No US non profits please. Case examples of selling out: chatgpt, Firefox. Even if we consider the country it’s based and it’s European look at the PEOPLE, their history of selling prev companies and to who? And their ethics who they do business with and if they stick to their word
Never would I have thought Lemmy would advocate installing Linux.
They’re so entrenched in OS/2, it came as a complete surprise to me as well.
What happened to all the “Your games will run fine in OS/2”, “it feels just like windows”?
I actually saw a pretty good YouTube recently about what happened to OS/2. In short IBM treated the OS as an afterthought, and didn’t really invest in marketing. The OS/2 team did a spectacular job with what they were given, but the corporate umbrella didn’t really care, so the market all went the win95 route instead.
I tried OS/2 v3 in the 90’s and it was actually pretty decent.
EDIT: I think this was the one.
I had it as a secondary system and it certainly was quite good.
Its compatibility with dos and windows was also quite good. And technically, it was way beyond what Microsoft had. It should have dominated the market.
Why?
It meme
Wait, wasn’t Vivaldi bought by a Chinese conglomerate?
Ew, Chromium
And why not DuckDuckGo?
Signal is American
Opt for a Matrix or XMPP provider in Europe (magicbroccoli.de is a genuinely great XMPP provider)
While Signal’s home base is the US, they are a non profit org that doesn’t operate in the same way as for-profit corporations. Also, Signal collects basically zero data so there’s no incentive to sell out, and who would want to buy them anyway when they have no data and the server and client are open source.
Matrix is great, but I wouldn’t compare it to Signal. I use both for very different purposes.
Chatgpt used to be a non profit. Now it’s almost half Microsoft owned. Sneaky! T&cs can change too (e.g. Firefox selling out google funds them a bit now apparently? ). Don’t give up just find European fully alternatives.
Agree with the sentiment against signal. However, Matrix is terrible for anyone who doesn’t want to bother with reading up on several hours of information just to use a text messenger. I will start recommending Matrix the moment someone actually manages to produce a feature complete client with usable UI/UX.
yeah been trying out matrix. Setup a server and tried various clients. They are all shit.
XMPP is more comparable to Signal, yes.
Signal does need (yes, need) a phone number, and most people only have one so that is identifiable info.
This puts it at mostly the same level as some competitors, including WhatsApp which is often advised against.
XMPP is more comparable to Signal, yes.
XMPP allows unencrypted messages and leaks metadata - Signal does neither.
Signal does need (yes, need) a phone number, and most people only have one so that is identifiable info.
Signal is basically a privacy enhanced text/SMS/phone replacement. I can give my phone to someone in person and they can immediately start “texting” me on Signal - this is a feature (as well as a con to some people).
This puts it at mostly the same level as some competitors, including WhatsApp which is often advised against.
People advise against Whatsapp because while it uses Signal to encrypt message contents, they take no effort to minimize the collection of metadata - Signal’s been compelled by court to present all data it has on its users various times and the only info they have is the day/time you signed up for their services and the last day (not time) one of your clients pinged their servers - Source: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
I have yet to find any other free service that collects this little information and works just as well as a normal non-encrypted messenger. Even Signals sticker packs are end-to-end encrypted - Source: https://signal.org/blog/make-privacy-stick/
What metadata does XMPP leak? AFAIK only when a message was sent, roughly (in large increments) how large the message was, the server of the sender knows from who to which server, the server of the recipient knows from which server to who.
I find it strange that Signal somehow doesn’t know when a message was sent, and from who to who; how would they ever make this possible?Also, you say you have yet to find any other free service that collects as little data… How about most e-mail providers? Not Google and Microsoft of course, but most e-mail providers only need a name which can be made up as well. You hm also host your own email server, then you are in control. All of this is true for XMPP and Matrix, as well.
Signal will operate until Elon Musk decides that everyone has to use X to communicate.
Also simplex is a good alternative, it’s decentralized:)
This? https://https/://simplex.chat/
FWIW Matrix and XMPP are also decentralised, much like e-mail is, which is why I recommended it. I’m immediately skeptic about SimpleX’s premise of having no user IDs; they’ll likely need some unique field for each user, this might as well be a UUID or something like that… So what’s the benefit?
Since it’s related, here’s a good comparison:
https://eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm
I think the other person here explained the thing about user ids. Matrix and xmpp are good too, they’re just different.
Simplex is more of a messenger, while xmpp/matrix are more of discord alternatives.
Also simplex works with nodes. I can host a simplex server and it will be added to the network. In matrix/xmpp if I host a server it will be a new instance, like in lemmy (if I get it right). Simplex’s approach is like tor’s approach, each server added contributes to the whole network (they arent a separate instance).
If you check their page they have some bery good features, to me it seems like its signal, done (somewhat) right. Signal doesnt even have a proper way to migrate accounts across devices… not to mention the phone number requirement which might scare people who aren’t gonna waste time hearing my explanation as to why it’s not an issue or the fact that until recently signal would notify everyone in your contacts who had a signal account that you made an account, bruh
There’s also this comment here that throws some shade to matrix, havent looked much into that tho.
Oh that is a great explanation, thanks a bunch!
Each convo gets its own UUID, and the convos can be spread across different servers/companies too.
That said the notifications don’t work consistently for me on iOS, so that’s a dealbreaker. Hopefully they fix that soon.
