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I really like the idea. It's so easy to create small tools with AI now, but hard to install them as local apps or share them.

But I'm missing a few relevant features:

1. syncing data and apps (capsules) between my devices. not necessarily over a single SaaS, but maybe p2p or some existing service

2. I think data and apps should be separated, I might want to share an app with someone else without sharing the data

3. Apps should support updates, install the same app again and just replace the code for the existing app, but keep the data. Also share updates either as a file or publish apps to a repo (just a folder of files on a public http server or github repo)

Both keeping data in sync between devices and providing offline capabilities is hard, I know.


E2E encryption should be part of the main protocol spec and mandatory. It's 2026 now. Nobody needs a messenger that isn't encrypted.

> Nobody needs a messenger that isn't encrypted.

Businesses want to analyze internal company messages. Chat protocols / platforms need to make inroads with one of the core audiences for online chat. Those are largely taken right now, (slack/teams business, discord gaming/oss). If it is personal/small group messaging, several E2EE options already exist, though I understand Jabber/XMPP is trying to be in the chatroom genre


You can do E2E encryption for organizations, you just establish all conversations as at least 3-way conversations: the two members of the org, and the org itself. You let the server refuse to host any conversation it isn't privy to, and then apps that support organization mode automatically add the org listener, and users using third-party clients can add it manually.

E2EE has well known issues for scaling, which is why it's found primarily in small group / personal chat

The org can just host non-E2EE XMPP, and it'd be the same as this wrt trust, easier to implement too.

There is literally nothing about enterprise inspecting proxies that requires the client operate without default and always on crypto. That makes no sense at all.

The way businesses handle this is by installing a certificate they manage and deploy to their proxies.


one does not typically do data science on message content by capturing it at the proxy, go to the database and dump the data set

Not every messenger needs to support every use case

you'll need one major group if traction is the goal, which seems to be what the posted link is really after

chat is network effect, so a chat app needs to answer "which network of people" if the creators about traction?


True, segmentation is already happening with users choosing apps based on geography, age, and sometimes by social group. It’s possible to target and win over a select group of people if you have a compelling feature or an experience that’s geared towards their needs. You just have to decide who you are focusing on.

I can easily imagine a future where people switch between three messengers, one for general communications with acquaintances and family, one for work, and one for their social circle. Many already do this with social networks.


text, slack, discord for those three already (for me); none were my choice, unlikely I would chose any of them given better options, yay capitalism!

I disagree. XMPP wasn't designed for it, and there are already others that have done E2EE better, while still having some downsides. The only way XMPP has an edge is by not doing E2EE.

E2EE will never be the default, because people lose their devices all the time, and don't want to lose message history.

WhatsApp doesn't even have the option to disable e2ee anymore and it's doing just fine, despite their best efforts to screw over their customers.

WhatsApp depends heavily on centralization.

Who are those people having lot of time to re-read their old message history? I assume most people only read last several messages in a chat. This matches the real life conversations which are not stored anywhere. However, police will definitely be happy to discover that your many years messaging history is intact.

I would rather want a feature, like Telegram has, where you can set auto-delete of all messages older than N days.


>Who are those people having lot of time to re-read their old message history?

Everyone who has to, say, prove that they kept paying their rent for a year without interruptions. You sent a photo of your money transfer from the bank app to your landlord, and he sends the "received" screenshot from his bank app.

Moreover, a lot (even most) people make personal notes by sending messages to themselves.


For me searching my old messages is really useful. I don't scroll back through history but I'll search for things like "plumber" to find the number of a plumber a friend texted me a while back.

>police will definitely be happy

Most people trust the police. This might not be justified in your state, but most people still do.


the only people that really trust the police are ones that never actually had to deal with the police (which may be a whole lot of people). however, if you ever have an unfortunate situation to have a run in with the police, there is a good chance you will not be all that trusting any longer. people trust the idea of police more so than anything else

Well, true. But even so, having the history intact is also a way to remove suspicions from yourself.

"Where were you during the event X? I was very far from the place you are interested in, as can be proven by this photo, sent to my grandma, have a look at the history in her phone."


It's the default/only option for popular apps like Signal or WhatsApp.

If message history is important it should be backed up on the receiver's end after decryption, like WhatsApp and signal do.


Transparent ziplock bags changed my cable organization significantly. I also put a lot of accessories into them. Preferably together with a small note about what it is for, or with the manual of the device it belongs to.

Storing stuff in individual boxes takes up too much space. The transparent bags can just go into a box and it's easy to just browse through. Nothing gets entangled.


