I’m not implying there are better ones. I mean that ways how “better” systems are being built, updated by developers, and how are they viewed by users, should make everyone question whether those are actually useful.

GOS lets you decide what apps to trust

But not what vendors to trust…

GOS is EXTREMELY clear about who their product is for

Clear… but apparently not loud enough because all I know is “for Google Pixel owners”.

It’s not like I even want to use GOS. I want to use something that cares about me as a user, more than the default experience with limited and forced aspects. It just happens that most people say Pixel is the best phone overall for now, and I can’t ignore that.

My issue is that someone who say they do everything they can to harden your device and improve security, fail at simple things. Like blocking such traffic at the OS level for all untrusted apps, or allowing installing untrusted apps at all. It’s like they can’t decide who their product is for. And users thinking they are getting more protected just because they switched to another OS, as a result.

Making security measures irrelevant is easy for police officers, for app makers, and for users too.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/22889-meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers

So it’s an OS for journalists now? For protesters? I’m not going to trust an OS that failed to save anyone from Meta, to save me from my government.

Are all protesters notified they must buy a Google phone to protest safely?

If you are in such a position, it’s only a matter of time for a friendly police officer to stop being friendly as soon as he sees any signs of your phone using encryption, or GrapheneOS, or being Pixel. You will get detained/interrogated/beaten/etc. and you will share all your secrets yourself. If they have those industrial devices and you allow them to take your property from you - an OS will most likely not help you.

Instead of trusting OS to protect your data on your device from unauthorized users owning unknown toolset, it’s better to make sure you have no data they might want from you, on your device.

I meant the requirements are tailored to Google devices basically. Anyway, Google Pixels are about 5% of android market if I’m not mistaken. Is it worth it? If yes then I’m sure targeting pretty much any other maker would also worth it.

My advice: lower the requirements, and focus on real issues and real expectations from users. It appears GrapheneOS’s default settings were useless against that latest loopback tracking by Meta.

Privacy risk is like “Google is constantly spying on me”. Security risk is like “a hacker next door is waiting for a next 0day to drop to get my passwords and photos”. Guess which of these is a real threat in most people’s eyes?

Maybe it’s just me but those “very reasonable hardware requirements” look like they can be handled only by huge corporations directly involved with Android development.

If you expect to have stuff patched within a week, it should tell me you expect all those unpatched devices are going to be heavily impacted after a week. It doesn’t look like a lot of massive security incidents are happening to Android devices in recent years because some vendor delayed a patch by a week. I understand high standards, but if some user also expects high standards why shouldn’t they expect their devices patched within a day? Only explanation is that most people care about privacy risks much more than about security risks.

Point is so that you might accidentally click on some F2P crap over there and actually spend more money than you would have otherwise. Bonus points if it’s Fortnite. They love filling it with so much confetti and showing off. Brings a lot of money.

It doesn’t work like that. Encrypted messages will not become unreadable for other clients. They will become undecryptable for users of other clients.

No, I’m not saying that.

First time I read about such thing being included in TOS. Care to link something relevant? I can’t imagine how they are going to control that or ban any client or wipe data transmitted by them.

No, my argument is “this argument about a gun being used is invalid. It’s not used for now”.

I’m pretty sure if there would be enough demand for strong encryption there would be OTR forks of Telegram that would become popular. There is no such thing now. People use Telegram for stuff that is not “1on1 talks that I want to be strongly protected” in overwhelming majority of cases. People choose convenience. Encryption is useless when you are getting reported on by people in your chats or when you don’t know what you’re doing. Stupidity breaks any encryption, see that latest Signal case.

I’m Russian, have a good knowledge about protest activity. Amount of people being unlawfully arrested, prosecuted, and jailed, is abnormally big. Yet, with this amount of cases you’d guess there will be at least some links or evidence of Telegram being a career, or a link that allowed to find certain users and arrest them. Such a case would be a huge deal for a lot of people. There is no such case as far as I’m aware.

Telegram is a platform that is used by both prey and a hunter. It doesn’t actively try to protect the prey. It does contain abilities that one could utilize to protect themselves. But it certainly does not help the hunter. Hunter can try to utilize various tools that would use Telegram, and help them get the data on the prey. But that data would not be exclusive. It won’t be a result of Telegram saying “we got your request for this user, here is the data that they hide, enjoy”. It would be a public data from public chats, or data that has been manufactured using social engineering. Telegram is not a side in this process, it’s a field.

There are other platforms that really provide data (private data, or data not easily reachable) by request from authorities, we know it and avoid them. That would be VK. It was created by Durov, but now it’s operated by authorities basically.

So when I see stuff like “owner of Telegram servers had some links to FSB”, “someone could get your data if they monitor your traffic” etc., it doesn’t strike me. Those have nothing to do with the “Telegram shares your data with authorities” narrative, which remains unproven. Durov is a creator of VK that now haunts on Russians, he is not a genius I would like him to be. But Telegram administration doesn’t seem to share the data I want to keep secret with anyone, for now.

Still unable to sort episodes by alphabetic file names?

The interpreter knows that this is not something anyone will ever do on purpose, so it should not silently handle it.

You basically defied the whole NaN thing. I may even agree that it should always throw an error instead, but… Found a good explanation by someone:

NaN is the number which results from math operations which make no sense

And the above example fits that.

"hello" - 1 makes no sense at all.

Yeah but actually there can be many interpretations of what someone would mean by that. Increase the bytecode of the last symbol, or search for “1” and wipe it from string. The important thing is that it’s not obvious what a person who wrote that wants really, without additional input.

Anyway, your original suggestion was about discrepancy between + and - functionality. I only pointed out that it’s natural when dealing with various data types.

Maybe it is one of the reasons why some languages use . instead of + for strings.

If you try what I wrote it will throw a NaN. I was asking about the first part of the proposal.

• should also do some string action

Like what kind of string action?

“Hello” + " world" is what everyone can understand. Switch with “-” and it becomes pointless.

I feel you. Nice job.

One indie that stuck with me is Immortal Defense. Try it some time if you like hidden gems.

Still waiting for Kung Fury 2.

Probably depends on the data. For example if you are a corporate worker and know that cameras are recording data which is kept not for 6 hours but for months, you are less likely to commint something bad.