Yaky

@Yaky@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm never going back to Matrix - Terence Eden⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Seeing lots of dislike for Matrix lately. Hosted a Synapse server for many years, never had issues with encryption keys, but have to agree that Element the company (formerly Vector, but they now control the protocol too?) rolls out more new things than they fix old ones. E.g: Element X is slower and calls are not backwards compatible (!). Synapse server keeps getting some (corporate-looking) auth stuff added while on-boarding and registration for plain accounts on self-hosted servers is still a pain. To give them credit, Element app is consistent across platforms (for purposes of convincing people and troubleshooting), and bridges work pretty well.

  But it seems any self-hosted solution has its can of worms.

  XMPP, being old, implements all modern-expected functionality as extensions, and servers are not guaranteed to have them (common argument). Spam was an issue as well (but simplicity of the on-device and server database allows easy message and attachment deletions). iOS clients for XMPP are meh and require integration with Apple push servers (Snikket and Monal do that, but for how long?)

  Tried SimpleX years ago, loved the idea, but it was going through growing pains. In the same vein as metadata leaks for Matrix and XMPP, if you host your own SMP server with a few users, that exposes some info vs using default servers (along with thousands users)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are all the successful "red cities"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There are some mathematical models similar to a Voronoi diagram, which would make districts convex polygons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are all the successful "red cities"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  With the new gerrymandering 2.0 Ohio is proposing, soon all of their cities will be “red” (on paper)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are all the successful "red cities"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  A small town, or a suburb of a city that is described as “a great place to raise a family”. From what I have seen, that usually means one of two things:

  1. The town/suburb is closer to the city, but is wealthy, real estate is expensive, usually very car-centric, which excludes anyone poor (or even middle class, sometimes).

  2. The town/village is far away from the nearest city, not necessarily wealthy, but usually ran by a group of people that know each other (good old boys club), probably heavy on religion or other “traditional” values.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That is also the premise of one of the stories in Asimov’s I, Robot. Human operator did not say the command with enough emphasis, so the robot went did something incredibly stupid.

  Those stories did not age well… Or now I guess they did?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Snikket is the rebranded-dockerized XMPP environment (uses prosody for server, Conversations clone for Android, and Monal clone for iOS).

  Worked pretty well for me in the past.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been hosting a server without much problems for several years now.

  Synapse and Riot.im (now Element) became much better around 2019 or 2020. But not too long ago, I also found out that Synapse also bloats the DB with state_groups_state table. There are a handful of commands that come with synapse, but no built-in admin tool or panel, so I wrote my own. Moving server to another host has been seamless for my (few) users. TURN/STUN for calls seems to work okay (I don’t really use it though).

  I appreciate Element being uniform across platforms (which I cannot say about XMPP clients), but the sign-in is pretty tedious, and registration with a token is still impossible last time I checked (which is either a hassle for the user to use another client and then their smart device, or a security issue if you open registration to anyone). Most normal people probably don’t care and don’t want to deal with keys, cross-verification, and all that jazz.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it wrong that i would like to start a small 3d print business?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The somewhat successful 3D-printing businesses I have read about (reddit, maybe here) are those with a rather specific niche. One that I recall was for reproducing vintage car parts (knobs, levers, decor), modeling, matching color, high resolution prints. Another one, I think, was producing hundreds of very specific part for another company (how they had the connection I do not recall)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn’t alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of “radio-hobbyist” stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for “inventor and rationalizer” for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.

  I don’t know much about how modern China goes about it though.

  But TBF it’s very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Signal – an ethical replacement for WhatsApp⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  IMO the best on-boarding I have seen in a chat app. Just scan each other’s QR codes or click a link. No account management because ID is unique to each conversation.

  Signal and WhatsApp need a phone number, Matrix/Element is needlessly messy, XMPP/Conversations is sensible IIRC (ID + password)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dems Demand Answers from Palantir About Plans to Build IRS “Mega-Database” of American Citizens⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t Equifax, Experian and Transunion already have that?

  At least they have enough info about where you lived, what credit cards you had, what loans you had, what vehicles you owned, enough to be used as “verification” to prove your identity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Part 2 of car Raspberry pi 4 GPS project⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  (I haven’t really used them a lot in the heat yet) Last enclosure was ASA, but AFAIK, black ABS is OK too because black pigment absorbs most of the light/UV, preventing plastic from degrading as fast

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Part 2 of car Raspberry pi 4 GPS project⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For offline navigation on Linux, have you looked at osmin? It was pretty decent on a PinePhone.

  How do you handle power-off? Does Raspberry Pi just shut down? My thoughts were to use Alpine or some RAM-based OS that would not corrupt SD card or the hard drive.

  I have been messing around with building an in-car navigation from e-waste for a while now. Right now, I settled on an old smartphone with OsmAnd and wrote my own app to view the reverse camera.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do websites now prefer IP-based geolocation rather than the `Accept-Language` HTTP header?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, plain old ignorance. (and some anglo-centrism)

  I am a software dev, worked on two translation projects at different points in time, and both of them were kind of a mess. In one case, translation team was all Americans (US company), and I was the only person who spoke another language and had firsthand experience with bad translation in media. When I asked how to switch the language in their app, senior dev told me to switch my OS language. Translations themselves often sounded overly verbose, robotic, or plain weird in other languages.

  And then, the typical oversights like not leaving enough screen space for longer translated text, using ambiguous terms without providing context, badly splitting phrases. Text-in-image, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do fancy cars look fancy and cheap cars don't? Can't you just slap a Lamborghini-style chassis onto a lawnmower engine if you want?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know much about cars either, but that does happen. For example, Cadillac Escalade was/is based on a less-fancy-looking GMC SUV (Suburban?). Chevy Volt is also Cadillac ELR (different body and interior, same drivetrain), Opel Ampera (in Europe), and Buick Velite (in China, because Buick has a better brand recognition there)

  Some cheaper car models come with variety of “sport editions” and out-of-factory tint and spoilers, which would be the equivalent to the RGB computer peripherals that you mentioned, and appeal to specific customers.

