then can randomly ban people who try to make their usage of the platform more private/anonymous...
Telegram literally only banned CSAM.
Then there is censorship, at least here. And I have heard of at least one case of cooperation with German LE, so it's not "untouchable" for Westerners too.
Source? Because they're pretty transparent about it and have only ever banned CSAM. If that's what you mean by "censorship" please KYS
It was never safe with such an approach of "I can close my eyes and pretend the law doesn't apply to me" even in the West
Except that it was, and that's why people used it.
If it was hostile to privacy and anonymity by design
No it wasn't? It was literally the private anonymous messenger and that's why people used it.
it was a matter of time until it became wide open to Western LE too
No it wasn't, or they wouldn't have had to arrest Durov.
The sheer amount of compromate it had on users was a ticking time bomb.
Yeah, but so is every good thing.
"Highly decentralized complexity" - what does that even apply to?
The subject matter at hand - Telegram. It was legally a complex mess of shell companies in weird jurisdictions. That's why the glowies couldn't touch it, the level of international cooperation it would require is far beyond the realistic means of any government. This is why they had to arrest Durov and offer him life in prison or to open up, there was nothing else they could do.
That would apply to Matrix, XMPP, Simplex, especially Briar.
It would if any of these worked, or were used by anyone at all.
Even Signal can technically be selfhosted (whether it is feasible is another question)
I don't want to self-host my criminal messenger, i live deep in five eyes shit.
in Telegram you can't have even that because the server is closed.
I'm fine with that, as long as it's out of the glowies hands, but fella couldn't stay away from the hairy pits I guess
You can't. You either go into work and learn to solve complex problems or pivot to something else. For me it was the latter, I'm IT brainlet now,, but every time I come back to brushing up on programming there's like no middle ground with projects, I don't have the time or really energy to commit to building a 3D video game engine in C or an OS, and learning pointer arithmetic for multiple iterators all just to make a palindrome checker CLI feels lame and building a clone of Spotify but in some new webdev thing of the week to some tutorial is hard to be excited about.
No? There's a pretty good reason every criminal used telegram. I've never seen any attempts at combatting anonymity much less censorship.
Likely TG got unbanned in Russia for cooperating with LEOs there, but while awful, that doesn't really matter if you're a westerner, even Ukrainian armed forces used it, and for the average substance enjoyer it was still much safer to use than any Five Eyes app due to its intentional highly decentralised complexity, and unlike Signal it actually works and is pleasant to use. Now they are straight up handing data over to British cops.
No, I have literally never heard of Haveno-reto. Most people back around the shutdown were just saying everyone should use atomic swaps. Thanks for the heads up.
Dream come true. Finally some good news for us substance enjoyers. With localmonero gone and TG selling out to the glowies, it's good to see not all is lost.
All those people are either masters at making use of little space (if you've ever seen electroboom's set in that one LTT video yk tho he ain't euro) or they've got a much bigger space (e.g. house, maybe even detached) than they're letting on. There's a good reason lots of tech YTers are from Texas.
There's also ofc some folks who just live drowning in garbage from various projects, but you won't know about them.
The maker spaces, and more specifically in my xp in London - hackspaces are cramped kindergartens
Mantric Rechargeable Remote Control Knicker Vibrator I got on sale for 50% off. I'm not super into the whole public thing, but I've been using it way more than my magic wand, that fucking tip is shaped perfectly. Plus it would make an excellent phaser prop.
If you got 7 hours and 500 bucks, you've got 7 hours.
Why? Because you've paid people to take care of all your chores.
If you've got 7 hours and 0 bucks, you've got 0 hours.
Why? Well you're taking the bus to the discount grocery store, you're doing your laundry, cooking your meals, you're commuting 1.5 hours each way on broken trains to work and pay £20 for the privilege, you're looking for new jobs because you think you'll be fired, and then you won't be able to make rent, you're doing 1-way AI-led recorded video job interviews and pumping out cover letters and CVs for job applications, yet never heard back, you're comparing payday loans to pay for heat, you're listening out for debt collectors, you're chasing up your GP for that blood test result from 6 months ago you never got, you're trying to find a cheaper place, you're doom scrolling your bank account balance, wondering whether you can cut down on something, anything, maybe a thicker jumper to sleep in during the winter.
At the end of the day, you might have a few minutes to kiss your partner, or apologize to a friend you still haven't got back to for weeks, and not much else.
So yes, most people cannot afford hobbies. The only thing people can risk it on is something that promises lots of money and an escape from misery, and it's almost always a grift.
