And I am waiting for a way to use Signal without it ever touching a smartphone) Right now I have a Graphene phone so I can trust it (so Molly works), but before that my phone (like most phones) did not support any degoogled OS. While the laptop (like most laptops can) was running Linux easily. Yet, you have to either use an Android VM or a frustrating command-line client to register!
IDK if this has been fixed, but this summer I was unable to register - it was stuck in a loop warning about lacking Google services (even though it is supposed to work without them, so maybe a coincidence).
Also didn’t know about Guardian’s repo having it, that’s awesome!
Yeah. For me, Signal’s security benefits are counteracted by various other usability issues. Such as not being feature-complete on desktop and not even allowing registration there without workarounds - given that phones are very privacy-invasive by default and far from all can have a privacy-respecting OS installed (while Linux works on pretty much any random computer). Or even on mobile - pushing the user towards Google download with dark patterns, not being on F-Droid, or (at least in my experience) the official app not working at all on my Graphene device (Molly worked perfectly though). Also, from what I’ve seen, even if you don’t mind losing connectivity with other users and would only converse with people on your server anyway (like how I do with my family on XMPP), selfhosting Signal is really hard compared to XMPP, Simplex or even Matrix, even requiring modifying the client app.
Yeah, it absolutely is. But just being FOSS does not guarantee that its development would be forked in a sufficient way should something bad happen. Especially since they use Haskell, and I heard that it is not very common thus decreasing the survival chances. Sure hope it is cool enough to still warrant a fork, though.
What the hell did I just read.
I use Simplex and overall happy with it, but since it is so new, would rather not go all-in. It is VC-backed so might eventually enshittify to make a profit.
Yeah. If the contact would be installing a whole new client to communicate with you anyway, why not make it an XMPP one? I got my mom to use it like this.
I did hear that the implementation of the encryption isn’t as good as in Signal (and most clients also use an older version of it), but from my understanding - not in any way critically so.
I haven’t lived before Internet was a big thing, so I don’t know just how likely it would be to have it published. Maybe would’ve sent it to an appropriate small magazine - under a pseudonym, of course.
Is my fetish fiction something bad that I have to take accountability for? No, it’s harmless. Would I still post it attached to my real name? Never.
Then I’d ask a mechanic that normally services it. The telematics are too much of a problem to not resolve.
I am not a car owner, but think that if faced with something like this, I’d consult with forums and/or a reputable mechanic on how to remove the telematics unit altogether. Apparently it is easy on some cars.
They do still collect an awful lot of data, though, there’s been research on that - even if less than Android, I’d consider them similar in this regard.
It is very much still a thing, and my preferred chat protocol - because it is easy to host and unlikely to enshittify.
Agree about features (pplus the fact that you’d need a bouncer or an always-on client to receive all messages), but the clients are just better than Discord. Discord just feels bloated.
Depends on the game. In mine, that would work for matches you organize with friends, but wouldn’t work with continuous public matches. Bot hosters would find the passwords and still flood the rooms. However, the safe place during the bot crisis were indeed community servers! I don’t know what exactly they did.
Yeah, I honestly like manually kicking cheaters! However, it is not enough on its own. It doesn’t help when BOTS join the game in hordes and outnumber the human players enough to make themselves impossible to kick…
That is, I would prefer even bots to a kernel-level resteictive anticheat.
I just had a better experience as a normie who doesn’t see these formats. All I see is that Matrix’s Synapse is too heavy to run on my cheap weak VPS, Conduit is not as feature-complete (most importantly - lacks old media and message deletion, which means the only way to free up my small disk space would be a reinstall), and encryption renders messages unreadable from time to time (OMEMO does not break like this).
Ah. I heard that in some cases (maybe earlier on?) they just didn’t deliver the messages without erroring out. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to use it either because a) not all carriers have it (where I am, only one does) and b) apparently not all manufacturers have it either, especially if we’re talking about cheap Chinese ones which are the majority.
Not only that, but there were reports that even Google’s implementation was stealthily turned off on custom ROMs or rooted phones :/
Yeah, true! However, you also have to trust their server not to log what is available to them (including your whole social graph), while with XMPP you can SSH into your server and see that its retention is exactly as you expected. But yeah, the issue remains when interacting with other servers - tho even then there the data is more evenly distributed between different servers with different owners.