One of the most sus things about Signal is the cult following it has. I really can’t think of any other chat app that will have people coming out of the woodwork advocating for it while telling you not to use anything else. There’s absolutely nothing special about Signal that would warrant this. It’s at best a mediocre user experience, it still handles a lot of things like switching devices really poorly. It’s open source in name only. There’s just no reason why it should be this popular on its own merits.

It’s not, it is a terminal emulator application for Android that creates a Linux-like environment.

I would imagine so.

That’s precisely why I pointed out that the role of Europe has changed from the American perspective in my original reply. It’s not a question of a specific leader, but the structural change in the material realities of the empire. A future president in the US may be less crass than Trump, but the policy itself isn’t going to change. The US is no longer going to see Europe as being worth the investment. The empire is contracting, and Americans will husband their resources either to dominate their own hemisphere or to try and contain China.

The handful examples are incredibly consequential. Europe is basically entirely dependent on the US for energy. And with energy prices in the US being around three times lower, the US is using that as leverage to lure industry away from Europe. The US is also actively meddling in European politics and uses their social media platforms to shape public opinion in Europe.

It’s kind of hard to see what positive actions the US has taken towards Europe over the past few years. It’s an abusive relationship where Europe continues to accept one humiliation after another.

Now that the Iran fiasco looks to have failed, it’s entirely possible that Trump will remember about Greenland again. Meanwhile, there’s very little indication that EU actually does much of anything to protect any common interests. The EU immediately folded in the trade war with the US, while China and many other countries held firm.

I disagree, Europe simply doesn’t hold the same strategic relevance for the US as it did in the days of the Cold War. The tariffs under Trump and the Inflation Reduction Act under Biden were both direct economic attacks on Europe. Blowing up Nord Stream was also an attack on European economy. Europe is also one of the main victims in the current war on Iran being further cut off from energy. If Europeans still don’t understand that the US is going to cannibalize whatever industry from Europe that it can and turn it into a cheap labor market, then they deserve everything that’s coming to them.

Right, but I would imagine now there’s going to be more pressure to become less dependent on US tech with the US becoming openly hostile to Europe.

I thought this program was still going no? https://www.raconteur.net/technology/schleswig-holstein-open-source