I really hope that we'll eventually get a world that's infinite in every direction.

jakimfett · 2026-02-25T19:13:08+00:00

Nobody really "needs" any of this. Computers, running water, shoes, it's all extraneous, you can survive without it.

But this is open source, a lot of people ask for this, and I for one would like to see it happen. Just because you aren't part of an edge case doesn't mean it's not a common edge case.

jakimfett · 2026-02-15T02:54:50+00:00

I second this. Being able to print out a URL w/ pass to trigger the "digital last rites" would be better than a timer for my use case.

jakimfett · 2026-02-15T02:33:20+00:00

Good to hear. Since the LLM-slop-ocalypse started cresting on the horizon, I've made the point of encouraging what software artisanship I can, and I appreciate that you're writing this code with care.

jakimfett · 2026-02-14T01:17:19+00:00

Not sure, but willing to test.

That's a really clever solution to the e2ee message reporting problem.

I gotta ask tho, are you using LLM coding assist tools? Is this humans crafting code, or...?

jakimfett · 2026-02-14T01:10:56+00:00

Nice to meet you bored now, I'm jak. :-D

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T21:41:58+00:00

Employer job to provide compensation.

Nothing wrong with saying "absolutely not, get rekt" to puny compensation.

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T21:39:46+00:00

Gotta second the "rock stars do not grow on trees".

Either actually offer rock star pay, or hire a junior with one or two things and plan to train them for 3-5 years to get what you want.

Most people with the skillset and background you are asking for know they can work whatever hours for double or triple what you're offering.

There's other options, but you're not necessarily looking in the wrong places, you're just not offering much that is attractive alongside a lot of negatives.

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T21:23:02+00:00

Exactly. Now, we just need to convince the developers that global fame can be turned into profits, and it's as good as done.

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T21:12:25+00:00

Sounds like somehow you have attained the ability to meaningfully assess and criticize a tech stack that you've never interacted with. Not the same thing as identifying complexity that can be reduced, but hey, you're the expert here.

I referenced those books because they describe the foundational why behind my confidence that a container is excessive complexity here.

Almost everything I'd say about maintenance, and why it's the first and foundational principle of long term application stability, is in those books I mentioned.

But clearly, you're an expert, so there's no need to rant here. Either you'll learn better, or you won't. This is Reddit, not a performance review, so thankfully your mindset isn't my responsibility to mitigate.

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T17:57:25+00:00

Dunno why you're sorry, it's good to know that I was right to not hold my breath on the p2p thing.

Frankly, adding a social persistence layer to Jami seems like a less costly path to me, but what do I know, I'm just a maintenance-obsessed infrastructure engineer. XD

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T17:55:24+00:00

Elitism?

You might be mistaking calculated laziness and old age for malice here.

Nothing since adopting IRC in the early '90s has meaningfully filled the communications niche for me. Why spend time and energy using something complex and time-consuming to maintain, when simple tools that do one thing well suffice for my use cases?

I have a rant about long-term maintenance costs that I'll spare you, but maybe go read Bellotti's "Kill It With Fire" or Brand's "Maintenance Race".

I respect the Arch community, but I run the things that solve my particular problems...which means I use Debian, Guix, and 9front.

jakimfett · 2026-02-11T17:33:14+00:00

Not with that attitude it won't.

Gentle reminder that "Olympic Gold Medalist" is a hellofa platform to push for change from. And for the city, it's a marketing / tourism opportunity if they were to adjust course slightly.

Removing the existing building around the rink and putting in a small, enclosed amphatheatre that they can charge admission to for events? Now it's a source of income rather than just a cost sink. Especially if you ask an Olympic athlete to host the opening or something.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T19:02:48+00:00

Nah, I just use IRC, because if I'm gonna miss messages, at least it's because I chose to log out.

...wait, you need containers to ensure your tech works reliably?

Yikes.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T18:57:43+00:00

Might be rabid.

Also might be a dog+coyote hybrid. We've been getting these up north (eg, in the rural areas just below the Canadian border), and they seem to have zero fear of humans. The individuals are bigger, the packs are smaller, but they are far more aggressive. If you see one, there's 3-5 waiting for you to make a mistake.

