Do you believe Huawei is spying on it's western users? And other related and non related stuff.

Yes. Of course. However, china having data on me is probably less invasive that western companies that do the same and that actually have some clout in my jurisdiction. So meh.

Well, take this as my personal compliment then :slight_smile:
As far as I am concerned, you are indeed a Darktable “power user” and by this I mean someone who has worked with this software long enough for being able to, more or less, compare it with other applications (Lightrooom etc). If I remember correctly, you wrote in a different thread that you have edited thousand of images, in the past, with variuos graphical softwares.

A power user for me is NOT someone who necessarily knows ALL the ins and outs of every single tool. Yes it might be important and in the long run it may be indeed useful. Yet, In my view, generally speaking, it is much better to learn how to “think out of the box” (which is not easy at all and take years…).
If you judge some tool of the software is not top-notch why spend hundreds of hours in order to know it better. By doing this you might end up like being a “mouse controller” but not a real “power user”. But again this judgement requires a personal huge “database” of previous skills and it also take years, humility, curiosity etc
If may crack a joke, I would even say that sometimes young people are more “power users” than the old veterans because the latter are often too proud and unable to learn new things or think out of the box.
Ok. Sorry for this long rant. I hope I have made my point (like it or not…).

I just found this article, reflecting on the consequences of letting critical infrastructure be built by other countries; I thought it was very interesting.

you know the real problem is not that it is other countries … the real problem is … the telcos say “having staff ourselfs that can handle our networks is too expensive … we outsource that and let the vendor of the hardware run the network for us”

and all that is done to increase the profits of the telco companies.

that is your underlying issue.

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Back in the mid-1990s I wrote C-networking codes for a company (no longer in business) that made Powerball and State Lottery software, sold to places like Arizona, Maryland and other states.

Powerball awards had to happen like a nuclear weapons launch. No one executive could authorize a winning number. Debugging was a pain. Even in test mode I had to walk down the hall and get my buddy to “authorize” a powerball number so I could step through the next sequence of events, to make sure my codes worked properly. For test purposes only I put a test for a secret environment variable that allowed me to authorize a Powerball winner by myself. Stupidly I checked it in. My plan was to erase it two days later when I had it debugged.

But I got in an argument with my boss. Made a phone call and left to become sys-admin at another software company. How long did that back door stay there? It was one obscure if-condition in a billion lines of codes.

A Reno Nevada slot machine company named Wxxxx got in trouble when a disgruntled executive called the feds after getting fired. He told them Wxxx had put a if condition into the random number generator their slot machines used, that said, in effect: “If payout larger than 50,000 dollars roll again.”

The Feds proved it by buying a few slot machines and running them for a week. Wxxx made one executive be the fall guy. Paid a fine and went on.

There is a lot of nefarious stuff going on. Always will be.

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Hello @pittendrigh

There is a lot of nefarious stuff going on. Always will be.

I totally agree :slight_smile:

This issue is hemorrhaging my country as an intermediary. Goodbye resources, diplomacy and two of our own.

If they aren’t now maybe with all the Blackberry patents they just bought today they might start

@pittendrigh amazing story :smiley:.

@priort Isn’t Blackberry making phones with hardened security and stuff for like presidents and CEOs? If I remember correctly I’ve read somewhere that only phone that POTUS is allowed to use was a Blackberry. That was back when Obama was POTUS.

It isn’t so much the hardware but their service. Didn’t they get hacked a few times as they started to decline? Blackberries use Android now, right?

Yeah is was Android with hardened security.

I have a some fond memories tied to Blackberry. One of my first smartphones that I had was a Blackberry sent to me by my cousin from Canada.
I was the coolest kid on the block even tho the phone didn’t even work on our networks and was essentially unusable. :joy: :joy:
I don’t think we even had wifi back then :joy:
Life was better tho :crazy_face: When we had to yell to our siblings to get off the phone!! because the Internet wasn’t working :joy: Oh man, and just look at the world now. rocket companies popping up like mushrooms, Everybody has a phone but no one speaks to anybody lol

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If I remember correctly they had their own network then. Nowadays WhatsApp is perfectly secure, unless you have a compromised phone, which you may not be aware of if you are considered a person of interest. Did Blackberry even had apps?

Anyway, the whole Huawei issue is about their commercial networking hardware, not their phones. I would love to get one of those Mate 30 pro with it’s 7680fps video, but even with all that bad news they are quite expensive. Damn!

Someone doesn’t want me to watch the video. :male_detective:
Whenever I play, it stops in a few seconds. :see_no_evil:

It’s only for your own good :wink:

(the video is quite nice if you are into those type of ultra slo-mo video, which is with other hardware very expensive)

It’s not, and it will be much less perfect soon: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using the app | Ars Technica

I’ve never used WhatsApp, but Signal has all.the features now-a-days.

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It depends on your social circles. Said no to others, but I am stuck with WhatsApp and Zoom.

But my mom isn’t going to do this, even if she understood how.

That’s why tech like Signal is important, it makes crypto usable by regular people.

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What? That is a non-starter for regular people… Also “could be” is quite far away from “is right now.” Signal is ready and here right now.

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Generally, regular people keep using what “everyone else” is using. So they’ll keep using Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, etc. What are your ideas for converting people to Signal, if they say “but everyone is on Whatsapp”?

An easy to use mechanism that leverages existing accounts on other networks could be a way to deal with messenger adoption issues.