They’ve been around a bit now. Everyone seems to be pretty satisfied. Desktop app could use some improvements, which is already on their roadmap

Money transfer platforms are even worse than chat apps in terms of how acceptance dictates usefulness. You might convince a couple of friends to use xmpp instead of whatsapp. But its near impossible to get major outlets to integrate new payment methods. Especially if that platform advocates privacy and therefore doesn’t offer a return on invest based on user data. I don’t think we’re gonna see true alternatives without government regulation, and even then…

Strictly speaking, if being trackable is an issue for you, you shouldn’t run around with bluetooth enabled in the first place. And incidentally, no BT means no find my device either.

I second disroot. Been happy with their service.

Nobara is great distro that includes nvidia fixes and has a KDE spin

Let’s see what europes e2ee ban will bring. Proton is one of the “high risk” services mentioned in the bills debate. Might not be too long before you have to host your own mail server if you want privacy in europe.

Privacy matters most in the individual case, with people who know you.

That statement is subjective at best. My friends and coworkers knowing where I live certainly isn’t my concern. In today’s day and age privacy enthusiasts are definitely more scared of corpos and governments.

isn’t worth it yet.

You’re thinking too small. Just in the context of the e2ee ban planned in europe, think what you could do. The new law is set to scan all your messages before/after sending for specific keywords. Imagine you get automatically flagged and now an AI is scanning all your pictures for locations and contacts and what not. Just the thought that might be technically possible is scary as hell.

You’re misunderstanding the post. It’s not about whether or not someone could guess your location from a picture. It’s about the automation thereof. As soon as that is possible it becomes another viable vector to compromise your privacy.

3 reasons for me:

• XMPP implementations have been around so much longer than signal, to me signal would be “just another messaging app”

• XMPP doesn’t require my phone number. Signal might give you the option to use usernames with your contacts, but still requires a valid number for registration last I checked.

• I can self host an XMPP server instead of trusting/depending on someone else.

The encryption itself isn’t outlawed. The law would force all app and service providers (signal and proton for example are mentioned as high risk entities) to implement backdoors. The user to user communication stays encrypted.

But you can make it a lot harder and economically unattractive for them

It’s a false dichotomy to argue that a service can’t have a free privacy respecting offering.

I don’t believe anyone is arguing that it’s technically impossible. But reality is pretty clear that it’s implausible. Targeted ads reel in too much money.

I think the real fallacy is getting used to services being free at all. You need to pay a monthly fee for basically every utility, but as soon as it’s in the digital world people expect that to change. What makes a search engine or mail provider so much different than your ISP or cable provider? You want competent services that respect your privacy? Pay for alternatives like Kagi and Proton.

In other news, water is wet. Honestly though, people expecting “free” services from big corpos are naive. What do they expect the servers and admins/devs are payed with?

Uses a lot of battery power.

I don’t use jellyfin and I stopped using a raspi as media pc. My new media pc doesn’t have an IR receiver so I use a mini bluetooth keyboard. While I used a raspi on my tv I had to dowload the correct IR package for the raspian distro I used and configured it. Or you could use Librelelec which has the IR support OOTB and check if there is a jellyfin plugin

I don’t know if the NUCs have IR receivers OOTB, which you will need to use a standard remote. I know the raspberries have them.

For best compatibility with NUCs I would just google for which distro to use. You’re definitely not the first person to use them as media PC. I use Nobara on my Beelink and everything worked OOTB, but that’s different hardware. Once you have a distro running you have all the options of a PC to run Plex, Firefox, Spotify, etc…

My go to OS is Nobara KDE which is a gaming spin of Fedora. It has the best compatibility out of the box for my stuff. I’m sure other distros would word too tho.

Most used apps are Firefox for streaming, Steamlink for playing games from my gaming pc, Retroarch for psx and snes gaming and kodi to watch the content on my local network

Interaction is with a keyboard like this one

Downside is obviously that it is less plug and play than a commercial media product. You need to set up everything initially, you need to update it and sometimes an update breaks something and you’ll need to fix it

Upside is awesome tho: no walled garden. It’s your gadget. You can do anything you like with it. No app is gonna track anything you don’t want

It just doesn’t exist. You will need some kind of mini PC like Raspberry Pi. I Use a mini PC from Beelink.

