunch of others. Just google “Mozilla CA removed” or “google CA removed”

Here’s a couple more examples, but this sort of thing happens all the time, because X.509 is just a terrible design that breaks https

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1567114

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/cyber-mercenary-groups-shouldnt-be-trusted-your-browser-or-anywhere-else



So does Wire. The reason Wire is better than Signal and Telegram is privacy.

The reason Wire is better than SimpleX is usability. Namely, it has clients on all platforms, and the messages sync between all those devices.


There is such a thing as credibility. You can extend trust to others that have credibility. For example, security audits from companies that are credible. Or, you use an app because a trustworthy techie friend of yours says they’re safe.

But a prerequisite in all these cases is going to be FOSS code and client side encrypt.


Are you mad? The phone number tells you what phone company to call. In most countries, that tells them your name and government ID.

The phone number is the thing that tells them everything about you.





You’ll know that you’re doing it right when they lock your account and won’t let you login.

These companies profit off of your data. They don’t take kindly to users who don’t let them link your account to a profile that they can sell.


No thanks. I have a business, and I don’t want to be fined for using software thats protected from backdoors.


Every time you have a child that’s abused, you have a child that’s abused.

Seems like the solution to this is the normal ways we deal with child abuse: social workers and school counsels.


They didn’t release the code, and they did this project to warn us. Thats not abuse.


Yes, there is countless examples of root CAs containing compromised CAs. Also the private keys live on the server, hot. That’s why we sign with release keys that are not stored on the publishing infr