Now there's no such thing as a hobby coder, it confuses the average person that someone could, as an adult, just make an app for them and their friends, as just a fun thing, as art, as expression or project or whatever. I always tell my coworkers I'm studying for qualifications, but I'm really just learning active directory because it's interesting.
It is only a thing you either grind for to make money through and pay your dues to the tutorial grifter culture promising big bucks selling endless courses on YouTube by people who are suspiciously not themselves employed as software engineers, or you don't do it at all.
In the UK the average salary (no data on median) in 1980 was ~£6000, but average house price was £23000, or 3.8x the salary. This is during a recession.
In 2024 the median salary is ~£34000, but the average house price in the last 12 months is £299000, or 8.7x the salary.
And that's just housing. Everything else is more expensive too. And you need more things to participate in society.
The country is FUBAR'd by neoliberalism and austerity policies. The houses that go for millions are barely fit for a dog shed, rotten through and through with mold, filled asbestos, insulation that kills you with gas when it burns, and boy will it burn once the boiler older than the 5 day work week finally explodes.
Almost no young people, few as they may be, have any interest in anything beyond making it to the top 1% and why would they? For them CompSci was a grift, and FOSS is just how you get something in your resume. So maintainers get defensive, and well meaning but less apt coders get discouraged too.
For our generation it doesn't matter if you know git and vim, or only meth and hopelessness, you live in the slums same as everyone. I'm in the top 20% of earners and I couldn't really even justify a big mac as a treat nevermind spending time on passions.
Oh no I totally understand that I'm privileged as all hell.
That said I also learned a helluva lot more outside of my degree during said degree and after.
Formal teaching is really like YouTube and it's meant to introduce you to what you don't know more than anything, and as I said that's a good thing as an introduction, but the vast majority of content is written, and you learn far more from it.
I have a BSc in CompSci and an MSc in Cybersec & Dig. Forensics and I'm actively employed as a mid level engineer in the field on a fully employer-sponsored Skilled Worker Visa, doing everything from vulnerability management and triage to GRC for ISO27001 to advising product and engineering teams on implementation details for best practices and compliance for a multinational org to DR&BC tabletops etc etc. I think this counts as IT.
Perhaps even more impressively though: I use Vim btw (to program in C).
I am not necessarily trying to brag very much, only to establish my own perspective, I don't consider myself particularly talented or intelligent or successful - otherwise I'd have gone into research, but I am currently (and kinda always) studying to improve my skills and stay up to date.
Just recently I decided to take a look into pentesting to learn the l33t side of things more as my education only ever briefly touched on it, I started in August as something to keep my brain sane during studies for the settlement visa (Life in the UK) test, and I've made it to Hacker Rank on HackTheBox a week ago or so. I think I watched a grand total of one Ippsec video, the rest of everything I read.
I don't know where you got the "game show hosts" from my comment, and I'm not aware of this if it exists as some broader trend. I don't see YouTube shorts it's all long blocked for me since release haha.
Yes YT tutorials and whatnot are good, but they are only good as broad introductions to a topic, personal opinions, or a particular historical narrative (Dr.Chuck on C's history for instance). Those are few good nuggets between an endless sea of scams selling you a course or some other grift.
At a certain point you should start going a bit more in depth and reading - actively engaging with the material, move beyond simply knowing or purely copying and pasting terminal commands and understand why things work the way they do.
You don't become an electrical engineer or something by watching electroboom, you learn what it's about yes, but the rest you learn by reading and making, even basic arduino/breadboard projects will teach you more.
The best thing about YouTube is how good it is as background noise.
Or just call them Content creators, recognize they don't really produce value for anyone but YT's grab on the attention economy and start living in the real world.
Huh? Worked for me.
Telegram literally only banned CSAM.
Source? Because they're pretty transparent about it and have only ever banned CSAM. If that's what you mean by "censorship" please KYS
Except that it was, and that's why people used it.
No it wasn't? It was literally the private anonymous messenger and that's why people used it.
No it wasn't, or they wouldn't have had to arrest Durov.
Yeah, but so is every good thing.
The subject matter at hand - Telegram. It was legally a complex mess of shell companies in weird jurisdictions. That's why the glowies couldn't touch it, the level of international cooperation it would require is far beyond the realistic means of any government. This is why they had to arrest Durov and offer him life in prison or to open up, there was nothing else they could do.
It would if any of these worked, or were used by anyone at all.
I don't want to self-host my criminal messenger, i live deep in five eyes shit.
I'm fine with that, as long as it's out of the glowies hands, but fella couldn't stay away from the hairy pits I guess