They could turn on end to end encryption and the fact that they aren’t doing that is telling imo.

Imagine having a giant, concrete skillet heating up your city at all hours or the day.

Signal is E2EE encrypted (similar to Telegram’s secret chats but probably better) so it’s less vulnerable. If people know about it they can ask Signal to ban you, but they can’t just passively spy on everything.

That said, XMPP is better still IMO.

(Edit: centralization isn’t as big a problem as you might think with Signal. The wealthy own the whole world now. You can’t set up somewhere outside their jurisdiction, you can only stay ahead of them as they force people to stop hosting you. Sending a takedown to Signal is the same as sending it to your hosting provider, do not fool yourself. )

I am not a lawyer but as far as I know: it super isn’t. It’s also illegal for compounding pharmacies to make, where I live.

Man, in lots of places the you can’t even get the name brand so at least there’s that.

I have heard, don’t know how true it is, that hospital pharmacies have first shot at the supplies so they’re less affected by stuff like this. For what that’s worth.

It’s funny because a lot of people really like Vyvanse (that is: lisdexamphetamine) better than the alternatives. It was only made because the DEA wanted fewer people to take regular amphetamines and then a bunch of people responded well to it and the DEA went “wait! Not like that!”

Anyway, it’s on generic now. The only reason there’s a shortage is the DEA.

(Before you say “I’m not in the US and we have a shortage, too!” the drug companies killed all their production lines because the DEA basically gave them an excuse to try to force people off Vyvanse and onto meds that were still under patent.)

Incredible video.

You can fly to a developed country and still get treatment cheaper.

Yeah, one of the meds they talk about making is Vyvanse. That’s having a serious national shortage right now due to a combination of the DEA and corporate greed. It’s illegal for compounding pharmacies to make it but there’s no technical reason they couldn’t. Same for lots of this stuff.

It’s not even funding the expensive treatments, it’s not charging a 1000x markup hurting their bottom line. It’d be one thing if it were genuinely expensive medicine (i would still propose a distribution method other than “capitalism”) but it’s not.

If these meds were available for a reasonable price i don’t think we’d be seeing groups like this.

Guillotine all the CEOs and venture capitals.

I’ve already addressed this but i guess i’ll expand on it.

Signal would not be able to add backdoors to all its users. Security researchers would see pretty quickly (more below) and that would be pretty big news because Signal is quite popular with people who care about their privacy.

They could in theory backdoor an individual’s Signal app but, again, that’s pretty inefficient. If anyone ever noticed it would be a big black mark against Signal, though they may not have much choice in the matter if it really came to it. However, we know that big governments and other sophisticated attackers usually prefer to just stick spyware on your phone. It’s easier, more comprehensive, and doesn’t require collaboration with Signal.

In contrast, you don’t need to do any of that with Telegram because it’s not E2EE. Your argument is basically “security features can be defeated by a sufficiently advanced attacker so use this other service that doesn’t have them to begin with.” This makes no fucking sense.

I don’t know what you’re talking about with FOSS stuff. Yeah, Telegram is open source. Signal is too. Some Signal forks (particularly the ones with “Signal” in their names) have been killed but others still exist, ex molly.im.

Signal client does have reproducible builds and has since 2016, as far as i know. This is another point against Signal being backdoored.

Beyond that, Signal has gone through a number of formal security audits. As far as i know, Telegram has not.

Finally, Telegram itself. Telegram could simply enable E2EE for all chats. They choose not to and that is concerning if you care about your privacy or security.

Yeah Signal could be better but that isn’t a case to use Telegram over Signal when Telegram is worse in almost every respect.

(Properly implemented E2EE is too difficult at the moment but those are some big caveats. Still: didn’t use Telegram.)

No, they cannot do it. That’s what E2EE means. It means they do not have the technological ability to do it. It is not possible.

