u_tamtam

@u_tamtam@programming.dev

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the world connected on Skype⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

I don’t see what you’re describing 🤷 Soon only appears once on the page and not in this context for me.

It appears as a tooltip here

Anyhow, where I intended to draw your intention was on prose.org/downloads

You can just download the client for your platform (assuming one is available), or use the web one (otherwise), or just build one from the sources I linked (which is what I do), and login with your usual XMPP account. Would you need an account and have to decide which provider to register with, this would come handy: providers.xmpp.net

In this set-up, prose.org isn’t hosting your account and will of course let you interact with thousands of users or more, like any other XMPP client.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Endgame of Edgelord Eschatology - Truthdig⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Those silicon valley tech billionaires are businessmen who, by the looks of it, have completely fallen for their own marketing, and secluded themselves in a weird echo chamber packed with sycophants and profiteers. They are not superior beings. They have no credential nor academic status enabling them to speak as authorities worth being listened to. Anyone with a critical mind and access to scientific literature understands better than them the actual challenges behind “uploading one’s brain to the cloud” and can debunk that science fictionesque bullshit.

All there is to this is a bunch of aging megalomaniacs with too much power, except over death, and that scares the crap out of them and makes them say some stupid shit. And I hate that we sanewash this just because they are rich and influential. As a society we should kick them back to where they belong, which is a court of law, for their continued effort in dismantling our society.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the world connected on Skype⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Just below you’ll find a section about “self hosting (soon)”, though you can already use it with your own XMPP account as a standalone client (no questions asked), like I do, or, optionally, with the server-side components (opensource prosody module).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the world connected on Skype⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
See my other comment: if you already have an XMPP account, prose is just another client that you can use however you like, for free (and at that point, everyone should be having an XMPP account, if you ask me). If you don’t have an account, they can act as service provider (but this being a decentralized network, the don’t want to encourage hosting everyone on the same server).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the world connected on Skype⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
It is not spam, and you miss-read it. Prose is an open-source XMPP client. They can set you up (host on your behalf) for free, up to a certain point. You can pay for it (there is a commercial offering), or you can use it unlimited and with no extra costs than your own server’s if you self-host. It’s all being developed there in the open in case you don’t want to take my word for it: github.com/prose-im
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the world connected on Skype⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
In terms of tech and implementation details, it’s been years since everyone has been converging towards the same WebRTC architecture (with everyone bundling/linking the same set of basic components and libs as found in chrome, android, …). As such, a call between two participants (or as a group with less than a dozen participants) should be as good on XMPP as anywhere else (including the commercial options like Google Meet, Zoom, Matrix, …).

spoiler
Of course there are caveats like relying on TURN where direct connection is impossible, but that’s the gist of it. Regarding XMPP group calls,

Where things start getting spicier is in large group calls (dozens of participants or more) requiring the stream to be brokered by a central server (SFU), with stream re-compression and optimisation. Standard-XMPP isn’t great for that yet (non-standard XMPP, like Jitsi, on which it is based, is pretty damn good, but unavailable from your regular XMPP setup). Work is going on to improve that (on two fronts, with some XMPP servers turning into SFUs, and with a protocol being designed for offloading AV streams to any willing existing SFU).

spoiler
The problem with large group calls essentially boils down to how much bandwidth and CPU you want to throw at it, and that’s not cheap (unless, of course, you are the product, i.e. Google Meet, Discord & al). The same applies to self-hosted Matrix/Galene/Jitsi: you probably won’t want to hold a large conference call on a home-server, and the server admins are bearing some costs, so get to know them and how sustainable that is. In the case of Matrix.org, it is not.

No idea what prose is.

Prose is an open-source XMPP client with a focus on large rooms/banquet-style conversations (like IRC, slack, …). It is still in its early stages but already quite usable and possibly a good fit for a subset of Skype refugees.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the world connected on Skype⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
None of those (except Jitsi to a small extent) qualify as replacements if we ever want to evolve out of the silos we let megalomaniac CEOs build to better control us. So I’ll add to the list: prose.org , movim.eu (or anything based on XMPP) and matrix.org (though this one is rapidly falling into obsolescence). The keyword here is federation.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bubble Trouble - An AI bubble threatens Silicon Valley, and all of us.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
It has already started. Microsoft and Google hiking prices with AI bundled in is both a way to inflate the “demand” artificially, keeping the show going (covering up the fact that nobody really wants that, and even less so wants to pay a premium for it: there just is no miracle AI product/application to sell), and to mitigate some of the absurd imminent losses.

You wouldn’t see that in an “optimistic” and sound market.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hundreds of celebrities warn against letting OpenAI and Google ‘freely exploit’ Hollywood⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Count me as a fervent critic of Hollywood, but the world isn’t binary and (unfortunately) Hollywood hating it doesn’t automatically make it a good thing for the rest of us. Essentially OpenAI, Google and the rest of the pack of thieves are lobbying to establish themselves as the rulers of a lawless world, and everything you already hate about Hollywood (its inordinate amount of power, the bullying of the weaker that ensue, the corruption and politics around it, …) is meant to get back to us, in worse, with new names at the top.

