The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

I completely understand, webfork, and I'm participating at this thread here only to suggest and to promote XMPP which gives a lot of control to individuals (not big-business).
I've edited post number 31067 (Jappix) http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 067#p31067

If the forums are anything to go by, I doubt there would be much going on for an TPFC IRC channel... but that's just my opinion.

I'll be happy if someone proved me wrong!
(Haven't been on IRC for years!)

Revisiting the topic of possible site chat locations:

I didn't push for this very much mostly because I was online at very unpredictable times, but lately it's been a lot more stable. Is anyone frequenting a host channel? Would it make sense to create one again?

* Discord has a Windows site https://discord.com/invite/microsoft
* IRC: The PortableApps channel is still online, but is describing itself as defunct, even though the page is still listing it: https://portableapps.com/support/chat
* Riot.im - Has a number of channels that might work and it appears to be fairly easy to create your own.

What's everyone using?

nothing

At the risk of sounding monochordic, I'd suggest something with both a wide coverage and extreme reliability, like Facebook or Telegram (I'd prefer the later)...

BTW, a while ago, I made a similar suggestion at viewtopic.php?p=96436#p96436 ...

Also, there's a really old TPFC entry still up at Metafilter:


Another very intriguing link: https://zenodo.org/record/2528209

Midas wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 3:08 pm BTW, a while ago, I made a similar suggestion at viewtopic.php?p=96436#p96436 ...

You did -- at the time I was thinking of it as a sort of emergency system rather than as a semi-social environment. Really it could be both ...

So to spell out what I expect are the goals of something like this:

• Want to connect to fellow users if there's a concern on the site, issue with connection, or other disputes
• Would like to potentially offer troubleshooting help with programs we highlight
• Connect people who like talking about software (more for me, not sure about anyone else)

Solution to this would have:

• Ease of access and use
• Some type of system in place so it doesn't get knocked over or bogged down with spam (reliability)
• Good balance of privacy / security / anonymity to hopefully enable users who would be more comfortable sharing system info associated with troubleshooting

On the suggestions:

Midas wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 3:08 pm ...something with both a wide coverage and extreme reliability, like Facebook or Telegram

Facebook is unfortunately not an option for me, partly because of security/privacy concerns, partly that I always found the service strangely antisocial. As to Telegram, I know you and I are on that service, but is that seeing wide use yet? I prefer the client over many similar tools, but it seemed to be more for 1:1 conversations. Have you used it for groups?

---

On Midas' other notes: the Metafilter link is interesting, very nice to see some of the responses to what the site used to be. I'm not sure what the zenodo site is.

The gaming server I've been helping with added a Discord server a while back and that has worked out great. You can create multiple channels of text and/or voice and the voice channels have even recently added video/screen sharing features. There is also private messaging available. I saw a post a while ago about issues with that but could be an option.

thepiney wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 12:39 am The gaming server I've been helping with added a Discord server a while back and that has worked out great. You can create multiple channels of text and/or voice and the voice channels have even recently added video/screen sharing features. There is also private messaging available. I saw a post a while ago about issues with that but could be an option.

I'm also quite familiar with Discord. My employer (a game company of sorts) has two servers (one private, one public) and I'm active in both.

Quick note to add that I'd be down to use Discord (https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=2905) which, without ever having tested it, I always got good vibes from; only I generally disqualify anything Electron-based on principle due to its adversarial stance to portability (cf. viewtopic.php?t=23425).

webfork wrote: ↑I'm not sure what the zenodo site is.

My guess is it's some kind of proof of concept consisting of a 10GB blob of last year's TPFC listed programs, gathered under the moniker of "cleanware" by someone affiliated with the French state national computer research body (INRIA), aggregated in a previously unknown Kyoto Tycoon database format (https://fallabs.com/kyototycoon/).

Basically, what we've got there is last-years entries freely available backup...

BTW, Zenodo is a CERN-based free open access repository meant to host all kinds of research datasets.

Okay I gave the Discord channel a try. Status so far:

• In order to maintain the ease of access, I've set the requirements to join as fairly low, but may push those up as needed. The great majority of channels I visit include quite a few requirements to join/participate so that's evidently a common issue. I'll wait and see if we need to add additional controls.

• Although Discord calls individual areas "servers" there are separate rooms to avoid talking over each other. I've seen a number of Discord servers with 2 dozen rooms and folks only seem to use one or two of them. I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

• I've tried to draw somewhat from our existing primary forums to make it easy to push conversations back to the site where that makes sense. So far just freeware discussion, development, and chit-chat.

... feedback welcome.

Location: https://discord.gg/MQBEcXG ... you can also reach out to webfork#5622 if for whatever reason that doesn't work.

I'd probably recommend Riot.im as it's more open than the other alternatives.

Then again, I probably wouldn't signup anyway

freakazoid wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 3:20 pm I'd probably recommend Riot.im as it's more open than the other alternatives.

Riot was definitely a candidate for this and may turn out to be the better option. There's a plugin for Pidgin and Riot seems to be very good about security and privacy. It's also not controlled by any one entity and seems to be endorsed by a lot of open groups, which says something for staying power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot.im

So far I like how Discord segments the channel into rooms, which seems to help avoid cross-talk. It also has a lot of customization and controls around access and usage. So we'll see how that comes together.

Just read an article about a potential Discord client vulnerability:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... d-malware/

freakazoid wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2020 5:28 pm Just read an article about a potential Discord client vulnerability:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... d-malware/

It's not a vulnerability. It's a Trojan horse someone has written (in other words, you only get infected if you download and run the trojan).

Wrong choice of words