They make giant ones too for bigger stuff. I think Adam Savage has a video about them for grouping unfinished project parts together.

I didn't see his video, but after many years I finally figured that out independently and felt like a fool for it taking so long to realize. That's a real game changer.

I usually just get them from IKEA. They have different sizes from 0.4l to 6l.

I try not to overfill them if possible, much easier to see what's inside.


It's inline CSS, but with all the limitations of inline styles removed. There is a lot of stuff that can't be done with inline styles, like media queries.

It's inline styles, not online stylesheets. Though yes, inline styles are limited.

I think tech founders need to think smaller. Build software for a few thousand people and make a profit from it. Something niche. Something that is sustainable with a small team.

VC eats up everything that's becoming bigger. And they will kill it. Their goal is not to run a healthy business that serves their customers. They try to take out as much money as possible and then trash it.


This is it. Sustainability. Not everything has to be about more money quickly. You don't even need VCs for that. More win to bootstrappers! I see a lot of folks bootstrapping in the LLM era, but that can be defeaned in the VC noise.


Exactly. And the dangerous mindset tends to be worse than just "more money quickly": it's far too commonly "if this can't become the next Facebook/iPhone/ChatGPT, it's not worth doing." The only options are "take over the world" or "fail"; there's no room (in many people's heads) for a product that makes a decent, steady profit and continues to do so over the course of many years.


There is, is just different capital for those companies (debt, growth equity, angels, grants) and less attention. There’s far more of these types of companies too.

> Something that is sustainable with a small team.

These days, it can be sustainable for a tiny team, named Claude and Luna.

Why doesn't every engineer have a side project or three for small market things of this caliber in 2026?


Because you still need a good sales and product team. Speak with potential customers, understand their problems. Building the software was never the hard part.


They don't give a shit about making a good product, the literal only thing any of these ghouls care about is line going up in the short term, because if line goes up they can dump their investments and move on to the next entity that they can get their greedy claws on and devour.


This is becoming more and more of a problem. For a small software company it could become an asset. Tell customers they are privately owned and small, and therefore won't be acquired by VCs.

Traditionally big vendors were more trustworthy and stable, that's no longer the case.

Edit: I'm not talking about end users, most commercial software is licensed by companies.


In that environment the founder has no hope or reason to go public, making equity in the company worthless.

VC used to push to public exits in order to maximize the founders and VCs stake which turned employees equity to a liquid asset. Truly aligning everyones interests, nowadays not so much.


You're forgetting about dividend, and off-market trade.

If a company is worthless if it isn't public, then IKEA would be absolute garbage. Quite strange for a company making hundreds of millions in profit for its owners.


The insane valuations for selling a dream are what make VC worthwhile.

TSLA would be worth crap if it were a private company giving off dividends. It is really truly about the insane valuations driven by collective delusion.


Are there modern positioning systems that can automatically join all those data sources into one position? Traditionally navaids are treated as completely separate sources and are shown on different kind of instruments. But they could also be used as a replacement source for GNSS data on a modern map screen.

Depending on their kind they might not return a specific position, but in combination with other sources they often do via triangulation.

PS: INS (Inertial Navigation) also still exits. It often works for quite a long time really precisely. Also precision can be calculated. So it can start as a dot on a map which becomes a bigger circle as the precision decreases. It could be automatically recalibrated whenever high confidence positioning is available.


Yes, modern flight management computers in commercial airliners do exactly this. I can't speak to smaller aircraft.

Essentially a position is calculated from VOR/DME, GPS, and INS. When there is disagreement it is flagged and procedures are in place to fall back.

The issue is VOR/DME is slowly being decommissioned eliminating one of those sanity checks. It hasn't been degraded to the point of creating massive gaps in coverage over land but it will slowly happen if the rate of decommissioning continues.

Ultimately, INS is sufficient for enroute navigation but if you're degraded to just that state, the impacts to traffic separation, particularly in congested airspace, are significant. Required Navigation Performance (RNP) levels dictate all of this.


The "cut and die" part is happening rather quickly, and you're done with it. But you might be hungry for weeks and have to watch your crops grow. Probably really boring and uncomfortable.


It's actually not that hard to return to this lifestyle. Maybe easier than ever before. Just buy an old farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere and do your thing. There are many regions in the world where farmland is really cheap and nobody will bother you.


This regulation is utterly broken. The only way for a small business is to ignore it completely and hope for the best.


First sentence: "From the late 1980s until 2013..."


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