I specifically bought a Pixel 5a because it was the last Pixel with a headphone jack. Then after a year, it died on me, and they sent me a 6a as a replacement.

I miss the jack. A lot. But it’s hard to justify buying a whole new phone for one. Once this one dies, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Questionable privacy/security practices: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-security-camera-cloud-private-encryption-authentication-storage

Revolt is certainly better than Discord’s privacy, but since it doesn’t yet have E2EE, it doesn’t seem like very privacy-focused software

Oh nice! Although, one issue from their website:

“Every message and file gets sent separately to every member in the group”

That seems fine for small groups, but for the typical Element crowd of large groups, I don’t think that would go over well. If you send a 10MB file in a 2000-person chat, you’d be uploading 20GB of data…

Just a quick glance at all of those:

-Briar, Tox, and Cwtch don’t have iOS clients

-SimpleX doesn’t have a desktop GUI has issues with big groups (see comment below)

-Session has a 100-person group chat limit

-Syphon’s own github states they are “still in alpha and we do not recommend using it where proven and independently verified security is required.” Plus, they haven’t had a release in over a year, so I’m not sure it’s still maintained.

Element (or most Matrix clients) don’t have any of those issues. Like I said, it’s not perfect, but I see why it’s recommended. All decent alternatives have significant downsides

Element isn’t perfect, but what’s a better alternative? A giant Signal group would be a horrible idea, since everyone’s phone numbers would be exposed to the other members (plus there’s a 150 group member limit), and Discord is obviously much worse than Element (from a privacy perspective).

It’s possible they want to support Steam Deck without supporting the rest of linux desktop, which would just be… dumb. The Steam Deck, in Valve’s own words, is “just a PC” anyway.

Considering they unbanned all most of the linux users last time though, this is likely just another mistake.