integrating with the legacy financial system will have the larger impact at scale.
The "not your keys not your coins" non-custodial dogma is for those on the privelged side of the digital divide and ignores most of those in the global south. The vast majority of those introduced to bitcoin, or onboarding, is from a fiat onramp and to a custodial wallet. Over time the user will want to learn more / technically proper ways of managing their sats, but shouldn't be shamed for not understanding it all on day 1.
FWIW: Apple and Google play stores are legacy systems and surveillance choke points, I would avoid those everywhere possible. To me, it's irresponsible to ever endorse someone use either of these, if you want to build a privacy centric future and care about the personal information of your users.
I speculate you've chosen this path of legacy system adoption for larger impact at scale than a PWA solution (which I've requested from day 1 as you know).
Happy to help -- what do you want to use a VPN for, and who are you trying to protect against?
If you're using the Apple store, you've already lost. Consider a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS (Why would you use an American proprietary OS with the US PATRIOT Act and US CLOUD Act in place?) for starters.
Actively working on a big new solution, I'm professionally in the privacy & security space for a long time (over twice as long as the +decade I've been in bitcoin professionally)
One year ago today we stopped at Crocodile bridge on the way to #nostrica
Is there a nostr service that includes the opengraph (og) title and image for social sharing? The image worked, but with nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg it used "primal.net" spam in the title and not the og:title...
Testing the ability to share nostr links on Facebook, to avoid Facebook's Canadian News sharing censorship...
An important precedent in Canada as of two Fridays ago, IP addresses should now be considered private, and police will need a warrant to obtain them!
Andrei Bykovets v. His Majesty the King (Alta.) (40269)
Constitutional law — Charter of Rights — Search and seizure — Investigation related to purchase of virtual gift cards with fraudulent credit card information — Police obtaining internet protocol (“IP”) addresses to locate residences — Whether reasonable expectation of privacy attaches to IP address — Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 8.
In September 2017, the police commenced an investigation related to the purchase of virtual gift cards with fraudulent credit card information. The police was told that the fraudulent online transactions used two IP addresses. The police obtained warrants to search the two residences associated with the IP addresses. The appellant was arrested and charged with 33 offences relating to the possession and use of third parties’ credit cards and personal identification documents, and firearms. The appellant filed a notice alleging the breach of his rights under s. 8 of the Charter as well as other rights. The trial judge found that it was not objectively reasonable to recognize a subjective expectation of privacy in an IP address used by an individual. She concluded that there was no breach of s. 8. The appellant was eventually convicted of 13 of the original 33 counts, which he appealed. The majority of the Court of Appeal of Alberta dismissed the appeal. It found that the trial judge correctly interpreted the scope of the law that governed her s. 8 analysis. The majority concluded that she applied the correct interpretation to her factual findings, which reveal no palpable or overriding error. Veldhuis J.A., dissenting, would have allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial. She found that the appellant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the IP addresses and that his s. 8 rights were violated.
Further reading:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-privacy-ipaddress-1.7130727
#privacy #cdnpoli
A reminder that everything you read online isn't worth sharing before fact checking yourself...
I've always used the term "corporate media" for MSM/legacy media, as it frames it in a way that makes the receiver hearing/reading this term realize profit incentives are the priority, not investigative journalism.
Legacy media to me could include investigative journalists using print, for example. (media being either the medium or the message)
I'm so old I've been on nostr BJ (before nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m), and I think this was my first zap... thanks 😀
🚨 My spook detector is 99% sure this isn't a normal Lightning node
The Blockchain Intelligence Group (based here in Vancouver) used to boast on their website that the Canadian and American feds (RCMP and DHS, IIRC) were their customers, I don't see that on their front page now from a quick search...
From my friend Christopher Parsons, Canada's national policing breaking pretty much every Canadian privacy law, as well as their own internal policies and procedures, collecting personal data on Canadians from dodgy and maybe even illegal sources:
The recent report from Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada/Commissariat à la protection de la vie privée du Canada, about the RCMP’s use of private tools to aggregate open source intelligence, is an important read for those interested in the restrictions that apply to federal government agencies’ collection of this information.
The OPC found that the RCMP:
* had sought to outsource its own legal accountabilities to a third-party vendor that aggregated information,
* was unable to demonstrate that their vendor was lawfully collecting Canadian residents’ personal information,
* operated in contravention to prior guarantees or agreements between the OPC and the RCMP,
* was relying on a deficient privacy impact assessment, and
* failed to adequately disclose to Canadian residents how information was being collected, with the effect of preventing them from understanding the activities that the RCMP was undertaking.
It is a breathtaking condemnation of the method by which the RCMP collected open source intelligence, and includes assertions that the agency is involved in activities that stand in contravention of PIPEDA and the Privacy Act, as well as its own internal processes and procedures.
https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/ar_index/202324/sr_pa_20240215_rcmp-pwa/
#cdnpoli #privacy
As of Signal 7, you will be able to use a username instead of your phone number on Signal. You can be an early beta tester by installing Signal Beta and getting your username early:
It depends where you're putting your attention of course, but I think most countries suffer from "corporate journalism" (what most people call MSM). I call it corporate media instead, because if profits are the priority, click bait and provocation sells, not objective (as non-biased as possible) research and story telling exploring both/multiple sides of a topic.
We also have a lot of really good journalism here, but it's usually long-form, and that doesn't bode well for keyboard warriors looking for stories that resonate with one's pre-existing confirmation bias.
Which VPS providers do you trust from a privacy & security perspective, and why?
GDPR because of their strong privacy laws?
I would suggest Canada is best out of the 5 eyes countries, as our spies aren't allowed the corporate / government collusion like the USA (US ClLOUD Act, US PATRIOT Act, MLATs) or the even scarier Australian AA bill. In Canada, lunanode and cacloud are the only two providers I know of that are Canadian owned and hosted on Canadian soil, are there any others?
https://privasectech.com/time-to-consider-which-jurisdiction-your-data-is-stored-in/
https://krisconstable.com/removing-australia-and-australians-from-the-online-world/
Although rare, I know many (mostly Canadians, where I live) who identify as journalists who don't pretend not to be personally biased, but as a journalist strive to share both sides and perspectives of an issue.
Although not a professional journalist myself, I try to do this on social media/blogging, and welcome constructive critical debate when I miss a perspective. You shouldn't know a journalist's position if they are a good journalist -- said another way, if you know a writer's bias or position, they're not a (good) journalist.
It does humanity no good in a polarizing world to go extreme with bias even though the result is more clicks, as that just increases polarization. This also erodes critical thought, as we can easily hear listening to keyboard warriors who follow extreme "news" -- I enjoy telling people what they watch/listen to/read when they share their political position, as their lack of critical thinking and dogma demonstrates this.
#Vancouver folks
If you are working on decentralization technologies, such as #bitcoin/#lightning, #blockchain, #nostr, #identity, or #IPFS, join our casual coffee chat to share your projects, or look for opportunities to join another founder on their decentralized project!