Infrastructure “We should own our infrastructure.” A lot of people would instinctively nod in agreement with that statement. Yet who “we” refers to shifts depending on the type of infrastructure. Highways, railways, bridges, and ports require nation-scale efforts. The water supply is usually put into the hands of municipalities. And the desire to own infrastructure goes down to a much smaller level: Owning your home is a dream for many—though such ownership doesn’t necessarily have to be organized on an individual level. Instead, cooperatives or city-owned housing1 can provide similar benefits.

Signal Sucks, Actually When I first installed Signal in the second half of 2023 to stay in touch with a few friends who had recently switched, it did not support message edits. This completely broke the way I used instant messengers. At that point, editing messages was a widely deployed feature across other instant messaging clients. Conversations had supported it since February 20161 and I had acquired a habit of typing a message, sending it, and only then reading it again and checking for typos. The lack of such an essential feature caused me to send incomprehensible messages, making the app almost unusable for me. Signal forced me to adapt and change my habits.

Il y a quelques jours, du 23 au 25 janvier, j'étais en Suisse, à Saint-Cergue pour les Rencontres Hivernales du Libre. J'y ai été invité par Oinska, l'un des organisateurs. Et quand il m'a dit que je pouvais proposer quelque chose si j'avais une idée, je me suis dit que c'était l'occasion de donner une conférence sur XMPP. L'arrivée En arrivant je n'ai pas pu m'empêcher de repenser à mon ami Lovis IX qui nous a malheureusement quitté en septembre. On s'était déjà rendus aux Rencontres Hivernales du Libre en 2020 et c'était à cette occasion que j'avais fait avec …

How during a snowstorm, the most reliable and relevant protocol to use for communication was XMPP

Pros and cons of Matrix and XMPP protocols. Or why XMPP is still relevant today