Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client • Hacker News Board

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#411

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

jimsug wrote: post #362

CivBase wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the point of that "Kids can't use computers" article is that everyone should be technically proficient with computers. Rather, it's an argument against the common misconception that kids have a natural technical proficiency with computers because they grew up with them. The author makes his point pretty clear here: > Not really knowing how to use a computer is deemed acceptable if you're twenty-five or…

This reminds me somewhat of people who aren't particularly skilled at math, or are proud of not being particularly skilled at math. A common refrain is "I'm hopeless with math/numbers". And to be frank, calculators exist, so as long as you know how to get to the answer you need... I don't think I have a problem with it.

Calculators don't do math for you, they do calculations for you.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#412

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #383

TeMPOraL wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was on the rising edge of the wave of "computers are awesome and will change everyone's life". We're on the falling edge now. The problem GP refers to is this: making computers is expensive, gets cheaper with economies of scale. But economies of scale are capital-intensive, so they exist only where there's a market for it. The market for people requiring general-purpose computation is small and getting smaller,…

This doesn't really make sense. A general purpose computer isn't expensive. It's just a special purpose computer without the locks added on top.

Manufacturing scale could matter.

I could picture a CPU design that had a boot key or other restricted features set by blowing fuses (or similar tricks) during packaging. The "developer" unit leaves them unblown.

If they're selling 10M "regular" units per year, and 5000 "developer" models over the product lifetime, you have to amortize the cost of special-casing the production line for a short run, and stocking and supporting a second SKU, over a relatively small sales volume. It could well be more expensive than the few cents of electricity per unit to blow the fuses in a standard unit.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#413

Post by proverbialbunny » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:21 AM UTC

anthony_barker wrote: post #320

jbverschoor wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno.. I guess I just follow what people use... IRC ICQ MSN Yahoo messenger for some people in japan Whatsapp, but noboday was there haha Whastapp, some people there FB Messenger iMessage, but bugs with normals SMS, so disabled it Google talk.. used by some, but I like to de-google a bit. Back to whatsapp kakaotalk, line, and wechat for research / gaming Telegram. don't like it at all Signal. kind of buggy So in t…

I followed the same path. Also used Jabber a bit, AOL Messenger, Blackberry messenger, Bloomberg Messenger (bank paid 2k per month for it!), Skype for messaging, Keybase (kind of cool but too heavy), Slack, and now Element Matrix. Its one place sometimes I think regulation might be good to force standardization (like electricity or phone standards). Oh and when I go to asia I use the ones there - viber, line, wechat…

>Bloomberg Messenger (bank paid 2k per month for it!),

Nice https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/24953235/nice.jpg

It's amazing how much spinning happens in current media. The only people in the world who truly know how much this is are those who get the headlines before the stories are written and talked about, like day traders, who get it for speed reasons. It's cool, but it sucks it costs so much to get an unfiltered news source.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#414

Post by simple_phrases » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #343

spiritplumber wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's terrifying. A computer is something you can use to consume content or produce content. A tablet is something you can only really use to consume content. (Regular tablet, not artist tablet obviously, and those generally have to talk to a computer)

Your own remark about tablets undermine your argument though. iPads and MS Surfaces have been arguably the best 'artist tablets' and they don't need to be hooked up to another computer.

There's a difference between a Wacom tablet and a tablet computer.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#415

Post by paulwilson05 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:55 AM UTC

jdlyga wrote: post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

I remember this Pidgin! It was one of the first applications I remember using in Ubuntu 15ish years ago.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#416

Post by foobarbecue » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

Pidgin / Adium is an important part of operations for Mars Rover Curiosity. Probably many other missions too.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#417

Post by netflixandkill » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

krisgenre wrote: post #95

Ah! the glorious days of integrated chat clients. I had friends of MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk and for a very limited time ICQ (Actually it was the same guys on all networks :) ). There weren't any network effort, people were willing to try out different IMs for their uniqueness. Lots of companies were trying to produce integrated chat clients - Pidgin, Meebo, Trillian, Digsby and a whole lot of guys on Mob…

It remains something of a testament to human stupidity and avarice that chat to most of the world in most languages with pretty good security and even some video support was basically a solved problem in like 2008 and a complete clusterfuck again by 2016.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#418

Post by maqp » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

Pidgin. A flock of zero-days flying in formation.

If you're going to use it,

PROTECT CONTENT by using the OTR end-to-end encryption plugin https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/

WARNING: OTR is opt-in E2EE for every session, and that uses old cryptographic primitives (DH-1536 etc.). OTRv4 is in the works but that's going to take years before you have an upgrade: https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4 (Note that Pidgin-OTR v.4.0.2 IS THE E2EE PLUGIN VERSION, NOT THE PROTOCOL VERSION. The protocol version is still 3: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/Protocol-v3-4.1.1.html)

In the meantime, use https://signal.org/ that uses modern primitives like Curve25519, and that you can't f up as it's not possible to use it without end-to-end encryption.

PROTECT METADATA by proxying your Pidgin connection via Tor from registration to use. Preferably register your XMPP account to an XMPP Onion Service server. This prevents you from accidentally conneting to the server without Tor which would deanonymize you. List of XMPP Onion Services can be found at

https://gist.github.com/dllud/a46d4a555e31dfeff6ad41dcf20729...

Ask your peers to do so too.

Note, since this is something that requires manual configuration, it's easy to mess up.

A better solution is to ditch Pidgin and use https://briarproject.org/ that you can't accidentally f up as you can't use it without Tor (unless they live in the flat above you, then you can use BT/WiFI), and you can't forget to use E2EE.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#419

Post by fattybob » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 8:48 AM UTC

Universal - i wish it were - or please make an IOS version....

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#420

Post by _-___________-_ » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 8:52 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #400

wruza wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to put an entire message text into APNS notification. Apple (and google GCM, and webpush) notifications only deliver a structured event to the application (which may or may not contain any text), and once the app is activated (if not yet), it has to connect to its own server to get a full representation of what was sent, update vv-status, etc. APNS/GCM are not instant messengers on their own, though ma…

Sure, but there still needs to be a server somewhere that has the app developer's client certificate, connected to Apple, that knows when you get a DM and can send that zero-content "wake up and check your DMs" packet to your phone via APNS, which means it needs (given current apps permissions models) access to your DMs without you.

It doesn't need access to the content of the messages.