Draconic_NEO

Draconic_NEO, 8 days ago

I don’t really use it either, but I thought it would be relevant to post here since the pawb.social network uses it to communicate outages, so it might be best for us to try to move away from that to something else, maybe something a bit more open.

Draconic_NEO, 8 days ago

@crashdoom @natebluehooves Mentioning because this is relevant to our instances since we’re currently using Telegram here, we may want to consider alternatives like Matrix, or even just a simple RSS Feed for updates.

Whatever we choose it probably would be best to eventually move on from Telegram, even if not immediately, as user experience on Telegram will likely continue to get worse in the future.

Draconic_NEO, 8 days ago

Lax moderation policies allowing for many groups to do what they want without getting banned (for a while anyway).

Draconic_NEO, 7 days ago

Yeah I know this is a hot take but I don’t really like signal much either, but for me it’s mainly because it is a centralized protocol and they attempt to maintain exclusivity over it (Moxie used to go after third party clients because of this).

That’s why I feel matrix is a way better alternative. It still has the option of being secure with the E2E encryption and so long as you save your keys you can still retrieve older messages on other devices. It also has the ability to create public chats, same as Telegram, but with the addition of Spaces, which can group connected chats together (almost like a discord server, except you can also join each room individually).

Also matrix doesn’t require a phone number to sign up so it’s significantly better than Signal in that regard because signing up with email is much more convenient, and probably more secure than phone number sign-up since you can simply use temporary email services.

Draconic_NEO, 6 days ago

Having the announcements simulcast in multiple places is probably a good idea since it makes it more redundant in case one service isn’t working properly.

Draconic_NEO, 2 days ago

That is true, there are definitely much worse messaging platforms out there.

I’m mainly calling out signal because in terms of private messaging platforms they are one of the only ones yes but they are also pretty bad due to their centralized dependence (and the fact that they insist on staying centralized) the fact that they are insanely and (most likely) artificially overhyped doesn’t help at all, and if people want to choose a better one they should choose one that isn’t going to end up having the same problems.

Obviously many signal fanboys would argue that it just wouldn’t happen, that signal could never enshittify but they fail to understand that centralized services can be fundamentally restructured in ways much harder than if not impossible with decentralized ones. Also the fact that companies, even non-profits can be influenced by money and even go public. Overhyped centralized bullshit is not the solution, and it never has been.

Draconic_NEO, 1 day ago

I haven’t seen it hyped as much recently (at least not outside of alt-right spaces) but I do remember a time when people wouldn’t shut up about signal.

Matrix certainly does have it’s issues, biggest one being that you can lose your encryption keys and with it message history, though it’s still much better than what you get with signal where you lose message history if you lose that device or lose your account if you lose your phone number (emails are more portable and permanent than phone numbers but you also don’t need the email to log in again, last time I used signal you do need your phone number to log in).

XMPP seems very glitchy and unreliable, I also wasn’t really able to find very good clients on Most modern platforms, but I may not have been looking hard enough. I also didn’t find many rooms of interest on XMPP so lack of people using it is definitely real, though I found no shortage of rooms on Matrix.

Using them to talk to people you know can be hard if people you don’t know don’t use them, I know Matrix does have bridges but I haven’t tried setting those up and I’m not sure how well they’d work.

Draconic_NEO, 1 day ago

I think criticism of matrix as a platform and protocol is valid and can help build a better decentralized ecosystem. We need to address the flaws in order to make it better.

I still think Matrix is probably the best way moving forward since its only real alternative is XMPP, which yeah, better than nothing but not great. Also relying on and ultimately hyping centralized solutions is relying on one guy to not love money more than “the dream”, and his reputation, which always ends up happening at some point in the end (every one of us are susceptible to it, just keep adding 0s). FYI whatsapp used to be just like signal, E2EE zero knowledge, over-hyped privacy messaging app, then they sold it to Facebook who backdoored it and made that not true anymore.

Pushing for a service that ultimately can and very likely will have the same fate, especially when this app is overhyped too just feels irresponsible at least in my opinion, especially since centralized messengers are the hardest to break away from.