Curious how none of the coverage of this launch mention that the app isn't actually open-source (though they pretend to be an open-source project), which makes all of their claims of "end-to-end encryption" worthless # WordPress.com owner Automattic acquires multiservice messaging app Beeper for $125M ### By Sarah Perez (@sarahpereztc) 2024-04-09 WordPress.com owner Automattic is acquiring [Beeper](https://beeper.com), the company behind [the iMessage-on-Android solution](https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/05/beeper-reversed-engineered-imessage-to-bring-blue-bubble-texts-to-android-users/) that was [referenced by the Department of Justice](https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/21/doj-calls-out-apple-for-breaking-imessage-on-android-solution-beeper/) in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The deal, which was for \$125 million according to sources close to the matter, is Automattic's second acquisition of a cross-platform messaging solution after [buying Texts.com](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/24/wordpress-com-owner-buys-all-in-one-messaging-app-texts-com-for-50m/) last October. | [![Screenshot of the Beeper app](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/01-Mobile.png)](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-multi-service-messaging-app-beeper-for-125m/) | |:--:| | Image Credits: Beepercaption | That acquisition made Texts.com founder Kishan Bagaria Automattic's new head of Messaging, a role that will now be held by Beeper founder [Eric Migicovsky](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericmigi/), previously the founder of the Pebble smartwatch and a Y Combinator partner. Reached for comment, Automattic said it has started the process of onboarding the Beeper team and is "excited about the progress made" so far but couldn't yet share more about its organizational updates, or what Bagaria's new title would be. However, we're told he is staying to work on Beeper as well. | [![Screenshot of the Beeper app](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/05-Desktop-Mobile.png)](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-multi-service-messaging-app-beeper-for-125m/) | |:--:| | Image Credits: Beepercaption | Beeper and Texts.com's teams of 25 and 15, respectively, will join together to take the best of each company's product and merge it into one platform, according to Migicovsky. "\[Texts.com\] built an amazing app that's more desktop-centric and iOS-centric," he said. "So we'll be folding the best parts of those into our app. But going forward, the Beeper brand will apply to all of the messaging efforts at Automattic," he said, adding, "Kishan ... I've known him for years now --- there's not too many other people in the world that are doing what we do --- and it was great to be able to combine forces with them." The deal, which closed on April 1, represents a big bet from Automattic: that the future of messaging will be open source and will work across services, instead of being tied up in proprietary platforms, like Meta's WhatsApp or Apple's iMessage. In fact, Migicovsky says, the eventual plan after shifting people to the Beeper cross-platform app for managing their messages is to move them to Beeper's own chat protocol --- an open source protocol called Matrix --- under the hood. | [![Screenshot of the Beeper app](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/02-Mobile-labels.png)](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-multi-service-messaging-app-beeper-for-125m/) | |:--:| | Image Credits: Beepercaption | Automattic had previously made a [strategic investment of \$4.6 million](https://matrix.org/blog/2020/05/21/welcoming-automattic-to-matrix/)), another company building on Matrix, and it contributes annually to Matrix.org. Matrix, a sort of "spiritual successor" to XMPP, as Migicovsky describes it, offers an open source, end-to-end encrypted client and server communications system, where servers can federate with one another, similar to open source Twitter/X alternative [Mastodon](https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon/). However, instead of focusing on social networking, like Mastodon, it focuses on messaging. Migicovsky said the acquisition came about because running Beeper costs quite a bit of money and it was either time to raise more funding or find a buyer. To date, Beeper had raised \$16 million in outside funding, including an \$8 million Series A from Initialized. Other investors include YC, Samsung Next and Liquid2 Ventures, and angels Garry Tan, Kevin Mahaffey and Niv Dror, and the group SV Angel. "I've known Matt \[Mullenweg, Automattic founder and CEO\] for years now," Migicovsky said, adding that the WordPress.com founder had shown commitment to open source technology, like Beeper, where about half its product is already open source. "We were looking to find a partner that could financially support this. One of the reasons why there are no other people building this type of app is it costs a surprisingly large amount of money to build a damn good chat app," Migicovsky noted. As for Beeper's products, the company has now briefed the DOJ on what happened when [Apple blocked](https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-back-in-operation-after-apples-attempt-to-shut-it-down/) [its newer app](https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/19/beepers-upcoming-fix-requires-users-to-have-access-to-a-mac/), Beeper Mini, which aimed to bring iMessage to Android. That solution is [no longer being updated](https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/21/beeper-done-trying-bring-imessage-android-after-month-long-cat-mouse-game-apple/) as a result of Apple's moves. | [![Screenshot of the Beeper website](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/03-Features.png)](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-multi-service-messaging-app-beeper-for-125m/) | |:--:| | Image Credits: Beepercaption | ## Beeper on Android launches to all The company is instead releasing an updated version of [its core app, Beeper](http://beeper.com/download), on Android. Unlike Beeper Mini, which focuses only on iMessage, the main app connects with 14 services, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram DM, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Discord, Google Messages and others. Android is its biggest platform by users, as 70% are on Google's smartphone OS. In this rewritten version of Beeper, the company is starting to roll out fully end-to-end encrypted messages across Signal. That will be soon followed by WhatsApp, Messenger and Google Messages. Because of Apple's restrictions, iMessage only works if you have an iPhone in the mix, Migicovsky says, and will not be a focus for Beeper, given the complications it saw with Apple's shutdown of Beeper Mini. However, Beeper is hopeful regulations could change things, pointing to the DOJ lawsuit and [FCC investigation](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/12/fcc-commissioner-pushes-to-investigate-apples-decision-to-block-beeper-mini/). In the meantime, Beeper supports [RCS](https://blog.beeper.com/2023/10/18/out-of-labs-and-ready-to-roll-google/), which solves iMessage to Android problems like low-res images and videos, lack of typing indicators and encryption. With the launch out of beta, the new app includes a new icon, updated design, instant chat opens and sends, the ability to add and modify chat networks directly on Android (no desktop app needed), local caching of all chats on the device and full message search. The 10,000 Android beta testers already on Beeper will need to download the new app manually from [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beeper.android) --- it won't automatically update. | [![Screenshot of the Beeper website](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/beeper-icon.png)](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-multi-service-messaging-app-beeper-for-125m/) | |:--:| | Image Credits: Beepercaption | In addition, the 466,000 or so people on Beeper's waitlist will now be able [to try the product.](http://beeper.com/download) They'll join over 115,000 users who have already downloaded the app, which is now used by tens of thousands daily. The app runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, ChromeOS, macOS, Windows and Linux. The team expects to have feature parity across platforms in a matter of months as they overhaul the iOS and desktop apps. In time, they plan to add other services to Beeper as well, including Google Voice, Snapchat and Microsoft Teams. Beeper also offers a widget API so developers can build on top of Beeper. Plus, since Matrix is an open standard, developers will be able to build alternative clients for Beeper, as well. The app will generate revenue via a premium subscription, where the final price may be a couple of dollars per month, but pricing decisions haven't yet been fully nailed down. Beeper is currently free to use. Like Automattic, Beeper's team is remotely distributed, with employees in Brazil, the U.K., Germany and the U.S. At present, Texts.com will continue to operate as the teams begin to integrate the two messaging apps.
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