Sure. Most of the actual traffic is encrypted by https these days. So they can’t look inside. But they can see to what IP you send these encrypted packets and from where packets come to you.

With DNS they can see what domains you typed in and your computer looks up. Just the part to the .com or something and nothing after. And sure, they’re preconfiguring their DNS server. Because they’re an internet service provider and you pay them to provide services like domain name lookup to you. They’re certainly not going to preconfigure a server of their competitors and funnel your data to them.

With something like Mullvad, if you configure that correctly (!) also your DNS requests go through an encrypted tunnel. Now your ISP can only see you connect to some Mullvad server. And now Mullvad provides DNS to you and they’re now the ones who can see what kind of domains you look up.

You can often just change your DNS settings. Either in the devices or for all your network in the router. But mind that plain DNS on port 53 is unencrypted. You’re connecting to a different setver then, but theoretically they could snoop on you if it’s an unencrypted connection.

Isn’t there some ISP in the US that is kinda trustworthy? I mean Mullvad or all the other VPN services are companies, too. Depending on your use-case and threat scenario, you might want to choose a different ISP if you’re afraid of them… But I’m not an expert on American companies. And I also use third-party DNS servers. I own my Wifi router and I set the DNS to opennic.org and also configured an AdBlocker.

I’m not sure if ActivityPub allows for an extension like that. And I mean if you open up a separate direct channel via TURN… It’ll be incompatible with something like Mastodon anyways, so I then don’t see a good reason for why to bother with the additional overhead of AP in the first place. I mean you could then just send the status updates in some efficient binary representation as data packets directly do the other players. So why use ActivityPub that needs to encode that in some JSON, send it to your home instance, which handles it, puts it in the outbox, sends HTTP POST requests to the inboxes of your teammates where it then needs to be retrieved by them… In my eyes it’s just a very complicated and inefficient way of transferring the data and I really don’t see any benefits at all.

So instead of extending AP and wrapping the game state updates into AP messages, I’d just send them out directly and skip AP altogether. That probably reduces the program code needed to be written from like 20 pages to 2 and makes the data arrive nearly instantly.

I suppose I could imagine ActivityPub being part of other things in a game, though. Just not the core mechanics… For example it could do the account system. Or achievements or some collectibles which can then be commented and liked by other players.

Probably for European users if Europe decides to force gatekeeping platforms to implement such a feature.

Port forwards in the router + DynDns.

Though those leaks showed they actually did it on a large scale. I don’t think they stopped for some arbitrary reason. Why would they? And technology developed further, surveillance is only getting easier. I’d say even without a tin-foil hat on, it’s more likely they do it than not.

Well, centralization and giving up your freedoms, letting someone else control you, is always kinda easy. Same applies to all the other big tech companies and their platforms. I’d say it applies to other aspects of life, too.

And I’d say it’s not far off from the usual setup. If you had a port forward and DynDns like lots of people have, the Dns would automatically update, you’d need to make sure the port forward is activated if you got a new router, but that’s pretty much it.

But sure. if it’s too inconvenient to put in the 5 minutes of effort it requires to set up port forwarding everytime you move, I also don’t see an alternative to tunneling. Or you’d need to pay for a VPS.

Not really. Contrary to what people say, there is practically no malware targeting desktop machines and the risk is close to zero. There have been a few select pieces of malware during Linux’ history. But as far as I remember nothing to worry about for desktop users. You need to worry about security if you run a server. And ClamAV and such are mainly for scanning for Windows viruses, so noone else in the network gets infected by files they download from your server.

Do backups, though. Loosing all your files is as easy as running ‘rm -rf *’ in the terminal.

And as anecdotal evidence: I’ve been running Linux for like 20 years and I know lots of people who do. Practically no one I know uses an antivirus. And I know 0 people who got their desktops infected. We had our servers targeted though and the website defaced because we didn’t update the webserver for nearly two years. That definitely happens.

Yeah and as other people pointed out: use software from the package repository of your Linux distribution. That’s the nice thing about Linux and a popular Distro, that most popular software is packaged and ready to install with one command/click. Lately some users have adopted the habit of installing lots of software from random sources. I avoid that unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Ah, nice. Alright. Thanks again. I’ll see how I can do it. Unfortunately I’ve already set everything up, joined Rooms and connected a few bridges. I hope it doesn’t break. I’ll do a backup first. Seems reasonable and not that hard to upgrade.

