MonoGame/XNA used to be more relevant 10 years ago, but not so much any more (funnily enough, in large part because Unity ate their lunch).

The military would like to know your location.

Anyone can build an implementation of the Signal client, but few do already because Signal actively works to prevent them from working with the Signal infrastructure, and likely will continue to do so. It’s one of the more common complaints about Signal, but it was built on the assumption that centralized services would be easier to use and to make private if the platform holder wanted, as well as more robust against attacks. They could well be wrong, and people just haven’t thought of and deployed the right tech, but it’s neither here nor there; I’m doubtful they can be convinced on this, and I’d doubt they’d be made to open up anyway by this regulation, meaning they’re not obligated to.

Awaken from thy slumber XMPP! Bring us new and better implementations and standards, and the network effect we once enjoyed now solidified by law.

I’ve never used Edge — is it really that bad?

The article indicated that, apparently, Shorts is even more unprofitable than regular YouTube. So they don’t even have that going for them

Landed gentry is when someone works for no pay in service of a lord, right?

I’m guessing it’s also not feasible to get her a visa on the other side, meaning nowhere to go. I also wouldn’t be surprised if her family being more closely watched and targeted if they leave isn’t also part of why they feel they can’t.

McBane thats the joke.gif

That’s a bit cruel to Gary, Indiana, don’t you think?

The attackers are meme stock traders.

The tl;dr is that the Wired (basically the Web) has an issue of pulling people in so deep that they rot away or die to get deeper into it. Lain, the main character, initially gets on there to find out what happened to a classmate of hers, and then proceeds to become very heavily addicted to it, like many others before her, with the plot and world becoming incoherent over the course of the series, mirroring Lain’s psychological decline. You didn’t really stumble your way into describing the plot of it, but your comment very much sounds like something that’d be in it.

*Raku

Vivaldi is fairly nice, but it’s another Chromium. Similar to Brave, they’ve said they won’t be including the Topics API, so it doesn’t quite feed into the monoculture. (Disappointingly, they seem like they won’t be disabling WEI, Google’s latest land grab. Admittedly, for understandable reasons that mirror the original DRM for the web a decade ago, the blunt fact is that they seem like they’ll go along with it anyway.) Considering the team is (supposedly) largely shared from some people that used to develop their own engine (Presto, before Opera switched to Chromium), I could also believe they could (possibly would) hard fork Chromium if they felt it necessary. If this is enough for you, then I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time with it, and I’ve enjoyed it well enough when I’ve tried it. Personally, I don’t daily it.