In some respects I’m glad the US gets invasive updates before the UK, it means I get a longer warning, and this realm isn’t always protected by EU regulations. I haven’t used Photos for a while but I still need to warn others. One saving factor: even though the article never says it, this feature seems to be for backed-up media only, and not for on-device media.

Well this is awful. My policy is if it can’t agree to my terms, it is rejected. If a company is kicking up a fuss because I want to ensure my primary address isn’t forever compromised by spam, and doesn’t work with aliases or duckduckgo privacy relays, then said company doesn’t get my attention or business. Whatever the service you’re trying to obtain from them, I can almost guarantee there’s a more amicable alternative.

I know it’s a joke but the fact is Al Qaeda was founded by people whose friends and family were bombed by the US military. There’s very little that people, who lost everything to live for in a country kept destitute by attacks from America, can do except keel over or find a way to attack back. The US government creates their nemeses through cruelty, and are ultimately the cause.

Then they somehow convince their people that some gang member in Bahrain poses an actual threat to the lifestyle of their children in fucking rural Wisconsin, and gets them to train up so they can go and murder four gang members and 48 civilians, whose family members become radicalised against America the violent untamed oppressor, and the cycle continues.

Do you prefer XMPP or Matrix

Yes* - I haven’t used Discord in a long time as its bloat simply doesn’t interest me, but for communicating with folk:

Matrix, at least for me, is great, but the most capable mobile client Element has many broken or missing features.
Classic, but not X, has:

• working calls via STUN/TURN,
• an emoji menu,
• correctly showing chat profile images (X duplicates the most recent one for all chats),
• and the ability to create unencrypted group chats (purely for public memes).

X, but not Classic, has:

• attachment captions,
• HD images,
• markdown support,
• a more modern UI,
• and (when it works) fully encrypted 1-1 and conference calls via Matrix Livekit.

I currently dual-wield the two because neither is enough yet, and most other clients lack call functionality entirely.

XMPP, at least for me, is nearly perfect. It just works and I find the fact that desktop clients still look like AOL Messenger quite charming. However it has:

• very manual encryption key management, meaning even I find trusting a new device daunting let alone any adopters,
• no backward decryption, meaning message history needs to be exported and transferred to a new device,
• plaintext serverside storage for several pieces of data. It’s my server so ownership isn’t a worry, but it’s a massive security risk in the albeit unlikely event of a hack or hijack.

I chose higher encryption and easier adoption between Matrix and XMPP but wish there was a more fulfilling option.