napoleonsdumbcousin

He was “sitting on his hands” (aka doing nothing) instead of doing school work.

They did not ban encrypted communications in general. They just banned the use of Signal for official purposes, because it is not fit for the job.

The article talks about how there were a multitude of cyberattacks and phishing attempts on EU officials’ smartphones and Signal accounts. With Signal, you have full control over the whole Account if you control the device.

The EU has their own encrypted communication tools with security and accounts managed centrally by the IT department.

Pro tip: Get yourself a good audiobook and listen to it while walking. I regularly do extra long walks just because I want to continue listening.

O+ is common, but O- is rare.

A person with O- can only receive O- blood.

Ah, ok I understand.

It is a replacement of SMS and MMS on cellular networks with more modern features

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

I have no deeper knowledge of this topic, but to me it seems like Wikipedia is disagreeing.

No one enables it to “give Google data”, they use it to get apps to work that use it as a dependency.

Well yes of course, but you are still giving away your data, regardless of intention. And a privacy feature of GrapheneOS is that it redirects location data requests to the OS by default. Thats why you have to disable it in the settings if you want Google to have this data.

RCS is neither.

AFAIK it is specifically meant as a replacement for SMS and is used with regular pre-installed SMS Apps.

But if you’re using it for privacy-from-Google purposes you probably don’t care about those.

Correct, I am not using GrapheneOS to then give my data to Google willingly. Kinda defeats the purpose I would say. I think it is the right thing that this is blocked by default and you have to actively turn it on. (Edit: I am assuming that you are talking about the fact that location data gets redirected to GrapheneOS by default, which can be changed in settings)

also RCS

Is this a country-specific topic? I don’t know anybody who still uses SMS/MMS to communicate. Everybody uses WhatsApp or Signal where I am.

As someone who uses GrapheneOS with sandboxed GooglePlay on his only smartphone (with daily usage for years at this point): I don’t know what kind of adjustment you are referring to. I never had to adjust to anything, because I never encountered anything that GrapheneOS couldn’t do that stock Android could. Follow the installation process and after that the phone behaves like a regular phone, except you have way more options regarding security and privacy.

Is your friend trying to use GrapheneOS without any Google services maybe?

Despite commonly using the term “GPS”, people are usually not using GPS directly, but GNSS, which includes satellite systems from USA (GPS), Russia (GLONASS), China (BDS) and the EU (Galileo). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation

Are you using the Summit App by any chance? If yes, the workaround is: Settings > Misc > Client user-agent. Choose “Use test user agent”.

This is AI. The shooter is masked in all videos.

You make it sound like there are not also multiple subsidies programs directly for organic farmers.

When it comes to VPN my choice is always Mullvad.

You think the Microsoft execs are using it?

I actually think it is very possible that they are using it. Because I also think that the execs have no clue how any of this works and use AI extensively to make their decisions. At least that seems to explain a lot of the stuff going on at Microsoft and elsewhere.

At least at the moment they seem to get it. We will have to see how it evolves.

Well yes, but I don’t see data retention of IP adresses and real-time scanning of the content of private chats as necessarily the same topic. Obviously they are both bad, but they are different things, which is also reflected by the parties having very different views on both.

Resistance to mandatory chat control seems to be the one thing that every current german party agrees on. Even the literal Nazis of the AfD voted against it. The point of discussion in Germany was always if there should be a voluntary chat control, not if there should be a mandatory chat control.

A shift away from that position across party lines would be very hard to orchestrate and I can’t see that happening anytime soon.

I don’t follow your argument. They repeatedly tried to use the expiration to generate pressure to come to a fast agreement. The pressure is gone now and so is a big reason why this topic was discussed so often in the first place. It will be harder for the advocates now to explain to the rest of the member states why it should be put back on the agenda. Countries like Germany are still against mandatory scanning and have no reason to engage in a discussion about it now.

The only thing that is lost now is the chance for all of this to expire, but that was always very unlikely.

Whatsapp already legally scanned for years, because the proposal is just an indefinite extension of this temporary regulation from 2021 that would have expired in April 2026 otherwise:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32021R1232

Services are currently allowed to scan you if they want to. It is shit, but it is also literally just the status quo. Nothing changes.