raspberries were viable while those were cheap. I think I got a 3b (plus?) in pre-deficit years for like $25 second-hand AND I got some shitty case AND a microSD card AND it could run off of a somewhat normal USB phone charger. so using those instead of a 10 year old decommissioned desktop was an awesome value proposition.

nowadays, those devices are encroaching on trip-digits territory and the power adapter is like $30. the computing power you can buy for a third of that designates raspberries exclusively for niche use cases where footprint and power consumption are primary considerations.

not to mention fake Jason Statham just rubs me the wrong way, like all them “visionaries”. he makes this sound like he’s the head of Feed Africa or something, on a noble mission to save humanity and whatnot.

it’s not “forever”. it’s however long they don’t have any ideas to the contrary.

why it was implemented - so that executive #279 can show executive #114 that number go up. look how our engagement is rising! look at all them people downloading our app! when I took over from exec #317, number was this big, lookie now!

same way google made their search worse, so you have to search multiple times, thus upping the engagment, page views, etc. and then exec X goes to exec Y and say “look there’s a huge rise in searches where my bonus at!”

you must’ve me confused with someone who does shit on your behest, go find out yourself.

this is just for onlookers, as it’s obvious it’s weirdo’s shill: the term in the ToS is “all comms must be readable by all other clients” which an E2EE capable client would be in breach of and would be promptly kicked off telegram’s infra, as was mentioned by those same FOSS developers in lemmy threads regarding that subject. as for you, plonk.

except, implementing E2EE via 3rd party FOSS clients is explicitly against Telegram’s TOS, which I’m gonna assume you already know as you’re parroting weirdo’s stance “all crypto is broken by NSA, so we’re better off without”. take care.

appreciate the effort, but kinda went overboard with the deets :) I run several prosody XMPP servers so I’m familiar with the underlying tech. what you describe should be feasible with it as well, but there are constant issues with devices not being able to access history, so I was wondering if things were better on your end.

so, based on this, I’ll spin up a snikker docker and try it out for a coupla weeks, see what’s what. many thanks.

edit: turns out this snikket thing is conversations (standard XMPP client) and prosody (XMPP server) with different branding.

your argument boils down to “the fully functional and loaded gun is in this weirdo’s holster and he won’t use it”.

the whole point is not relying on the benevolence of the weirdos out there and not letting them even be in the position to do any harm. encrypt my 1on1 comms and I don’t give a fuck what happens in the pedo/terror/carding/etc public groups. ample time to implement that in the past decade+ and be on par with practically every messenger out there. but he/they won’t implement it, they insist on all your shit being in the “cloud”, in plaintext, forever. there is no scenario where there’s not a malicious intent behind that.

I’ve been using Telegram since the early days. it was phenomenal vs the crap of its day - magical, even. like many, I was enamored with the vision of durov the folksy hero battling the forces of evil (in a bozo nightmare) and bequeathing us this tech marvel.

but I can’t trust it with anything any more. if weirdo can’t be trusted about some stuff, then he can’t be trusted with anything. enough for me, YMMV.

sorry for reiterating, so cross-device sync is totally impossible? or just something you don’t use?

aside from the dogshit UX and the uber reliance on Evilcorp’s infra, having more than two devices (I know, shocker in this day and age!), the arduous migration process to a new device, the limited chat history (I think it’s 40ish days) and many more.

same way Telegram adamantly refuses to implement E2EE, and not only that, it actively prevents 3rd party devs (a number of clients are FOSS) from implementing it on their own.

both PJ Harvey and durov respond the same way when asked about any of them things - smokescreens, FUD, whataboutisms, etc.

any of them things woulda been acceptable in 2015, here’s a PoC looking for funding, limited devs and resources; remember TextSecure and RedPhone? nowadays, they are nothing short of malicious.

how’s the chat history with snikket? I had issues with prosody, namely multiple devices coming and going and maintaining the same chat history between all of them, as well when there’s a disconnect (device gone forever, new device connects)

just skimmed their confusing web site, it’s free for selfhosting, right?

although it’s interesting research, I think it’s a weak text if you’re even tangentially aware of Telegram’s bullshit narrative as it focuses on the wrong thing. the main point should be “this dude was caught lying on a number of occasions and throws out smoke-screens and FUD when confronted about super-simple stuff. therefore nothing that comes outta his mouth is to be trusted” which should’ve prompted a mass exodus from this bullshit platform a long time ago.

the way more important issue is the collective action problem of dumping this crapware - leave it for what?

