You can check yourself here: https://beehaw.org/instances and here: https://vlemmy.net/instances

But both instances list each other as connected.

Have you checked your subscriptions feed to see if posts are actually coming through? The pending status is functionally the same as the subscribed status from the user perspective.

Nice, I might try this setup.

It seems a lot worse than that... At least somebody would have to hack a 90s forum to see your DMs.

I don't know the exact details, But apparently, Google implemented xmpp wrong (possibly maliciously?) in a way where Google Talk users could see other xmpp servers' content but those servers users could not see Google Talk content. Which meant that Google forced the Libre servers into obsolescence.

Alleged rioters!

I don't want my VPN provided by spooky Microsoft and attached to my Microsoft account.

That information is easily found with a web search, so there is no need to cast aspersions. It's funded by Brian Acton's "activist" funding (interest-free loans of $100 million+ total to Signal Foundation over the years). I'd guess Acton used it as a huge tax write-off the year he sold WhatsApp to Facebook.

Other revenue sources include voluntary user donations and grants from many free press organizations whose members rely on Signal. Some years they report positive net income, and other years they report negative.

Signal Foundation tax forms, which list all general revenue sources: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840

What Signal says about how they operate: https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signalfoundation.org/en/

Signal Privacy Policy: https://signal.org/legal/#privacy-policy

All the code, including what runs on their servers and in their apps, so you don't need to take their word for anything. You can compile the signal client from source if you like: https://github.com/signalapp

Article which talks about their audit history (this is their weakest point. The full results of the audits Signal paid for were never published): https://restoreprivacy.com/secure-encrypted-messaging-apps/signal/

However, anybody can check for any spooky stuff in their code, so I doubt they would purposely try to hide anything untoward there.

I mean yeah they scavenge but their diet has a lot of bugs, especially ticks.

I haven't liked Brave search results in general lately. SearxNG is pretty good and Duckduckgo as well.

It's much worse, actually. Twitter API has been dead for months by exorbitant costs, but TweetDeck is a first-party feature! Twitter is a joke.

Until recently, Linux didn't differentiate between E Cores and P Cores on Intel CPUs. I think there are some efforts underway to implement a "linux hybrid scheduler," but it isn't fully optimized by any means. In reality, Linux still often has better battery life due to not being spyware, not updating without being asked, and some very clever battery saving CLI programs available.