> Now, there exists a minority of extremely technical computer user for which Signal is a nonstarter (because you need a smartphone and valid phone number to enroll in the first place). > there presently isn’t really a good recommendation for private messaging that meets their constraints.

You don't need a phone number or a phone for https://haven.xx.network and there are others.

If nothing is recommended, fine, but it's simplistic to not recommend or even consider the 3-4 apps that don't have those limitations. If you didn't have time to investigate or couldn't find anything else, say so.

Every time someone brings up PGP issues, it's always something to do with the usability rather than blaming the protocol itself. If people are too reckless, no matter what protocol you use, it will always be insecure in that sense

For emails, there's autocrypt which works great. You don't have to deal with managing keys anymore

> Note: I’m deliberately being blunt in this post because literally more than a decade of softspokenness from cryptography experts has done nothing to talk users off the PGP cliff. Being direct seems more effective than being tactful.

I hate PGP, too. However, I’ve spent money on five YubiKeys and several months of tinkering to make them somewhat work on Linux and WSL. I use them to sign my commits and Debian packages I build.

If your goal is to convince me to throw *all of this* away and sink another shitload of money into an alternative and re-do months of tinkering to make it actually work, then being deliberately blunt and condescending is not going to help your case.

I don't understand the issue with encrypted emails. Is Proton Mail not secure?