I run XMPP and Matrix servers and use various clients, along with Signal. all of those things are fucking dogshit software, there isn’t one that can come close to Telegram’s UX. if you fell into a coma in 2014 and woke up now to Element of Fluffy or whatever, you’d think someone’s pulling your leg. this is what a decade of development looks like?!

http://archive.today/Ocm8S

for the presentation part, watch standup. watch them construct the story, the path they guide you through, how it all comes together. notice how they lay it out, every syllable, every stutter, how it’s all in the service of delivery. planting and harvesting the callbacks. inadvertently, you’ll start picking up on techniques and implementing them and you’ll notice people hanging on your every word.

as to the actual part converting them over, determine who you’re talking to. if people are aware of the issue but are apathetic about implementing change, that presents one set of issues. if they’re completely unaware that there’s a problem, you’re better off changing environments.

I have an easy job, in my roles I implement the privacy aspect for tech-illiterate people from a security standpoint and I have a dictatorial position - they have to listen to me. I also don’t have tech debt when I implement their IT strategy, i.e. there’s never an issue with an OS or app they love or are used to. all of that is way, way harder when faced with someone who can’t imagine life without a $1000 easily breakable/losable/stealable slab of glass with the blue bubble and the tiks and toks and whatnot.

edit: there’s this thing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/24/what-i-discovered-when-i-asked-amazon-to-tell-me-everything-alexa-had-heard I just saw at HN. this dude having a blissfully ignorant walk down melancholy lane, pondering the details of his decade-long spyware-ridden life, completely oblivious to their most intimate family shit just being out there in the world, for anyone to abuse just so he can be a more effective consumer. reaching those people, although possible, is such a tremendous effort I don’t think it’s worth it.

you can remove firmware and other software that doesn’t pertain to your system. the regular upgrade process will be shorter and you’ll save some SSD space.

however, you’ll lose the ability to take this SSD and plug it in a completely different system, like e.g. an intel laptop, and have it boot right up, unmodified.

every mobile device I ever owned is encrypted and protected with a reasonably secure pass-phrase so losing it is no big deal. it is conceivable someone could forensic the shit out of my setup but that is highly unlikely; it’s far more likely it’ll get wiped and sold or parted out.

I’ve done no benchmarks but I haven’t experienced any issues ever. the oldest linux device I own is a 2011 MBP (i7-2635qm, so quadcore) and I don’t perceive any speed degradation; it’s possible 1st gen Core i5/i7 could have issues as those don’t have AES-NI in hardware or sumsuch plus they’re SATA2 only, but those would be 15+ years old at this point.

with btrfs that has on-the-fly compression, copy-on-write, and deduping, everything works seamlessly, even when I have database-spanking applications in local development.

so the only thing I’ve changed recently is encrypting every device I have, not just the mobile ones. the standalone devices get unlocked with a key-file from the local filesystem so they boot without the prompt. selling/giving away any of those drives, mechanical or SSD, is now a non-issue.

for future reference, encrypt your drives from the get-go. even if it’s not a mobile device, you can use on-device keys to unlock it without a pass-phrase.

source: used shred on a couple of 3.5" 4 TB drives before selling them, took ages…

that’s for Fedora, for Ubuntu it’s toram I think? or was that for older versions… Esc during boot to verify, if it goes “loading to RAM” then you know it’s working.

to add to what others already said, the work from linux-surface is being adopted in the mainline, so it is possible that your hardware is already supported in a modern distro, like Fedora. boot it off a live USB image and poke around, you’ll get a better feel for it.

pro tip, at the GRUB menu press ‘e’ to edit the first item and then add rd.live.ram and that should load the image to RAM. you can then remove the USB and it’ll be way faster to navigate and it won’t touch your existing SSD install.

all Apple devices are part of a covert peer-to-peer network and its primary purpose is to facilitate the Airtags and find-my-shit apps. it runs on desktops, laptops, phones, ipads, watches, etc., including when they’re supposedly off. you can’t turn it off or opt out of it and what that crap additionally does and how secure it is is unknown.

having said that, if you run linux on an old intel-based macbook or similar (say, up to 2015 models) you’re out of that racket and similarly all Apple or iCloud based crap. they do have a permanently enabled IME but that’s true for the majority of devices sold and, dependent on your threat model, isn’t an issue per se.

not sure about the “credit card” angle as you can’t buy a new Apple device that runs linux, the asahi mess is limited to M1/2 models which are like 5 years old at this point.

borg + vorta. borg is the undelying tech, vorta is the UI. the UI is a little bit rough around the edges but it’s immensely powerful for a wide array of use cases.

those things were designed to run off mechanical drives. so whatever you fit it with will be screaming fast. the bottlenecks you’re concerned with arise with workstation-class machines with fully implemented PCI lanes and such, which are pretty rare in laptops. HMBs also require a beefier CPU as all that buffering introduces overhead; not noticeable on a 6-core Ryzen, noticeable on a dual-core decade-old i5.

summarum: whatever SATA SSD you fit it with is more than adequate. obviously, don’t go with no-name “brands”. also, save yourself the bother and don’t dick around with adapters, just fit a regular SATA 2.5" SSD in there.