I’m impartial about both platforms, and the way I see it is that Signal would be great if it was decentralized, and Matrix would be great if it used a different type of protocol, even though Matrix does use a fork of a protocol that Signal uses.

I think if signal were decentralized it would be awesome and possibly even better than signal in some ways, I also wouldn’t really have any issues with it being given as an alternative to Matrix or XMPP, since it wouldn’t have the same deep issues it has now. Though it isn’t and their developers’ attitude towards decentralization shows that it probably won’t be (someone could fork the open source parts and make it so but it wouldn’t be signal, that would be something else).

I’m not sure what the difference of the protocols Matrix and signal use so I have to look into that in my own time to really find out why one is better than the other like soatok claims haha

I’m not really sure either, I’ve heard that they use similar protocols underneath but I’ve also heard from others that they are drastically different. So hard to say.

Draconic_NEO, 22 days ago

Awesome. You did an amazing job.

Draconic_NEO, 29 days ago (edited 28 days ago)

Well us dergs have very long life-spans naturally and the problem with this idea of everlasting life or even very long life that no one ever really thinks about is that the probabilities that misfortune will befall you don’t go away or even really go down once you have it. That means that even though it seems unlikely to be crushed by an air-conditioner falling out of a window, or fall down the stairs, or choke to death on your food, the probability of these things happening when given enough time approaches 100%, even the very unlikely ones.

So while you might think something like this is awesome unless it also grants you the invulnerability to survive the catastrophes you will encounter in the future or cancels out their probability, it’s basically useless, because those will get you likely in a comparable amount of time as old age would.

Draconic_NEO, 24 days ago

That’s really too bad and I hope you do continue to stick around. While I’m mainly on Pawb.social I do enjoy a few communities on here and it would be sad to see those communities gone.

I wouldn’t worry about lemmy.ml too much, as many people have said they tend to have a lot of political problems with their management and also as many people have said most content on ml ends up on world anyway so it’s not that big of a deal.

Draconic_NEO, 24 days ago

fediblocks were a terrible design decision to begin with, way to ruin the fedi user experience.

I would definitely disagree with that one, they may suck when they are abused but they are very much needed to keep spam and trolls out, since anyone can host a server you need the ability to block servers which foster toxic environments or servers with the intent to cause harm, banning users isn’t enough in those cases because malicious servers will typically spawn more users with different names or allow their members to create as many accounts as desired to circumvent remote bans. This is especially important on LGBTQ servers (which both this one and the one you’re on are) where many people are targeted minorities and in the interest of keeping them and everyone else safe necessitates blocking other servers.

There are projects that don’t implement blocking or make such blocking functionally useless, and those spaces are for the most part awful places to be, overrun by crypto shills, scammers, and bigoted trolls.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Pretty sure most protos require much more juice than is supplied by regular USB A or even USB C with power delivery.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Yeah they are very power hungry, usually 24 killowatts is what they’ll suck down at max on AC power at least if it’s available (it isn’t always), if they can’t get up to that they’ll still charge at lower power but it just takes much longer.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Mostly charging up their battery cells, those batteries are usually very high capacity.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Usually to run their visor, their cybernetic systems (some of which are critical support systems that keep them alive), if they have synthetic/mechanical limbs they power those too and are the primary source for movement. Some protos have x86 CPUs and high end GPUs in their visor and for them the batteries run those as well.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Wow this is very cool. A lot of care and effort clearly went into that suit. Not sure if it’s intentional or not but I like the style of the hands they went with here.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Aww so cute, this is such a cosy scene.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

If they’re fish and not mammals would it even make sense for them to have breasts? Like breasts are one of those exclusive to mammals things.

I mean I’ve seen ones where they have dolphin or dolphin-like tails instead of a fish tail in which case them having breasts makes more sense, but that’s also almost never done and instead they have a fish tail.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Being a merperson is so overrated, being a derg is so much better, we’re strong, and fast, and can soar through the skies. It is truly the life of adventure and excitement.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

Indeed.

Draconic_NEO, 1 month ago

In post-apocalyptic without ready access to complex machines crossbow/wristbow makes a lot of sense since it’s easy to fashion on one’s own without the need for special equipment (i.e. a metal-working mill).