  TBH I don’t know why some expensive car designs are perceived as “fancy” or “impressive”. I think they are mostly boring. And quality-wise, anything above bottom tier would have materials that last decades now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s the difference between “he died” and “he’s dead”?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting, as an ESL speaker of US English (for several decades nonetheless) the timing sounds the reverse for me:

  “I thought he died” seems to imply the death was recent, and “I thought he was dead” implies the death happened some time ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨glupi jebeni bot⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Recently, saw some survey that explicitly said 1-7 is “poor”, 7-8 is “OK”, and 9-10 is “great”. Wild, not sure what the point of the scale is then.

  Same with book ratings. Looking at StoryGraph, the average ratings I see is somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5. While I would rate a decent book a 3.

  Born in Eastern Europe, live in the US, maybe that’s why.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I read books, picturing everything in my head is a part of the enjoyment. Often, books describe senses and feelings that would be more difficult to portray in images or video. Some examples:

  Right now, I am reading Ancillary Justice (by Ann Leckie), and the main character (who is the narrator) has difficulty with recognizing gender, so, unless explicitly stated, it is up to me to decide how characters look. Also, main character controls multiple bodies at once, and some paragraphs are full of parallel events and thoughts.

  Annihilation (by Jeff Vandermeer) has a movie adaptation, but it’s different from the book. The book goes deeper into the main characters own thoughts, concerns and regrets. It also describes smells and physical senses quite often, and the creature the main character encounters evokes emotions more so than just a description. And throughout the story, in addition to the general eeriness of Area X, there is just a feeling of being lost. (I should give credit that It Follows does the uneasy feeling really well, too)

  And just to be annoying, I can extrapolate your logic to “video does not show what happens around the camera, VR is better”, and “VR does not bring the senses of touch, smell, and heat, fully immersive simulators are better” :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft shuts down email account of International Criminal Court chief prosecutor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider

  Whose CEO publicly stated that “Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses”. Oh, the irony.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Says iPhone Adoption Of RCS Has Led Users To Share 'More Than A Billion' Messages Daily, Yet SMS/MMS Still Reign Supreme In The U.S.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I run GrapheneOS and can send RCS to both Androids and iPhones mostly without issues. But then, my GrapheneOS is still the actively supported version, so I don’t know what will happen in a few years.

  The only reason I have Google Messages is for RCS.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How I view others in social media⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am the same way, if I write something, I try to make it a complete, and informative statement.

  IMO this trend started with Twitter 10+ years ago, where short messages were equivalent of shouting into the crowd, and more frequent shouts got more retweets. Then there was the trend of “first” comments, glad that is mostly gone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Android’s next big feature turns your phone into a desktop⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
  • postmarketOS for older mainstream phones
  • Librem 5
  • PinePhone and PinePhone Pro
  • FuriLabs FLX1
  • Liberux Nexx (upcoming)
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Short summary of dumbphone market in 2025⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not looking for a dumbphone at the moment, but

  There’s a KaiOS jailbreaking community … I’ve seen an XMPP client and a Matrix one too.

  This is good and opens up a path for using other messengers via bridges.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk: your new Tesla will drive from the factory floor, to your house 'this year'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Right… My favorite “promise” so far was the Tesla SpaceX edition (with rocket boosters or microjets or some shit, IDK doesn’t make sense) and die-hard fans defending this PR stunt as “the car that might fly”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do I avoid becoming conformist, lazy and completely incapable of learning something new?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I knew a guy in his 30s that has similar attitudes: thinks that his ways and opinions are the only valid ones, thinks he is smarter than most people, has instant assumptions about people based on appearance, and does not take criticism well.

  From talking to him, I would say that to avoid becoming someone like him:

  • Do not define yourself in terms of work or money. Yes, most people need a job to pay bills to live. But find a hobby, passion, or charity that you like. Trying to make / hustle / gamble money for the sake of a larger number in your account (with no other goal) is honestly sad.
  • No one is out to get you. Stop seeking enemies or blaming problems on others.
  • Do not make IRL opinions from online “content” (I don’t even wanna know which subreddits and YouTube people this guy follows) Interact with real people.
  • If your friends are repeatedly calling you out on questionable or insensitive actions and opinions, listen and think for a minute.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It also works as a weather provider for Gadgetbridge!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have been using OpenSCAD to make models for 3D-printing. I know this is a specific use case, and I have no experience with the “real” CAD software, but OpenSCAD makes sense to me as a programmer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You might be interested in postmarketOS They try to mainline older Android devices. It works pretty well on the PinePhone, too.

  As far as I understand, the hardware-adaptive part is difficult to implement because ARM systems do not have automatic hardware detection like x86/x64 PCs do, so the hardware list (tree) has to be known for each device, that hardware is mostly proprietary and requires proprietary drivers. All of which results in Android phones using different per-phone-model kernels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The code is on Codeberg, as seen on their site.

  And it’s free on F-Droid. Playstore has it for $8, which goes to the developer (and probably supporting the conversations.im XMPP server)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Markor: one of the few Android text editors/notepads that saves text to text files (crazy idea, right?) and works rally well with Syncthing.

  Conversations.im for Android is an incredibly well made XMPP/Jabber messenger, and their message polling and real-time message delivery is unmatched AFAIK.

  ratbag (and the frontend, piper) is a tool for remapping buttons on mice with a sensible interface. Beats installing proprietary Logitech software.