Every Friday, I post some of the coolest things I found (or explored) that week. I borrowed the concept from Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday. Since I don’t want to commit to exactly 5 things, there will only be some points, which may change from week to week. My main motivation is to keep up the habit of regular blog posts with little effort, and to have a little archive of cool things I’ve stumbled upon.
What I’m reading
You probably heard about Pavel Durov’s arrest in France. I am less interested in the current case of Telegram than in the whole messaging service as we have known it for years. It is still so wild that many people still believe that Telegram is a secure or “encrypted messaging app”. This is one of Telegram’s claims that has actually never proven to be true. And yet, many news outlets continue to spread these claims.
Strong encryption by today’s standards would mean end-to-end encryption by default, like Signal, WhatsApp, Threema, Wire use by default and can’t be turned off, protecting every message end-to-end. Unfortunately, Telegram has never enabled end-to-end encryption by default, has used questionable encryption algorithms for years, and is not fully open source. Telegram (and anyone else with access to its servers) has access to every message ever sent through its platform.
Here are some resources you may find helpful that highlight Telegram’s security weaknesses:
- Matthew Green, renowned cryptographer: “Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?”
- Gizmodo: ” The Arrest of Pavel Durov Is a Reminder That Telegram Is Not Encrypted”
- Wired: “The Kremlin Has Entered the Chat”
- On the CCA (in)security of MTProto (Telegram’s encryption protocol)
In addition, I can also recommend securemessagingapps.com to compare popular messaging apps with each other.
But the most interesting read I had from all of this was Kremlingram.org, which is a project by an investigative group studying Telegram’s security and its possible ties to the Kremlin. Telegram has pretty much always been the most dubious messaging app, especially when it comes to its intransparent funding. This should be an immediate red flag for everyone. We now communicate the most intimate details of our lives through messengers, so we should choose wisely which ones we consider trustworthy and why. There’s plenty of indirect evidence pointing to Telegram’s close ties to the Kremlin – from personal connections, to history of relationships, sources of funding, statements from government officials, and a general lack of transparency.
What I’m listening to
“Sometimes we need to behave like happy people if we actually want to be happy.”, Dr. LaFreniere in “How to Strengthen Your Happiness Muscle”.
What I’m watching
My YouTube history is currently full of goalkeeper training videos. We don’t have a goalkeeping coach on my team at the moment, so it’s up to me to come up with a proper training if I want to improve. I’ve had great coaches in the past (read more about that here), so I’d say I know how to design a good training session, but it takes time to prepare the session and easily doubles the time investment of a single training session. And time is something that I am struggling to find at the moment. Also, I’m not a big fan of being a goalkeeper and a goalkeeper coach at the same time, because it makes me train others well while I can’t fully focus on getting better myself.
The thing I struggle with the most right now is goal kicks. In fact, I have struggled with them my entire career and it is probably one of the few things I have never been taught properly. This is one of the best goal kicking videos I have found so far. I plan to work on these more consistently in training sessions to improve. If you have any tips and tricks on goal kicks, let me know!
What I’m excited about
It is with some trepidation that I await the results of the elections in Thuringia and Saxony this weekend. Fascism is on the rise again with a party that is tilting the mainstream towards the far right. It feels like a doctor’s appointment where I already know the outcome is bad, but in a way I feel relieved to finally get the diagnosis. Once the results are in, there is room to act on them. The East German elections feel similar to me. Germany is the last country anyone wants to make great again.
Alright, that’s it for this week. Enjoy your weekend! 👋