Observing the public conversation around FB, and the private ones happening among techies and ex-FBers, I think the mutual misunderstanding is worse than when I set out two years (and 500 pages) ago to (in a small way) bridge that gulf.

We're basically fucked.

Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.

In that spirit, here's some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already.

Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless.

Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams ("because software is so easy there, amirite guys?")

Charge more. Charge more still. Go on.

The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn't.

Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees.

The Fishrot De Klerk Affidavit.

De Klerk starts by saying he deposes of the affidavit without any charge or indictment against him.
He says he knows in his revelations are informing of corrupt practices
he relies on his memory, his phone and computer records

He says all paper files from his office are already with ACC
he concedes that this is evidence of criminal offences to which he may also be implicated in.
He highlights that the PG and ACC can use him as a state witness and he is allowed to ask for indemnity for offences

He highlights that the indemnity is if he coorperates with the Authorities in the Criminal proceedings and asks to be indemified against prosecution for assisting in the case.
He mentions the offences/contraventions he might have commited and asks for pardon from prosecution

Fraud, Contravention of POCA, FIA, ACA and 5 other criminal offences he was involved in with the fishrot accused.
He says his name & images have appeared in the newspapers and it has affected him until hospitalization and now on strong medicine bc of weak emotions and psychology

He mentions that no warrant or indictment are yet against him and he asks for an opportunity to explain his side of the story and how it will help ACC.
Even as a lawyer he says he was duped into doing some peoples dirty work since 2016 as he will explain.

I posted about the Signal messaging application versus Telegram a while ago, and I received a lot of answers about different applications as alternatives. So I'd like to write a thread giving an overview about my perspective on the security of different applications. 1/53

It's very important to remember that this thread is only about messaging applications for mobile phones, and the evaluations are based on my own perspectives and needs. In some cases they will be subjective, and you should investigate before applying the advice to yourself. 2/53

As I've mentioned in previous, when talking about secure messaging applications, it's extremely important to remember that if an application is secure enough, the limitation will not be the security of the application itself, the limitation is the security of the device. 3/53

When talking about security, the weakest link in a chain will be the one an attacker will go after. There are some applications in this thread that are very secure and have great protocols. But if the device is compromised, that will simply not matter. 4/53

So, if you have something very sensitive to discuss, my strong advice is to not trust that information to a mobile device - there are simply too many ways it could be compromised. So, from that perspective, the security of the protocol is not relevant. 5/53