Newsletter Archives

• Secure messaging on Windows with Signal

  Posted on March 18, 2024 at 02:45 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.11 • 2024-03-18

  PRIVACY

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Signal is a smartphone secure-messaging app that also works in Windows. Here’s why you want it, and how to get started.

  Sometimes you need to send a message that you can be certain will stay private. Perhaps a friend urgently needs a place to stay while you’re out of town, and you must give them your alarm code (and maybe tell the neighbor who has your spare key how to recognize them).

  Or perhaps you want to discuss a medical condition, or something that’s perfectly legal but might still get you into trouble at work, such as whistleblowing or staging a protest.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.12.0, 2024-03-18).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Privacy Instagram, Mastodon, Newsletters, RCS, Signal, SMS, Twitter, WhatsApp, X

• The best news of the year

  Posted on December 18, 2023 at 02:44 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The year 2023 revealed many poor decisions made by Internet giants. Almost every big company seemed to make at least one techno no-no.

  The good news is that the year also saw several positive developments — or, at least, an incremental change that might lead to something better.

  I’ll update you today on some of the most significant news. These situations were first described in stories that I originally covered in an AskWoody column this year.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.51.0, 2023-12-18).

  Public Defender Generative AI, images, iMessage, Keyboards, Newsletters, RCS, Rich Communication Services, SMS, TenKeyLess, Texting

• Google explains why videos sent from iPhones look so terrible

  Posted on August 29, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Visuals sent from iPhones and iPads via iMessage are seriously degraded, sometimes unrecognizably so, when received on Android phones — and even sometimes on other iPhones. This is because Apple refuses to support a common tech standard, according to a new public effort by Google.

  You may be surprised to learn that some very solid Mac users are the first to complain about Apple’s garbling of their multimedia files.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.35.0, 2022-08-29).

  Public Defender iMessage, Messages, MMS, Newsletters, Public Defender, RCS, SMS, Texting