Matrix the protocol & its blockchain-like eventual consistency model is incredibly expensive / wasteful to run since it requires duplicating all data to all servers for the entire history. Matrix uses so much storage & RAM on a machine. Medium-sized servers regularly close their door due to costs—which further pushes users to the de facto centralized hub in Matrix.org (or servers they host for others) which basically has a copy of all metadata on the network (scary since it was originally funded by Israeli Intelligence … so one might assume they still have access to that data). If a system isn’t accessible to a run for groups on a budget, it isn’t radical/revolutionary.

If you don’t care about the centralization or E2EE, IRC/IRCv3 covers all the bases. If you want decentralization with more features, XMPP + OMEMO + MUCs, covers the rest. Neither of these are resource hogs while having over a decade of extra stability. Matrix 2 is just trying throw a rug over the problems of eventual consistency—but under it is a fundamental issue to the protocol.

Haskell devs like to write code, not maintain it. A bunch of libraries get written, but get abandoned shortly after for something new & shiny.

Xmonad. I prefer tiling window managers, & I tried Sway but I can’t do color work without proper color management… something Wayland doesn’t support. Thus, I moved back to my old Xmonad config awaiting Wayland to get its shit together after years saying color management was around the corner & distros still adopting it despite not being ready.

Mid-2000s Suzuki Forenza. I loved having a hatchback for getting additional storage while not sacrifing fuel efficiency. This part was good on paper, but I had issues with overheating + lack of power + alignment, but the real killer was constantly needing to replace the transmission selector switch—which got me ripped off for quite a while before I know what was wrong & mechanics absolutely took advantage of me if I didn’t say exactly what was wrong. This affected almost everyone that bought the vehicle. I stuck with it for like 4 years, & ditched it for a early-2010s Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Hatchback which was nicer in literally every way & had no issues with the vehicle. As a bonus I didn’t have to be yet another Subaru Outback driver meme.

I didn’t have it terribly long tho—I had to sell it to leave the US. I had to sell it to a dealer since I couldn’t find a buyer, & it was kinda rare to find them. Guys at the dealer ran out to gawk at it, one piped a “this is a nice car; why you think you had trouble selling”? “It’s not a Subaru”, I lamented. The rest of the men nodded their heads in agreement with that fake smile of knowing the truth. & now Mitsubishi no longer makes sedans/wagons.

But despite moving from something I loathed to loved & selling prematurely, I am not too sad since being outside the US, having a car is not a requirements where walking, public transport, & a motorbike (want a bicycle) cover my needs while being much cheaper & better for the environment.

One reason for moving to Nix was declarative config so at least that part of my system is a series of Nix files to build into a working setup.

…The rest… let’s just say “needs improvement” & I would like to set up a NAS.

It’s great to see this project still chugging along. I tried it on an old phone & it worked, but it would run into readonly filesystem errors after a few hours of usage. I never got to figure out why since I ended up actually needing to use the phone while mine had broken so it’s LineageOS for microG now.

Didn’t watch the video, but… Traffic is often already encrypted with TLS or other encryption & you don’t have to use the ISP for DNS. This would cover a lot of the data you would be discussing. Instead if using these advertized commercial VPNs you are giving the data to those corporations instead which is hardly better in many cases—luckily most of your traffic is encrypted with TLS & you don’t have to use them for DNS …which takes us back to the previous statement for concerns.

There’s still value in VPNs for a several online activities (censorship, piracy, activism, etc.) & threat models to certain folks, but assuming the ISP is the bogeyman in most common scenarios for non-niche use cases is incorrect—but it isn’t how these commercial VPNs are selling themselves. If the ISPs possess the ability to break TLS encryption we’d have bigger issues to worry about & VPNs wouldn’t help. I would assume the video goes in this route but chooses the clickbait title for views.

Libpurple had constant breakage due to proprietary apps having no incentive to keep their protocols stable. A lot of it worked easier then since no one was using e2ee either. Newer gateways exist in the space but it’s a real shame since for a brief time the earlier 2010s, most chat applications were using the same protocol—until they realized it’s harder to capture profits when the garden walls are lowered.

And if you want something realtime, IRC & XMPP are low-resource chat options—with the latter being federated & can offer encryption for private rooms.

Git provides itself, so forges aren’t even required (the d is distributed version control). Issue trackers don’t need to be attached to the code forge. Even if you like someone else hosting it & an sidecar of integrated bug tracking, it should not require an account with Microsoft if privacy is the end goal—and there’s a host (pun not intend) of other options.

PRISM Break, Calyx live on GitLab (not obscure, supports SSO). Many free software projects like Freedesktop, GNOME, KDE, DivestOS, Briar, Jami self-host the community edition of GitLab. Privacy Tools & Awesome Privacy mirror to Codeberg as well as MS GitHub, presumably to have an escape hatch to the megacorporate bubble & to practice what they preach about privacy. LibreWolf is exclusively Codeberg. Cwtch self-hosts Gitea. Prosody self-hosts its Mercurial server. Choosing not Microsoft GitHub puts you in good company.

If a mailing lists alternative isn’t your thing, Forgefed, federation protocol for software forges, would apply for anyone with a Fediverse account (so Lemmy) could submit issues with Forgejo building it in along with others soon (GitLab expressed interest).

Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.

—Matt Lee, https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/opinion-github-vs-gitlab

I mean yes you reduce your privacy by interacting with Microsoft GitHub in general, but posting your Nix config to the public isn’t much of a privacy concern since you shouldn’t have any plaintext secrets anyhow as a best practice since it would be compiled into the Nix store. There are a couple of different ways to encrypt secrets, as well as just not committing private *.nix to a public repository.

You could also launch directly to big picture mode for a “console” PC