Interesting discussion about this on the OpenStreetMap forums.

The resolution is introducing “official_name” tags, referencing “en_us”, because “en” is not just the U.S.:

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/gulf-of-america-gulf-of-mexico/124571/11

So when OsmAnd or OrganicMaps start to support them, maybe your locale settings will change the displayed name there as well.

Current description of that node: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/305639190/history/80

So maybe that could be a reason for everyone around the world to stop using en_US locale settings. XD

That is pretty common when you hear conservatives talk. You often agree about the issues, but then you suddenly hear crazy conspiracy theories about why everything is the fault of immigrants, jews, trans people or whatever.

When conservatives talk about the rich and powerful being bad, its often about some “globalists”, “George Soros”, “World Economic Forum”, “Liberals”, … than just the system being bad.

That is the reason why the leftist critique should always focus on the system, not specific people or groups.

There are different degrees of vendor lock in. If you use email (or Matrix) with a domain, you have no control over, you are soft-locked it. You can buy a domain, self-host or pay for a managed service and inform everyone that you are now reachable over some other address, but nobody else has to change.

If you use Signal (or Discord or whatever) and want to switch to a different domain. You cannot. If you switch to a different protocol, everyone in your contacts has to switch as well, or you lose that contact. The network effect forces you into the service of one provider. The only way out of there would be if the service get so bad, that a critical mass leaves, but you will have to deal with that bad service all the way.

As long as financial interest are there, non-federated services will sooner or later start to enshittyfy. So if you choose a communication medium, choose something that leaves your options open. If you don’t like Matrix, try XMPP, it has come a long way as well.

Matrix?

IMO the whole “metadata insecurity” stuff about Matrix is over exaggerated. Also Matrix is improving there.

If metadata security is really that important, you could try Tox or similar P2P chats.

Now they will likely spin any critique and demonstrations against the AfD&CDU as “influenced by russia”.

And long term CDU voters will eat it up, since “russia is on the extreme left” or whatever.

We live in an inverted world it seems. It looks like making stuff up is more difficult then just inverting facts.

AFAIK, Signal does not want anyone to use alternative clients, has that changed?

As far as I know moxie, signals lead dev, considers only the use of the officially build and distributed client authorized to use their servers.

So if they ever manage to detect someone using their services with an alternative client, they might delete your account.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/07/signal-app-maker-rebuts-criticism-of-dev-direction-by-calling-for-more-community-help/

Well, you can still insert client side decryption into the app.

But it isn’t really about the messages, it is about the control of the servers and the accounts. You cannot easily move away from their servers, because you will lose your contacts. This gives the people controlling the servers power over you. A sort of vendor lockin.

The company (Signal Messenger LLC) is fully owned by Signal Foundation, a 501©3 non profit organization.

OpenAI is also non-profit. Not really an argument.

Probably around 80-90% of Matrix users are on the matrix.org homeserver, so it’s absolutely not as decentralized and resilient as you think it is.

Well, the goal is that moving to your own server, will not mean that you will loose access to all your contacts. Which makes moving instances much simpler. If Matrix gets a hostile take-over, your don’t really need to reach a critical mass for an alternative server.

But you should also be aware that Signal does not federate, so the company can be bought. They have control over all accounts and the servers, without easy way to migrate away again. So it might just be another trap.

Try to use federated services (like matrix), they are more robust against hostile take overs.

If ARM is a small market, RISC-V is even smaller.

I personally like when boundaries are pushed, and welcome more independence on x86.