I’ll have you know that this is famous sci-fi author Charles David George Stross posting an excerpt from his seminal novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus. The warning is right in the title, I’m sure nobody will be dumb enough to ignore it!

[…] a public institution is really not a great example of the general population […]

Which I touched upon in my disclaimer, but in some ways it is a great example. Public institutions are defined by the general population, indirectly through their representatives creating the rules that govern them, and directly through contact with the public at large. Now if all our institutions still use this very outdated technology, and you can have trouble convincing them - during a global pandemic mind you - that using email is just as safe as using fax (so not safe at all basically), then that speaks to a larger mindset in the general population.

Many in the general public are also a lot quicker, some might even say careless, with adopting new technology of course. But as a society we are rather slow, and there are surprisingly many individuals who are hesitant or entirely resistant to adopting new technology. The fediverse usage is a bubble in a bubble here.

The internet infrastructure is another good example for this on the societal level, as there were plans in the 1980ies [!] to lay out a glass fibre network between every publicly used building in the country, which would have gotten us a good part of the way towards adopting this new material at scale. But in the end it was deemed unnecessary and too expensive and the project got canned (mixed in with rumours of “close friendship” between the chancellor and a major copper producer). Instead now we have people running around thirty years later and collecting signatures at the door for last-mile fibre network projects that seldom make quorum and thus almost never materialise public funding.

2. […] But also how are Germans technologically behind regarding common personal life?

I bet you wherever in Germany you are, if you go to the website of your local city government right now they will have a still active fax number in their contact information. I guarantee it. Well if they have a website that is.

Which is a bit silly as an example but highlights the central problem, which is that adoption of new technology happens at a glacial pace, especially in public institutions. There are many reasons for that of course, some good, like the aforementioned inclination towards privacy, some bad like whatever allows fax machines to still be around.

And don’t get me started on internet infrastructure… In an international comparison we certainly aren’t leading the field regarding adoption of new technologies.

Depends on the kind of colour blindness you have I guess. I think I have the congenital red-green blindness common among men, and saturate Just Works™ for me. Plus I don’t have to fiddle with setting a rotation degree there.

Oh yeah, can’t use the same IP range as your LAN, that will lead to problems. :D Glad it’s fixed.

Out of curiosity, does forwarding work now without the output (-o) command in PostUp?

PSA for my fellow colour blind people, you can use inspect element option of your browser to add a filter: saturate(100); rule to the element for this kind of image:

Like I said in another thread on this post, I’m pretty sure that’s because they are forwarding input but not output in the PostUp rules. Setting a /32 in AllowedIPs works fine for me.

What are you trying to say? That reply also shows AllowedIPs set to a /32 on the server side.

I don’t think that’s what the setting does. Anyway, I have them set to a /32 IP in my server config and it works nonetheless. I get full access to the /24 behind the server from the client.

You have ALL traffic being routed over Wireguard here.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it the other way around? All Wireguard traffic is forwarded to the local interface.

I think the problem might be your PostUp/PostDown lines have an in-interface (-i) but are missing an out-interface (-o) for the forwarding. Try this:

PostUp   = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -A FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE
PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -D FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE

Linux users can’t even agree […] so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?

Easy. You make a post like the OP, count the positive mentions of distros in the comments, and bam, you have your distro of choice. It’s called the Linux newbie roulette and works kind of like the magic hat in Harry Potter that sorts you into your house.

So, I think it’s pretty stupid to argue whether “convicted felon” should be in his opening lede line for Wikipedia.

True though that may be, I don’t think it’s surprising that this would happen, and since making the post I have been falling down a rabbit hole of finding out how Wikipedia is handling situations like this, partly through taking more than a glancing look at the talk pages for the first time ever, and it’s fascinating.

Currently my deepest point of descent is this sub-thread on the Admin board about the “consensus” boxes on top of talk pages being an undocumented and unapproved feature.

Not yet, but you probably will be able to in the future.

Right so WhatsApp and messenger are gatekeepers and they must allow interoperation with who anyone who wants to ie me running my own signal instance?

There are several stipulations on interoperability in the new regulation (Ctrl+F “interop”). To my understanding it is stipulated that they have to make interoperability possible for certain third parties, but how to go about this is not exactly specified on a technical level - meaning the specific way to implement this is left to the gatekeeper. So your Signal server may or may not be able to depending on how exactly they go about this.

They also need to interoperate with signal hence if a works with b and c works with a why wouldn’t b work with c?

No they need to enable interoperability period. Says nothing about Signal (the software) per se. Meta has announced they plan on implementing it based on the Signal protocol (not Signal messenger software, not Signal server software).

Cos if thats hoe it works or if im not allowed to interoperate with WhatsApp or messenger in the first place then this juat seems like its handing the monopoly away from the companies to the government and giving the people fuck all.

To my knowledge the aim of the regulation is exactly that, to allow anybody interoperability with these “core platform services”. The status quo is that the regulations has been announced by the EU, it has gone into effect, and Meta has announced how they will implement interoperability to comply. Once the implementation is available and then found lacking in regard to the regulation it would be up to the affected third party to sue Meta over it.

Not with Signal messenger, the company running it hasn’t been designated as a gatekeeper under the DMA rules. You can see which services will be affected on the Wiki page (only WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger currently).

Signal protocol ≠ Signal messenger

AFAIK you could always have selfhosted a Signal server, you just can’t interact with the “normal” Signal messenger and its network.

No, the DMA has nothing to do with RCS, at least not directly.

Yes, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were initially just XMPP servers, but have since had proprietary expansions.

In the context of the DMA both of them will be forced to make interoperability with other third-party messengers possible, since Meta has been designated a “gatekeeper” under the new regulation. Meta has announced they plan on doing so via an implementation of the Signal protocol.

There are some provisions in the Digital Markets Act that go in that direction. It only took effect roughly 3 months ago though, so remains to be seen if it works out as intended.

What the fuck kind of argument is this? Courts aren’t supposed to play politics, they are supposed to enforce the law. And if you want to do that in a genocide case you have to prove intent. Gallant made several public statements that can interpreted in that way.