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Welcome to the deep dive the place where we cut through complexity to give you the

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essential knowledge you need fast today

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We're doing exactly that we're opening up the hood of a really unique piece of

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software called now

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Now if you're thinking high-cost proprietary tools, well, this isn't it now is open

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source

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It's a powerful multi-room persistent chat server

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You can find right on github our mission today pretty simple give you a clear

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beginner friendly way into understanding what makes this platform special

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You know both for someone just using it and maybe for a developer looking for a

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cool project

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But before we really dive in we want to give a shout out to the supporter of this

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deep dive

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Thinking about hosting something like mal might seem like well a bit much safe

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server actually handles exactly this kind of innovative software hosting

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They support your digital transformation find out more at

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www.safeserver.de and that's a good starting point because we're not just looking

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at a simple messenger app here

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This is more like a whole communication ecosystem. It's open source. Yeah, but it

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offers features you'd usually expect from

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Enterprise software things like persistence ways to extend it rich media stuff that

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often costs a lot and licensing fees

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But here it's all community driven and you get total control over your own data

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Okay, let's start with the basics then for someone just looking for a better chat

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platform if meow is a chat server

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What are the ground rules? Well, fundamentally it's built for flexibility for

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communities. It's free to use

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Anyone can set up rooms public or private and it's really designed for long-term

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use

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But there's one really key security rule. You have to be logged into chat

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This isn't just some anonymous forum, right that immediately tackles a huge issue

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online impersonation accountability

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And to make sure identities are verified the sources say it uses oeth to

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authentication

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Okay, for those of us not living in the server room. What so apt to end like plain

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English. Oh, yeah

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It's basically the standard way systems delegate identity verification

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Think of it like a digital bouncer at a club

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Instead of meow itself handling your password. It asks a trusted service like github

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or google

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Hey, is this person really who they say they are? Hmm. So when you sign in it's

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verified and that identity gets linked to that

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Persistent history we need to talk about okay

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So verified identities that security layer lets us trust the chat history more

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Right, which brings us to maybe the core idea persistent and searchable history.

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Hmm

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Why should someone new to this care about chat being persistent versus you know,

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just disappearing?

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Oh, it's a huge difference think about standard messengers that knowledge those

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discussions poof gone off the screen lost forever

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You lose that collective memory meow treats every single conversation every link

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shared every decision made as a permanent searchable entry in a database

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So you can actually find stuff from months ago. Exactly information shared six

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months back is still there still accessible still useful today

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that's vital for any team or project that actually values retaining knowledge and

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importantly data sovereignty

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Knowing your history is yours. It's available not locked away behind some corporate

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paywall or subscription fee

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Okay, we've got trust. We've got longevity. That's the foundation. But what about

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the now?

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How does meow make the actual conversation experience better? Let's get into that

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feature set. What makes it more than just typing, right?

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This is where it really pulls away from basic chat apps

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It starts with things like rich markdown formatting good for making text clear

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But what really stands out is how it handles content. It doesn't just show links

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It like boxes them up nicely. It supports audio and video directly audio and video.

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How does it do that?

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That's thanks to WebRTC. We can maybe unpack that a bit later

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Okay, and crucially for some groups, it's brilliant at handling complex stuff like

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code snippets and tables right there in the chat window

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Oh, yeah, I've tried pasting code into normal chat. It's a disaster scrambled mess

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loss formatting. Exactly

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So having proper rendering is a lifesaver for say development teams makes sense

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And it's not all serious business either. You've got features like

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Starring messages voting on things highlighting important conversations even

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embedded games. Hold on embedded games

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Really? It's not a much for a serious chat server. I get the persistence and code

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stuff, but games

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Who's the audience for that mix? That's a fair question. Yeah, it does suggest the

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target isn't just you know, buttoned up corporate teams

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It might be more for open communities

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Maybe dev teams again or special interest groups where there's both intense work

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and a strong social side

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But the really clever part is how a lot of this stuff is delivered many features

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the games

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Yeah, but also things like persistent notifications those powerful github hooks for

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integrating with code repositories

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Let me guess plugins. You got it. They're implemented as plugins

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Ah, so the core system stays stable, but people can add whatever functionality they

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need precisely that plug-in architecture makes it

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Incredibly flexible and customizable those github hooks and bots for instance

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They let the chat server become a central hub for tracking development progress

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issues code changes

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That's serious enterprise level stuff delivered in an open way. Okay. Let's switch

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gears a bit

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Let's unpack this for the tech folks or people curious about how it works. We've

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got all these real-time persistent features

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What's actually running the show? What's the tech stack? All right, if you peek

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under the hood, it's overwhelmingly JavaScript

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The language stats are pretty clear. JavaScript is about

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75.7 percent then you've got

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SCSS for the styling that's around 16.9 percent. So if you know JavaScript you

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basically hold the keys

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Okay, let's slow down here though. This technical part can lose people. What's the

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absolute core starting with that real-time feel?

