it really depends, if the features are difficult to implement it may not be very quick at all, we see this with XMPP often where features take years to implement or never appear. If a homeserver targets a particular use-case then they may actively choose to ignore certain features that are not relevent. Really when people talk about the flaws of XMPP they often have in mind the problems of private e2e encrypted chat on mobile which is a hard problem to crack, but there's many more private servers inside organisations that don't even federate and work fine for how they are used. This flexibility perhaps makes it better to view XMPP as a toolkit for building networks out of, similar to how IRC networks which have a converged set of servers but outside that network all bets are off. The idea of viewing XMPP as a single network inevitably causes it to look fragmented but there are pockets within the network that interoperate just fine they just don't identify themselves as a group.
I wonder what happens when there's 10 implementations of the matrix spec controlled by different groups. Being able to indicate where the implementation gap is seems like a strength rather than a weakness.
I doubt any platform uses vanilla XMPP, that wouldn't be sane, but like using XML, XMPP is a relic of its era. Whose to say what super-critical "how can you not have this as standard!?!" feature won't come up in the next 5 years that Matrix devs hadn't even known of in 2018. That doesn't mean we should flip over the table and start again every now and again and hope the users will follow, this is why extensibility is an important part of the recipe and make ways to ensure the standards of the day are always implemented before being considered ready for prime time.
It's still so common to see clients tout a list of supported XEPs like they expect users to know what any of it means. It's great there is a list of importantant XEPs but this must be communicated to users better so that it's easier to find suitable clients. It might even be good to refer to compliant clients as something other than Jabber/XMPP then you can easily search for an "XTalk" (for example) client and know this means the full list of XEPs are supported.
Part of this might include some new XEPs to indicate to users when they are communicating with non-XTalk users so the experience might differ.
A certification programme even might help motivate devs to meet compliance quickly.
The thing that concerns me about this is that while Matrix might be a more modern protocol today, it won't be long before the world moves and it requires an upgrade, and extendability has been the killer feature that has helped XMPP survive a long time albeit not to prosper. Unless the problem of convergence is solved this will haunt evolving distributed networks no matter how strongly they start.
I sometimes wonder what motivates obscenely rich people to continue working, particularly when that work is as controversial as Facebook. The values of these people are clearly different from mine. In Koum's shoes I'd probably make the same decision, he doesn't need to work another day in his life if he doesn't want to so he has no excuse to violate his personal beliefs.
I have a strange feeling of synchronicity, I saw this code for the first time only this morning on the 8bit guy's YT channel, looks like this page just pre-dates that video though. https://youtu.be/KAivGLHJzJM?t=18m54s
Curiously I've experience using 63 baud PSK on amateur radio, setting this to that same speed feels slower than when receiving text over the air. I guess this must be some extra overheads somewhere
I don't know how certain we can really be, I had the same concerns myself, I could just keep my account disabled and stop feeding information to Facebook but still keep access to it myself if I ever needed it. Or I delete my account, Facebook maybe has access to that data but I do not, it was a thought process that delayed my action for a while.
This non-committal situation created some anxiety for me, it was a decision that still needed to be made in my mind so wouldn't go away.
Then Bryan Lunduke went through the process on his YouTube channel and he claims his contacts at Facebook were unable to find his data once it was deleted, so that was good enough to push me off the fence and I finally made the decision to delete.
I can never be absolutely certain but there's really not much more I can do besides use European privacy laws to try and force the issue, but that probably won't do much about the NSA backup. ;) But my mind is at rest now, I don't worry about it apart from doing my best to limit tracking online but that's another story.
Both of my siblings live abroad but I stay in touch through messaging. Facebook always made me feel my relationships there were shallow, and many people I regularly interacted with never followed up off-site. For me this is a good thing. Pruning false relationships frees up time to invest properly in those relationships that really matter. Facebook gets in the way of social relationships, you can't see who really matters while you're distracted talking to people you'll probably never meet again. Quality > Quantity every time.
I deactivated first for about 6 months, didn't get any communication from them. Eventually I went to delete and used a link from deletefacebook.com taking me straight to the right page. Maybe it was because I was on mobile but there wasn't any emotional blackmail begging me to stay and it was done. I was expecting much worse but the experience was quite smooth for me and I'm happily free of Facebook for good now.
The dentist doing surgery under the NHS will be the same one doing a private appointment afterwards. The only difference is the price you pay after, not the quality of the work. Each dentist typically has a limited number of NHS patients on their books so it can be pretty hard to find one available NHS spaces but private dental is not expensive.
I use a private (non-NHS) dentist in the UK, my last x-ray was wrapped up in my standard check-up price of ~£50, the cost is clearly so low they can just not bother billing for it separately.
If they were after finding treasure, they would be better off buying lottery tickets. Metal detecting finds are more likely to have archaeological value than monetary.
When the Web 5.0 is all hosted on Facebook, the best and more impassioned learning material will still be hand-written in HTML 4 on some old radio ham's personal web site that's been lovingly crafted for some 30 years.
You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it's crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on it's back. The tortoise lays on it's back, it's belly baking in the hot sun, beating it's legs trying to turn it'self over, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?
In the UK the law is complicated on keeping weaponry in the house, that said when I was burgled the police officer attending in the morning suggested a baseball bat to be kept with a ball therefore it is a sports accessory and not a weapon. I personally keep a 4 D-cell maglite by my bedside, y'know, in case the power goes out.
Decentralisation provides no benefits to users, only burdens. Federation is there to provide scalability and resilience to admins and designers of the network. The ultimate federated social network is the one that does not need to mention it at all to users because it has zero impact on how they use it.
I use both Nextcloud and Syncthing, they solve different problems.
Nextcloud is great for easy access to currently important files and automatic uploads of phone pictures, synchronising contacts and calendars. The news app is also an excellent RSS reader.
Syncthing synchronises the bulk of my data between systems I own, it is much faster at this and isn't exposed to the risks you get with public web servers, but I cannot access those files from systems I don't own so anything I am currently using goes in Nextcloud.
I installed AV once on my android phone after doing something stupid, luckily I got away with it and uninstalled soon after due to irritating pop-up annoyances from the AV app.
Desktop-wise I've been on Linux for well over a decade, I've never used AV except to (rarely) clean out infected files I might share and infect others with, not necessarily for my own protection.
That's the benefit of travel isn't it, these same friends we visited had come over to the UK 2 years prior for the first time and that experience adjusted a lot of their pre-concieved ideas about the British in a positive way.
If American's were enabled to take the time to see the world a bit more they would be less reliant on media stereotypes to understand it and might question their lot a bit more often but perhaps that's not in the interests of the people who run America.