Isn’t signal owned by a single company with backend infrastructure all Managed by them and only them?
The current CEO is nice, for sure, but she won’t be there forever. Look at what Mozilla just did, this eventually WILL happen to signal too
What alternatives are there form something like signal?
You can self-host Signal, although you’d need your friends to sign up with your server.
What we really need is a federated messaging platform. I don’t think it’s been done yet, but encrypted email efforts are kinda in that direction.
Federated messaging we’ve had for ages: XMPP
A modern messenger based on existing technologies, including encrypted email which you happen mention: Delta ChatMatrix is trying to fill that gap
We have email as an example of federated messaging
Where it’s mainly owned by Google and Microsoft
So your suggestion to “buy European” is to download a bunch of free shit…
I tried Mistral and it’s awesome, I am upgrading to the paid version
Last spring Mistral (free tier) was better for my usage (mainly JS programming) than ChatGPT (free tier). No idea which is better now (esp. after openai launched chatgpt 4, but Mistral improved too) but at least Mistral isn’t bad at all.
I don’t think I have to elaborate on Linux > Windows. If that’s really needed ask for it please. Summary: It’s simply better, the times where it was only for nerds are long gone.
Search engine doesn’t matter too much. I usually use DuckDuckGo and it works fine (does what a search engine should do without displaying ads, unlike Google).
Signal over WhatsApp also is pretty obvious, but it’s the hardest one to change because so many people simply don’t want to switch once one thing is running and you want to communicate with those people.
LibreWolf basically is Firefox (which is far better than Chrome in terms of privacy, ad blocking, customisability, …)
For more varied and detailed recommendations, these might be useful:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/
librewolf is still dependent on firefox for development, just like vivaldi is on chrome. there is no european web browser.
is there anything based on khtml ??? Idk how it works but these forks are shady
yeah, webkit (as in, the engine for safari, and the base of blink which powers chromium) is based on khtml. khtml is oooooooold.
Although I found mojeek which feels like a browser???
mojeek is a search engine.
For FF and Chromium to, their source is open so if there ever was a need to make it fully European, it would be doable. Or did I miss something? (novice question, here)
in addition to the other reply, the teams working on browsers are massive. over 500 developers for each, and that’s only the core teams without external contributors. you don’t just put together a team like that in an afternoon.
I got a security alert when clicking the link, I did not push further sorry ;)
Because it’s not using https. While https is certainly preferable, as long as you’re just reading info of a website (not making an account, entering data) http is pretty much fine.
Modern Browsers just don’t like it (which is also understandable, because most users probably don’t care about the nuances of when it is or isn’t a problem).
The problem is that Librewolf, ungoogled chromium etc are soft forks, meaning they are completely dependent on the original projects. If for example Trump made a law banning releasing software as open source because that’s communism, Librewolf would likely cease to exist
Startpage? (based in Netherlands). I mean it’s a frontend for google, but ecosia is a frontend for bing. And startpage has a no log policy which beats ecosia.
System1 acquired Startpage and they are based in the US.
Well that’s a bummer, but at least the company who owns Startpage will remain in the Netherlands for now it seems.
Startpage gives very good results, I recall reading somewhere that they use search results from Google, but I honestly don’t know. I use it over Ecosia because it has slightly better results and is more privacy focused. Plus I never click any adverts, so Ecosia wouldn’t generate an awful lot of trees from my usage haha.
I also used Qwant, but the search results weren’t great for more complex search queries.
Yeah, websearch is a huge undertaking, there is an European initiative but it’s not ready for use … Can’t find it now though, ironically. It wasn’t the one by Ecosia and Qwant but a European Union initated research project.
As an american I am switching to European apps I am disgusted with being an american citizen and if I could I would move.
Threema is a European secure messenger.
It’s also a paid product with multiple flaws found in a recent-ish audit:
Paid means you’re more likely a customer than the product.
I can’t verify the security claims either way, but this article is a counter point to the one one linked: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/threema-claims-encryption-flaws-never-had-a-real-world-impact/
“While some of the findings presented in the paper may be interesting from a theoretical standpoint, none of them ever had any considerable real-world impact. Most assume extensive and unrealistic prerequisites that would have far greater consequences than the respective finding itself.” - Threema.
Paid unfortunately also means that it’s way harder to convince anyone to use it, even though the price seems very low for what you get. The other problem that brings is that I don’t know what I’m buying exactly until I bought it.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I’ve bought it for three people I know, and I’ve had three people buy it themselves.
I’ve only suggested it to people close to me who use Android because my main phone is iOS and texting between the two is a way worse experience than Threema. I also have Signal, but no one has asked me to use that. I also find it annoying that Signal needs my phone number. I hear they’re working on changing that.
@Zachariah It is worth it?
Already done most of those, whatsapp is the hardest to replace for me from this category.
Whatsapp/Facebook is probably one of the biggest offenders. They’re one of the ones that got us into this mess.
Isn’t ecosia paying
GoogleBing for its results?Edit: changed Google to Bing.
Yes, but ecosia is currently building a European search index together with qwant. In my view, the two are therefore worth supporting
They’re planning to eventually switch to a european index alongside Qwant.
So is Startpage, if I recall correctly.
So is Qwant, yes.
You can run very powerful llm locally, albeit slowly if you lack GPU power.
Check out Dolphin models you can run on LM Studio
