This is the one case where I’d make an exception. I read through the threads, it got particularly heated.

Life has gotten better since I dropped it. Moved a dozen or so people over to Signal and have been running with that ever since.

I do miss the ability to easily stream games, though.

Someone feel free to jump in and audit my take:

The Internet Archive is not a company, does not sell me anything, and is merely providing a public service.

The service has nothing to do with my health or wellbeing. It is not marketed as being privacy forward. Hell, the whole purpose of the project is to make data publically accessable.

Therefore, exposing email addresses… I kinda don’t care?

Of course, it would be way better if they just used generic login numbers etc instead, but… I feel like this is the equivalent of my library card number getting leaked, and these headlines are treating it like Equifax just leaked my SSN again.

874 partners

Man these polycules are getting crazy

I completely forgot these existed until this post. What a vivid flashback. Totally going to try them when out

No, closest thing is to join a datahoarder group and trade when needed.

Although with LinkWarden gaining popularity, something like this developing is a possibility.

I define it by whether something is independently verifiable.

I am told that there are 8* planets in our solar system, and where they are located. If I wanted to, I could buy a big telescope, point it at the sky and find all 8.

I am told that it is possible to boil water through nuclear fission. If I had the means, I could take a number of resources, spend decades researching nuclear physics, build my own test reactor, and verify that this is possible.

I am told that the earth is flat. I could get a pilots license, buy a plane, and fly to Antarctica to see the ice wall. I would find that there is no ice wall, just a number of scientists who are very passionate about ice samples. Therefore, it is not independently verifyable.

I don’t have the money to verify all of these claims, but they are all claims that have been verified by hundreds, if not thousands of independent people and organizations throughout history.

No matter how you look at it, Wikipedia is one of the modern wonders of the world; those who maintain and defend it are doing holy work. The availability of free, high quality, publically indexed and equitably accessible information about our modern world is such an under-appreciated gift.

Education is a powerful tool, but when most people hear “knowledge is power” they think of personal success or political might. But its true power is on an evolutionary scale.

No other species in the history of our (known) universe has the capability to study the world, and then share those the conclusions to the next generation with high precision, like we do. It’s absolutely fascinating. It’s what sets us apart from the rest. It defines the human experience.

The reality is that the integrity of this mechanism (or rather, the democratization of said mechanism) is under threat. It always has been, but the nature of the threat has changed, and its scary. I’m glad it is being protected, at least for now.

I have no sympathy for those who attack and deface our libraries, whether they be physical or digital

That is interesting, the last time i tried Element/matrix it did not have these features. Can I ask, is your screen sharing of a quality that you can stream videos and games at equivilant frame rates?

This is so stupid. God forbid they actually police their ads for malware. No, instead let’s push the responsibility onto the individual, by adding get another “Papers, Please”-esque stamp that very few people will know about and even less will actually use.

Hard pass. The day I saw them promoting malware above legitimate search results is the day I turned on ad blocking for my entire org, and a stupid little pay-to-verify badge isn’t going to change that.

/end rant

But neither have seamless voice chat/screen sharing, which is a staple of Discord that users are very used to.

Matrix does not have seamless desktop sharing or voice chat, and has a drastically higher executive cost. It also does not solve the information silo issue.

The fediverse as a whole is promising but likely needs to mature a bit longer. Theres a lot of potential issues that have yet to be worked through.

This is a fantastic read. I wasnt around for the prime days of forums but I did experience them a bit.

I’m becoming extremely concerned about the number of topics and projects that are migrating to Discord. My main issue is that it is not and never will be publically indexed, and among other problems, is itself a corporate walled garden we consider to be “one of the good ones”.

I really hope we find and establish a “low executive cost” solution before the next time Discord fumbles (which is inevitable) and we can claw some of that activity back.

But people are so used to seamless voice and video chat nowadays - and that’s a technical hurdle that AFAIK, no open-source self-hostable projects have come close to solving.

Yeah, this is a big part of why I stopped using discord recently. Not yet sure of any alternatives but leaving is step one.

Oh, I need this thread. I’ve been all over the place ever since Mint shut down.

Everyone blames food/diet/portions for this, but personally I think the car-centric culture should also bear a large portion of the blame.

When I stayed with friends in Europe, they easily ate as much as my American friends, but everywhere we went we were either walking or biking.

Meanwhile, in the VAST majority of the US, if you so much as want a safe place to walk that isn’t adjacent to the pervasive pedestrian-hostile street design, you need to take a car to get there.

American car culture essentially turns the average routine into ferrying oneself from chair to desk to chair to bed, intermixed with brief walks throgh scenic parking lots.

We need to counter the sedentary lifestyle within the design of our actual cities, but its the american way to push societal problems onto the responsibility of the individual… so I do not see this changing within our lifetimes.

I’ve been trying to find a more privacy-friendy alternative to Discord but I keep coming back to the issue of screen sharing. No other platform does it as smoothly.

The best I’ve found is using Parsec with some virtual audio cables to avoid voice feedback.

I feel this in my very soul