mreiner @ mreiner @beehaw.org

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Thanks for replying!

There are lots of services using E2EE, so I’m really not sure this is a unique benefit of Matrix and would not convince me to use Matrix by itself. It is a fair point in favor of Matrix, though!

I already use enough platforms as it is given what the individuals with whom I speak are already using. I’ve convinced some to standardize on platforms using E2EE, but the overwhelming majority of people who are not technology enthusiasts cannot be bothered to mess with something more complicated than what comes with their phone or the services that they’re already using (and fair enough, this isn’t a knock on them).

For that reason, the bridges Matrix offers are the only feature I’ve heard of so far that might make me switch. Unifying the services I already have to use due to what is used by my friends, family, and colleagues would be killer, but if they don’t at least leverage the E2EE supported by those services’ native apps, it negates pretty much all benefits for me. Yes, using stuff that isn’t encrypted in the first place isn’t ideal, but the answer to that for me is not “well, it’s already visible to some people so trusting the admins for this other third party service isn’t a big deal”. Additionally, integrating with services that do natively support E2EE in a way that breaks that E2EE is a huge step backward. I don’t blame Matrix for this, but it also doesn’t win any points for it in my mind.

Thank you for dispelling my misconception about the data replication!

To gain widespread adoption, any protocol will have to have friction-free sign up and usage, which is a tough nut to crack given how sharded chat already is and has always been. Email, which Matrix strives to emulate, was an established standard that predated most users’ access to the internet by a decade and a half or more. Conversely, chat has basically always been fragmented and siloed.

Unification would be a killer feature that would even have a chance of convincing non tech enthusiasts to switch, which could then lead them to start switching more of their communications over to native Matrix traffic as more of their friends also switch (relying less on the bridges over time). Given doing what I’ve described above requires compromises on security, though, I can’t see a path to wide adoption for this protocol (which really makes me sad). Since I don’t see a path for it pulling in non tech enthusiasts, and the bridges can break other platforms’ existing security, I don’t see myself adopting another platform for chat.

Please let me know if I’m still getting anything wrong!

Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply!

I’m still not sure that moving our trust from a megacorp (as you put it) to some random person or organization running a Matrix server is an improvement. Even assuming the Matrix server admins aren’t selling your data out the back door, there’s no guarantee their admin accounts, or the server itself, isn’t compromised by those same corporations or others, allowing them to harvest all your data (and potentially more of your data than would be possible if you were using at least some of these services natively).

I respect that you have your opinion, but I’m not sure it makes sense to move trust from one organization/corporation to another is guaranteed to be an improvement.

From a security perspective, Signal seems to be brought up the most in these conversations, so I am surprised that you called it out between WhatsApp and Discord. Do you have any evidence that the Signal foundation is spying on its users, selling their data, or that the E2EE they natively employ is compromised?

I’m a fairly technical guy, but I genuinely cannot figure out why I’d want to use Matrix at this point.

My understanding, which may be wrong, is that it can communicate on its own encrypted standard, and that there are bridges that allow it to communicate with other services like Signal and WhatsApp. You have to register for a home server, which essentially means trusting the individual(s) running that home server not to abuse that privilege, especially considering that not all features are supported by the bridges to other protocols at this point (including end-to-end encryption in some cases), so they may have access to your unencrypted content. Not only that, but your data is then replicated on other servers where the other participants in your conversations are registered, which means you essentially need to trust all those other admins as well.

Then there are the clients, which (at least on iOS) seem to be few and far between. The (seemingly) most popular, Element, appears to collect a crap-ton of personal information - including user content!

I was a big fan of Trillian back in the day, which sought to unify AIM/MSN/ICQ/etc. into one place; am I correct in thinking Matrix seeks to do something similar today?

Given the seemingly large amount of trust you need to put in potentially numerous individuals and organizations, is the convenience of a unifying protocol that may or may not bring your various chat and calling services under one roof with varying levels of compatibility and security (not to mention the apps, some of which appear to collect everything under the sun about you) worth it?

