otter

There is a popup explaining how it works when you install it. I asked something similar and the dev replied saying that they are looking into alternatives that don't upload the image anywhere: https://lemmy.ca/comment/22876710

Tldr from the pop-up:

it uses litterbox by default for the auto delete, and catbox when that fails
it needed to add uploads since apps aren't allowed to programmatically upload to search engines
it recommends against scanning anything sensitive since Google/Bing are keeping it too

I don't have the latest version since I got the fdroid release, but the GitHub release mentions a number of things that are now processed locally (ex. Text, QR, phone numbers)

Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

Selling Clifford's droppings as fertilizer, or to research labs

Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

This is incorrect. They also have your full name and address by extension

I didn't suggest otherwise. This was about whether they can correlate that to additional information. I am already assuming that the US government might try to maliciously compromise the servers, without needing the pretense of national security laws.

I'm not an expert in cryptography or Signals codebase, but my understanding is that the client app uses separate connections to verify the session (something that can be tied to your phone number on a compromised server) and to send a message out. The initial contact discovery process can leak info if you are searching for specific phone numbers, and this could be mitigated by using the QR code or usernames to get an ID directly. The actual pre key fetch is sent as a separate request not tied to your session verification. So outside of timing attacks, it shouldn't let Signal know who I am talking to day to day even if they know that I have connected to the person at one point.

I think it's cool that Simplex and Matrix allow selhosting, and especially Simplex's 2 hop technique. That should make it much more difficult for someone trying to map things out. However if the average person is going to be using the default servers, I don't see how a compromised server is any less of a problem than with Signal's ones.

I recommend Signal to non-technical users trying to get away from Facebook/Instagram/whatsapp. I might start recommending Simplex too if it gets popular enough and goes through a similar level of scrutiny that Signal had. I'm already comfortable using a variety of chat platforms / self hosting for myself.

The lack of a phone number requirement does limit the extent of social graph mapping. I hope signal will do away with that requirement as they've promised to for some time. The risk though is spam, which is already a problem now that signal is getting popular.

Just read the first article I posted, it gets into all this.

I did look over it again, and I still find the CIA section to be silly. I'll refer back to these old comments from myself and someone else:

https://lemmy.ca/comment/5401873

https://lemmy.ca/post/16397504/7661724

The 2nd article is the signal CEO Meredith Whitaker interviewing with lawfare, which is a US defense industry think-tank.

Again, I would say this is a big leap. The CEO agreeing to an interview with a think tank that has ties to the defense industry is not the same thing as Signal having ties to the defense industry. She has done many interviews talking about Signal, with a variety of orgs of different ownership and politics

Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

You can also set it to hide the sender, but that's overkill for my use case

Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

Unfortunately their funding situation is dire, they're shutting down in 90 days

https://getsession.org/donate

1

Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

They do

You can set it to show name + message, name only, or nothing. The last one means that you'd need to open the app to see what you were notified about.

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Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

Did you mean to link a different article, that one doesn't say anything about defense industry ties (from my quick skim). It does talk about how phone numbers are no longer required when connecting to someone else.

Signal DOES have my phone number, but they can't tell my government anything other than

yes I use Signal
yes I connected to it today

This becomes even less important as the platform gets popular. I know some friends who work in healthcare that report that they're switching to Signal (and WhatsApp unfortunately) as an alternative to texting/phone calls for staff/department group chats and non-patient related communications.

Otter @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

This might actually work? I imagine getting up to altitude is the most difficult and energy intensive step since the engines are operating at a higher power and the air is thicker.

Even if that's only 10% or 15% of the overall energy usage, being able to drop the battery and have it return to the airport on its own for reuse could be a cool concept. You could also optimize that particular battery for take off & climbing, and have the main battery for cruising.

It just needs to be able to pilot itself back to a landing / catching structure 😄