Yes.

When I learned about it first time I thought it sounded too good to be true. Turns out, it is just that good.

Yeah, hearing about how hard it would be to get tenure dissuaded me from pursuing my original dream of doing a PhD. In retrospect I think I am much happier where I am now than I would’ve been, which really is what matter the most to me now. Freeing myself of the obligation of attaining my goals was actually quite nice.

I misinterpreted your comment and was very pleasantly surprised that something named “rational wiki” would call him out for the crackpot that he is.

Realistically, how many people build applications themselves? Signal does not have reproducible builds (on Android at least) and depends on Play Services for notifications.

EDIT: Seems they have it now (since 2016). I am getting old.

Yeah, kind of. Moderation is tricky and moderating moderators is even worse. I got banned from !worldnews@lemmy.ml for being a “white moderate”. Was it censorship of non-leftists? No. I am a communist, not a moderate.

There is one rogue mod there banning people right, left and centre and that is a problem, but not one of plain censorship. I would rather say it is frankly the problem of having a bad mod who does not understand their role. I imagine the same happens on .world and other places, albeit under different guises.

As far as I know all bikes have these. The number is definite proof of ownership, but can of course just be removed by the perpetrator (if they bother).

Yes! Two days ago, someone stole my bike. That is, I had parked it (and locked it) in a bike garage monitored by CCTV at the train station where I commute and when I came back from work my bike was gone and only my broken lock was left. However, as I looked around a little the thieves had not moved it far, only down a floor into the premium “bike hotel” area that is an actual locked in area as well. So I just called the company, and they let me in and gave me my bike back.

Afterwards, I called the police to let them know someone stole my bike and that the whole ordeal was caught on cameras (they have to open an official investigation before the footage can be used due to surveillance laws). As I tried to report the theft (or attempt thereof), I had the following fun conversation with a policeman:

• Me: Explains the circumstances of what happened.
• Policeman: (Interrupts) “Yeah, maybe you should keep that in mind for next time.”
• Me: “Uhm what?”
• Policeman: “Yeah, maybe you should be a little bit smarter with regards to where you put your bike.”
• Me: “Uhm OK, I just told you I put it in the designated parking spot that, as pointed out, is monitored.”

I get that they do not really care about bike theft as they account for 30% of reported thefts, but I mean come on. They obviously moved my bike (along with others, I assume) to a nearby area so they could collect them all in a van later that night and drive off unnoticed. The police could have sent one patrol there at the right time and have them caught red-handed with video footage of the entire ordeal. Incompetence and unwillingness to actually do their work is precisely why there are so many thefts to begin with. Had I said I was a shop owner and had a bike stolen, I am certain they would show up in no time.

TL;DR: Bike got stolen and the police sucks. Thankfully, the thieves sucked marginally less, so I got my bike back.

I thoroughly believe that 4 hours is the limit for most people (on most days) on how long they can focus deeply on a problem. That was at least my experience as a mathematics grad student. In math this is more evident because most of high level math requires this deep level of understanding.

Of course one thinks about these problems while doing other things (obsession is a common consequence of prolonged deep thinking), which is why visits to the restroom, walks outside and so on are famous to prove very productive.

Either way, math is also social (most problem solving benefits from discussion) and it is in my opinion much more productive to set some time off for talking about / working on stuff with others than grinding through longer. This is still work and incidentally also good time and resource management.

This and solitaire are the only games I would install on my phone.

Yeah, I am proud of my country’s history of somewhat national control over resources and not super incredibly terrible distribution of wealth. The bar set by the UK and US is outstandingly low though, and the trend for the Nordics is going in the wrong direction, and has been for 50 years, even though there were lots of potential for improvement even 50 years ago.

The communist viewpoint is that bourgeoisie interests will inevitably erode social democracies and make them rot from within. You have to replace the capitalist mode of production to have a chance at combatting exploitation of nature and people in any real and lasting capacity.

Infra-materialists unite!

I am from the Nordics. Spoiler: the rich get rich from exploiting workers and national resources, or inheritance from someone else that did.

Look at university professors’ pay compared to that of a broker if you think we have a merit awarding income system.

As a mathematician I will reiterate what my supervisor told me: Math is not hard, it is only we that suck at it (said in context of me complaining about having used way too much time on what I in retrospect found to be simple).

Did not know about MAM, but that sounds great. I also hosted a Mumble server for my friends for over 5 years, but it was basically never used because there existed a one-stop solution (Discord) that allowed for more stuff^TM. TIL Jitsi was powered by XMPP, thanks. I personally have no problem with fragmenting functionality between different specialized applications, but it will always be a tough sell for those I know because they believe they can have it all in their cool app.

At the end of the day, communication services usefulness are upwards limited by the people you can reach through them. The need for everything to be easy and centralized for the user (ironic with respect to server federation, I know) is what has made me so hopeful for the Matrix protocol, since it is designed for allowing this while still being decentralized at its core.

I have no experience with the last two options you mentioned, but I was of the understanding that XMPP does not have video group call functionality. Also, it has been a long time since I used XMPP at all, but syncing history between sessions was not possible to me then. These are features that would be deal breakers to miss.

Well, in their FAQ the Matrix team states that they love both IRC and XMPP and that for those whom these options perform better they wish the best of luck continuing to use them. Matrix does have some qualities they do not and they do not mean to compete with them, rather to put up bridges so as to federate between these decentralized protocols.

Personally, I want to move away from communicating through Discord with many of my friends. I do not believe neither IRC nor XMPP would entice them, but Matrix could as soon as they finish implementing their new video call capabilities. The same goes for community projects that use Discord as a replacement for forums.

Oh no! But you see young people joining the military because of indoctrination or poverty surely are to blame for US interventionism (read terrorism)!!!

What fundemental aspect of Matrix is both causing too heavy performance degradation while also being unfixable or impossible to reimplement?

I guess it depends on the specific laws of your country, but IMO gifts that have any real value save symbolics are off the table (even if not strictly illegal). I would just send a heartfelt letter expressing my gratitude. That would certainly make them feel very much appreciated!