I would argue that this statement from Bill is the most interesting. This statement shows Bill Gates, someone who has influence on legislatures, making a statement against encryption.
Gates is scared people are passing bad information through encrypted platforms such as whatsapp. Next, he will require 24/7 monitoring of every private citizen to make sure we don’t call him mean names.
I'm not convinced e2e encryption exists in WhatsApp. Every time I have conversations about products in whats app I get those products as adverts in Facebook.
Did you or your correspondent view a web page related to the product before or after the conversation? Viewing web pages is quite common.
Facebook also has a button next to ads saying why you were shown the ad. What does that say? Also the causation might be in the other direction. You and your correspondent might have seen an ad that then caused you to have the conversation.
Nope. So my current apartment is on the 28th floor. It's common to have gates/grills on the windows here in Singapore. But this apartment, AFAIK the family didn't have kids so they never got it done.
So I messaged my agent and said "i love the apartment but the windows don't have any gates or safety catches, my understanding is gates are pretty expensive, would it be possible to atleast get safety catches on the windows?"
Never googled or anything like that. For the next couple of months I had constant adverts for windows gates in Facebook.
That doesn't mean there's no E2E encryption. WhatsApp can take the text of your conversations and also send plaintext to Facebook for ad targeting, while the actual conversation to the other person is still E2E encrypted. Or do "local" analytics on the phone to find keywords for ad targeting. Etc.
So literally defeating the purpose of e2e encryption where the conversations are between me and the other person. Not parsed prior for advertising. In any case people should avoid WhatsApp as it’s clearly less secure now that Facebook owns it.
That in and of itself is a testament to how problematic our man-made legal system is.
Compare a nature made system to a man made system.
Nature changes over time. Our laws and regulations however do not get updated to reflect the times. That is the reason why human progress is slow. It's because humans don't change. That is the root cause of all evil. Humans like the comfort of not having to change.
> Nature changes over time. Our laws and regulations however do not get updated to reflect the times. That is the reason why human progress is slow. It's because humans don't change. That is the root cause of all evil. Humans like the comfort of not having to change.
That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard today. It took a billion plus years for nature to come up with humans and about ten thousand years for us to go from written language to causing a mass extinction. To call such a comparison "hyperbolic" would be an understatement.
> Nature changes over time. Our laws and regulations however do not get updated to reflect the times. That is the reason why human progress is slow. It's because humans don't change. That is the root cause of all evil. Humans like the comfort of not having to change.
You have put together arguments that make sense individually, but do not make sense when you weave them together. Nature changes over time, but over a long period of time (e.g. evolution is slow). Our laws and regulations do not get updated to reflect the times, yes, but the times that are changing is because of humans, not nature. A manmade part of society is having a tough time catching up with another manmade part of society. Human progress is NOT slow, at least when you are comparing it with nature. Humans do not change on an individual level, but they change a great deal en masse culturally, psychologically, etc. We are actually almost built for adaptation and change intergenerationally.
There is a subtle point here about institutions refusing change, but you cannot make a valid comparison of speed between human institutions and nature.
Everyone has a range of opinions and some of them will be factually/morally/logically/practically objectionable. The fact that Gates has an opinion that you, I or indeed everyone disagrees with is not interesting.
What about "It’s insane how confused the trials here in the US have been."? That opinion is very important and has implications for how everyone here should act. The last 6 months have been expensively purchased and the best thing that could have been bought was good information. If that time has been wasted then there should be reform of an evidence-based nature. This is an opinion that really deserves debate, opinions thrown about and evidence dredged up. With encryption, HN will basically just agree that he is wrong and everyone likes encryption. Not much more to say. Maybe we will think of the children on the way thorough.
Encryption is an important issue but frankly that isn't what Gates is talking about, so arguing about it is a bit pointless. It is barely even germain to the topic he is talking about. He is talking about a global pandemic.
It does speak to why he's treated with so much distrust, as is discussed by other threads. Unlike the average person, Gates is someone who can actually make things happen with his incredible wealth. It suggests a form of paternalistic authoritarian attitude towards social issues that undeniably colors his attitude towards this pandemic.
You can also read in his tone that he feels personally slighted by not being given a seat at the table in the US COVID response. People point to South Korea's success and call the US a failure, not realizing that if you implemented their measures in the US: things like forced contact tracing, forced registration, and locking up the infected in isolated sites, you'd have a civil insurrection on your hands.
History of democracy in South Korea is short, and privacy is not recognized as an important virtue. Sacrificing your rights for the nation (or historically the kingdom) is an important duty, and failure to abide by such ‘selflessness’ is deemed as malicious and egocentric. It will take many more decades for South Korea to shed its cultural shadow of being subject to a ruler.
A case and point: Seoul is riddled with security cameras on every street. This makes Seoul an incredibly safe city, but also with decreased sense of privacy. Cameras are everywhere, and this is not recognized much as a potential problem in South Korea.
With Covid, there is a pending legislation to sign in your name and social security number whenever you visit designated crowded areas. I am worried for the increased loss of freedom and privacy in South Korea, but the culture worries less about that, and more about mutual subsistence.
> The fact that Gates has an opinion that you, I or indeed everyone disagrees with is not interesting.
Evidently it is interesting to the HN croud, because this is how they vote.
Why argue about this? This is what we have a voting system on HN for. It shows us what is objectively interesting and what is not, we don't really need you or anyone else to tell us what should be interesting, we have real data to demonstrate what is.