Why not write down the characters and their lives and may be turn that into fiction? Especially if they are so interesting.
Then this obsessive day-dreaming becomes an asset rather than a liability?
I have problems with daydreaming similar to what the article describes (it makes it incredibly difficult for me to work from home [with music the main trigger], though I am getting much better at controlling it), and yeah, most of it is wish fulfilment. Also fan fiction is basically wish fulfilment as well IMO, so that fits as well. (somewhat ironically, the effort to turn that into good fiction would probably fall prey to the same daydreaming problems)
There are a couple of problems with this suggestion. The first is, have you ever read any fan-fiction? Often, the reason these fantasies are so engaging to authors is the same reason they would rather off-putting to others. They're generally self-insert fantasies or power fantasies or wish-fulfillment fantasies.
The other problem is that writing often interrupts the fantasy. The flow in one's head is often very different than the flow of a book and that translation process often takes effort, especially if one is prone to revising the fantasy as one goes along. Worse, once a fantasy is done, one might be able to go back and retrieve it. Creative writing and fantasizing are really different 'skills.'
Well, they can quote the most advanced encryption algorithm, but you still can't be sure if they have really used it unless they share their code.
Bottomline: You either trust them or you don't.
One reason for them not sharing the details could be that they want the potential hackers to keep guessing rather than making their life easier (No encrytion is foolproof)
That's not true at all. Trust isn't blind faith. Their choice of algorithm, and other factors they can disclose tells a lot about their understanding.
"One reason for them not sharing the details could be that they want the potential hackers to keep guessing rather than making their life easier (No encrytion is foolproof)"
This is security by obscurity, an example of a poor choice. Overall, your statement says more about your lack of understanding of software security than anything else; as their statements can about theirs.
You could perfectly well trust that they're earnest without trusting that they're competent. If that's your position, which is resonable, given enough information you can alleviate some of the competency concerns.
That said, given the landscape they're working in, it's hard to trust any commercial entity is genuinely willing and able to keep your communications secure.
Transparency in how you secure your shit is basic diligence, then the user trusts that that is accurate and properly implemented. I'd never use a service that didn't do that; just as I have a firefox addon (CipherFox) that shows what cipher a site is on, so if I see, for example, RC4, I know it's secure in name only.
Security by obscurity isn't sufficient by a long shot -- and you can't rely on it -- but that doesn't mean it's without value.
Obscurity may only buy you time while you fix your security problems (before someone stumbles across the mistake you've made), but if you can manage to correct flaws before they are exploited, well, that's a good thing.
That said, Wire would do better to share enough details to show that they are putting real work into security and encryption. Compare Wire's security detail with something like Crypho's: http://www.crypho.com/features.html
They're still omitting plenty of details in their implementation, but it's obvious they have a strong focus on security. Wire doesn't really say anything (yet).
The article makes it sound a big deal to develop J2ME app. This app basically has just 2 screens, so I wouldn't think it would be any big deal to replicate those screens across platforms. Their challenge is more on the server-side, scaling for all the billions of users that they have - again, no big deal for plain text but mostly the pictures and the videos that are shared ...few big datacenters somewhere...again, nothing great. And hey, they dont even support voice calls. I dont buy that the app itself is a deal breaker. It's mostly their user base that they have been paid for.
