I haven’t had a chance to try this yet, but just downloaded the update. The video really makes it look like a unique way to keep track of them, and I can’t wait to see if it works!

Not that I’m aware of

I will say that it’s worth being careful: there’s no option for a backup XMPP account (so your account better have perfect uptime) and I very rarely have incoming phone calls actually work (calling out works, calling in is pretty random, most of the time it doesn’t even ring). Also the UI on the client is still pretty bad (especially for group texts, which are almost unusably bad).

All that being said, it’s a great service, just know what you’re getting into before you make it your primary phone number, it’s not nearly as polished as they make it sound.

It only gets full of memes if that’s the culture you create (I hope we won’t do that, so far it seems like we haven’t). And I definitely wouldn’t follow everything on a high-volume chat, when you’re on and a topic of discussion you’re into starts or you just feel chatty, then you follow along, otherwise it’s not necessary. But that’s just how I do chat rooms, YMMV.

Oh nice, some of the GSoC projects are really interesting this year!

Oh nifty, I do this when backpacking to keep rice, noodles, or whatever grains and cereals I’m carrying dry, but it never occurred to me that folks might do it at home too! What bottles work/look the best I wonder? On the trail I always used Gatorade bottles because they’re a bit thicker walled.

Right? Can I just sit on my bike and pretend to pedal?

I created a new Gajim community and cross posted there as well, for future use!

I’ve been looking forward to the UI overhaul since the office hours demo! I’m looking forward to it trickling into Fedora.

Welcome, and thanks for the newsletter translations!

Yes, I’m aware, but “rarely” is not “never”, so it seems worth having them.

It doesn’t “just” do that, it also makes it easier for the elderly, those in a wheelchair, those rolling a grocery trolley full of bags, etc.

I apologize if thatwsas a joke, my bad

This is exactly why we should stop pretending everything is fine and actually try to address the problem of Google doing damage to open ecosystems.

This kind of language is literally what I was replying to. You’re not helping, you’re just ensuring fewer people use XMPP. Stop spreading fud.

When people say “killed” they obviously don’t mean “literally no one uses it”. Also no one really cares that Whatsapp or Google are still using it internally. Google did serious damage to the public network and the broader XMPP ecosystem and it’s worth acknowledging and learning from that instead of just complaining that someone wasn’t absolutely precise in their language. For all intents and purposes, XMPP is effectively dead to the general public. Let’s try to bring it back to popular use and make sure Google et al. can’t do their “embrace, extend, extinguish” thing again.

TL;DR — please stop being snarky to the OP.

When you say “not quite there yet”, what issues did you run into?

Do you already have a bridge setup and hooked up to your account, eg https://jmp.chat? If you go to add a contact, for instance, it will let you add a phone number and automatically append the bridge address (@cheogram.com in this case)

I’ve been using Cheogram (another Conversations fork that adds features related to telephone dialing and SMS gateways; if you don’t use one of those, it’s probably not super useful and Conversations is a better choice). I think it’s only available on F-Droid, sadly: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.cheogram.android/

Seems okay to me, but I’d bet existing ones are already established and probably other instances will have a wider user base. But I don’t see any reason to forbid it, personally.