XMPP was a well intended idea but a bad protocol. Sure federation is good, but they needed a proper standard instead of making everything an optional extension that C2S and S2S never agree on. Like getting the right auth and encryption is even messier than on email.
Also, XML was the wrong choice. Pissed me off as a dev, back when I was doing stuff with ejabberd.
That's the kind of "compelling in theory, irrelevant in practice" comment I would make if I had no/obsolete experience with XMPP. It just works, with a healthy and thriving ecosystem of compatible client/server implementations developed independently by many organisations (small and large) around the world. At the user-level, it's just plug and play. As a developer, you don't even have to see any XML (you can deserialize your stanzas into whatever higher-level/prettier construct the programming language/stack your product depends on)
The argument that xmpp problems stem from XML format is the silliest of all: from 15 years of working with xmpp, we had all kinds of problems, but none of them were caused by XML format.
On the contrary, xmpp is a very good protocol. The problem with it is that most of extensions are bad: half-baked, often contradict or duplicate other extensions, and sometimes solve only part of the problem that they intend to solve.
Disclosure: my team and I are actively working on improving xmpp, but in a rather orthogonal direction to general XSF council route.
> The problem with it is that most of extensions are bad: half-baked, often contradict or duplicate other extensions, and sometimes solve only part of the problem that they intend to solve.
I think that's in the organic nature of protocols catching-up to changing goals and priorities, as the state of the art and the user needs evolve. I think it's pretty-well acknowledged by the XSF (and to a further extent by modernxmpp.org) by curating a short-list of XEPs and behaviours to implement.
Is this an important feature? I know WhatsApp and iMessage have some kind of API for businesses, but as a regular user, I've never interacted with a legit business using it. Only been harassed by bots a few times.
My one serious problem with Signal is that it silently goes out of date then stops sending notifications, so I miss messages entirely. Kind of its one job.
Maybe maybe not. I think it is a useful feature for power users. The question is if targeting power users will help mass appeal. I'd argue with an app like Signal, yes it would. The power users are effectively their evangelists. APIs could enable a lot of features that people are asking for like location sharing, bots (e.g. on your IOT devices), and so on. The concern is more that introducing those things creates security risks but I think that's okay. Put a "developer mode" type switch like in Android.
But there are also other things I'd like to see.
For mass appeal I'd like to see them integrating Signal Stickers[0] into the app so people can search stickers. This has been a surprisingly common complaint among people I've converted over.
For both groups I'd love to see something like this feature request[1] I like that it could serve as the backbone of a mesh network and AirDrop is a incredibly popular. Would be super cool if you could hold a copy of the APK on your phone and drop it over to others to install that way. I imagine even a rudimentary mesh network could really reduce server loads. My GF and I often sync pictures to each other this way. No reason that needs to go over the network when we're sitting 5 feet from one another.
For power users I'd love to see a nuking capability. Bidirectional. I want to know that if I am at a protest or something and get picked up by the Gestapo that either I or a trusted friend can wipe my phone. It's not a cure all, but it greatly reduces the chances of "incriminating" evidence being found on my device. But such a feature seems quite unpopular on their forums (I am very much not a fan of their forums and the community there...)
> APIs could enable a lot of features that people are asking for like location sharing
Please, no. You don't need that as a feature when you can drop a maps link.
> it could serve as the backbone of a mesh network
????? What?
> For power users I'd love to see a nuking capability. Bidirectional. I want to know that if I am at a protest or something and get picked up by the Gestapo that either I or a trusted friend can wipe my phone.
If you are at a protest with your phone, you are very likely leaking enough signals intelligence to identify, analyze, and monitor you and the entire group you are/were in contact with.
To me? All of these requests sound like things that would make the app the exact opposite of what I am looking for. Right now it is damn near perfect.
This does not update over time. So it has some serious limitations. The feature is actually quite helpful when meeting up with others, especially on longer road trips. It's a good way to allow the other person to know when to expect me as well as them know if I'm safe or have had hiccups. Means I am not using my phone while driving.
> ????? What?
