Infrastructure Legislation

I don't tend to agree with Senator Capito (R-WV) on anything, but there are a few things she recently said about Green Energy infrastructure legislation (particularly for e-cars) which I also believe. It will be incremental and it should be done in cooperation with companies which are involved in the energy and transportation industries. We may disagree on details, but these big picture ideas make sense to me.

We have already seen Tesla building charging stations for its car owners. I don't know how they arrange for the electrical power supplies. But, that beginning can be improved by having government providing subsidies or some kind of assistance to anyone wanting to build charging
stations -- only the ones which can be used by any of the EV cars being made. There's no sense in building chargers which will only work with one kind of car or truck.

There are a lot of gasoline/diesel stations across America and it took a long time for them to be built. We want the EV cars to come along much faster since we already have roads for them and we have a pressing need to depart from fossil fuels. So, incentives of some kind for the construction of charging stations of a certain number per year and of a certain standard (to charge all vehicles) is easily done and can be run by the Department of Transportation, with safety standards designed by
the Department of Energy. There are existing industry standards and they should probably be continued, but agreements among the transportation manufacturers needs to be upheld, as we do with liquid fueling stations for gasoline and diesel.

Background Checks for Gun Purchases or Transfers

I'm tempted to simply repeat what I just read on social media. Don't call them "Universal Background Checks", call them "Checks for Previous Use of Violence or Mental Illness".

In recent discussions it has become more clear to me that the urban-rural divide which is connected to the Democrat-Republican divide applies quite well to the gun use issue. In many rural areas guns are just used only for hunting or target shooting. And the weapons of choice are rifles or shotguns (long barrel). Someone who lives in the city and uses a rifle is likely to take it to a rural place for hunting. In the city the weapon of choice tends to be a pistol (short barrel) and when possible automatic or large clip. Yes, there are some crazy people who use rifles for mass shootings, but that isn't the most common use.

Thus, I suggest that any legislation related to gun purchases or transfers should be tailored to the type of weapon and its primary uses. Handgun or a large clip (Congress can choose a number, but anything over 12 bullets is my immediate sense of "large") purchases or transfers should require the background check for previous violence or mental illness or violation of gun laws. Purchase of transfer of long barrel weapons (usually rifles or shotguns) should be left as they are today.

This is a departure in Democratic political policy, but it may be the kind of smaller step which could succeed in Congress.

Myanmar Violence - updated

There is great violence in Myanmar. To become more familiar, read from the Reddit.com discussion which includes pictures and some videos.

https://www.reddit.com/r/myanmar/


If the military of Myanmar want the support of The United States, the first step for them is to stop killing and send the protesters home. After that discussions can be arranged to find some kind of government arrangement which is satisfactory and peaceful. Without that first step there is no way to proceed.

 

Update: Apparently the people of Myanmar have had difficulties with the Indonesians when there was a prior military coup, they don't have the best of relations with Australia, India has had a tiff with China, and the United Nations can't act because China and Russia veto that. 

So, I've suggested Japan, South Korea, or another nation far away, such as France or the U.K., become involved.

Has the time arrived for Google Messages ?

This blog-post is all about messaging from one computing device to another.

There are a couple of basic protocols for message sending. The user of programs don't need to know about them, but if you're interested, here's a discussion of the basic texting protocol SMS and security.

https://www.howtogeek.com/709373/why-sms-text-messages-arent-private-or-secure/

There have been many texting/messaging apps (short for application programs), including those which emphasize ease of use and a nice UI (User Interface) and some which emphasize security like Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, iMessages (Apple), and others.

https://getstream.io/blog/most-secure-messaging-apps/

Some are owned by foreigners, some are more popular with kids, and some have been embroiled in security controversies.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/03/14/new-warning-issued-for-all-whatsapp-and-imessage-users-major-threat-to-encryption/

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/21/whatsapp-encryption-under-scrutiny-by-us-government.html

The changing corporate ownerships and the changing technologies or user agreements means there has NOT been any one in particular that has dominated the market. Recently a change of the user agreement has made WhatsApp users worry and the CEO of Tesla Corp, Elon Musk decided to promote Signal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/why-whatsapp-s-privacy-rules-sparked-moves-to-rivals-quicktake

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-signal/

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/what-is-signal-everything-you-need-to-know-about-elon-musks-app-recommendation/

Signal has a messaging app, but they also license use of their encryption technologies. Google has decided to use it. That leads me to introducing Google Messages.

For an introduction, here is the Wikipedia page for Google Messages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Google)

And here is the PlayStore link to Google Messages. I'm not endorsing it, only discussing it and introducing it to anyone who hasn't looked at texting apps or Google Messages in particular. In fact, I've just recently put it on my phone and haven't used it much yet.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.messaging&hl=en_US&gl=US

Studying these different apps, in particular to use on smart-phone, desktop PC, and tablet, I discovered a few interesting things. Aside from Google developing the RCS protocol, they also are now using the Signal encryption technology for end-to-end message security. It's applied automatically. However, Google has been struggling to get their many communications apps in good order. Here is an article describing some of that struggle with regard to their texting app Messages.

https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2021-and-googles-still-doing-bad-job-explaining-google-messages

Here's a video describing it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8jxj9GQa3I

So, how will we know if Google Messages can become very popular? Well, there are many people who simply won't trust a large corporation with their privacy. Even the use of the Signal encryption technologies may not suffice to win them over. But, with other companies now struggling to hang onto their customers it may become possible for Google to have some success.