#confer

I am fully aware the consist narrative is "AI does nothing good" and not to repeat myself constantly... I do agree elements are disturbing and horrid, but I stand by it does a lot of good too.

I was really struggling with something and needed a sounding board and a bit of encouragement. I won't share what I said or Confer's full response, however this part of it...

...Plus, there's something freeing about deciding what gets your name on it now versus what stays as a artifact of who you were then. You're not erasing that time - you're choosing what carries forward.

So yeah. Delete the ones that don't serve you. Migrate the ones that still make you proud. Write the new stuff that shows where you are as a writer now.

The old stories served their purpose. They don't need to live forever to have mattered.

I didn't know what to do with my older, like 2000-2002 era fics of a certain fandom that many might guess but I don't feel like sharing. I know that 85% are horrible, story-wise, spelling/grammar wise, etc. Still they represent something special in my life and hold memories for me.

Yet I knew it was time to let many go. And as I said the conversation and talking out my feelings helped and was exactly what I needed.

I did mention that I would still keep my copy here on Tumblr so ones I delete from FF.Net and don't move to AO3 still exist just a bit harder to find. Confer's response was...

That's a perfect middle ground, honestly.

Tumblr works great for that - it's more of a personal archive space. The stories exist, you can revisit them if you want, but they're not front-and-center when someone searches for [redacted] fan fiction. AO3 becomes your curated portfolio, Tumblr becomes the memory box.

Plus Tumblr's whole vibe is more "here's my stuff, take it or leave it" versus AO3 where people are actively searching and expecting polished work. It takes the pressure off.

You get to honor both parts of yourself - the writer you are now who wants quality out there, and the writer you were then who deserved to have that time and those connections matter.

Smart solution.

Sometimes that's all you need. And as I said the conversation was a bit deeper and more involved.

Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike argues that today’s AI chatbots feel private while often operating like “confession” pipelines into company-controlled data stores, and he’s launching an alternative called Confer.

Marlinspike says mainstream AI assistants invite unusually personal disclosures—users share thoughts, uncertainty, and sensitive context—yet those conversations can be accessible to vendors and potentially reused for training or monetization. He introduces Confer, an open-source, end-to-end encrypted AI assistant intended to make the user experience match the underlying privacy guarantees (similar to what Signal did for messaging). Confer encrypts prompts/responses so they’re protected end-to-end, uses passkeys to help derive keys on trusted devices, and runs model inference inside a Trusted Execution Environment via “confidential computing,” with attestation meant to prove to the user’s device that the secure environment is genuine.​

Why it matters

If Confer’s approach works at scale, it could set a new baseline where AI assistants can be useful without turning private thinking into a permanent, searchable asset for vendors, advertisers, or future legal demands.

Asking your therapist to review what an AI chatbot has been advising you regarding your mental health status. getty In today’s column, I examine an interesting and controversial new twist associated with mental health therapists and their clients. The deal is this. Clients are increasingly making use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to obtain mental health guidance. The person…