Indeed that would be the end of the copyright law, but only for the oligarchs.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prepare For Discord To Get Way Worse [Kotaku]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Matrix has gone open core, XMPP is safer
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prepare For Discord To Get Way Worse [Kotaku]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, open standards with similar or better capabilities already exist. Don’t create another silo, contribute to making e.g. XMPP clients better.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prepare For Discord To Get Way Worse [Kotaku]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

but it taught us that you always want more than one method of contact, as a a rugpull can happen at any time off any whim.

Being on the internet long enough taught me instead (by having seen countless providers rise and fall since the early 00’s) to self-host my comms and prefer open federated protocols. I switched to XMPP, I have no regret, everyone that matters made the move painlessly a decade ago or so.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘TikTok Refugees’ Flocking to China’s RedNote App Experience Intersection of Free Speech and Censorship While The Chinese App Seeks To Meet Censorship Requirements Set By Beijing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

leftist activism like tiktok

Lol, you might have missed a few news cycles if that’s your take. Tiktok has been well documented as a vector of foreign interference while propping up right wing populist movements.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI and the American Smile⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Isn’t that the essence of the issue, that those models are loaded with biases, that might or might not overlap with dominant ones in inscrutable ways, hence producing new levels of confusion and indirection?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor with Pro-China Content Originating from State-Linked Entities, Study Claims⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
If you have the impression that there’s a dominant, homogeneous “mass” sharing the same opinion, you are right there in the middle of an information bubble and a victim of those “algorithms”.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hacktivists release two gigabytes of Heritage Foundation data (Project 2025)⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Would that make a difference?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
I’d like to share your optimism, but what you suggest leaving us to “deal with” isn’t “AI” (which has been present in web search for decades as increasingly clever summarization techniques…) but LLMs, a very specific and especially inscrutable class of AI which has been designed for “sounding convincing”, without care for correctness or truthfulness. Effectively, more humans’ time will be wasted reading invented or counterfeit stories (with no easy way to tell); first-hand information will be harder to source and acknowledge by being increasingly diluted into the AI-generated noise.

I also haven’t seen any practical advantage to using LLM prompts vs. traditional search engines in the general case: you end up typing more, for the sake of “babysitting” the LLM, and get more to read as a result (which is, again, aggravated by the fact that you are now given a single source/one-sided view on the matter, without citation, reference nor reproducible step to this conclusion).

Last but not least, LLMs are an environmental disaster in the making, the computational cost is enormous (in new hardware and electricity), and we are at a point where all companies partaking in this new gold rush are selling us a solution in need of a problem, every one of them having to justify the expenditure (so far, none is making a profit out of it, which is the first step towards offsetting the incurred pollution).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Use WhatsApp without a smartphone?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
You can always give a shot at using a third party client (possibly acting as bridge for other/better protocols, like e.g. slidge.im>xmpp or the buggy matrix equivalent), but you need to keep in mind that they will all require you to authenticate (and remain authenticated) using a smartphone, and that usage of 3rd party clients is forbidden from WA’s terms and conditions (which may lead to your account being blocked/deleted).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Twitch "isn't profitable" admits CEO, in wake of recent layoffs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
It’s part of the reason why I think decentralized services could be the future. Lemmy or Mastodon can have a lot of small servers with reasonable costs spread across many admins, instead of one centralized service that costs a significant amount to run.

Ohh, absolutely, or rather, it is the past. I mean, internet was built that way, as a resilient federation of networks and protocols. Lemmy could be seen as us just rediscovering emails after the tech giants almost succeeded in killing it. We should approach all the services we use by asking ourselves basic sustainability questions:
- is that thing opensource?
- self hostable?
- does it federate/interoperate with equivalent services?
- can I pull my data out of it/relocate to another provider on a whim?
- if not, is this a trustworthy and ethical business?
- is it profitable?
- are there open financial records available showing where/for what the money is going?
- is it at risk of being acquired?
- is it subject to foreign/unlawful interference
Etc Etc
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Linux is Best for Most People⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

Until i can give a laptop with linux to my neighbour without also needing to also provide support, its not there yet.

I mean, isn’t your neighbor already getting Windows support from his son or nephew anyway? Let’s not pretend that there exists a magical and perfect OS for those who don’t want to learn one. Some learning is required, whichever the OS, and I would be hard to convince that a current preinstalled Linux is more difficult to handle than a current preinstalled Windows.

Windows has for itself that it’s a devil most people know/got exposure to (thanks to Microsoft schemes and monopolistic practices), there is nothing inherently better or easier about it (and arguably quite the opposite).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Atuin is an open-source shell command history app for Linux with syncing, unlimited history, and with contextual search⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
What I found compelling about the sync is that you can have your other machines’ histories there with you, but in the background, behind a different shortcut, just in case you need to re-run or check that command you ran somewhere else few years ago…

As I said, I haven’t used that yet, but that’s in many ways more appealing than having to SSH onto said machine (assuming it’s even possible).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Atuin is an open-source shell command history app for Linux with syncing, unlimited history, and with contextual search⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
Thanks
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Atuin is an open-source shell command history app for Linux with syncing, unlimited history, and with contextual search⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
I figured starship.rs but not the CTT part, any pointer to help me?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Atuin is an open-source shell command history app for Linux with syncing, unlimited history, and with contextual search⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:
Been using it for months, haven’t gotten to use the sync yet, my only regret so far is that it doesn’t support case insensitive search which is a pretty big deal for me unfortunately.