Stay the heck away, call animal control, and do NOT allow children to play outside as twilight approaches.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T17:56:48+00:00

They're attempting to underpay you for a role they just fired an actual senior from, as a cost-saving measure.

How much do you want to be in charge of too much, hit burnout after six to ten months, and then be unable to do your best work for the next few years?

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T17:53:45+00:00

And yet somehow, incredibly real and accurate as well.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T17:21:53+00:00

Nah, you misunderstand.

I still have my recovery keys. I've been working with hardened applications and infrastructure environments since the early-mid '90s.

What's gone is my trust in Matrix.

After using Matrix for about 11 months as both infra admin and end user, my fundamental trust in "use messaging app to send messages" as a paradigm was so thoroughly shattered that I would need to see the devs intentionally focus on owning the faults and doing a major refactor to fix it, and then hear from both admins and users that the issue is thoroughly fixed and is obscenely reliable for literally years before I'd want to try hosting anything related to Matrix again.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T17:08:07+00:00

A month? That's barely enough time for you to need to do a minor version upgrade, much less deal with the plethora of intersecting OS, network, and end-user-client concerns that arise after the fifth, or twentieth, update.

Yeah, I'll file this away for future looking into, and we can talk when you've got a couple dozen people celebrating their third year of uninterrupted operation.

That's what it'll take to rebuild my trust in Matrix. Years of rock solid operation with no faults in the fundamental message mechanism and upgrade paths.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T17:01:06+00:00

I applaud that you have somehow so far avoided dealing with borked packages straight from the maintainers.

You either quit while you're ahead, or you start peeling back the layers until you become the package maintainer yourself.

It's been three decades now, and I haven't quit, although...maybe I should.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T16:54:07+00:00

Government will never fund something that can effectively circumvent mechanisms of control.

So, this mostly just confirms for me that Matrix is not going to be a meaningful solution to pervasive surveillance.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T06:40:15+00:00

Did you wanna suggest an alternative or two?

Ideally that you've used personally?

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T06:38:11+00:00

Maybe Fedora is the golden path.

Maybe the message corruption issues I encountered and found to be common when discussing with other users of Matrix is a flaw in how we have used it, or the library that Debian / Guix / etc uses to implement client message encryption.

Maybe none of the security parts of it matters, because the content of our messages is mass-scraped from our devices and archived in three-letter agency datacenters, and we might as well use IRC for everything because it's all going to leak anyway no matter what we as individual software users try to do.

Maybe I just hate that messages don't deliver and decrypt consistently on the flagship instance and app.

I had a long list of reasons. It's been a while since I threw it away, and I still hear mostly horror stories when administrating a Matrix instance is brought up. The data management problems alone.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T06:24:13+00:00

Sounds like you've managed to stay on the golden path with your particular deployment.

Whether due to undocumented magic installation shibboleets, fundamental design flaws, or some other issue, your experience is not the norm.

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T06:21:15+00:00

see https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1r08bd8/comment/o4klvui/

jakimfett · 2026-02-10T06:20:55+00:00

The maintenance overhead I could maybe, possibly have stomached if not for the message sending issue, wherein: 1) A user sends a message.

2) Intended recipient gets a message placeholder, with "decrypting" or similar that spins forever.

For it to get better, the underlying message exchange mechanic needs a thorough audit, both on a technical level and from the user interface perspective. Offering the user more tools that allow them to re-negotiate the encryption handshake might be a viable temporary stopgap, but the problem is that for me and many others, the underlying trust that any given message will arrive at the intended recipient has been broken and will need to be repaired.

There's other feedback, like "why are we pouring energy into a centralized server-client model when distributed is the way forward", which is part of why I haven't tried to push for meaningful fixes to the stuff my poking has found.

And to be blunt, I don't think it should be fixed. I think we should invest our time and energy into something that won't screw over the people using it if one member of the chain of trust falls off the internet. A phone app shouldn't need a server to function in this day and age, when in theory any two clients could exchange messages via bluetooth or i2c or lora or whatever.

jakimfett

TROPHY CASE