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I avoid Apple devices, so I don’t have a first-hand recommendation, but something like Nextcloud would seem to fit.

https://nextcloud.com/encryption/

I don’t think discoverability would be dead even if there were no other Matrix servers.

Rooms/spaces can be announced and found in other places. I generally find them through various projects’ own web sites, just as I do forums, email lists, IRC channels, etc. They could also be catalogued separately, much as is done for Lemmy, which has terrible built-in discovery.

Did you read the same post that I did? Where does it say they’re centralizing the directory control? This post reads to me like it’s about an individual server instance, not the whole network.

I think you mean across the internet, but I get your point. You might want to state that in your post.

Its file sharing feature works between any supported devices, including phone-to-phone, and yes, it is intended for connections across a local network.

Why go through someone’s service when you could go direct?

https://kdeconnect.kde.org/download.html

https://archive.today/uwd3g

It also seems that the headline currently on the article is different and switches out

Both are present in the article; they don’t switch out. One is the title (as you can see in the title bar of a desktop web browser) and the other is the top-level heading of the text.

Looks like Lemmy picked up the former, which makes sense considering the document structure. BBC probably should have used the same phrase in both places.

How?

If you can’t do everything on the web, change bank.

And to be clear, make sure you can do everything on a web site. Not a Chrome site.

“my concern about leaving my abusive partner is what if after all the hassle the next one pulls the same act ? and the next one !”

There are many banks and (better yet) credit unions. Not all of them are awful. Be brave. Take action.

+1

In case you don’t have an optical drive, new ones cost only slightly more than a CD these days.

Here’s some guidance on which models are especially good at audio ripping:

https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/

(Note that the best ones cost a bit more and don’t come with a USB enclosure, but could be mounted in one.)

Matrix literally syncs the entire data/metadata history to all other servers where someone pops in

How else would you expect a decentralized and persistent chat room to work? If that stuff wasn’t synced among the servers that were invited to participate in a room, then it wouldn’t be decentralized; one server going down would kill the room (or at least lose data).

The only way I can think of is not to use servers at all, but go fully peer-to-peer. Matrix has done some proof-of-concept work toward this, but I’m not aware of any service that does it successfully while being practical for most people, yet.

chat is meant to have an ephemeral aspect to it.

There are use cases where that makes sense, but for general use? No thanks. When I lose my account password or my phone breaks, I want to be able to sign in on another device and still have my message history.

It sucks so much RAM, so much storage,

Synapse is indeed a heavy server implementation. Several lighter ones are in development, some of which people are using already.

encryption regularly breaks in weird ways, usually you see a message that you can’t read

This was once common, but it’s somewhat rare now in my experience, and the upcoming Matrix 2.0 apparently addresses most (all?) of the remaining causes.

if you enable encryption in a chat room you cannot disable it

I consider this a good thing, for the sake of the people who joined or wrote in the chat with the understanding that what they write is and will remain encrypted. If you want to abandon encryption, you can always create a new room.

we now have two official clients for Android (Element and Element X) in the first one encryption breaks in weird ways, in the later there is no way to use Spaces properly

No, there is one officially released client for android: Element. Element X is in beta. When it leaves beta, it will take over as the one officially released client.

direct messages between people don’t work well - it is like they are a room with the two people

It works well for me. How is it a problem for you? It looks just like the person-to-person chats on other platforms I use, including SMS.

privacy wise matrix is weak,

Privacy of message content is not weak at all.

leaks metadata,

It’s true that some metadata can be read by admins of the servers that have been invited into a chat. Given all the features that Matrix uniquely offers, that’s an acceptable tradeoff for many of us. Also, the developers have stated that moving most of that metadata to the encrypted channel is planned.

attachments are not encrypted, etc.

This is just plain false.

https://spec.matrix.org/latest/client-server-api/#sending-encrypted-attachments

Matrix is good for private general messaging. The fact that it’s decentralised means it can also withstand things like government-ordered shutdowns or back doors, since there is no central point that controls the whole network.

Two things to be aware of:

• Some non-message bits (e.g. room topic text and membership) have not yet been moved to the encrypted channel, so those could be read by the administrator of a homeserver that participates in your chat room. Since most people care primarily about keeping the message content private, this is an acceptable trade-off to get all the things that Matrix offers.
• The upcoming Matrix 2.0 features and design choices simplify the UI and fix some occasional errors. It might be worth waiting until this stuff officially lands in the client apps before bringing your contacts to Matrix, for a better experience all around.

I must say I e never played Skyrim, and I didn’t know how beautiful it could be.

Modern texture packs, replacement models, and lighting mods make it even more so.

On top of that, Skyrim’s soundtrack is outstanding, and conspires with the scenery to make it a game world not easily forgotten. I’m sure I’ll be going back.

Indeed. Tucked away in a corner of their web site, where it isn’t easy to find unless someone else guides you to it, below a large bold warning that discourages people from actually using it:

Danger zone

Advanced users with special needs can download the Signal APK directly. Most users should not do this under normal circumstances.

This ensures that nearly nobody uses that build. Consequently, almost all chats on Signal will have an app store build running on at least one endpoint.

It’s not false.

Signal’s default, well-supported installations use Google services, so unless you’re an extremely atypical user, those services are present on most of your contacts’ devices. You might have the knowledge, skill, and motivation to remove those services from your own device, but since they’re still present at the other end of most chats, you haven’t escaped them.

Let’s also remember that E2EE doesn’t protect the endpionts, and that Google Play Services run with system-level privileges.

Maybe try here?

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