If you just want a media station with some basic apps a Raspi with LibreELEC is perfect. Your TV remote will work out of the box and there are plugins for Netflix, Disney, etc… available.

If you want a little more, like a working browser and / or some light gaming I would suggest a full OS with a little beefier PC like the ones available at Beelink.

“Can I please use your phone?” and then just start scrolling through their texts and pictures

Or if you use Steam Link. Still borked in Wayland

I don’t undestand this comment, could you please elaborate?

The way I way I see it, privacy without anonymity only works if you can trust a service provider. Since there are no trustworthy providers, especially since legislation can cancel any assurances anyone could give you, anonymity becomes the only way to ensure privacy, making it virtually synonymous.

Like @merde@sh.itjust.works said, several accounts for a tech illiterate person is counter productive. Unsubscribe what you can unsubscribe and then filter rules on thunderbird like you proposed. That’s how I do it with my elderly parents.

While I agree with you, EU is currently expected to enforce client side scanning on all devices in the EU, basically outlawing e2ee. Where the fuck are we supposed to live that isn’t a fascist hellhole?

Nothing absolutely needed, it’s just a convenience factor. For example you can program them to turn on when your phone connects to the wifi, which will probably be a couple meters from your home. So the light is already on when you get home. Or you can program them to turn on and off at certain hours when you’re off vacationing to simulate a presence.

Should I be interested in this if I already use hardened Firefox?

We have a similar thing going. But my kids are getting to an age where they wanna use tiktok and post on insta. I think that beyond the privacy issues it’s actually a mental health risk. My wife thinks being excluded from what their peers are doing is an even bigger health hasard.

100% with you on this regarding relations with adults. But children is where it gets spicy. Like, for me, I genuinely believe I’m not doing my job as a father if I don’t protect my children from google, meta, etc… My wife genuinely thinks she needs to protect them from me so that I don’t ostrasize them from their peers. It’s a real issue…

Yeah no thanks, I knew that. My question is what is QT about it. In the screenshots it doesn’t integrate into KDE at all. It’s just plain Firefox.

since it appears to be using QT I do not have that annoying mismatch I tend to have with Firefox

I’m interested because I’m a KDE fanboy: I’ve looked at some screenshots and I’m seeing regular old Firefox. What’s QT about it?

I kinda get where you’re coming from, but I think your perspective might be too “techy”. I actually do use XMPP myself for the time being, but I have like half a dozen contacts on it. IMO because the set up process, presentation and apps fit a protocol born in early 2000s. Which might not bother some IT guys, but you’ll lose all the normies. SimpleX is on a whole other level it that regard, but keeps the benefit of being as secure, if not more. I have high hopes this app could become the signal killer we need.

The desktop client is in beta right now. I should go public by next week for all platforms save windows. Windows is planned for about a week later. However, in the first phase, there will be no account syncing (but it’s on the roadmap). So you will need one account for each device, which is fine imho, since you can set up groups instead of 1-on-1 chats to resolve that issue.

It’s not P2P, but it definitely is decentralized, as in anyone can set up a server:

Their browser is sharing data with MS, since they’re using their services instead of Google. They’ve been upfront about it and explained there is no way around it.

As long as you just use their search engine, you’re fine.

SimpleX is the new thing to watch imo. Even protects your metadata while still feeling modern and compfortable

I took a look and didn’t see any big differences with the “conversations” app. Is there any reason to go with moxxy over conversations?

DDG is miles ahead of Brave. But the company behind it has a deal with MS to feed them user data. They’re transparent about it and the motivation isn’t nefarious. But still, it’s a thing. Now obviously, FF has deal with google, so I guess it’s more of a “pick your poison” situation

I think you mean yes (you do just not have any privacy at all)

Additionally to what people have said, I have set up several banking accounts with different banks. That way, no bank has the full picture of what I earn or how much I spend.

100% agree with you. Been keeping an eye out for something more streamlined to bring the whatsapp crowd over. XMPP ain’t it due to different servers with different features being a thing. So I only have a few contacts there. But as soon as SimpleX has a desktop client I’m moving over. Not because XMPP is bad, but because it’s not able to pull less privacy driven peope over.

I can second Tumbleweed. Super stable “just works” distro. If Nobara didn’t come packaged with almost everything I need, it would be my go to OS