I don’t have a direct source other than the source code of the software they use: https://github.com/mautrix/signal

When using one of their “cloud hosted” bridges, the bridge software (that connects between Matrix/Beeper and other protocols) has to read all message content. Otherwise, it’s impossible to bridge to another protocol. E2EE becomes end (other users) to bridge (beeper) encryption.

With “local hosted” bridges, E2EE stays intact, but messages can’t be sent/received if the device hosting the bridge is unavailable.

In the future, with MLS (a different E2EE protocol), it could be possible to keep E2EE even when bridging to Matrix on cloud hosted bridges.

Depends on how it’s implemented. Anyone using a “media proxy” will see their discord bridged media probably fail to load (outside of possible caches) after a day. Anyone who has their bridge configured to reupload discord media to their homeserver should see no change.

Short answer: you don’t. It’s either privacy or a facebook app, not both.

Longer answer: Don’t use the facebook app https://github.com/mautrix/facebook (requires your own Matrix homeserver)

It is much more complicated to host a Matrix homeserver and Facebook Messenger bridge, however, it allows you to use a FOSS chat app on your Android phone. With notifications and if needed, fully outside google infrastructure, or even fully selfhosted, with ntfy.sh for example. Without running any proprietary Facebook code, and without directly connecting to Facebook servers on your Android device.

It is of course unavoidable to have complete privacy, as your messages will still be sent to Facebook, but you avoid almost all telemetry (and all on-device telemetry) by using a Matrix bridge rather than the official website/app.

Another option is Beeper, although privacy with them is questionable, since you’re fully trusting them with your account, and any incoming/outgoing messages. It does avoid Facebook telemetry on device, and is much easier than hosting a Matrix homeserver.

Not just the “lack of APKs”, but the lack of a FOSS build. As you noted, it is possible to instal an AAB by extracting the APK(s) inside, but that doesn’t magically remove non-foss libraries.

The only build is an aab file. This is a Play Store bundle file, not an APK, so not directly installable in Android without the Google Play Store.

The only build being a Google Play release also indicates that non-foss libraries were likely included, such as the FCM libraries, as is common for GPlay releases of otherwise FOSS projects.

As far as I’m concerned, Element X for Android is not available yet, unless either building from source (with modifications to included libraries), or by using a non-FOSS version from GPlay.

Your iPhone 13 syncs slower over USB because Apple decided to stay on Lightning connectors, which use USB 2.0 on the other end. Although FireWire was faster back when it co-existed with USB, the USB standard has surpassed it a long time ago with more power, faster speeds, and better physical connectors.

VRChat in particular has been degrading in quality and experience ever since they needed to start pleasing investors. You can give it a try if you want, but there’s a lot of toxicity there. Platforms like ChilloutVR or NeosVR have a better (but smaller) community.

Although some titles like BONELAB or Pavlov do feel a lot more like “tech demos”, they are still great titles. Some desktop titles also have VR ports that are worth playing, No Mans Sky and The Talos Principle come to mind.

The modding scenes of a lot of games have good VR mods too, “Vivecraft”, if you’re into Minecraft. Subnautica has a good VR mod, Half-Life 2, Deep Rock Galactic, Outer Wilds, and much more.

What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

The whole point of EEE is to leave the original project in a messy state. With most of the fediverse userbase being “Meta Threads” users, developing anything for other fediverse software or making it somehow incompatible with Threads is not a (good) option. With a decent chunk of software and side projects being only compatible with the Threads “extended” (and likely undocumented) version of ActivityPub, Meta still has the ability to pull the plug on all of those. A lot of Mastodon users will become used to having interactions with friends on Threads, and will be forced to switch over by the time Meta kills federation.

It’s not just “a doom and gloom post”, it’s a valid concern that the communities and environments built up over years will get killed off, with a known strategy for doing so. Why else would Meta (Facebook) suddenly play nice with federated platforms, when their history is to buy out or kill off competitors?

Is everyone here forgetting that Embrace Extend Extinguish is a thing? “Having the option to follow friends on Threads from Mastodon” will lead to the downfall and eventual death of the rest of the fediverse.

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

Not when “Intel based Macs” go out of support. There is no way to run the M1/2 MacOS version without having Apple hardware.

Lets take the imaginary program Y. It is free open source software with the GPLv3 license. If Valve wants to include Y in SteamOS, they are free to do so. Any time Valve makes changes or fixes to Y, they are legally required to provide the source code of their changes, as stated in the GPL license included with Y.

A lot of programs have this license (or a similar one), which forces corporations to contribute back to FOSS projects.

Some Valve-made components in SteamOS are truly “SteamOS only”, but a good amount of fixes to non-Valve programs are submitted “upstream” (to the original project). Due to the nature of Linux, it might be possible to copy the few non-foss components in SteamOS and directly use them in another distro.

Alongside forced contributions due to licensing, Valve contributes a lot of code to “gaming” programs on Linux, such as Wine or DXVK. They also make some SteamOS components FOSS, including Gamescope for example. Valve is (currently) doing a lot of work “for the community” rather than for direct profit.

Mainly their creation of Proton, and contributions to DXVK and WINE have helped Linux gaming become possible on any distro.

It is up to the device manufacturer. Google develops Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and the Google apps and services (Google Play Store for example). This feature (afaik) is in AOSP.

Google developed the version in AOSP, which is open source. Device manufacturers are then able to change the code as needed. If a device manufacturer uses base AOSP with (nearly) no changes, the fix Google made will be applied when the AOSP update goes through the manufacturers build pipeline and to the device (on Google Pixel phones for example). For manufacturers that have a lot of changes compared to AOSP (Xiaomi, Samsung, and many more), they might have to create their own fix that works on their own version of Android, which takes a lot longer.

One of the reasons people run “Custom ROMs” on their Android phone is to be responsible themselves for updates and fixes instead of the device manufacturer.

The same “rumors” exist about Matrix. According to some, “a lot of metadata is unencrypted”. While somewhat true, there’s literally no way to be able to deliver a message from person A to person B without knowing who the message is from and who it’s going to, especially on a decentralized platform. Most of the (not E2EE) metadata sent with an event in Matrix needs to be read by the homeserver, and thus can’t be E2EE.

Didn’t NVidia drop support for gamestream? To use that protocol with maintained software, iirc you need “Moonlight” on the device acting as your screen/controller, and “Sunshine” on your gaming pc.