Oh yeah, the Debian vs. JWZ XScreenSaver spat, that was royally stupid and led me to stop using it altogether

“Right about a lot of things but fucking insufferable” is an apt summary of JWZ

Oh yeah, same thing, by that day we should be already running whatever else we choose, or we will likely go to Teams 😬

Jami seems to be designed as a drop-in Skype replacement, even with account management for corporations, we are in a similar boat and that was the top alternative that rose up in checks but we’re still far from decided

The GDPR ensures there’s no mailing list you cannot unsubscribe from, if they won’t let you it’s not a good thing

Note: The “Key Verifier” one is supposed to be tied to E2EE on Google chat platforms or something on those lines, although you shouldn’t be using those and go for a safer chat instead though

Here’s some info on why Brave is to be avoided

On Android i use Perfect Viewer, and on Linux i use Mcomix straight off the APT repositories. Quite willing to switch if better alternatives appear though.

The “distro” I’ve been eyeing is Snikket since it’s all in one with batteries included, it’s only notorious lack is bridges which is the reason i didn’t jump into it right away when i saw it (LOTS of contacts on WhatsApp, some on other Zuckerberg properties, so will likely need to do it, let’s see if the recent EU legislation leads to force them into interoperativity)

And yet again i feel like XMPP is the way to go, but depends on setting up a server and managing it, i for one don’t feel like managing servers in my free time, i do that at work all day 😅

What of the alternatives like Matrix or XMPP? I haven’t explored these well yet, is it easy to have multiple profiles with those?

And once again this XKCD applies

It’s email, that’s the best you can get with email, if you want to have more privacy, DON’T USE EMAIL

This advice is not directly related to that, this is the same advice given by security-oriented organizations all over to compensate with people being people

I like Snikket as a solution to this

Snikket is an attempt to solve the XMPP issues, or at least to reduce them, single all-in-one XMPP server distro and clients across platforms, and since it’s self-hosted no one should get their hands on your data (in normal circumstances).

That said, the saying goes “Perfect is the enemy of Good”. Just because a solution is not perfect doesn’t make it unusable, any of those options you mention full of problems are a helluva better than FB Messenger or plain SMS for example. Depending on your threat model they might be more than enough.

They do, one with them at the top

They bought an ads company AFTER this person took the reins

Not customers, users, otherwise they’ll start paywalling features

First AI and now freaking Bitcoin…

Thanks!

As somebody that might be changing phone sometime this year and to cover all the possibilities, do we have a recent comparison of all these projects?

The community is VERY MUCH against the decline of Mozilla

They have gone corrupt, they’re full-on techbros now

This is precisely for the master password of your password manager, the one you actually need to be highly secure but memorable

That or passwords that won’t go there in practice, like computer boot passwords

The AI techbros wanna scare you with tales of AI becoming sentient and going rogue to destroy us all, when corporations, mindless machines made out of people to maximize profits at all cost, are already doing all that

Direct, non-Reddit link

I missed this one, have a link?

My issue with these is that my use case is public transport, for that it seems like GMaps is still unbeatable, i hope to find an alternative as good or better based on OSM soon because it’s the one tool i still have no alternative to

Given that the XMPP contingent is around, is there a comparison between a typical 2024 XMPP server (with all the recommended extensions and whatever), and Matrix?

First time i hear of this, sounds handy, although I’ve seen some of those “loyalty card” thingies with chips for hands-free usage, i tend to avoid them as a general principle as they’re the opposite of privacy-oriented but for the few that you do want (like the store where you always buy your groceries from, to get extra discounts) might be handy

For nearly a decade

Looks like another Have I Been Pwned, at least at a glance they’re looking for email addresses, and given that you have your email with them if you’re using this service they kinda do have it already

Oh yeah, this MUST be done too, but expecting that to be the solution to MS apps getting worse all the time is for the moment not a solution for the random user of the day complaining of yet another MS enshittification escalation.

Switching to Linux gets you completely out of that mess and has lasting results, continuing to participate in the MS market might change things if the anti-monopoly forces taking encouraging actions the last few years continue advancing but will take years IF it happens, along with any class-action lawsuit, anything else in the meanwhile (patches, debloaters, secret policy rules or registry entries, etc.) is nothing more than a band-aid treating the symptoms.

So, these discussions always devolve to this because it’s a proven and effective solution that works today and lasts, unlike any other patch that can be broken next time MS forces an update or catches you unaware, it’s hard and imperfect and “not the CORRECT way to solve the problem”, but works.

All these discussions turn into that because WE KNOW that no one will convince MS to stop doing whatever they want, specially after investing literally billions on this kind of technology, the idea of MS “being held accountable” is something that realistically will not happen, and literally the only leverage people have against them is to just stop playing their game. Oh yeah, it’s not easy, but given the fact that MS have made it so that you’ll HAVE to fight the tech and relearn stuff every time they unilaterally decide to change things you might as well put effort where it will make a difference and free you from their BS

Any idea what are the “forked degoogled chromium” branches going to do about this?

That’s exactly the cure, not using Chrome

I’ve mentioned this issue a few times, then “But Proton has proven to be good! It’s OK” is the usual response, that’s when i remind them of how Google also used to be good. I don’t really use a notes taking app, but in general after Google, the idea of “one login, a gazillion apps” is something i dislike in principle because even if the one central authority doesn’t go evil, one login incident and you’re locked out of everything you depend on.

Yeah, I’ll continue using Protonmail but that’s likely all I’ll use from them and diversify on the rest.

Let’s see, on one hand we have this list compiled by somebody on Mastodon:

• mockup looks like they’re pitching a device.
• mockup is missing critical functionality (buttons)
• infected with cryptocurrency brainworms
• they haven’t decided about open source yet
• trash talking existing devices, yet being vaporware itself
• grand claims that have no backing in reality (like Epic, Fortnite, Roblox)

And the article itself has this:

Update 13:34 UTC, 19/03/24: One of the videos Playtron supplied to The Verge, showcasing some tech used on mobile in the article linked below, wasn’t even their own and was taken uncredited from another person on YouTube, who hit them with a copyright claim and had it taken down. Not a good look.

I’m betting this is either an outright scam, or some small project by somebody WAAAAY over their head that won’t even see the light of day