Not going to lie, I found your back and forth interesting (and mostly sided with the other person), but the argument was lost for me when they attacked you directly.

You are right, SpaceX brought down costs (in dollars) to move mass into space which has opened many new doors. We can argue and disagree about what the broader and long term costs and outcomes of that change might be, but I didn’t get the feeling you were being a fanboy or unreasonably lavish in your praise.

Kudos for walking away from the conversation.

Could not agree more!

That said, I did call out one legit problem with widespread EV adoption in apartment dwellers. I really hope something is done soon, either governmentally or through the market, to make EVs a more viable option for renters.

Ha, we posted around the same time and said basically the same thing. Nice!

Have any sources to back up your claims?

According to KBB, the average American drives around 37 miles per day. That means that the overwhelming amount of driving could be accomplished by a plug-in hybrid, let alone a fully electric vehicle. When it comes to the occasional long road trip (what, once a year or less for the average person?), is it worth burning - and paying for - gas for the thousands of miles that could be easily covered by even the most pathetic of electric vehicles' range without issue just so you can save a bit of time pumping fuel and hitting the convenience store rather than stopping a bit longer to charge up? In those cases, it may even be cheaper to rent a gas vehicle for the occasional road trip if if is that big of a concern for you.

Your use case may be different than mine, but I can't think of too many trips where I couldn't stop for a half hour here and there to charge up a bit. Most people, especially people with kids, have to stop periodically anyway, so use that time to charge up and you won't even notice. It's true that, especially in the particularly sparsely-populated western United States (speaking from a US perspective), some route planning may still be required, but that will get better as more people buy EVs.

Why are battery swaps even entering the conversation? Are engine swaps a concern for most people purchasing a new car? According to J. D. Power, every EV in the US comes with at least an 8 year or 100k mile warranty on the battery. Some manufacturers, like Hyundai, have a lifetime warranty on the battery. Most batteries are expected to last somewhere between 100k - 200k miles, which is often longer than the rest of the car will hold up and certainly competitive with combustion vehicles.

If you want a serious argument detailing a real struggle with which EV manufacturers and the market/government must contend, then here you go: apartment dwellers. From a US perspective, you pretty much have to own your home or work somewhere that provides charging parking spots to be able to fully take advantage of the benefits of an EV. While using a public charger is a viable option, it is more expensive than charging at home (though, in my research, it is still cheaper than gas).

EVs make sense for a super-majority of the driving that takes place today by normal people in North America. If you don't own your home, want to tow a boat, or travel hundreds of miles a day on a regular basis, then EVs will serve your needs somewhere between "fairly well" to "not at all".

If "range anxiety" is the only thing keeping people from pulling the trigger on an EV, I strongly suggest they consider the possibility of renting a car for the rare cross-country trip if finding a DC fast charger every once and a while and spending a little extra time at each stop isn't a viable option for them.

Aww, now I’m feeling nostalgic

Ah, I guess I misread (in my own research) or somehow missed that a degree change in Celsius was directly pegged the same degree change in Kelvin (shifted by 273.15 ) when the Kelvin scale was updated to be pegged to the Boltzmann constant. Thank you for helping me understand where my understanding was flawed!

I guess I still don’t understand the utility of Celsius, though. If it’s really just an alias, shifted by 273.15, for Kelvin, what utility does Celsius offer? Why not just use Kelvin?

Apologies, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Both Celsius and Fahrenheit are based off the exact same thing: the freezing and boiling points of water. Fahrenheit just gives you more resolution between the two (180 degrees for Fahrenheit vs 100 degrees for Celsius), but otherwise they operate in the same way.

I agree that the underpinnings of the weight and distance measurements used in the Imperial system are silly, but they are still just as accurate as the weight and distance measurements in the metric system. The metric system’s units for weight and distance are more logical and easier to use, but that doesn’t make them more accurate given modern measurement methods.

I think the US should adopt the metric system in general, but I honestly don’t see the point in bringing Celsius along with the rest of the measurement standards.

