Just a fair warning: Element (Matrix client) also had issues with notifications not appearing in time, or attachments/images not loading. (This is on a self-hosted Synapse with a handful of people and 1 bridge).
I haven’t kept up much with new developments, but last I remember, hosting the official Element Server Suite Community requires Kubernetes. Third-party servers or some install scripts are an option though.
I used porkbun, and never had to upload an ID (but I am in USA). IIRC still need to provide an address, but they mask WHOIS.
IMO the “visual concept” is a weak argument - those are very abstract shapes.
each character conveys a word or concept rather than a single letter that has no inherent definition.
And each character consists of strokes, or even unjoined glyphs, making them more eqivalent to a word rather than a letter.
they even have words that are “swapable”
In languages that I know, order of compound words mostly matters but order of words in a sentence can change a lot. In Ukrainian and Russian, it could be used for emphasis without tone, e.g. “она пошла домой” (she went home, neutral), “домой она пошла” (she went home), “пошла она домой” (she walked home). But in English, at least in conversational, non-contorted way, word order has to be preserved.
alphabets (as those are based on sound)
Well, yes, but, actually, no. Alphabets co-evolved with pronunciation. While Ukrainian and Belarusian (AFAIK) are very close phonetically to written text, Russian has a lot of a-o sound swaps, and English, in addition to a = æ and the th sound is… Well, you just have to know how to pronounce every word because they could derive or be borrowed from Spanish or French or any other latin-script language, but for some reason they keep the original spelling.
As one option, they weren’t old enough, so they did not have to. As another, they moved and GPS app was too convenient, never learned to drive without it.
I mean, at least here in US, smartphones with (easy and free) turn-by-turn navigation apps have been widespread since early 2010s. So anyone born around 2000 had access to the tech in their teens. And even earlier than 2000s if they only needed it as adults. And before that, in-car GPS units were available in 2000s. So not that new either.
Normal people can just read a map easily enough
As someone I know says, “have you met people?”. There are many who cannot get around without GPS and direction, and some are well aware of this.
Love the simplicity and pragmatism of both protocol and gemtext markup (not so sure on TLS requirements though). I even use gemtext to write pages for my web site / gemini capsule.
Read about it when playing with Gemini (the protocol, not Google garbage), but just like Twitter, did not find a good use for it. Saw maybe one page promoting it.
Large corporate, some AI tools are available, some are optionally tacked onto PR reviews (Copilot on GitHub). No quotas or enforcement yet. Most vocal proponents of AI happen to be the most obnoxious developers or designers.
Bowerbirds build elaborate color-coordinated displays to attract mates. How the female bird chooses the bower (and mate) is still unclear - it is not simple number or color or shape. So, in our human understanding, bowerbirds have a concept of “art”.
IOC is just bending over for bigots.
In these winter olympics the IOC forbade a Ukrainian athlete to wear a plain grey helmet with 12 portraits on them. There was no text or symbols, but it was deemed “too political”. (The helmet was to honor athletes killed in war)
If that doesn’t sound idiotic enough, Ukrainian paralympic athletes were not allowed to wear the outline of Ukraine on their gear. Again, “too political”.
That is fair, and I appreciate the explanation.
Edit: Author says GenAI was not used for code, see below.
Original comment, observing signs of GenAI project:
What’s up with these brand-new “Discord alternatives” being cranked out en masse? Would be easier to contribute to XMPP or Matrix IMO.
Initial commit 14,203 files changed +2872320
AI? Or “i worked on this for 10 years and uploaded just now”? /s
Overabundance of emojis in description. Probably AI.
Would be cool to see if anyone manages to get it running.
Were you able to run it yourself? What.
I think most larger (or older) immigrant communities have their own dialect. Runglish is Russian spoken with lots of words borrowed-adapted from US English.
In parts of Eastern Ukraine and Western Russia, there is also surzhyk, which is a difficult-to-describe blend of both languages, often difficult to comprehend to those who do not speak both or dis not grew up in the area.
I knew of some of these issues with the protocol, but this article definitely gives an impression that Matrix was built as a “cool protocol” first, with messaging applied on top as an afterthought.
It’s possible to run the services without Kubernetes, but official ESS Community uses Kubernetes.
ESS Community works ‘out-of-the-box’ on a single machine or existing Kubernetes cluster using the provided Helm charts.
TLDR: bare Synapse was fine on 1CPU 1GB RAM VPS, but uses lots of disk space (from large rooms). Current/future ESS requires Kubernetes and several services to be functional.
Thank you for the queries. The rhetorical question is why isn’t the server handling this.
I have ran Synapse natively on 1 CPU 1GB RAM VPS for years. But it fills up a lot of disk space, eapecially with larger rooms, so get at least 100GB? (I had 20GB on my VPS, and with 4 regular users, was using up 15GB)
If you are looking at (new) official ESS Community, they recommend 2 CPU, 2GB RAM minimum for Kubernetes.
Matrix clients aren’t great
IMO the main advantage that Matrix-Element has for normal users is the branding: Element is Element on the web, Android and iOS. (Snikket is trying to do the same for XMPP though)
Matrix is too difficult for “normal” people
Agreed. Simple user+password login to a hosted (non-matrixdotorg) server takes 5-6 pages to click through.
Matrix public rooms have a CP problem
I was spammed with racist copypasta on XMPP once too. But being in large Matrix chats guarantees being invited/messaged.
…Matrix also pisses metadata to any server it federates with, including matrix [.] org
Replication+sync is a strange decision for chats. It sort of makes sense for slower fediverse posts, but creates a lot of strange scenarios and privacy issues with chats. Also, matrixdotorg is used for key backups and vectordotim is used for integrations IIRC.
“AI” is a pretty bad blanket term. BirdNet / Merlin is a model trained specifically on bird calls (and some noises) built to recognize bird calls. App and logo use huge general-purpose models to create content of questionable quality.
And yes, a decent birder should never trust just Merlin ID.