Matrix has a lot of problems, some of them inherent to its design, including spreading metadata of encrypted messages to any server that participates in a chat room (this metadata includes the time the message was sent, size, sender and recipients of messages).

I’m not a fan of it, despite it being federated.

Not personally a fan of it since it’s not federated (and has no plans to implement federation) meaning its one centralized point of failure and one centralized point for governments to subpoena. It has no plans to implement any form of encryption (Movim has solid encryption, and Fluxer plans to implement encrypted DMs in the future).

Also very concerning to me is that it uses the MIT license, which allows for the company to do a rug-pull and close-source the code in the future so they can enshittify it. Only the GPL license ensures that it remains open-source and in the community’s hands forever.

I found with Movim that you need to ensure that both you and the other person have each other added as contacts (and both parties each accepted those contact requests) for the call button to show up, just being in a chat with each other isn’t enough (and that is quite painful UX, since there’s no information that explains that that must be done).

I think it won’t show a call button if it doesn’t detect a microphone either.

In the case of our communication apps, they do have to be open-source and GPL licensed, otherwise we’re just kicking the can down the road. Being able to be self-hosted and federated are also essential for long-term stability and preventing centralization.

The two best discord alternatives we have available to us that meet those requirements are Movim and Fluxer. I would not consider any other options.

I believe MX Linux shares a lot of devs with Antix, but offers full DE’s.

MX Linux (Debian based) has a KDE version, and lets you choose a non-systemd init during the install.

it’s very clear we have to escape Android and Google entirely, there is no other option.

Please donate to PostmarketOS if you have the means, it gives us a true alternative that is completely community owned, it just needs our support to become polished and to add support for more phones.

We have to support software that’s still made for us. While we still can.

It’s less hidden for admins. Whenever we click on a user’s profile, there’s a button that can take us directly to their individual mod-log history, which can help us quickly see if there’s a history of AI or bot spam behavior that was spotted by other admins/mods.

Also did you mean “bot scrapers”

Agh, auto correct got me. Yes, I meant bot scrapers.

As for the robots.txt v2 idea, I’m not sure that would be very effective or popular amongst admins, as I think most would prefer not to give it any data if possible, and even with reduced rates, there would probably still be enough bots and queries to present a significant issue.

I think there have been some experiments with ‘trapping’ bots in a recursive loop that they don’t realize is a loop, and therefore can’t escape, but I’m not sure how effective those have been.

The Fediverse has a lot more safeguards in place, in particular the ability to require a message to register an account, such as my instance requires, weeds out 99% of bots.

We can also defederate from instances that become overwhelmed from bots if they have lax sign-up requirements (already happened a few times), which vastly limits their ability to take hold.

The bigger problem for us, I think, is the fight against bot scrapers. Anubis is keeping them at bay for now, but it will likely be an ongoing cat and mouse game until the AI bubble bursts.

Although it’s all borrowed money so it doesn’t matter to them…

Right, and they tend to convince investors to give them more by the amount of users adopting and using the product, which they can then extrapolate out with wild projections to convince venture capital to give them even more investments.

If more people abandon it entirely, the less venture capital they may be able to entice into their trap.

Unless that AI is hosted locally and only trained exclusively on public domain or GPL code (AFAIK, no AI model like that exists), it’s both unethical to use, and potentially corrupting the code-base with proprietary code it copied from somewhere else.

If a developer uses an AI hosted in a datacenter, then every use of it encourages the waste of water and fossil fuels to run the datacenter, it encourages the more to built in vulnerable neighborhoods where they can’t do anything about the pollution they generate, and it enriches the pocketbooks of the techno-fascists that run those datacenters.

I’m surprised they’re not adamantly against it, since AI code so frequently spits out garbage code, yet Debian is known for its stability. How can they not see the conflict here, especially to their reputation?

Your previous comment lead me to think that you disapprove of instructional videos of things that if replicated by someone who does it incorrectly it would become dangerous or life-threatening.

Hm. Out of curiosity, do also believe that instructional videos of how to do house construction, electrical work, or brake repair on cars should not be freely available to prevent people from watching it and doing incorrectly and dangerously?

If someone’s threat model requires absolute always-on encryption, then XMPP does currently fail that standard, but each individual will have to determine if their threat model does infact require that, and contrast it with the potential benefits XMPP currently has compared to the more secure options.

As an example, all of the always-on E2EE alternatives are really only a good alternative to messengers like whatsapp, there is currently no always-on messenger that could potentially replace the feature set of Discord, where as with the XMPP Movim client, that is currently possible due to the recent implementation of Discord-like spaces (single communities/channels with groups of rooms and drop-in chats).

For a discord community or for friends that want discord-like features, XMPP is leagues better for privacy, even though it only has optional encryption. It also offers true a decentralized federated network, which allows for more control of how your encrypted or unencrypted data is shared.

Unfortunately there’s no perfect answer for all messenger needs, so each will need to have their pros and cons weighed on a case by case basis.

I’m not super well versed with diving, but wouldn’t the excess pressure and air just go out the bottom of the helmet? it’s open to the water below, similar to shallow-water helmets, which are used by untrained tourists.

How would it blow up your lungs?

I’m assuming you didn’t watch the video, but this particular helmet design has a completely open bottom. the only thing keeping the water beneath you out is the positive pressure from the air hose. Any excess air flows out the bottom.

it needs weights attached to it to keep it from floating (he attached just enough weight to keep it neutrally buoyant). If it sprung a leak, you would easily be able to remove the helmet either by lifting it up off you, or tilting forward or to the side and sliding it off. it is not strapped to the person at all.

Not OP, but XMPP and Delta chat are good options.

For XMPP, the Movim client in particular is a good replacement for Discord, since it can do audio/video calls, as well as screenshare, and Discord-like spaces (channels with groups of rooms).

The only advantage of the non-a models is they use a potentially more durable battery that is less prone to pillowing.