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Sure, the the core engine is built on Node.js

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That's the server-side JavaScript environment handling all the backend logic and to

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make the chat instantaneous

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Which it absolutely has to be it uses socket.io socket.io

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Okay

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Yeah, think of socket.io is setting up this like permanent fast lane between the

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server and everyone connected it pushes updates out instantly

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No need to keep refreshing your browser right handles the speed but persistence you

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said history lives forever

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Where is that digital archive stored? Good question that involves two main players

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the main permanent storage

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The heavy-duty database holding all the chat history user settings room data. That's

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Postgres goal Postgres

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Reliable choice very known for being robust, but Redis is mentioned too for someone

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new to this

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Why have both Postgres and Redis? What's the difference? Ah, yeah, that's a key

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architectural point

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Yeah, Postgres will is the long-term archive Redis is all about speed Redis keeps

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certain things like maybe who's currently online or

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Temporary session information and really fast memory not on the slower disk drive

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like Postgres. So it acts as a high-speed cache

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The server can grab common info super fast from Redis without having to query the

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big Postgres database every single time

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Okay, that makes sense speed layer on top of the permanent store

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Yeah, and just circling back quickly security and multimedia

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We mentioned OAuth 2 is passport.js the tool doing that. Yes, exactly passport.js

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is a

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Very common trusted piece of middleware for Node.js

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It handles that verified sign-in process securely and the video audio right the

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last key tech piece there is web RTC web real-time communication

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That's the browser technology that lets you set up secure direct connections peer-to-peer

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for live audio and video streams

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Essential for calls Wow. Okay. So that's a pretty modern and powerful stack gives a

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clear roadmap for any developer wanting to maybe contribute

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Mm-hmm, which brings us neatly to contributing section for the open source

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ecosystem looking at the github repo

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It's got what 549 stars 73 forks 22 contributors that feels pretty healthy active.

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It's definitely a respectable level of community engagement

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Yeah, and getting involved seems fairly straightforward partly because it's mostly

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under the MIT license. This means generally it's very permissive

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It gives contributors a lot of freedom with what they build and how it can be used

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low barrier to entry legally speaking and

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For anyone actually thinking about contributing code the developers have laid out

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some clear rules

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Sort of a how-to guide for contributing responsibly. Okay. What are the must-do

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rules if someone wants to submit say a

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poll request with a new feature rule number one is basically

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Talk first you must go discuss what you plan to do with the team beforehand

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They even give active hours like 8 a.m. To 7 p.m. GMT when you can usually find

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them in the chat rooms

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This avoids people coding something that won't fit or is already being done smart

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avoids wasted effort. What's rule two quality control?

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You must test your own code thoroughly and run the project's automated test suite

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before you even think about submitting it

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Discuss first test always makes total sense for something needs to be reliable

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Exactly, and remember the plugins we talked about yeah the extensibility, right?

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The contribution guidelines even point out. There's a specific channel just for

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developing plugins

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So if you want to add a significant new capability

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Chances are they'll want you to build it as a plug-in. That's actually a great

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maybe safer

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Way for newer job script is to get involved without potentially breaking the main

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platform

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Good entry point and if coding isn't your thing right now, but you just want to try

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me out

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The installation docs are available so you can set up your own server for your own

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team or community and get the full experience

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Okay, so let's try and wrap this up summing up our deep dive meow isn't just

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another chat app. It's way more

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It's persistent. It handles rich media. Well, it's built on a solid tech stack like

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node Postgres Redis

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And that plug-in system makes it super customizable puts control back with the

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users

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It really is a comprehensive hub designed for you to own your communication data

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Which actually leads to a final thought maybe a provocative question for you the

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listener

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Considering everything we've touched on the sheer range of features from dedicated

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web RTC video calls and deep github integration for devs

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All the way down to embedded games and voting systems

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What kind of really unique maybe complex community or perhaps some non traditional

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organization?

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Could genuinely leverage every single aspect of a platform as feature-rich as meow

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something to think about a great question to ponder as you explore the sources

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yourself and

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thanks again to safe server for supporting this deep dive if you're looking for

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powerful reliable hosting for software like this or need support with

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Your digital transformation check them out at

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www.safeserver.de

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That's all for this deep dive. Keep learning. Keep digging until next time