barathr

18 ms·

181.
by barathr 4y ago
I like Chapman's piece on the subject -- "Maps, the territory, and meta-rationality" -- which is a deeper examination of what this classic saying really means: https://metarationality.com/maps-and-territory
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by barathr 4y ago
Not sure how this ended up on the front page again, but FWIW we discuss a lot of the privacy goals of the system here: https://invisv.com/articles/pgpp-more.html There are fundamental tradeoffs here, so it's good
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by barathr 4y ago
We named it entirely as an homage to the original PGP. This was literally an academic research project we did, with the exact same name, for years before we made it into a service.
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by barathr 4y ago
You can just install the app on a normal device and subscribe to the service on first run. For PGPP Relay, almost any Android device (and maybe even Chromebooks) works fine. For PGPP Mobile plans, you'd need an eSIM capable device (e.g
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by barathr 4y ago
Thanks -- to your comments / questions: 1) we have tested with GrapheneOS and it does work. Relay works well with GrapheneOS. With some amount of configuration, the mobile plans also work, though it can be a bit tricky to set up. 2) We
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by barathr 4y ago
I don't see what was evasive, happy to answer in more detail if there's something you're seeing not answered above. We use Stripe as a credit card processor -- so we have what Stripe's (very well documented) APIs provide
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by barathr 4y ago
This is one of the problems with mobile -- there's isn't any one universally correct answer to this (or most questions), so I'll answer to the best of my knowledge. IMSIs are what are associated with your identity (because it
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by barathr 4y ago
Hmm, thanks for that feedback. I think (hope?) people wouldn't think that service like this was free (the prices reflect the costs). We say pretty clearly on our site what the prices are and are trying to be upfront. It's true tha
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by barathr 4y ago
I tend to not take this as a black and white matter -- I see privacy as a layered problem -- at multiple network/software layers -- and as a policy and user behavior question. No single response, whether user education, policy, technol
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by barathr 4y ago
It does, but you can use any number, even a VoIP number. (And you can connect to the VoIP provider with PGPP Relay enabled.)
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by barathr 4y ago
Right now we use Stripe (mostly because it's the the most rock solid choice for payments) -- we don't ask for name or email, though of course Stripe could know that as a card processor. But our approach goes back to decoupling hum
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by barathr 4y ago
The IMSI. We don't do anything with the IMEI ourselves (it's in the category of hardware identifiers that I'm mentioning above). Some phones can change them when rooted, some can't. The network attach process doesn'
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by barathr 4y ago
It's true, they could. The one thing that is perhaps helping at this moment is that they've come under scrutiny for their (bad) privacy practices -- both from the media and from the FCC. Ultimately we see privacy as a layered prob
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by barathr 4y ago
Just wanted to say hi – I’m one of the co-founders of this effort and would love to answer any questions or discuss further. Also wanted to add, since this is a common question: does PGPP protect all identifiers or just some? As with most p
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by barathr 4y ago
Oh, perhaps we should have gone into it in more detail, but this is a direct consequence of the architecture of IETF MASQUE. It's not a VPN tunnel of the classic sort. Instead it's nested HTTPS-based proxying of E2EE TLS streams.
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by barathr 4y ago
Thanks for the comment -- the regulations in Europe for this vary from country to country. So for the mobile piece of this (the pro/core plans), we limit signups to countries where such requirements don't exist. However, roaming a
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Show HN: PGPP (Pretty Good Phone Privacy) – a new type of mobile privacy service(play.google.com)
21 points by barathr 4y ago|13 comments
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by barathr 4y ago
Cryptography Engineering Design Principles and Practical Applications: https://www.schneier.com/books/cryptography-engineering/ They cover the fundamentals from a practical engineering perspective. After reading i
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by barathr 4y ago
True, though there's a question of whether there will be demand to keep up those ag uses as water becomes more scarce generally (I could see it going either way). Electricity is something like half of desalination's operational co
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by barathr 4y ago
While this is a nice project for emergency and remote uses, what we really need re: desalination in places like California (and other variable / dry climates) is large-scale desalination tied to opportunity power (such as curtailed gri
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by barathr 4y ago
Fastly as well -- Fastly, Cloudflare, and Akamai are the three egress providers.
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by barathr 4y ago
Mumford wrote a fascinating history of technology nearly a century ago -- Technics and Civilization -- in which he tried to identify key technologies to each technological era going back many hundreds of years.
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by barathr 4y ago
Edit: I realized describing the paths forward to dealing with this sort of challenge requires more context than can be given in a short comment, so I'll work on that and come back with more later.
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by barathr 4y ago
If you're in California, check out California Rare Fruit Growers. If elsewhere in North America, check out North American Fruit Explorers. Both focus on rare varieties that are really good to grow but are not commercially available. I
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by barathr 5y ago
SPR is being tapped: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/oil-markets-us-strategic-pet...
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by barathr 5y ago
Yes, sorry, you're right -- I forgot to state that I was speaking from a US-based perspective where there is ample land (and grid infrastructure) that could support baseload solar at scale (in addition to rooftop solar, which will put
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by barathr 5y ago
I understand the interest in baseload generation but don't see why there's so much interest in nuclear when low-tech concentrated solar in the desert can get the job done and scaling it up (and ensuring it's 100% safe) isn&#x
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by barathr 5y ago
Chapman's writings on the subject are worth a read: https://metarationality.com/remodeling
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by barathr 5y ago
A few you might check out: The Humphrey the hamster series The Zoey and Sassafras series The Secret Explorers series Alice in Wonderland Some Beverly Cleary books Many of the DK nonfiction books
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by barathr 5y ago
A good answer is to cover the channels with solar panels -- a win-win that cools the panels and reduces evaporation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00693-8

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