I honestly see zero benefit to Celsius over Fahrenheit: they are both pegged to the boiling and freezing points of water, Celsius was just unnecessarily limited in the number of degrees between those two points. Beyond that limitation of Celsius, there’s basically zero difference between it and Fahrenheit.

Respectfully, I don’t think you are completely correct.

While you are right that Kelvin is tied to absolute zero, it is also defined in such a way that a change in 1K corresponds to a change of thermal energy kT by 1.380649×10−23 J (the Boltzmann constant).

It is the difference in what 0K describes, along with the fact that a change in temperature equals a specific change in thermal energy (the measured value to which I previously referred), that separate it from Celsius. In Celsius, zero is the freezing point of (mostly pure) water (at sea level), and a change in temperature has no relationship to a specific/prescribed change in thermal energy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin

Ok, but the comment to which I was replying was referring to when Tesla (supposedly) opened up their parents almost a decade ago so I’m not sure your comment addresses my question.

Honest question: other than the number of people using Celsius, what benefits does Celsius bring over Fahrenheit?

Even the scientific community felt the need to hollow out the Celsius scale, leaving the numerical values of Celsius in tact but otherwise completely decoupling the scale from the properties of water when it created kelvin. It instead moved to measured values, like basically all other SI/metric units.

Celsius is there to describe water. Well, it’s used to describe a mostly pure form of water. Well, it’s used to describe a mostly pure form of water at around sea level. So, why does that make Celsius more relevant or useful for temperatures than Fahrenheit?

Frankly, it feels like Celsius is, to the rest of the world, what the Imperial system is to the US: a vestige of times past that has been supplanted by a better, measurement-based standard, but has yet to be abandoned because it is so entrenched in popular culture.

I’m sorry, but Fahrenheit has nothing to do with the errors you cited. Hell, even the overall Imperial system, silly an (mostly) antiquated as it is, has nothing to do with the examples you cited.

The expensive failures you listed were caused by a lack of standardization. Those failures wouldn’t have taken place if every international agency had standardized on the Imperial system or the metric system.

Your point is not only a nonsensical non sequitur, it is also wrong.

I agree that Tesla did a TON to popularize electric vehicles when the closest thing from a major American auto manufacturer at the time was probably the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt. That spark, largely ignited by Tesla, is likely a huge reason we have many of the options we do today.

It’s a shame major manufacturers like Toyota and Honda still won’t get onboard (yes, Toyota technically has a single EV offering as of this year, but good luck finding it and most reviews seem to find it underwhelming at best), but I think that fact further bolsters your point. If those two major players still can’t be bothered to get involved, I think it does indicate that what Tesla did during the last decade or so helped inspire others to get into the market that may not have otherwise.

That said, do we have any evidence that Tesla’s announcement of a plan to release their patents in 2014 really made any real difference? I am unaware of any of those patents being used by competitors anywhere, though it is entirely possible I am uninformed and I’d appreciate any sources you have.

I think one of the most glaring examples that the patent release may have had little to no impact is that the now-presumptuously-renamed “NACS” connector still isn’t used by anyone other than Tesla almost a decade on. In fact, SAE only announced that they would standardize the thing at the end of June this year.

Again, I freely admit that I agree Tesla deserves credit for finally creating a real, mainstream electric vehicle market. However, I am personally unaware of any benefits their 2014 “announcement of a plan to release their parents” has actually directly benefited the industry.

In those instances, the argument I’ve found to be the most persuasive is to ask them to think about some of the strongest animals out there: gorillas, rhinos, African elephants, horses, even the cattle they chose to consume. All of those animals “get swol” while eating nothing but plants.

If they can get all the protein they need to be some of the most powerful mammals on the planet, I will probably be ok.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/chrome-vs-firefox/

Today I learned that I actually set up secure boot properly. Neat!

Breathedge.

It has a quirky sense of humor that I enjoy, but even if you don’t I think it does a great job exemplifying the solo space base-building, survival, and mystery genres.