Signal is the best intersection of genuine security and ease-of-use that I’ve ever seen. No choosing a server, no making an account. Just install the app, get a confirmation SMS, and now you can communicate with future-proof encryption and authentication right away.

For more technical people, who aren’t going to be intimidated by things like making accounts and secure passwords and choosing servers, Signal is not the best. But when I need to communicate securely with non-technical people, it’s a wonderful quick go-to solution.

It needs to be said. Because anonymity is only one part of privacy.

Security is another part - in messaging, this means that the message cannot be spied on in transit, and cannot be altered in transit.

Authenticity is another part - you need to know that the message came from who it claims to have come from, and not elsewhere.

Signal does not provide anonymity, basically. But it guarantees security and authenticity beyond doubt. And this is useful - you can exchange secure information with people using Signal, knowing that it’s not being spied on or altered, knowing that only the person you intend to see the data can see it, and knowing that they know that you sent it.

But yeah, if you want to send messages anonymously, other services are necessary.

So Signal doesn’t provide anonymity. Is that all you’re saying?

I’m guessing somewhere in the range of 18-30. How’d I do?

You literally don’t understand how hashing works, got it. Please educate yourself on this topic. In short, “connecting your existing contacts” is ENTIRELY possible with hashed phone numbers; it’s not even complicated or tricky. To claim otherwise, as you just did, is nothing but trumpeting your own ignorance.

As for deleting (and propagating deletion of) messages, this is most definitely NOT a matter of “just trust us”. The client is open-source! We KNOW how it works. We KNOW that deletion propagates across devices when you tell it to. We KNOW that the service cannot see your unencrypted messages, and that the encrypted messages are made with AES so even quantum computers in the future can’t decrypt them. This is incredibly far from “just trust us”.

This is vastly different from every other piece of information I’ve read about Signal. Please link me to a source for your claims.

Are you talking about the client app, or about the service?

Much of what you said doesn’t apply to the service, which stores hashed phone numbers and first access / last access times and nothing else.

And the client does store these things, but also lets users delete messages and contacts. Your message deletions can propagate as well.

Indeed, I also don’t realize that. Please explain further.

Signal stores the hash of the phone number. So you can query them for a specific phone number, but are unable to figure out phone numbers based on the hashes (outside of brute force - trying every 12-digit phone number).

And after doing that, you learn “this person uses/used Signal”, with no information about particular messages whatsoever.

The leak from the administration was because Pete Hegseth included a journalist in a discussion about sensitive war plans. Trying to blame that on Signal is deceptive on your part.

If you are saying that Signal does not offer anonymity then you are right. Anyone I message on there knows it’s me. But Signal is still keeping my messages safe from monitoring and third-party surveillance, to the best of my knowledge.

Be specific: what does Signal divilge about me to outsiders besides “I have used Signal”?

Starfleet Academy technically has all of this criteria met, depending on how far you’re willing to stretch the definition of “crew”.

Prodigy meets your criteria.

Not Mary Sues:

Kirk: repeatedly impresses god-like beings with his emotional maturity and reasoning. Fought hand-to-hand with Khan and won. Saved the whales.

Picard: passes Q’s trials and makes a case for humanity’s worth, multiple times. Proves Data’s person-hood. Survives Carassian torture by sheer willpower.

Sisko: chosen as the Emissary. Does wrong and suffers no consequences.

Janeway: holds fast to Federation principles even when it prevents her from getting home; gets home anyway.

Archer: so important that Daniels and the Xindi both fight over him. Ends the Temporal Cold War and founds the Federation.

Mary Sue:

Burnham: starts the Klingon war, freed from prison by a Terran who uses her as a pawn. Gets called out for breaking rules.

Is this right, @[email protected] ?

I’ve been happy not using Amazon since 2010!

For paper books, find a good local bookstore first. Then for online ordering, bookshop is good. B&N is iffy ethically - they helped crush a lot of smaller stores in the 90’s, but they aren’t part of the current tech giant oligarchy either. Target will usually have a section of best-sellers. If you have to buy from a big store, maybe offset it ethically by donating to a library.

For ebooks, Bookshop is good! They point out which of their ebooks have DRM and which don’t. For some cases, you can also buy books directly from the publisher - these basically never have DRM in my experience. I mainly experience this with technical books and tabletop RPG books.

ProtonMail, or the Steam game compatibility layer?

Nah. DS9 made a big point of showing people doing bad things to accomplish good goals, while always questioning if those were actually good. Nothing about Section 31 is worse than what Sisko does in “In the Pale Moonlight” for example. And after so much about the Tal Shiar, the Obsidian Order, and the actual conspiracies within Starfleet (see STVI, the season finale of TNG season 1, The Pegasus, and Insurrection), Section 31 is not a far stretch at all.

“Yeah, way to focus on one part of the comment.”

Yes, people are allowed to do that.

I meant the Crusher who was serving on Enterprise-G. Say what you will about how his character was written or introduced, Speeler is a fine actor.

The best (only good) thing about PIC S3 was the fact that we now have an Enterprise captained by Seven of Nine. I’d love to see a series about this ship and crew (including Raffi and Crusher for continuity’s sake) but they definitely need different writers.

Enterprise season 4 is pretty good. The augment 3-parter, the Vulcan 3-parter, and Terra Prime are all worth watching. The Mirror episodes are a guilty pleasure.