On top of the mounting enshittification they’ve been undergoing in recent years: they opted in to perform age verification processes worldwide utilizing face scanning and/or ID submissions and/or data scanning to verify age.

They’ve now postponed it until later this year, but enough was enough for us.

For chat: IRC, Stoat, Fluxer, Root, Zulip, Matrix, Slack, Teams, Guilded.

For voice/video: Mumble, Teamspeak, Jitsi Meet, also several of the above.

Perfect 1:1 drop in hassle free replacement with the exact same feature set? No, there isn’t.

Viable alternatives that aren’t too bad to learn? There are many.

It works as expected as far as Matrix is concerned. From what I can tell the aim and goals are just quite different from what a platform like Discord is going for.

If you’re going in wanting/expecting a perfect Discord replacement then it’s just not going to be that and doesn’t seem to want to be that either. Hence the need for onboarding documentation.

If you’re unable to make the mental shift to it such that it can work for you then there are other platforms that might more closely conform to what you’re after. We tried Stoat, Zulip, and Root before ultimately deciding on Matrix.

Uhhh…I haven’t seen any. But I just run a space about video games.

Thanks, stranger!

This was one of the larger hurdles for me as an admin.

Rooms are their own discreet entity. While they may be organized into your space, they exists as their own thing.

So properly setting who can and can’t create rooms is crucial. If I’m allowed to make rooms in your space then absolutely I can make a room that you’re not the admin in. You’d need to remove it server side if that’s a thing you needed to do.

Spaces aren’t even exclusive. You can link in rooms from other spaces and they can exist in their original space as well as the new linked one.

As far as users seeing rooms, if the rooms are set to visible for space members then they need to join the space. Once done they can see them from the space’s home.

The Matrix.org page touches on the basics here: https://matrix.org/docs/communities/getting-started/

The most up to date stuff I’ve found in that is here: https://matrixdocs.github.io/docs/bots/overview

I believe element will let you preview. But you do still have to be signed into element.

https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

I found a Pi Hole blocklist that filters out known ai slop websites but even then they’re still clogging up my DDG result. Such a pain.

Also: Phantasy Star is great! Have you played the Sega Ages release? It adds some really cool stuff to make it more playable.

Discord user here. Spent the last three days bashing my head against synapse.

Finally got it running. Moving my podcast community over as soon as stress testing finishes. This was a great response from Matrix.

Discord can eat my shorts.

As someone who has had stitches a few times: always go in ASAP! Apparently there’s a time limit on how many hours after an injury they they’ll give you stitches.

Learning that the hard way wasn’t fun.

Glad you (eventually) healed up and fuck this healthcare system.

🤷‍♂️ My guess is some kind of hyper masculine performative bullshit.

A high end custom gun is pretty expensive. So it’s the same kind of flex as showing off an expensive car.

Rural dwelling pedant here: Dollar General is not a dollar store. Dollar Tree is, but Dollar General is a garbage store with regular-ass prices. They only stock shit and the prices are often higher than regular grocery stores.

It’s the only food store my town has and it sucks so bad. At least Dollar Stores are affordable.

You can take it from my cold, dead, cheese covered hands!

I’m a pretty avid old video game enjoyer and own multiple CRTs. Also had the pleasure of owning and maintaining a 19" Sony PVM until I traded it to a friend for a mountain of GBA games. Still keep a 13" hooked up for the occasional VHS or old game.

That said, I feel like a lot old sentiment toward emulation and modern display tech is rooted in internet opinions from 2010 or prior.

Yes, older and cheaper LCDs with a Bluetooth controller on old emulation tech pales in comparison to a Super Nintendo hooked up to the cheapest CRT ever. But both display tech and emulation tech have come a long way. High quality upscalers, ultra deep blacks, low latency game modes, insane refresh rates, FPGA, Retroarch run-ahead, cycle accurate emulators, and a dozen other breakthroughs have made retro gaming on modern panels extremely enjoyable.

Have you tried any of the various shaders available? I find that a good shader set gets pretty so close to my CRTs that I honestly can’t tell the difference. I have a Retrotink for hardware scaling and it also has very good shader options.

There are options now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinden_Light_Gun