How could something designed for human communication be so utterly cumbersome and confusing ?

Several reasons, I guess?

1. The PGP (later, OpenPGP) protocol.

The proprietary PGP software, which was the initial implementation of the PGP protocol(s) also suffered from usability problems:

• 1998. Whitten, A., and Tygar, J. D. Usability of Security: a case study
• 1999. Whitten, A., and Tygar, J. D. Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0
• 2015. Atwater, E., Bocovich, C., Hengartner, U., Lank, E., & Goldberg, I. Leading Johnny to Water: Designing for Usability and Trust
• 2015. Ruoti, S., Andersen, J., Zappala, D., & Seamons, K. Why Johnny still, still can’t encrypt: Evaluating the usability of a modern PGP client

2. GnuPG maintainers are implicitly using asymptotic software versioning

Donald Knuth was probably the most notable proponent of the idea that software packages should increasingly tend toward stability, with fewer and fewer patches needed. He used explicitly asymptotic version numbering for TeX and Metafont.

Some of the quotes in OP’s video make imply GnuPG’s maintainers are implicitly following a similar approach, e.g. the section about “Sequoia’s need for churn”.

With encryption software, there is an especially strong argument for being conservative about changes. Patches may have unforeseen consequences, adding subtle vulnerabilities.

However, the downside of this, as the gpg.fail team pointed out, is that it biases the GnuPG maintainers towards excessive rejection of patches. Especially patches that would improve usability. Arguably, TeX suffered from a similar bias; hence the development of LaTeX and newer TeX front-ends to improve usability.

3. Changing the interface would be effortful

Improving GnuPG’s interface would require quite a lot of work in itself, both to the codebase and the documentation.

Releasing a version with those changes would also require fielding a lot of support queries for many years, because decades of software manuals all over the web were written for the traditional GnuPG interface, and aren’t going to be updated overnight. Some of those manuals will surely never get updated, because they are no longer maintained even though they are still online and still used.

I can sympathise with the GnuPG maintainers for finding this daunting. But the improvements are needed. Thankfully, developers of tools like minisign, age, and sequoia are taking on much of this work; it’s just a pity that the work had to be done in this fragmented way through third-party efforts, instead of in GnuPG itself.

They throw out far more than that in unsold food at the end of the day.

Again, if the store is wasting food, boycott it (or persuade it to stop doing so).

Decent coffee shops partner with local homeless shelters, or food apps / messageboards (Olio, Too Good To Go, …), to find takers for their leftovers.

It’s not really about the cost of the cup.

Indeed, which is why I did not say that it was “really about the cost of the cup”. The latter is, as you correctly imply, only one factor.

Boycott those stores.

Decent coffee shops offer a discount if you bring a reusable mug, because it saves them a disposable one.

That doesn’t seem to be true in practice.

People on the secondhand market seem to be more drawn to other “premium” brands and to features that are less important for a smartphone than security (e.g. camera zoom).

Most places I’ve looked, secondhand Pixels are priced similarly to or lower than other brands’ secondhand “flagship” phones of similar age - even though Pixels have a killer feature the others lack: security hardware to run GrapheneOS.

I don’t judge but I do get annoyed…

Getting annoyed is a form of judgement.

… at US defaultism

Yes, U.S. defaultism is problematic.

Still, as long as companies, especially US-based ones like Google, are exporting their US-centric products & practices, people outside the US will be exposed to products & practices shaped by US law.

Because enforcement is rarely watertight, the above holds true even if the importing country’s laws forbid those products & practices.

Therefore, unless you wish to live in ignorance, it’s worth being aware of the laws that most strongly shape the technologies that in turn shape your society - even laws from jurisdictions outside your own.

Exactly how does it have implications in a country it’s not a law of?

Because it had, and continues to have, a significant bearing on the development of technologies that are used internationally, many of which shape the society you live in.

Not gonna dispute that.

However, someone like that not only probably wouldn’t want to submit residency evidence to Google, they probably wouldn’t have utility bills or land registry documents etc that could prove residency. Therefore, they’d be outside the scope of this post.

They might not know it.

But they would, if anyone with your name & address ever:

• Stored it on a Google server. (Maybe a business you once placed an order with uses GSuite?)
• Made a Google/GMail Contacts/Address-book entry with that info. (Maybe you invited a friend or colleague for dinner?)
• Made those details public (land registry, company officer registry, etc).
• Etc.

Somewhat relevant: https://thebrainbin.org/m/linux@lemmy.ml/t/1858588

It would probably be a better use of time for those people to vote and lobby their legislatures for decent privacy protections in law.

Yet another example of why US citizens would benefit from GDPR-equivalent privacy laws.

Where will you post updates?

Sorry, I’m not sure how to bypass that. Maybe disable JavaScript or try Reading Mode?

It’s a good article. However, it has at least one massive oversight: the NYT should have included Trump’s promise to end the Russian invasion of #Ukraine “on day one”.

A chart showing the cumulative loss of life since then would be sobering indeed.

How does resale value “support Google”?

If you want GrapheneOS without funding Google, why not get a secondhand Pixel?

Thanks, I’ll try that.

The issue has happening on an increasing number of websites, though: Ecosia, ScienceDirect, TrainSplit (which thankfully has a fallback to hCaptcha), Indeed, and more.

Thanks. What’s your source for that list? I think you’re right that those measurements are factors in the final “bot score”, but I expect there are many other measurements also factored in.

If you look at my OP, though, you’ll see my browser passed the checks but was still blocked, which Cloudflare said shouldn’t happen.

It pops up on which page?

I can’t see it on either of the pages mentioned in my OP:

• https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-challenges/troubleshooting/challenge-solve-issues/
• https://browser-compat.turnstile.workers.dev/

I’m getting this issue in Chromium.

Like you, I’ve encountered it especially often in the last 3 weeks or so. Thanks for confirming it’s not just me!

Do you have a link to that feedback form, by any chance?