Article URL: https://antonau.tech/posts/2026/11/agents-microvm-firecracker/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50405649

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

I love open-source software and open protocols, but my family and friends primarily communicate through SMS for exactly the reasons in https://xkcd.com/2365/

Whenever XMPP or Matrix threads pop up on HN, several commenters casually mention their "friends and family XMPP (or Matrix) server."

How did you convince friends and family to move away from SMS/WhatsApp and replace it with a niche messaging app?

My family and friends aren't hardcore nerdy, but they're more tech-savvy than average. Their needs in messaging are mainly pragmatic: they want ease of use, reliability, and fun features. They don't care that much about privacy, decentralization, or extensibility (though I care about those things a lot).

I've been experimenting with self-hosting XMPP and Matrix servers and clients in the past week, and the UX is even worse than I expected. It seems like all the clients either imitate Slack, imitate Discord, or imitate hot garbage. I haven't seen any that try to be a simple, friendly replacement for SMS. I'm a software developer who uses computers all day, and I find the UX for most of the clients incredibly hard to use.

The only angle I could see to pitch XMPP/Matrix to people for non-philosophical reasons are that there's a more consistent experience across iOS/Android. The biggest shortcoming I think is visible to regular users is that there's feature degradation and missing information when iOS users have SMS conversations with Android users, especially in group chats.

For people who have successfully won family and friends to XMPP or Matrix, what was your pitch? What do you recommend others do to make XMPP or Matrix an attractive experience for a regular person?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50405250

Points: 11

# Comments: 6

Article URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2016/epr_2016_gordon-gekko-effect_lo.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50404747

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Article URL: http://thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-8-linux-computer.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50404599

Points: 69

# Comments: 30

Article URL: https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/11/06/every-windows-11-app-should-kill-electron-and-discord-just-showed-why-no-starting-screen-and-70-less-ram-even-with-two-accounts-signed-in/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403507

Points: 19

# Comments: 7

Article URL: https://uploadyourram.org

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403214

Points: 232

# Comments: 212

Article URL: https://8rank.ai/game/apple-intelligence-personal-knowledge-graph

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403097

Points: 366

# Comments: 210

Article URL: https://decoded.legal/blog/2026/11/running-a-law-firm-on-free-software-2026-edition/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403066

Points: 108

# Comments: 51

Article URL: https://acid.vegas/blog/the-port-that-does-not-exist/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403063

Points: 39

# Comments: 16

Article URL: https://nfsu2.xyz/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403052

Points: 422

# Comments: 135

Article URL: https://bong.glendalab.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50402535

Points: 7

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://www.anthropic.com/research/components-of-agent-memory

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50402212

Points: 101

# Comments: 58

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-faa-says-it-will-phase-out-floppy-disks-air-traffic-control-by-2028-2026-11-05/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50388001

Points: 372

# Comments: 310

Article URL: https://asahilinux.org/2026/11/progress-report-7-3/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50401867

Points: 205

# Comments: 171

Article URL: https://www.science.org/content/article/barbarian-tribe-s-mythic-origin-story-true-ancient-dna-reveals

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50401740

Points: 162

# Comments: 134

I've heard so much about how prediction markets are the guiding light in this dark world. But when put head to head against polls or Nate Silver's FLIPR model, they are really a wash. Especially looking at flipped or close-by-polls races, there is no alpha compared to a traditional poll-based model. Was this obvious to everyone else too? Can we treat them like the entertainment they are and tax them for the terrible ads?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50401451

Points: 11

# Comments: 2

Article URL: https://computer.rip/2026-10-25-searchlights.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50401414

Points: 12

# Comments: 2

Article URL: https://www.kadoa.com/companies/insights/ai-selloff-perspective

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50401029

Points: 47

# Comments: 33

Article URL: https://mattlakeman.org/2026/11/05/notes-on-san-marino/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50395183

Points: 111

# Comments: 46

Article URL: https://josef.cn/blog/unitree

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50400597

Points: 110

# Comments: 76