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Hacker News guidelines say:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

Your comment makes zero sense in this context, because it's just marketing.

> we're trying to enable innovation.

You're trying to make profit, like every other company in the world and that's OK.


> In 2019 multiple studies are showing that prolonged screen time has a damaging -- and perhaps permanent -- effect on developing brains

Hi! I'd like to read those studies. Where should I look?


I've recently bought two different cheap ones. They're both like that. Nothing but power and time. Timer is mechanical. I much prefer this UX over more cumbersome and expensive ones.


It's difficult to show you the relevant ads when you don't even have a screen.


Ha, comic gold (because there's truth to it)!


Are there microwave ovens with ads?


There are gas pumps with ads, operating systems with ads, eReaders with ads... it's only a matter of time.


Amen!


If you don't plan to offer your app on F-droid, could you at least provide an APK for download? Signal does that here:

https://signal.org/android/apk/

With Keybase we currently have to resort to shady APK sites.


> All for-profit plateforms over 3 years old are affected, even small ones

https://www.politico.eu/pro/germany-weighs-in-on-copyright-w...

So, what happened to that? ^

Parliament wanted:

> Apply the law to platforms that “optimise and promote” significant amounts of user-uploaded works and are not small businesses (turnover below €10M and less than 50 employees)

According to: https://juliareda.eu/2018/10/copyright-trilogue-positions/


Apparently, France happened to that: https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/


So you're saying this is what passed? If it wasn't for the "Available to the public for less than 3 years", I wouldn't be as worried.

---

Upload filters must be installed by everyone except those services which fit all three of the following extremely narrow criteria:

* Available to the public for less than 3 years

* Annual turnover below €10 million

* Fewer than 5 million unique monthly visitors


Yes, this is what passed.

The "5 million unique monthly visitors" point is concerning too, because that term is not clearly defined.


I've had one at work since it first got released, but I'm used to Lineage at home. I feel like I'm in a straitjacket when I try to use my iOS. Simple things such as transferring files to and from the device is a pain in the a.

I would never consider choosing it as an every day device. Depends on what you do with your phone though. I prefer a near FOSS device and I use F-droid software with two or three apps sideloaded.


In 5-10 years your biggest problem would be no more OS updates and no security updates.


Or app developers not updating their apps for smaller phones. When the minority of people cause the majority of the work, app devs tend to ship even if it's broken. Firefox is a great example: many sites are working great in Safari / Chrome, but are broken / not as nice when viewed in Firefox. Again, Firefox is used by considerably less people.


It's not even that alone, it's app developers both dropping support for the old OS in new versions of their app, and then actively disabling old versions of their app.

This was what ultimately did in my last iPhone. I kept it well past when iOS upgrades ended, and over time apps stopped working. At first it was stuff that's pretty easy to let go of. My mobile provider's app was the first to go, but I could still do everything I wanted through their website. Eventually it starts to be stuff that's sort of the whole reason you own a smartphone instead of a dumb phone.


> isn't it possible to just revive XMPP?

Please no. XMPP has adapted over time to support various chat and instant messaging features that we today take for granted. These adaptions come in the form of Extensions[1]. A year ago I spent about two hours with a geek friend to configure something that resembles what we get from any other instant messenger today. That's not acceptable to the outside world.

Meanwhile, Matrix just worked. Granted, UX involved with the key management associated with E2EE was not what it should have been. But, that has largely been fixed in v1.0.

Funny thing, Matrix is still struggling (like every other federated network) to explain the concept of federation. People may have grasped email, but for some reason it seems hard to translate that knowledge to other federated technologies.

To suggest that we should just go back to XMPP seems like insanity to me. Matrix stands a chance. It's freaking wonderful!

[1] https://xmpp.org/extensions/


> Funny thing, Matrix is still struggling (like every other federated network) to explain the concept of federation.

Are there any data on how federated is Matrix? I mean number of users on different servers.

From my experience most of people are on matrix.org server and even if they run their own homeservers the identity server is still vector.im.


From memory, about 50% of the users visible in Matrix are on the matrix.org server, which is one of about 30K deployments total that we're aware of, directly or indirectly. This will likely change in the near future as the French deployment expands, which should dwarf the matrix.org server. In the medium/long term, we'd like to at least disable registration on the matrix.org server if not turn it off entirely (once decentralised accounts land).

The identity server is used ONLY for mapping email addresses and phone numbers to matrix IDs, and is strictly optional, so I'm not sure it counts as centralisation. We are also hoping to remove it entirely from the mix in future (switching to storing 3pid->mxid mappings per room instead).


Thanks for your post. I've been wondering about federation distribution in various protocols since seeing similar stats for Mastodon [0]. Having federated protocol where vast majority of users still use one server is sub-optimal IMHO (this is not only for Matrix).

[0]: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html

As for identity server, it was just surprising for me (from user's perspective) that when my friends ran a homeserver I still needed a lot of config on Riot for Android to connect to (homeserver URL, identity server URL). I've seen some well-known URIs [1] but sadly Riot for Android did not query them for my e-mail.

[1]: https://f-droid.org/.well-known/matrix/client

Thanks for your work on Matrix, glad that you guys are pushing the boundaries of UX of open-source software!


the mobile clients lagged a bit on .well-known support, but it landed over the last few weeks: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/pull/644 and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/pull/436. Hopefully this should improve things a bunch.

For 'the federation fallacy' thing: our approach is to first decentralise accounts (so you can transparently move them between servers), at which we can turn off matrix.org (or at least disable signup) assuming there are enough other quality public servers available to incorporate the resulting diaspora. In the longer term, we want to enable P2P in Matrix so you don't even need a server at all if you don't want it, at which point the federation fallacy argument entirely falls apart :)

and thanks for the thanks! :)


Doing the same for XMPP: http://upload.zinid.ru/xep-eax-cir.html

Let's compete.


Could someone be the first to send a newsletter via email that is not a web page. Spare me the HTML and just send me a plain text email please. That would change my experience of email newsletters for the better.


It's not as simple as laziness.

Within our current economic system, any country that will try to _really_ do something will face severe recession.


...and regarding environmental controls instigating a recession, that is very far from the truth (again, in my experience).

Extending the above 'ship design industry' example, when IMO imposed emission caps on ships, did the shipping industry (and supporting industries) faulter or thrive? They're thriving. Why? Because they need to build new things to replace the old things.

-MAN B&W and Wartsilla (Engine Manufacturuers) are now building dual-fuel engines.

-These guys, and their affiliates are offering Exhaust Scrubbing systems (e.g., EGRs, SCRs, Scrubbers, etc.).

-Because of the increase in SCR's, there is now a new, large market for UREA (the active agent, basically Ammonia, in SCR's)

-Propeller manufacturers are offering more hydrodynamic designs, and tow-test tanks are employed to help design those propellers and hydro-improved hull forms.

-New companies have sprouted up (e.g. Energy Focus, etc) just to supply energy efficient LED lighting for ships.

-Contractors are being employed to design new LNG-fuel supply infrastructure to piers world-wide. New training facilities/programs are being built to teach sailors/shore crew how to safely handle LNG.

-Marine hardware suppliers now have a host of new products to sell to meet the demand for energy efficient plants (e.g., high accuracy fuel mass flow meters, shaft torque/thrust sensors, tank gauges, smart controls for HVAC plants, low-power water production units, etc.)

-Companies have sprouted up to supply newly conceived "energy dashboards" that use genetic and machine-learning algorithms to find optimized ship operating configuration (speed, equipment line-up, trim, etc) for a given set of environmental/mission inputs (e.g. weather, voyage plan, etc.).

-I could go on for a long-long time.

Does this sound like a recession to you???

The argument that increasing environmental regulation will stifle the economy is just not true. From what I've seen, the opposite is true. Competition is spurred and new markets emerge, putting more people to work in jobs that actually matter.


> It's not as simple as laziness.

> Within our current economic system, any country that will try to _really_ do something will face severe recession.

I respectfully disagree. From my experience, it's quite simply a matter of laziness and weak, shortsighted people.

I've worked in my industry (cargo ship design) for 18 years. Most ships operate on straight-up large diesel engines (20-30MW+ installed power) burning low quality high-sulfer diesel. Multiply that by many ships per class operating virtually continuously for 40-50 years, and you've just dumped an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

Because ship operators (government and commercial) won't curb emissions on their own, because they THINK it costs more (and it can over the 10 years they'll be in their position of leadership), the International Maritime Organization (IMO) imposes emission regulations, which is forcing ship owners to add exhaust scrubbers, SCRs, etc. However, use of these are only imposed in Emission Control Areas (ECA's near coastlines).

The truth is that with very little ingenuity, you can transition to a dual fuel LNG powered diesel plants (with no Methane slip) to virtually quash NOx and SOx emissions. Yes it's harder (i.e. don't be lazy), and yes in costs more up front (i.e. don't be weak/shortsighted), buts it's achievable even if you aren't forced to do it. On top of that, you can add simple smart controllers to your plant and hotel services, and make other adjustments to the hull form/propeller to improve ship energy efficiency 10% or more.

My engineering team has implemented similar measures simply by telling leadership that this is how the plant needs to be designed. Period. They are not going to design the ship themselves. We've largely balanced the cost by minimizing innefficiencies in other areas (e.g. plant/hotel service controls). It just takes a little time and effort rather than taking the easy route and pulling a 40 year-old design off the shelf and calling it a day.

In the long run, the owner will save money in operating costs, and will actually be a more efficient money-making maching due to the decreased time spent refueling and repairing the ship (improved efficiency means less wear on hardware). All while also decreasing pollution.

I don't feel LNG is enough though, and I'm now setting my sights on zero-emission, H2-powered autonomous shipping (and yes, liquid and compressed H2 is a readily available fuel supply at piers; it's been used in many industries for decades). The technology is available, so we're implementing it. It's really not that hard. The hardest part are synthetic (I.e. safety regulators, merchant marine unions who fear loss of jobs).

These barriers have their purpose, but a lot of people are lazy and just toss up their hands saying "it's too hard" or "it costs too much", without doing the little bit of work needed to say, "no, it's not".

The power is in the hands of the engineers who build the world, not regulators or customers who move money around. Sure, without money and legal runway, better "stuff" won't get built, but without engineers, money/laws alone are not enough to build new "stuff".


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