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While I agree with you, and there should more diverse members than just the people from Element.

What I do like about them is the zero server trust stand they are taking on their clients which makes migration a pain in the butt, but that is what one would expect from a true e2ee chat app.

And now they have two stable servers in rust. The French and German government including military are using the protocol to make their own apps. Maybe it should be something the EU should put some more resource into it?


> What I do like about them is the zero server trust stand they are taking

Last time I checked, the Matrix servers had access to a lot of metadata. Did they fundamentally change it?


Encrypted metadata is in the works.

German Healthcare will also be using Matrix

All this just seems like a slippery slop on the road to censorship to free speech and behavior control.

> slippery slop

Best Freudian slip I’ve seen in years!


Freudian slop?

What is the LICENSE?


I love the anti-licence and thank you for the blessings!

I actually found that in SQLite's source code! I love it too.

>I think a stored generated column allows you to create an index on it directly. Isn't it better approach?

Is it also possible to create index (maybe partial index) on expressions?


That's the first solution (a function based index), however it has the drawback of fragility: a seemingly innocent change to the query can lead to not matching the index's expression anymore). Which is why the article moves on to generated columns.

but having the bluetooth part working on iOS should not be an issue right?

One of these bluetooth messaging app was made by a developer who was on a cruise ship with family, and the Internet over satellite costs an arm and leg. So he wrote an app to communicate with his families over bluetooth.

Also why would one want to have the data go over some servers thousands miles away when the device is right next to you? Seems like bluetooth is the perfect way to communicate for devices that are close to each other.


On a similar situation, someone try Meshtastic and it works great

https://old.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1qd2z97/mestast...

I doubt that BLE can propagate well over a cruise ship.


Yeah I can imagine a jam-packed cruise ship might be useful provided the signal propagates from deck to another (unlikely), but it's quite a niché use case.

>Also why would one want to have the data go over some servers thousands miles away when the device is right next to you?

Why would that matter? Use Signal to protect the content, or use Cwtch to protect content and metadata. If you need to exchange secret communications that mustn't go through some server, why not discuss f2f with no phones around? You'd also eliminate attack vectors where your (chances are, Chinese Android) device spies on you, as well as anyone who has compromised it to read messages from screen.


> Why would that matter?

Reliability? Why should we want to centralize things unnecessarily? It's nice as a fallback but then so too is P2P.


If your message goes though my infrastructure I can shut it down when I feel like it but even if I really don't want to do that I still might be forced by other parties commercial, private and state owned.

You shouldn't need any kind of permission to send a picture to your mum sitting next to you on the sofa.


I remember a different app thats was used on e.g. festivals where the local broadcast cells where overwhelmed when a quite rural area suddenly had to server 50000 to 100000 additional people and 3g and 4G basically stopped working. I think it was called Firechat or something.

Still, wouldn't a wifi meshnet be a better choice for these scenario's?

Went down that rabbit hole a while ago. iOS works fine, but think they may have discontinued ad-hoc, or at least on macOS. Android has a bit issue with ad-hoc hot spot at that time. [1] But theoretically it should be able to do that.

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/28551/why-cant-a...


Can that be setup on a phone?

I imagine in a situation like Iran, carrying a backpack full of WiFi gear to stay connected to the meshnet is a red flag.

Establishing a bunch of base stations is likely to raise red flags too.

It's pretty trivial for a nation-state that is jamming GPS to go around and jam WiFi or analyze WiFi spectrum for a meshnet operating in and around a protest area.


On a cruise ship, isn't the cheap walkie talkies still a thing? Or did those die with cell phones?

For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless, not much I can do on it, might as well sue a purpose built device. They're also very cheap.

Even better if Nextel still worked on phones (but without service).


> For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless

Projects like this one are a step towards fixing that. Personally I choose to keep both street and topographical maps of the entire continent locally on my phone. There are plenty of uses for a computer without a WAN connection.


I once wrote an article detailing as many prepper uses for an offline phone as I could think of. Dozens of offline apps useful for a survival situation. My favorite might be ATAK, which is from the US military and allows a team to communicate encrypted over Wi-Fi or radios, completely offline. Share GPS coords, camera feeds, messages, map markers, all kinds of goodness.

And if nothing else, you can always rupture the battery and start a fire :-)


And of course you can now run local LLMs on your phone as well.

Prepper J.A.R.V.I.S. :-)

The fact the even simple encryption with walkie-talkies is basically illegal might be problem (though I have no idea how/if that applies to at-sea ships).

Well, it's not illegal per se.

On the cruise I'd need to seek the written permission of the vessel's master's to operate :) (and ideally cruise company permission to even bring the transmitter on board)

Unlicenced passengers could probably plead ignorance and sneak UHF DMR radios.

Or get a business allocation and use P25 radios and once again plead ignorance :)


The boat could do a captive portal and provide it's own LAN?

The boat could do a lot of things, but providing tech for free is not high on the list.

This is definitely a thing (though sometimes comes with a fee): https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/texting-on-a-cruise-7-...

It's a cruiseship. Your family are at the nearest bar. Just get off your ass and go and give them the message.

> Just get off your ass and go and give them the message...

If I need to have all 4 members of the family meet me at the pool, first I need to go find each one of them. They could all be at different place. And then tell them individually to meet me at the pool? Is that the better solution you are proposing?


This seems a bit reductive. You could use this argument for any small town

It was how things were for a long time, and in a lot of ways it was better.

I've checked, they're not there. Now what?

Tell them to install bitchat. How to deliver the message to them is left as an exercise to the reader.

I just realised the name works very well if you choose the appropriate word splitting position.

Best thing about sites that works in TUI browser is that it can also work in Tor Browser "Safest" mode. In fact to those who are saying that these text based website are anti feature. I would argue that it is a safety feature to be able to browse and work in Tor Browser "Safest" mode. In fact ALL web page should strive to work in "Safest" mode, and only throw in bells and whistles when needed. As one can see just by turn on JS the site is NO longer really safe.

Let me ask you, is TOR even still safe or worth it?

I'm seriously asking cause I don't know. I heard that the US govt runs a lot of the exit nodes now. So maybe it's safe, as long as you don't live in the US?


The author did mention to use MPV, which is much much lightweight than VLC. Being using it as default for quite some times now.


Do you have any links or more info about the special internal mechanism? Would need an apple employee to initiate this I assume?


"When you give money to an eligible organization, we’ll match your donations one-for-one, so your $1 has the impact of $2. And if you choose to donate your time, we’ll contribute $25 for every hour you volunteer. Whether you donate time or money, Apple will match your contributions up to $10,000 a year."

https://www.apple.com/careers/us/life-at-apple/benefits.html


That is neat- any idea what they consider an eligible organization?


They're probably using something like https://benevity.com/ to do the vetting, esp. for non US charities.


One good thing about NOT having JS is what the page can function in Tor Browser's "Safest" mode!

A step down is to have JS only on your domain. "Safer" mode.

Try to avoid web site that require "Standard" to view and run properly.


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