Ricochet.im uses tor hidden services for messaging. No signup, no choosing your own name, no logging, since it uses tor hidden services, whatever security improvments tor gets, it should get. A while ago when there was an explosion in the number of hidden services running, I think it was this program. Thoughts?
Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
121–130 of 169 posts
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, we're still using IRC for open source projects. Matrix/Riot gives me a glimpse of the future. Matrix/Riot does tend to break down in channels with 30k users all chatting, sending hundredthousands of messages per minute. (Which is a real use case of IRC).
There is a reimplementation of the Python based server in Rust going on right now. The Python version has proven really slow in places, and Rust is probably a great answer to shortcomings in Python performance without having to change semantics much.
A native server with a socket-based and not longpolling based transport system would indeed solve many of the issues.
But even then, Matrix will likely not scale well enough to replace Twitch's backend, or to be able to nicely handle QuakeNet's event channels.
You'll also have to have a native client at that point, because the webclient also breaks down at those amounts. And you'll need to use a binary protocol or simplistic text protocol between client and server, because otherwise the user's mobile connection won't be able to handle that traffic.
Matrix will have to change a lot of things before that scaling is easy.
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#123Signal is a centralized point of failure and surveillance. Why can't I run my own signal server? Why doesn't the client support this? We need something like Signal that that isn't under the control of a single party.
There was a piece recently about the proliferation of central server based chat services by young people and newcomers with total disregard that this was just adding to the issue of those not being to talk to each other.
For some reason the people are reinventing the wheel and the problems that come with it that have already been addressed.
We actually need signal to go away and disappear for the very reason that is a walled garden casting shadows on what we actually need to grow in the long run which would be matrix and xmpp at the moment.
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, we're still using IRC for open source projects. Matrix/Riot gives me a glimpse of the future. Matrix/Riot does tend to break down in channels with 30k users all chatting, sending hundredthousands of messages per minute. (Which is a real use case of IRC).
There is a reimplementation of the Python based server in Rust going on right now. The Python version has proven really slow in places, and Rust is probably a great answer to shortcomings in Python performance without having to change semantics much.
Would that rust implementation be https://www.ruma.io/?
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#125I have 0 friends using signal so it's hard to give it a try: Did they fix the multiple devices end-to-end problem? Can I continue a conversation from my smartphone on my desktop? ( should be possible by mirroring the conversations and having 2 keys). This was what killed OTR for me (and that it fails on unstable mobile connections, and the setup).
There is no way to use signal on a desktop unless you are willing to give in to google and use google chrome which is far fetched for an app supposed to protect privacy.
But I guess requiring a smartphone for a privacy anything is quite far fetched too.
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#126> A single decision by Moxie or a single court order in some country can make Signal unavailable to a large part of its user base. I think the solution here would be a "lightweight" federation of 3 or 4 entities following a common charter and covering a wide geographical area. If one drops out for some reason, the others will still ensure the service remains alive.
Then it is a single court order and 3 people agreeing on the same decision which is quite easy to make when it has to made at gunpoint.
The actual solution has been known for ages: decentralization, federation, peer-to-peer. pretty much what the internet was designed to be.
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#127The technical merits and drawbacks of XMPP aside, deployment only works if there's an appetite from deployers. For high-visibility consumer chat that average people use, this appetite has vanished. Around the mid-2000s, IM networks started getting tired of constantly changing their protocols to thwart third-party reverse engineering efforts like Microsoft logging into AIM, libpurple (Pidgin), or Trillian. But then Go…
> Microsoft is lost at sea
Nice sum up of events, though you missed that Microsoft bought Skype.
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#128It would (will..?) be a crying shame to see XMPP grind to a halt - but I suspect, sadly, that the honest answer to the question is "not one heck of a lot really". I don't know if it got started too early, or moved too slowly, or what - but in the end, it missed its boat.
what's the universal alternative for XMPP?
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#129The advantage of slack over jabber is not only that the client doesn't suck (it's just electron) but that the server logs and creates a continuous experience for the user no matter if hes on mobile, in a browser or both.
It can be argued that there's no advantage of slack over anything because it is cloud based[1], is not fully cross-platform (no linux client), is proprietary closed source centralized service, and so on.
[1]: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/slack-admits-hacked-enables-2-f...
Re: Easy XMPP: What are we doing here?
#130People who care more about convenience than freedom and privacy can and do use Skype, iMessage, and Snapchat. If you give up freedom and privacy to make a more convenient client, you're not improving the freedom and privacy situation, you're just making more of the miserable proprietary software that we're trying to get away from. If it's not free software, you have neither freedom nor privacy. If it's not decentrali…
Except that messaging services are useless if the people you want to talk to don't use them. If all the people you want to talk to share your prioritization of freedom & privacy above everything else, then you're probably ok using a federated, self-run XMPP style messaging system.
Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people, that just isn't the case. I would love it if I could use XMPP-based services to talk to everyone I care to talk to, but, in practice, I use 8 different messaging services, and all of them are walled-garden non-XMPP services.
In the end, the people I know who care about privacy and security communicate with me using Signal (can count that number on one hand), and the rest use one of the others.
You can say and wish all you want that popularity and money are secondary, but in the world we actually live in, they're #1. I expect that won't change until and unless something horrible happens and "regular people" have their privacy compromised in a way that causes them real, tangible, extreme harm.