Interesting, thanks. Had not considered that second point.

for terminal tabs and splits. Only recently did I realize that tmux is the better option, even for local use

Reasoning?

Completely agree. Alas.

This sounds like the script for a Jehovah’s Witnesses induction session. Jesting aside, it’s a decent plan.

And this assumes that Matrix and its mobile client (I forget its name) are ready for the big time. Not sure if that’s true. The UX and reliability have to be flawless before Matrix can be recommended to normies. If not then the experiment will end badly for everyone including Matrix and the cause of software freedom. That’s my view.

That’s an idea too. But personally I think this worrying about the dominance of a single site is a bit misplaced, assuming that the server uses the same software and protocols. There’s advantages in having some centralization. More resources can be put into the chosen instance to improve its reliability and its moderation. These need to be absolute priorities when trying to attract new users.

A certain encyclopedia site has a de-facto monopoly of the encyclopedia space. That’s not a problem because it has the right governance and ownership structure. I think the discussion space could perhaps use a similar site.

Alternative: just send them to World and do not even mention the whole federation thing. Federation is essentially a power feature for a few people who care about it.

For normies, the real killer USP will be something much simpler: no ads.

Apart from the the janky scrolling it works great as a reader app, yeah. Zero distractions and fast.

Try reading an entire epub book in scroll mode and you’ll see the use case.

The only other feature I want is smooth scrolling, I can’t believe there are no modern terminals with it.

Seconded on both counts.

OK. Given that self-hosters are maintaining two PCs already, I suppose that’s fair.

As an RSS user since the early days, there’s something I never get: why is this something that people are hosting? Are you really all consuming so much news, so much of the time, that you need to do it simultaneously on two devices? That sounds like news overload to me but what do I know.

Personally, I catch up once a day for an hour (or two). Seem more than enough and means I only ever need an RSS client. Right now: the Feedbro add-on in Firefox desktop.

As for tips and tools, RSSBox is a useful one. IMO if RSS were more popular this is the sort of thing that would be built into the client.

OK, I see that problem. In fact I remember having the same issue myself. (Presumably this will create a secondary confusion problem for “All” subscribers, who will see the content of their feed gradually expand without explanation as other users subscribe to other foreign servers, correct? Whatever, I don’t care much about them, someone who subscribes to “All” apparently doesn’t know what they want anyway!)

So the optimal solution here would be for each instance to preemptively connect to a whitelist of known foreign communities, perhaps? Or maybe each instance could regularly ping other servers in order to update its search database with popular communities.

This goes completely against what the average person is expecting and causes a lot of confusion.

But this is only true if the user looks at the All feed, correct?

That’s what I would have said till I tried using a TUI epub reader. The jankiness of line-level scrolling (rather than pixel-level like in a GUI app) is all but a deal breaker.

I was then most surprised to discover that terminal emulators with this amazing cutting-edge technology (smooth scrolling) do not even exist.

Honest question. In the era of collaborative document editing on browser-based platforms, who is using this software and what are they using it for? I work with documents for my job and it’s been literally decades since I used a local standalone word processor.

Of course you can. You said you live in Europe.

Unless you live in Russia or the Vatican, that means your country has signed the European Convention on Human Rights, of which article 8 commits it to respecting your privacy.

So, sure, you’re not going to bother suing. It’s not that important to you. But let’s go easy on the helplessness of “In my country you can’t do that”. Yes. You can do it.

Well done for taking a stand. The problem, as ever, is that most people prefer to comply obediently even if it feels wrong. And then next thing we know, it becomes standard practice.

BTW I have been in your situation and responded similarly. Usually it ends in the clerk inputting dummy info, sometimes after I irritably tell them to do so.