tommorris

I've seen one or two people using the Switch on the London Underground. Rare but not non-existent.

We've solved the trusted-third-party problem by having a trusted-third-party (i.e. the lawyer).

All hail blockchain as the most amazing non-solution to the problem.

> During the process of drafting the legislation, at least here in America, the existing players have a voice on the legislation's course, and the larger the existing player is, the louder their voice gets to be.

Sounds like you need campaign finance and lobbying regulations. ;-)

My comparison is simply to show the standard laissez faire talking point of "oh, regulation exists just to protect incumbent market players" as bullshit: regulations exist to protect consumers from negligence and misbehaviour on the part of the companies.

The fact you think GDPR only applies to websites rather than the huge clusterfuck of personal data loss means you haven't understood the reason behind GDPR.

Equifax lost millions and millions of records and have so far faced no meaningful punishment from the UK regulators: as far as I can tell, they've so far made one brief statement on their website, and one tweet.

Major ISPs like TalkTalk lost millions of records (and ignored security researchers telling them about gaping security holes) and were given a slap on the wrist - £400,000 by the UK ICO. Mere pennies per user in fines; a drop in the bucket compared to their annual revenue. There is no economic interest to change their behaviour.

The negligence of these companies has led to millions of people having their personal and financial data stolen, having to keep eagle-eyed over bank statements and credit cards, having to worry that their transactions (or their travel bookings) might get flagged up as suspicious, that their credit rating gets eaten, and much else besides.

If a company you've entrusted your personal data with—not just your tweets or whatever, but sensitive personal data including health data, data about your religious affiliation, sexual orientation, etc. loses that data, as a UK citizen, you currently have no right to appeal the ICO failing to take action. GDPR/DPA2018 changes that balance.

Companies tell consumers "hey, trust us with your personal data". Consumers do in the false belief that there is some protection or basic responsibility taken. When they colossally fail to take the most basic steps to protect consumers from data loss, the status quo was this: nothing happens to them.

Glad you can tell how regulation affects a market after less than one day of being active law, and zero enforcement actions or cases suggesting how courts/regulators are going to interpret the rules.

I was thinking about getting in to the car market but all these pesky requirements that I sell a car with airbags and seatbelts and fuel efficiency compliance are just there to protect existing incumbents.

Good luck arguing that novel legal theory when in front of a judge on a fraud or tax evasion trial.

Yes, acaí berries are tasty and make a lovely addition to a healthy breakfast. Cryptocurrencies are Internet penny stocks with lofty aspirations.

It is a cheap substitute. But you should try the cheap substitute: its not half bad and lots of people seem to find it pretty tasty.

The reason people use Signal over WhatsApp is partly because of a perception it is more likely to be good against malicious state-like actors: tyrannical regimes etc.

If said malicious actors pwn the phone of the person you were talking to, suddenly they have a pretty good way of mapping a contact called "My Best Friend" to a human through billing records.

Or even easier, they type the phone number into Google and find that the Syrian dissident they've just arrested has been corresponding with the NYTimes or BBC.

If they know only that they are talking to [email protected] they could, uh, get Google to release their IP address. Google are fairly unlikely to honour a legal demand for disclosure from Libya or North Korea or some other tyrannical/fucked-up hellhole.

I like Signal, but I'm not totally sure about the threat model.

> you can add pgp on top of it if you want security

Nobody does, sadly.

Baking it into the protocol like Signal and WhatsApp did means nobody has to want it, they just get it included without having to bolt on any extras.