by mtlynch ·
I love open-source software and open protocols, but my family and friends primarily communicate through SMS for exactly the reasons in https://xkcd.com/2365/
Whenever XMPP or Matrix threads pop up on HN, several commenters casually mention their "friends and family XMPP (or Matrix) server."
How did you convince friends and family to move away from SMS/WhatsApp and replace it with a niche messaging app?
My family and friends aren't hardcore nerdy, but they're more tech-savvy than average. Their needs in messaging are mainly pragmatic: they want ease of use, reliability, and fun features. They don't care that much about privacy, decentralization, or extensibility (though I care about those things a lot).
I've been experimenting with self-hosting XMPP and Matrix servers and clients in the past week, and the UX is even worse than I expected. It seems like all the clients either imitate Slack, imitate Discord, or imitate hot garbage. I haven't seen any that try to be a simple, friendly replacement for SMS. I'm a software developer who uses computers all day, and I find the UX for most of the clients incredibly hard to use.
The only angle I could see to pitch XMPP/Matrix to people for non-philosophical reasons are that there's a more consistent experience across iOS/Android. The biggest shortcoming I think is visible to regular users is that there's feature degradation and missing information when iOS users have SMS conversations with Android users, especially in group chats.
For people who have successfully won family and friends to XMPP or Matrix, what was your pitch? What do you recommend others do to make XMPP or Matrix an attractive experience for a regular person?
by L0in ·
Hello. I'm an Information Technology university student from Greece. I'm older than most of my peers and i feel anxious about my professional future with all the advancements of AI. What advice do you have for someone who just starting out?
by linsomniac ·
Ubuntu has CVE-2026-98432 marked as a 9.8, but yet it's coming up on a week with no update to fix it. It's still marked as "work in progress" (though at least now they've listed a mitigation):
https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-98432
I've had mitigations in place for a week, but this response is really shaking my confidence in Ubuntu. I'm just trying to understand what is going on with Ubuntu. Do they have too many kernels (that page is loooong), do they not have enough automation in the build/test pipeline, are their engineers overwhelmed?
We are moving into a world where there are going to be vastly more security issues; if you can't keep up now, where are you going to be in the next 6 months?
For a long time keeping on top of OS updates has been a huge part of keeping the attackers at bay. However, the world is changing.
by jameslk ·
If you have a personal Google AI subscription, all your saved chat history in Gemini can be used for training and there is no way to opt out unless you turn off chat history or use temporary chat sessions. These chat transcripts may even be read by human reviewers. Although Google claims to disconnect them from your account when human-reviewed, they explicitly warn not to enter confidential information.
https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16836988
“[Gemini app activity] is used to improve Google services for everyone, including by training generative AI models, if your Keep Activity setting is on.“
https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/13594961?hl=en#human_review
“A subset of chats are reviewed by human reviewers”
https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/13594961?hl=en#pn_retain_data
“Chats reviewed by human reviewers [...] are not deleted when you delete your activity. Instead, they are retained for up to three years.”
https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/13594961?hl=en#pn_data_usage
“Please don’t enter confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our services, including machine-learning technologies.”
To disable their training on your chat sessions, you need to turn off “Keep Activity” in Gemini’s settings. Turning that off means you’ll lose any chat sessions after 72 hours.
I learned this too late, thinking that having a paid subscription = not being turned into the product. Apparently paying is not enough.
Thank you to this user on HN for mentioning in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50355424
by eggbrain ·
I'm curious how people on HN are using AI day to day, and came up with a list of questions I thought could be interesting to know. No need to answer every question of course, just wanted to get a gut feel how people are using AI.
1) What AI subscriptions are you personally paying for? (Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, Cursor, etc)
- Which tiers?
- Have you purchased multiple subscriptions from the same provider (eg two Claude accounts)?
2) Are you using models outside (or instead) of those subscriptions? For example, pay-as-you-go APIs, OpenRouter, or locally hosted models.
- Which models and providers?
3) What coding harnesses and interfaces are you using? Are you sticking with the default CLIs or IDE integrations, or using alternatives like OpenCode, Pi, Aider, Muse Code, or custom-built harnesses?
- What made you switch harnesses (if you switched)?
4) Are you using any agent orchestration or swarm tools?
- For example, Munder Difflin, Gas Town, Ruflo, or something custom.
5) Are you using broader agent platforms like OpenClaw / Hermes Agent / Grok bot / Dots / Muse?
- If you are using them, what are your main use cases?
-----
I know my workflow has differed significantly from a year ago, and so it would be interesting to capture a snapshot today of what people are using and why.
by user052919 ·
My company is pretty paranoid about leaking IP to the frontier labs through prompts, so we've all been diligent about disabling data sharing in Codex/Claude Code/etc. But yesterday my coworkers and I noticed that the setting had been silently reenabled in Codex. None of us knowingly opted back in.
You can check your settings here: https://chatgpt.com/settings/data-controls. Look for "Improve the model for everyone".
Curious if this is an isolated issue or something more widespread.
EDIT: looks like this has been noted before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643556
EDIT: apparently you can also turn off data sharing here: https://privacy.openai.com/policies?modal=take-control
by apatheticonion ·
With the efforts to clamp down on LLM-assisted reverse engineering - I am wondering;
If LLM assisted reverse engineering is deemed illegal by the courts, is that precedent for a class action that asserts OSS licenses are violated by labs that trained LLMs on that code?
There are two modalities for this;
1) LLM being post-trained against a decompiled binary - then used to output working source code.
2) LLM being used to analyze decompiled binary and used to output working source code.
How can it be "clean room" when an LLM is trained on or reads OSS but not clean room when the same is done for decompiled software?
by kradeelav ·
There have been previous outages that last 1-2 days, but I haven't been able to get RSS feeds for the last 4 days now.
This goes for new channels and previous channels in a feed reader; Google displays a 404 page no matter what.
by Mattboxx ·
Hi, I’ve been working on ESP32 Tailnet Gateway, an open-source firmware that turns an ESP32-S3 into a small Tailscale/Headscale gateway The main use case is connecting IoT devices that can’t run a VPN client to services on another network with a low cost device. The idea is to have a small, independently powered device that can provide connectivity and help recover a NAS or PC when the main server is offline.
by bbg2401 ·
Just received this via email:
> Usage credits purchased on or after December 7 will expire 12 months after the purchase date. Any unused amount after 12 months will be removed from your balance.