I'm hoping my boss never finds it. I'm collab'ing with a few people at work to de-stigmatize PhD bands. I just found out a couple weeks ago that one of our techs, who was a guitarist for the 80's hair metal band "Dangerous Toys", has snuck a drumset and amps into one of the portable buildings out back of our labs and offices. The division's Christmas party this year should be interesting, hehe
I gotta check Le Hubwheel better!! I like to do drafts and then sneak in a posted reply off the activity bar's watchful gaze. I'm such a spy and stuff. Ah man, no dice for the X-mas party. But a band did play! I was glad that the division had a band already, honestly, because I have been hyper-focused on something else. Still solo. Hooking up everything into itself, basically. I will now spend some months getting almost comfy with breaching the visual side of things. So much to do. I have an entire testbed setup that I'm permutating through slowly, and that's just the tip of one of many icebergs. I was in Denver for a couple nights for New Year's Eve. Was seeing an artist at Meow Wolf, French guy, Darius. Event fell through at the last minute, but we couldn't cancel flights and hotel. Went to Kulture instead, off of Federal near Mile High (would absolutely love to hear your complete uncensored thoughts on this, if any, lol). And the art museum! The Mrs. and I wanted a couple nights to ourselves, and had a wonderful time around town, actually. OH, but also, new guy at work who plays All The Horns just bought a house and it's very close by mine, and we're planning on speeding up Jeff Jarvis' "Critical Mass" (btw shutup jeff, i'm gatekeepin' physics-sounding words now) to 122 BPM, despite Jeff's explicit warnings in the sheet music's "forward" section NOT to speed up the tempo. So we gotta. I'm the rhythm section. Bass, piano, drumset, and probably some guitar I'll add. We'll see, I need to jam it many more times before I'm comfortable. Hubski's thoughts on a madman's visual microphone are welcome. Ehhhh like what do you think of when you hear the phrase "visual microphone"? I might should do a whole separate post sometime on methods, motivations, and obfuscations. This is a new era. I don't want a new era though I just want one era to last like more than a few years. As a treat. But yes I think I am going to be switching many p2p convos to Signal, unless someone recommends another service. Might look at proton mail. Was really hopingn I wouldn't have to do this but. oh well the link fairy will visit ur dms tonight
so much to unpack here! I understand the urge to have a weekend away with the wife... if ever you find yourself here again, let me know. I am curious about this.I was in Denver for a couple nights for New Year's Eve
I think I am going to be switching many p2p convos to Signal, unless someone recommends another service.
So I've been using Signal for going on ten years. I don't remember why I started poking around with it; having a job that basically pays you to surf the internet for 50 hours a week masks a lot of origin stories. Either way, when I signed up I had basically one conact that came up "so and so is on Signal!" He messaged me on the app saying "what the hell are you doing here" to which I said "poking around, what the hell are you doing here" to which I got an amusing story about how "Ed" insisted that every piece of production communication related to the movie needed to be on Signal, which was a real pain in the ass considering it couldn't even send MMS at the time. According to "Ed" Signal was the only thing the NSA hadn't cracked. Granted, that was ten years ago. I also need a messaging platform that is (A) HIPAA-compliant (B) familiar to everyone who uses it (C) in-network for all the people we need to communicate with which was absolutely WhatsApp. Which, of course, has had Facebook baggage for longer than Signal has existed. Signal, by the way, exists in large part because Brian Acton, WhatsApp founder was extremely ooked out by what Facebook was doing to Whatsapp so he took his billions and built a competitor. So anyway we tiger-teamed WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and iOS (which, incidentally, the WSJ did years later and determined that: - Telegram is owned by a Russian oligarch, but has cool stickers - Signal is about as meme-unfriendly as David Brooks - WhatsApp has the greatest penetration by far and is also owned by Facebook - iOS is rock-fucking-solid but also based on a proprietary ad-hoc glueball entirely beholden to Apple's moods So. Wanna start a lynch mob? WhatsApp. Wanna help out Putin? Telegram. Wanna be unable to talk to anyone on Android? iMessage. Wanna be about as boring as Windows 3.11? Signal.
It'll be for people I text with, overwhelmingly. Nonviolent political organizing opposed to the current regime will be criminalized. Better to start working in bits of tech like this and adapt my lifestyle now, is my thinking.Signal