It’s also not real. It’s legislative clickbait.

1. this is a joke of a law meant to generate headlines and nothing else; congrats on biting.

2. how dare you imply the GDPR is bad. It might just be the best consumer protection law ever put to paper, certainly in the digital space. It has massive positive impact on the privacy of EU citizens, and even beyond. All the shitty things associated with GDPR - namely, annoying cookie banners - are not mandated by GDPR, they are malicious compliance from companies furious they can no longer steal your data without telling you. And even then: incredibly small price to pay.

Would be such a shame if third-party OSS contact managers “oopsie” don’t pass thus check, wouldn’t it, Google?

My god. Ken is right, language is not just a communication tool. Every language you learn, an entire new universe of human experiences opens up to you. It’s amazing. You get to experience the world through an entirely new lens, talk to and become friends with people who’d have stayed strange and strangers forever.

If I could go back to highschool, I’d choose the linguistic branch (we could choose between an additional foreign language, or computer science + more physics and chemistry). And I say that as a computer scientist who loves her field!

I have a list of languages I want to learn… Once I’m “finished” with the current one (aka fluent enough to not actively study every day). Chinese is also on that list.

Disclaimer: I host and use XMPP. I like using it.

That being said: the question isn’t if there’s any client, the question is if there’s a good client.

And my god, do XMPP clients suck ass. At best, they’re decent (monocles comes to mind, for example), but I actively loathe interacting with Linux desktop XMPP clients. There’s not a single one that is competently designed, or rather, they are all so fucking bare-bones and ugly looking.

“But that doesn’t matter!” yes it does shut the fuck up.

99% of the population doesn’t give a shit if you support the latest OMEMO spec or are written in memory safe rust or whatever else.

It takes a a fraction of a second to realize “this client sucks” and at most an additional minute to figure out “…and it’s not suited to my use-case”.

I also host matrix and use it extensively on all my devices. There actually are nice clients, and even some Discord-likes. But a) the protocol is so horrible, I’m not sure reinventing the wheel can be called a bad thing, and b) I want to cry once a week at least when using it. Why do my old messages not load today? Why does my message show as sent two weeks ago (!), but only arrived now (!) despite having sent plenty of messages both directions in between? Why are all of my messages marked as “can’t verify authenticity” on about half my devices, but not the other, a bug that has been open for YEARS with hundreds of complaints and pleas to at least reduce the danger-signaling indicator since it indicates “insecure!” to non-expert users, with zero maintained response? And this is just for myself, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck supporting matrix for friends & family. I mean, I am doing that, but fuuuuuuuuck thaaaaat.

Fluxer allows us to tell friends and family “here try this, it’s just like discord but no corporate bullshit!”, and they can open the app and go “oh yeah that is like Discord. Ok, sure, we can try using that instead”.

It may be initially inconvenient, but you can choose a bank that offers 2FA/TAN beyond the smartphone app.

Not sure what healthcare apps you mean. There’s lots of categories, so won’t comment without clarification.

Same for employers tbh. Would love an example. (Besides: work apps can’t be forced on your private phone in most places.)

I live in “modern society” and do own a smartphone, but I’m aware that it’s a convenience, not a necessity.

I have multiple young-ish (30s) friends that don’t own a phone (not just smartphone; any phone), and basically all people I know above 80 years don’t own one either.

You can absolutely live a perfectly fine and good life without a smartphone. You’re just drawing the line where it’s convenient for you.

Or let’s put it in more familiar words…

[Owning a smartphone] is not “participating in society”, this is participating in, contributing to, and directly benefitting from the very thing they’re complaining about.

Quick! Get this person a series A, B and C funding!

Yeah Librewolf is amazing. I dialed some if the ootb settings back for usability, but all the “new” stuff Mozilla adds is filtered right back out upstream, so I never even see it.

But… That would force them to provide a great user experience in order to retain users!! That’s an unacceptable burden on the largest companies in the world!!

Yeah. Honestly. For platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, mandate chronological feeds of only people you have followed, paginated at like 30.

They saved lifes.

Glad to have cleared that up for you 👍

No

That’s not a physics statement btw. I just think that you, personally, are too slow to be able to do that. Offense intended.

Yeah. I think this is one of the best examples of letting nix do the hard stuff for you.

I think the text is somewhat dubious in its arguments, but this (and the arguments built on this assertion) is just plain wrong:

[Signals servers have] a few important pieces of data;

Message dates and times Message senders and recipients (via phone number identifiers)

Signal clients implement the Pond protocol. As a result, Signals servers know who a message is for (obviously, how else do you get the message) but cannot know who it is FROM.

I’ve been playing around with implementing a secure/private messenger demo for myself, and have been consistently impressed with how privacy preserving Signal is when reading their papers and code. I wish it was selfhostable, but apart from that, it’s great.

The server would be NICE to be OSS, but ultimately, privacy breaches are prevented client/protocol side.

This doesn’t make a call to government servers.

The app (or desktop application BTW, incl. Linux) reads your national ID’s NFC tag, once. When you need to prove your age, the app locally computes a zkp that only tells the site “at least 18yo yes/no”.

Note that every EU country has a form of national ID, and the digital capabilities of these IDs are already used for a bunch of stuff (e.g. taxes, bank account creation,…). This doesn’t worsen the privacy situation for EU citizens, but instead ensures that no privacy-unfriendly solutions emerge.

You’re not talking about growing up, you’re talking about giving up.

I rely on xdrip+ for getting blood clucose measurements. That app is not on the play store.

So, in case I’ll loose my phone and have to buy one (or even just need to reset it) I’m 24hrs without blood glucose measurements…? Yeah that sounds great /s.

It ensures that non-power users stay in the clutches of Google.

Yrs, you need to update.