Spyke

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Do you prefer XMPP or Matrix powered apps as a discord alternative?

From my digging on alternatives the main contenders are (in no particular order)

  • Stoat
    • Essentially 1:1 on discords format
    • UK based, so its future there is uncertain
    • Infrastructure is lacking, was crippled by the initial influx after discord's announcement.
    • Missing some minor UI and UX features, feels unpolished.
  • Spacebar
    • Reverse engineered discord
    • Greatest potential, IMO, but as of a few days ago all it has is potential.
    • lacks significant client development, relying on an external client named Fermi, which feels quite amateurish.
  • XMPP
    • Highly mature, looks very promising, but lacks any kind of guild/nested channel grouping support which makes it unsuitable for my group, so I didn't look too deep at it.
  • Matrix
    • IMO the most likely discord successor.
    • Minor functional hiccups, that vary from client to client
    • Of the clients I tested, Cinny is the most discord like, but I hear commet is closer.
    • Nested spaces provides the minimum format equivalence.
  • Fluxer
    • Slightly sus vibes
    • Lacks self hosting instructions
    • Media is non-permanent, which is I guess fair to keep infra costs down, but its unsuitable for my groups media usage habits.
    • Looks promising, but I've not actually tried it given the lack of self hosting instructions.

One thing that's wormed its way onto the to do list that haunts the back of my mind, is I'd like to see if I could abuse the matrix or XMPP protocols to get some of the nicer discord-like features lime invite links, server side channel ordering, and space membership over channel membership. But that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

EDIT: Forgot Fluxer. Added.

games

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*Permanently Deleted*

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They may not be de jure be public utilities but they are de facto public utilities. It is essentially impossible to live in society without them, and outside their collusionist cabal there are no real alternatives.

games

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*Permanently Deleted*

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Agree it disagree with them, but don’t the payment processors get a say in what they do or do not want to process?

Absolutely not. Power companies don't get a say in what the power they supply their users with is used for, same for water companies and even ISPs. If they really, really want to enforce rules on what they will and will not process payments for, they can accept legal responsibility when they process a payment on a gun someone uses to shoot up a school or what have you. But they cant have it both ways.

linux

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Beeper is joining Automattic

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There was a bit of drama on tumblr (owned by Automattic) not too long ago where a relatively well known trans blogger got banned as a part of an alleged harassment campaign. I recall Matt Mullenwag (Automattic's CEO) being accused of following the user on to other platforms and harassing them. There were also accusations of, IIRC, tumblr staff taking payments to ban users. Which isn't great. So if my memory is accurate, your gut feeling is probably right.

Edit: typo, slleged -> alleged

linux

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The problems and shortcomings of Cosmic (According to Hyprland Dev, Vaxry)

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There are valid criticism to be made about cosmic desktop, like

*Lists two positives*

If that's the best example of criticism to be had about COSMIC, then it's practically flawless. Except of course, though, it isn't. Aside from the general lack of polish, I'd argue that there's not enough customization. E.g. things that should really be a slider or spin control (or better yet multiple sliders/spin controls) like corner radii are multiple choice button things (not to mention that the 'square' style is anything but.) Some of the sliders that do exist (particularly the size ones) have very few set points that make them essentially disguised drop downs. I could probably find dozens more things to criticize if I cared to sit down and nitpick everything.

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Webp

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Unfortunately most people don't really have a choice in the matter. It's sites like twitter that crunch images to hell and back on upload that choose for us.