throwaway82003

I think long ago, Signal used to display phone number just beneath name when you are chatting someone. That always made me a bit uncomfortable. Now they don't do that, only displays name.

Comment · 5 years ago

My understanding is that the coin stuff is still in beta and not available in the regular app.

Also when it lands on stable, it will be opt-in. So one need to deliberately switch it on to enable their cryptocurrency.

Their history tells us they go to great lengths to eliminate metadata. Court requests for signal data only get the account creation time and last access time. Please read about how they implemented their gif functionality in such a way as to preserve privacy. Also read about how they preserve your privacy in group chats. I think they are available in their blog. My understanding is that these things are unique to signal and apps like Element Matrix, WhatsApp, wire, telegram, threema, Conversations XMPP etc don't have it.

IMO it's a good idea to read Signal's blog. It can also be subscribed through RSS so you'll get notified about new articles.

https://signal.org/blog/rss.xml

https://signal.org/bigbrother/

Comment · 5 years ago

But I think the new policy changes allow WhatsApp to read business messages. So be weary. Also I think you gotta accept the new terms to have WhatsApp Business.

There's Watomatic. Author claims it doesn't connect to internet even though it has full network access permission, so idk about it. But the code is FOSS. It's on fdroid too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26153963

Comment · 5 years ago

Someone shoulder-surfing you can see the phone number of the person you are messaging and might mess with them?

Comment · 5 years ago

For Android, there is one from Peter Sanford (psanford on HN). He implemented the Go version of magic-wormhole, which I think is used by people like tptacek. So I guess it can be trusted.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.sanford.wor...

https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william-mobile

One disadvantage is that current magic wormhole doesn't support resume but they plan to implement it.

Another app that you might have heard of is croc, but it doesn't seem to be secure:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27056746

Comment · 5 years ago

Hi I'm not blind but wanna just dump some links here I bookmarked related to accessibility. Might be useful.

[1] The actively developed version of Mozilla TTS, named coqui-TTS. My understanding is that the original team was let go from Mozilla and they formed coqui.

https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS

They are also on Element Matrix:

https://matrix.to/#/#coqui-ai_TTS:gitter.im

[2] FOSS automated accessibility testing engine for websites and other HTML-based user interfaces:

https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core

[3] Emacspeak, developed by someone who was blind since childhood:

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

[4] UK government websites are famous for being accessible. They have design guidelines:

https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

[5] Similar system for the US govt.

https://designsystem.digital.gov/

[6] Mozilla MDN learn accessibility:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility