New #cybersecurity roundup, in which we find it hard to exit the coal mine with all these canaries on the ground.
Also, alternatives to Discord (ranked), rules for extraterrestrials, a social media rage check tool, and more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-10-150379364
New #Matrix question, mainly for @eryn:
Have you looked much at the client-to-server protocol? I assume it's not the same thing as the server-to-server federation protocol, and from what you said it sounds like the main issues are with that.
What I'm inquiring towards is the possibility that existing Matrix clients could work with something that speaks Matrix-client but does federation in a more reasonable way (including addressing all the key security/admin issues).
@piarji This seems like a case of "who shaves the barber" -- we don't get to work on our own software much because we're too busy working on other people's so we can get paid.
“We have shown up and compromised at the bargaining table for more than two years, but our newsroom’s management has slow-walked negotiations, offering weak contract language well below what our members deserve. […] More than 80% of our unit’s members are now publicly pledging to vote ‘yes’ on a strike to win these protections.”
— @propublicaguild, https://www.propublicaguild.org/updates/the-propublica-guild-is-ready-to-strike-for-a-fair-contract
Nugget of truth (around which fantasy was apparently wrapped): https://thehill.com/opinion/lindseys-lens/5519725-epstein-trump-statue-accountability/ (2025/09/24) -- those quotes appear here, but the context is:
Rep. Thomas Massie and others are using procedural tools to try to force a vote to release the rest of the files. If that succeeds, he believes released documents may show new, politically dangerous connections.
@HeavenlyPossum I'd like to retroactively ask permission/forgiveness for reposting on Issuepedia a thread you wrote in 2022 about the mythical "tragedy of the commons".
If that's acceptable, please let me know if there are any tweaks or edits I should make. ^.^
@servelan I hope some of the pushback is along the lines of "no, we tried to warn you..."
@eryn If the basic design is sound, then maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to retrofit offline delivery (and saved history), as well as rich-text, reactji, threads, and so forth.
@eryn I had the impression IRC was kind of a hot mess (aside from needing a UI update by about 2 decades).
@Angle New-to-me! More investigation needed; I'm not sure where I can actually access the source code... but it sounds like it's filling the Signal/DChat niche rather than the Discord niche.
That said, we may have to start there, unless Revolt Stoat might be made usable (they don't seem to have a lot of support for self-hosting it... and no fedi presence :-P).
@eryn @Angle How about trying to do something with Delta Chat to make it more Discord-like?
(DChat uses customized email servers as its back-end, as I understand it.)
@eryn @Angle I mean, the "adequate" part was entirely aesthetic in nature, and ignored the engineering issues.
@PandaCab @feorag @netskaven @verge
...and Guilded is no longer available (which shows one compelling reason why proprietary software is not an option).
@PandaCab @feorag @netskaven @verge
Pumble looks to be proprietary, which is an immediate disqualifier.
@Angle @eryn I'd heard from other sources that it could be banged into shape with the right configuration -- but I guess that's purely on the aesthetic side, and under the hood it's a misaligned Wankel Rotary Engine?
[possibly irrelevant footnote: the IBM PC came with BASIC in the ROM, and all IBM-DOS BASIC did was load that; if you tried to run it on a clone, it wouldn't work]
I'm pretty sure there are enough people who would join such a mob as to make it quite overwhelming.
The big problem I see is logistics -- getting everyone together, providing the resources needed for many of them to take time out from their lives, etc.
Anyone want to collaborate on setting up an open-signup #Discord-alternative of some sort (exact platform TBD)?
I can pay for hosting.