Yes, even if a judge orders. You can see instances of that on their website: https://signal.org/bigbrother/

Yes there are weak points (the huge one with Signal being: requiring your cell phone number as a part of authentication) but that’s far beyond the level of technical expertise required to, say, just intercept clear text communications, ex from Telegram. If a government is wiretapping you then you’ve got problems that neither Signal nor Telegram can solve.

Now maybe you will suspect that a three letter agency will force them to do something bad, like send a suspect a hacked/backdoored version of the app or something but by and large i don’t think they would do that. They’d just go to Google or Apple and put a keylogger on your phone, or some other solution. Realistically, though, this is a level of effort far beyond what >99% of all humans need to worry about. Choosing Telegram over Signal because you’re afraid the government is manipulating your Signal app is a sign of incoherent paranoia.

A more serious concern would be, for example, the government capturing all data sent across the Internet and then holding onto it until some hypothetical future computer is developed that can just break the encryption. That’s still pretty silly but it’s something the US (at least) is doing. Still way beyond what they would need to get your Telegram messages because, again, they don’t need to decrypt those. They can just look.

The difference being: Signal cooperates as they’re legally required to buy do not have the technological capability to betray you. Telegram has the technological capability to betray you (and governments can spy on Telegram, with or without Telegram’s assistance) but refuses to cooperate.

Signal is much better and more reliable in this.

Heinlein’s “all you zombies” is an early version of this.

In terms of biology, it’s extremely rare for humans to have fully functioning sets of both reproductive systems. The reproductive physiology develops from the same parts so it either develops “male”, “female”, or (more common than people think) somewhere in between but not “both”. A clone may or may not even develop in the same way.

One other possibility, though also very rare. is near-identical twins. If twins have the same genetics (in other words, they’re identical twins) but have intersex conditions that result in different reproductive development it’s conceivable that they could reproduce with each other. It’s uncommon to be fertile incongruous with your genetics, though, so again: this would be extremely unlikely.

That said, in a sci-fi context there are some options. Biological hermaphroditism is possible in animals, though there aren’t any vertebrates on Earth, so conceivably an alien species could encounter this problem.

Advanced medicine could also build people a new reproductive system and implant it, giving them the counterpart they lacked.

Of course, in that case, advanced medicine may also be able to give you someone else’s reproductive genetics (ex, implanted sperm or eggs) and thus effectively sidestep the genetic problems. I’m imagining a particularly narcissistic person getting a gender-flipped clone of themself and using someone else’s genetic material to have a kid with themself but also avoid the shallow gene pool problem.

Of course, you don’t need to go that far. If you’re female (or have those parts anyway) you can just do IVF. Don’t even need to clone yourself, then.

Anyway, this is getting a little silly.

I did a little Wegovy and then even less Zepbound and maybe they helped but also i think they messed up my gastrointestinal situation. Pay attention to that stuff, it’s not fun if things go wrong.

They can order Signal to turn over data (and the have) and signal has complied when it was legally required of them to do so, handing over all of their no data.

That’s the difference.

If that weren’t true they wouldn’t be so constantly upset about E2EE.

Specifically, they have the technological ability to prevent some crimes on their platform and have repeatedly refused to do so, or even engage with attempts to do so. Because they’re not E2EE they can see what everyone is doing and are therefore legally required to step in when someone is (for example) selling drugs on their platform.

Signal (etc) have no insight into the actions of their users and when they are legally required to take action they do, they take the minimal legally required action (unlike other services from, ex, Apple). Signal follows the law, Telegram does not.

States are really pissy about E2EE for this (and other) reasons. They want to get rid of it because they want to monitor all private conversations. That’s why E2EE is important.

It’s definitely not willfully ignorance given they collect the data.

I get it, i don’t want to live in China but i don’t want to live in whatever Elon Musk has planned for the US, either, and his wealth gives him undue influence over… pretty much everything. You’re not convincing me you’ve got a consistent take here if you’re cool with Twitter but not TikTok.