I didn't want to post this from my main so I'll post it from my alt instead. I just found out I got a first class honours in my degree! Not sure what that translates to in U.S. degrees, but I'm fucking hyped :big-cool:

I don't know what they're legally able to do, but it's being investigated by the US, EU, China & South Korea at least, so I don't think it matters too much that it's not owned by a British company anymore

I don't think end to end encryption is a third party plugin, and client support for it isn't bad anymore, but the rest are valid critiques. Let's hope Matrix does well!

Fair enough, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Yeah, that Moxie post is pretty infamous, and I have a lot of thoughts on it (won't write them all because it'd take too long). Mainly though I think he makes a very good point, and is more or less right.

The Matrix devs talk about this a lot, and is why for example they have Matrix Spec Proposals. Those are meant to work around the critique (they can be very informal, easy to submit, lots get merged). With the hype Matrix is getting these days, I think it could offer a federated way forward.

Even with that out the way, I think a lot of the reason centralized services do so well is because it's just easier to use them. If a non-technical user tries XMPP and Matrix, they're going to be confused ("why do I need to sign up to an instance, and which do I choose?"). Compared to Signal, you just give it your number and you're done, it's so much easier. This aspect of federated vs non-federated is not solved (Matrix's "solution" is to have a de-facto primary instance, matrix.org, but that undermines a lot of its federated claims). I think advances in UI/UX will eventually lead to this being less of an issue.

The different between something like the de-Googled Android operating systems and posh versus XMPP and Matrix is that, to my knowledge, there's nothing about XMPP that truly makes it inherently worse at the protocol level. Its main drawback, aside from its small userbase, is that most of its clients are not very good. Admittedly it is good to see excitement around Matrix because a lot of clients are being worked on. But had Matrix not been around I would have hoped XMPP would have gained more traction by now.

The de-Googled Android operating systems have the issue of being overwhelmingly full of Google code. It's too difficult to remove it all, I don't think even the best de-Googled OS manage that. XMPP doesn't have a similar flaw that Matrix fixes, in the way that the new Linux UI work does with Android.

The problem with that approach is that most the users are using Facebook Messenger or something.

What issues does it have that Matrix doesn't?

If you haven't used it before, I recommend it. I prefer it to Matrix because it's more robust and Matrix's only server implementation is quite slow.

I'm curious, why did you use veracrypt rather than something like LUKS?

"I use Linux as my operating system," I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. "Actually," he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. you use GNU+Linux." I don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "I use alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It's Linux, but it's not GNU+Linux."

The smile quickly drops from the man's face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth as he drop to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!" Coolly, I reply "if windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?" I interrupt his response with "and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even if you were correct, you won't be for long."

With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. he lies on the floor, cold and limp. I've womansplained him to death.

I'm going to stop lurking and start posting because I'm no liberal.

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I love David Graeber, thanks for the link.

As sailorfish pointed out, not all of European culture. Eastern Europe isn't always included in "the West", which is instead taken to mean (mainly) Western Europe, the U.S. & Canada, and Australia.

Good point.

Part of the difficulty is that both terms are constantly being defined and redefined. I remember somebody here predicted that in 100 years or so, some Hispanics could be deemed "white" people.

I also remember reading about how Germans weren't considered "white" until the 1900s or so (not 100% sure about that, I may be misremembering).

Not exclusively to the bourgeoisie. It also includes the petite bourgeoisie, and most importantly in the context of my post, it refers to the labor aristocracy.

I've been owned.

No. There are plenty of other things to do after logging off from this website. Play a video game or read a book, for example.

Often if somebody says "log off" they're saying "have some perspective". "Go outside" is similar. They both also often mean "disengage, please".

"Log off" is basically the same advice but doesn't include a risk of getting ill.

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