Piero Bosio Social Web Site Personale

The sun never sets in the British Empire, but it doesn't rise, now does it

@twinkle @sierrashark A lot of people need therapy. I think Twitter legit gave people PTSD. Like actually for real. I used to think it was laughable, but I talked in therapy about it and it's absolutely A Thing that people get disproportionately pissed off about things online and especially triggered by anything that reminds them of their old platforms because of constant trauma from needing to defend themselves and their existence, because Twitter was/is essentially an experiment in psychological abuse at scale.

You know it's wild how everyone swore up and down quote posts would cause the end of the Fedi. Like it was more of a reaction than post edits (which people freaked out over, too).

Yet so many instances have had it for ages and the sky, remarkably, has not fallen.

You don't get billions by being a kindhearted generous person. You get billions by being cold, calculating, and exploitative. It should be no wonder that these same types of people are also pedophiles.

Is anyone truly shocked to find all these elites in the Epstein files? No? I'm the only one who's not?

WHY DID I TRY TO TASTE MY SOURDOUGH STARTER D:

RFC 9420 is kinda like this meme.

One of my biggest issues with MLS, RFC 9420, is it's like... "we get you want to build your own house, so we gave you the bricks, but you have to mix your own mortar and figure out how to apply it yourself. Also if you fuck up the mortar your house is going to crumble to pieces. No you don't get a recipe for mortar. Good luck!"

I have personally tried to solve this problem and have come to the conclusion Signal did it best, Signal did it right, and the main cardinal sin of Signal besides being centralised is that it requires a phone number. Pretty mid.

I still say Signal is the go to protocol to use if you want absolute anonymity. Get a throwaway number. Just fucking do it. For the love of God, do not use XMPP. Do not use Matrix if you can help it. Those do not exceed the floor, in XMPP's case, not even close.

Anyways so I want to also say since I am here and was talking about metadata not being encrypted:

Any "E2EE" system that does *not* encrypt metadata is WORTHLESS.

If anyone who has access to the central system can see you are in "government dissident chat" for example, *your system has failed at privacy.*

It is somewhat okay if you know they're in "group id 694201337" as long as you can glean *no other details* as a server operator... because there's not easy ways around this problem, to be blunt. But the server operator should *not* know you are in, say, "government dissident chat."

Server operators should also have *no real clue* who is on your contact list. Ideally, they shouldn't know who you're messaging at all... but that one is also a difficult problem.

Just because the contents of the messages are encrypted, *does not mean that the group is private.*

Metadata *must* be encrypted.

The only thing the server should know about you:

* How to map something user-friendly to your user ID
* Other people's user IDs
* Maybe group IDs for the purposes of rendezvous

And the only thing a server should ideally do:

* Be a dumb relay
* Handle mailboxing of encrypted payloads (if your payload is too sensitive to survive being stored, your encryption is broken, try again)

The only thing that remotely comes close to doing any of this, is Signal. They actually have tried very hard to make a fully anonymous chat protocol and have done a damn good job.

If ANY other chat protocol is to exist, it must provide the guarantees Signal does, at the bare minimum. That is the *floor.* Anything that does not exceed the floor should be summarily discarded.

Fedi instances are run just like IRC servers:

1) The nicest but brokest people you will ever meet in your life, ever. It will stop existing in 5-10 years.

2) Run by a small ragtag group that's kinda just holding the thing together with duct tape and vibes and a prayer. Most instances fall into this.

3) It is huge and effectively immortal but run by the biggest bunch of fucking assholes you have ever met in your life. Not even politically offensive, just outright offensive. These people are massively opposed to any kind of change or really any advancement of the state of the art.

In times like these it is easy to ask:

"WHY NOT MAKE A NEW CHAT PROTOCOL"

1) Existing chat protocols largely solve the problem to various degrees. Nobody does it *satisfactorily* in a way that satisfies everyone, but they nonetheless solve the core issue.

2) Making a chat protocol is hard; making one with E2EE that works reliably and doesn't rely on a central server is extremely hard. You need a cryptographer to audit it. Making one that supports E2EE correctly *and* encrypts metadata *and* supports federation *and* isn't a bloated hot mess *and* plays well with mobile? Painfully hard. Now make it reliable.

Matrix discovered this fact. Signal is... well, probably one of the better designed ones from a cryptography standpoint (unlike XMPP, it actually encrypts metadata and isn't a Kafkaesque nightmare to implement nor a crusty 90's relic that should have died in 2010), but still does not satisfy everyone.

3) To make a new chat protocol that satisfies everyone, you need *money.* Cryptographers are not free. Developers deserve to get paid, and if you think that they should just pour their blood sweat and tears into it for free, you're clearly not a developer. Guess what? People don't want to pay for chat. Nobody ever in the history of anywhere will pay for chat when they can use Telegram or Discord or IRC or even Matrix (despite being a pile of hot shit) for free. Everyone will go back to Discord next week. They're mad now, but will grumble and do it anyway.

So guess how it gets funded?

If you're lucky you have a patron. Otherwise? Governments and police, who will pay. Selling data, because data brokers want more data. Or... charging money for extras, like Discord does, on top of all the other stuff. Or like IRC, it relies on a brittle network of volunteer servers that pop in and out of existence, and the most durable ones are also the ones run by the biggest assholes you've ever met in your life.

Saying the moon is a stepping stone to Mars is like saying "I walked across town, so now I'm ready to walk across the whole state!"

I'm not excited about Artemis.

It's old tech, SLS is objectively bad and a waste of money, we did it 60 years ago with 60's tech, it's not a realistic stepping stone to Mars (the moon is 3 days away... Mars is... 9 months away).

And I've heard so many broken Mars promises...

Biblically accurate 3D printer

My sourdough starter has yeast! Big bubbles and rising now.

I did a thing!

https://elizafox.github.io/rizztest/

Now with 3D visualiser

I propose a rizz compass which is a weird five dimensional cube

V axis: authentic <-> performative
W axis: powerful <-> harmless
X axis: based <-> cringe
Y axis: effortless <-> tryhard
Z axis: unhinged <-> calculated

And where you lie in the hypercube determines your rizz alignment

Yes it’s dumb I don’t care I’m all about high-concept shitposting