For that link the user was talking about sending multimedia directly between devices, like "Airdrop". Why stop at pictures and videos? Why not texts? If these are short range then why send over the servers? It saves Signal server costs as well as provides some extra privacy and security for users as their messages cannot be gobbled up over the network (you'd have to be physically in range). Capture and decrypt later (the motivation Post-Quantum resistance, as discussed in the Signal blog post) can't be done if you don't capture, right?
There is real desire to still be able to communicate at times when networks are down. Be that a natural disaster, a crowded/congested area, or a government shutdown. Means of passing digital media during such events is still critical. It's not like we pass each other physical notes anymore. Plus, behind a secure protocol that's a bonus.
> If you are at a protest with your phone
Yeah sure, but reducing signals and information leakage is better than not reducing, right? Privacy and security are not binary things, they are continuums.
> To me?
Why?
Do these things stop you from using the app the way you currently use it?
I haven't done this in forever, but last time the recommended OpenJDK answer was somehow not right. Got the Oracle one, had to figure out where you extract the tarball to, fix my
PATH, yada yada.
That sounds fine though. The PATH variable is a nicety for the user to not need to type long paths, really like using ~ for the home directory, not for program setup.
I switched my spare PC from Linux back to Win10, and it's way less annoying than I remember (rug bazaar was right). Maybe because it's not getting constant updates anymore.
Even when it's not the insurer, it's at least a hospital. Many a doctor around me that used to have a private practice sold to one of the hospital chains, as they promised more money than by owning, solely due to superior collective action advantages. A large insurer can bully a private practice into cutting costs, but a hospital network that handles 40% of ERs in the metro area? The insurance company can lose. So everyone makes more money but the people paying insurance.
To be fair, this is because there's long-standing [but disputed] evidence that healthcare providers drive up costs/utilization when they can refer to hospitals they have equity stakes in.
Not quite true. If you own the providers, getting people to pay deductibles and copays (i.e. getting treated) will yield way more money than just having them pay premiums.
Correct, which is another reason why they are buying the healthcare providers. It allows the insurers (“pay-viders”) to strong arm independent doctors and smaller insurers out of the market.
The insurers are legally obligated to pay out 80-95% of their premiums for treatment. So the only way to grow profits is to spend 2x and much and charge 2x as much. Sure you only make the same 5-20% margin, but it's on 2x the revenue so it's 2x the gross profits.
Uh, no… they want to deny claims. The best situation for insurers is that you are healthy for a while, then abruptly die of something that cannot be treated.
Uh no, they don't. Not if they're also the ones who provide healthcare. Simply denying claims isn't even remotely close to the financially (and obviously not the politically) optimal strategy.
The optimal strategy if you own both the insurer and the provider is a combination of premiums, copays, deductibles, and maybe even some totally unnecessary care to drive up volume.
Lower margin on dramatically higher volume is still dramatically more money. Lower margin actually provides political cover for your $400 billion revenue years.
You first have to agree on a definition of free in this context. When Adam Smith was writing the Wealth of Nations most of the transactions in the market were between entities with more or less comparable power. Local people bought stuff from local suppliers. This is very much not the case any more when it comes to transactions involving private individuals on one side and corporations on the other.
This is true but beside the point. I don't care either way what you count as a "free" market or whether such a thing exists, you can just say that health insurance is less free than almost any other market.
It makes a ton of sense in theory. In a fair market, you would want to prevent the insurer from charging super high premiums that let them make a large profit relative to the cost of care provided.
The problem is that it doesn't stop there. There is a second order effect.
As noted by sibling comments, the arm of the Healthcare company that wons the doctor's office wants to collect as much as possible, while the insurance arms are anyway capped at how much they can make. Incentives (conflict of interest) are towards paying more.
Governments of countries that have public health care generally are price sensitive. The competition is from other governmental functions that need the budget.
That's less a matter of price sensitively and more that other countries usually have price controls on healthcare. That's why doctors make so much less and drugs are so much cheaper outside the US: it's literally illegal to charge more.
If the feds are mandating USA manufacture in order to secure the funding for the muni.. then it just really amounts to welfare for the bus manufacturer.
Which is probably the right way to support american manufacturing.
Mobo integrated graphics require CPU support. Maybe you bought one of the slightly cheaper Intel "F" chips without realising it lacks the graphics support?
Also, XML was the wrong choice. Pissed me off as a dev, back when I was doing stuff with ejabberd.