I counted 49 pickup trucks with empty beds in the parking garage downtown this morning.

Wouldn't there be a selection bias, as trucks in parking garages are much less likely to be doing hauling /towing tasks?

I counted 50 sedans with empty seats in the parking garage downtown this morning.

Half of them sticking out into the roadway blocking half the lane. What an entitlement.

So? You saw them for one subset of what they are doing. Perhaps the most common one, but still just a subset.

The same reason federal agents wear GoPros. Security theater, and to send the message that journalists should not pursue stories like this that put the federal government in a less-than-favorable light.

> there is a very strong anthropological connection wired into us that doesn't go away when the situation changes.

I have not found this to be true.

Except certain features in the software will be reserved for subscribers only.

For the context of this thread, WhatsApp and Signal are both American.

Just look to the federal United States government using it for communicating military strikes, and including journalists.

But it doesn't make Signal bad. If Americans blindly process our messages without knowing what's inside, it's worse than not depending on them, but better than showing your private correspondence to somebody.

At least we don't seem to have things which are close by UX and security at the same time.

Simplex is fine, but still feels a bit raw.

Everything else is either untrustworthy because of the closed code or no e2e encryption or custom encryption schemes (WhatsApp, Telegram, any Asian messenger) or unusable from UX perspective (Tox, Matrix).

Simplex is a project by a fervent COVID conspiracy theorist FYI. (Evidence: his Twitter page)

And the internet is originally made by the US army (i.e. professional murderers). Doesn't make the internet bad as a technology.

Simplex is quite well designed. Even if it doesn't succeed, I think we'll see its forks and similar implementations.

Wouldn't that lend it credibility if your concern was privacy?

For the context of this thread, it's infinitely better to depend on Signal than to depend on WhatsApp.

The context of the thread was "deAmericanizing." Not "what's good or bad."

You must be joking :-).

I was saying that non-US office suites are good enough in terms of features, but people don't like to adapt to new things. WhatsApp vs Signal was an example where people don't want to use the better alternative, for no other reason than they can't be bothered to try it.

But even when talking about not depending on US tech, it is relevant: depending on open source US tech is a step towards not depending on US tech. The goal is not racism ("it's made by US people so I don't want it"). The goal is sovereignty ("if I depend on this, the US government can screw me").

Your reliance on the random word generator is making the point of OP.

Probably a Samsung, the company that replaced door handles with a microphone for "open fridge" voice command, and advertises to you based on the contents of your fridge.

Then use OCR to convert it back from raster for Section 508 compliance. All the existing work to make handwritten pages and visuals compliant would have to be redone after converting to raster.

That'd be fun to make Section 508 compliant at mass scale.

They do get to tell their agents how to enforce illegal "laws," and a majority of Congress will accept that.