Oh well, seems both reasonable. Maybe I should switch before the projects diverge too much. Conduwuit seems pretty active. Hope it stays that way.

Do you happen to have a link where I can read the backstory myself? Thanks for the info anyways. Seems to be a good call.

I found that. Seems it mainly addresses caching and database performance, adds some admin and moderation commands. I’m not sure if it addresses any of the shortcomings I have.

My main question is: Which one is going to be maintained in the years to come and have the latest features implemented? And secondly: Why a fork? Why don’t they contribute their fixes upstream to Conduit?

Agreed. I think most prominently competitive gaming; development where you need to assure it later on actually works as intended on the target platform; and business stuff where parties are obliged by contract to guarantee something works flawlessly and keeps running that way - are good examples.

That laptop doesn’t look to me like it was intended to do any of that, so that’s maybe why I’m being a bit negative here. It’s cool and a nice idea, though…

(And we already have ARM-based retro machines, FPGA clones if popular processors available. So there is no need for them to do the exact same thing.)

The M6117C also isn’t the original and not that old. Also the 8MB of RAM aren’t true to the original.

I’m not sure. I occasionally use emulation. And I think it’s fine. Unless you’re a speed runner and need everything to be exact to the frame timing, you won’t notice. Certainly not for a desktop UI like the Win 3.11 on the photo. I guess it depends on the use-case.

Something like a FPGA or an ESP32 can also be repaired, replaced, programmed and most of the things a CPU or different architecture can do. And if the emulation layer doesn’t have too many flaws, it’ll be pretty realistic. Not exactly the same thing, but I think it’ll do for practically any use-case. And it comes with other benefits.

I think you’re allowed to do it just for the sake of it. But I often see people using an original SNES because “emulation is shit” and then they proceed to connect it to the TV set in their livingroom, which isn’t even close to the original experience because it adds lots of latency and doesn’t have interlacing and the colors are different than on a CRT, too. I think that’s just having strong opinions despite being uneducated. And I think I’m equally as well off with my Raspberry Pi and Emulationstation. (Which can also run DOS games.)

In the end everyone is entitled to their opinion. But this also isn’t the original (You can get an old Laptop… I have one with an 486.) But this isn’t the original but a replica. And it’s debatable (in my opinion) whether it’s the CPU architecture that does the realism, or other factors. I think for realism, you’d need a black and white liquid crystal display, a NiMH battery that degrades fast if you don’t charge it right and half the amount of RAM at most. And maybe just a floppy drive. The CPU is something you wouldn’t notice with the current state of technology.

Ah, well I only read the official documentation on https://docs.conduit.rs/

I’m gonna take a look at this later.

Depends a bit on how much images and videos get shared. If its mainly used for chat by a bunch of people and a few gifs and stickers in-between, it shouldn’t consume that much storage. But sure if you frequently share all your vacation photos, the cache is going to grow fast.

Definitely the whole server name. Other servers and clients can’t guess that information. I think it’s properly documented how to do it.

I installed it like 2 weeks ago. As of now it’s still running and has a really low memory footprint compared to Synapse. But a lot of things aren’t implemented. Chatting works fine. I get a lot of warning messages about not implemented things, though. Like my client (FluffyChat) trying to query some profile status … I’d say try it. I’ve done so. But I can really only give some good advise after a few more weeks of using it. Maybe there is a dealbreaker.

I’d be interested, too, if he and FUTO got to terms with their community and if they learned how licensing and trademarks work… Last thing I remember he claimed lots if things that weren’t true. And FUTO didn’t really address anything.

Seems the two German supermarket chains really like to have the same infrastructure everywhere. Everywhere I go the Aldis look exactly the same. They have slightly different products depending on the country. But the price tags, interior, … is basically the same. Okay and we don’t have “Flaschenpfand” everywhere… (deposit on the plastic bottles and the machines where you can return bottles.) I bet all of this makes it a lot easier for their techs and management. And it could also explain why they sometimes redo a store that still looks fine and fit it with the latest shenanigans.

And as an aside: I’ve shopped in the first Aldi store ever. It’s not far from where I live.

Nice, didn’t know about HomeBox. Are there other good inventory systems for home use?

They’re already widely adopted in supermarkets here (Germany).