Does anyone know how de-Googled Chinese phones work? How do programs like Wechat go about it?
UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
121–130 of 150 posts
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the actual likely hood that the average end user is going to install a random service? For now, UnifiedPush is targeted towards De-Googlers, self-hosters and FOSS enthusiasts, not average users.
Except, in the threads here, this is called out repeatedly as a replacement for push notifications on phones, replacing webpush, apple push notifications, and whatever google is calling it. Which implies the use case people are seeing is phone apps. Unless people are building one off apps for themselves, you've got end users in the mix. I don't see how this can be positions as much outside of phone apps, as txt messa…
People are seeing it as a way to get efficient push notifications in an open, decentralized system.
That's pretty much it. Because there isn't really any possible alternative except something that looks like this.
GCM/APNS/ETC do not fit those requirements, so it needs to be something new.
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#123Please don’t get me wrong but I wonder what is the use case for this. First of all this tries to solve a problem that has already been solved by the mobile device OS layer within IOS and Android and furthermore is only working for Android. Why should anyone use this?
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#124Would this be vulnerable to spam?
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#125Oh gosh, a wheel reinvented again? XMPP did it ~7 years ago [0] and we have used it for quite a few applications already. [0]: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html
It seems like you have misunderstood something. I just read the specification you linked. If I understand it right, it just specifies what we call a "Push gateway" in our last diagram in the "under the hood" section. As in, it specifies how multiple servers can connect to a single (XMPP-speaking) push server. This is also evident from the excerpt I'm quoting: >XMPP Push works between the user's XMPP server and two pu…
You seem to not see the forest behind the trees. It doesn't do 100% of what your UnifiedPush does, sure, but it does 99%. All it needs to reach the final 1% is to send a message with an agreed payload format to a client. A day of work.
As I said, we did it as far back as 2016: a watered-down XMPP client (a "distributor", as you call it) was used to deliver push notifications to a few different apps on devices that didn't have GCM (as it was called then).
> Please make an effort to come across as less antagonizing in the future.
Someone has to antagonize people who ignore prior art.
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like adding a random deviation to wakeup times would solve that problem.
Surely we'd be at back square one at that point?
Why? On a single mobile you want to run all wake-ups together to save energy.
That network and the server get them from many users spread out evenly is only a benefit.
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#127Wow, that was submitted here quicker than we could do it! UnifiedPush has been a thing for a while, see the official website: https://unifiedpush.org/ With this blog post, we† tried to clarify a few names. Feel free to point out things that are still unclear, the documentation is pretty much a WIP. UnifiedPush aims at replacing the push notifications mechanism provided by Google services with something independent, t…
Is there any plan to have a method available for patching proprietary apps to work with this? Notifications is the only reason I still have Goolag services on my phone's work profile, and having an alternative to that would be great for privacy.
> Notifications is the only reason I still have Goolag services on my phone's work profile
Wouldn't microG be enough for that?
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I wouldn't even think about a degoogled phone at this point, none of my downloadable wiretaps would work, and I use a lot of them. But this at least gives FOSS a chance to compete on battery life without FCM fallback like some do. Most likely FOSS will never get full parity, Android might be gone and replaced long before then, but the ability to make an app that's F-droid legal is still a big deal.
hmm, I think most spyware apps still work without google services (on GrapheneOS), but you'll have to go without notification, among a few other things. If you need a tracking devi.. cough .. googled phone for work only, you can consider using a separate phone for it, and a personal degoogled phone.
I use a googled for both home and work pretty extensively, including Google Calendar, Keep, and Assistant, plus Tile and YoLink(Which loses most of it's value without notifications).
Carrying two phones seems like a lot of stress, I generally like to minimize the number of objects in my life as much as I can.
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#129Wow, that was submitted here quicker than we could do it! UnifiedPush has been a thing for a while, see the official website: https://unifiedpush.org/ With this blog post, we† tried to clarify a few names. Feel free to point out things that are still unclear, the documentation is pretty much a WIP. UnifiedPush aims at replacing the push notifications mechanism provided by Google services with something independent, t…
Thank you very much for your hard and important work!
And a special thanks for not forcing us to use a slack channel!
Hopefully other OS projects will follow.
Good health and all the best for 2023!
Re: UnifiedPush: A decentralized, open-source push notification protocol
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you deliver notifications, you are always leaking metadata around timing. A police unit parked outside a guy’s house and confirmed it was him in the real time chatroom, by cutting his internet and seeing him drop off. If you want real anonymity on the Internet, never use push notifications. Always “pick up your mail” periodically from random endpoints on the Web.
This would be an interesting protocol. Almost like spread spectrum or frequency hopping in the radio space. Have many servers who just accumulate encrypted packets and then only the host knows how to reassemble them in order and decrypt. Could probably be somewhat realtime if executed correctly.
Simply use free Usenet Servers via Tor and post your anonymous* PGP
messages to the Usenet group alt.anonymous.messages.
*You send PGP encrypted messages via Mixmaster Remailers (via Tor) and preferably use a hashed subject (hsub) so that the intended receiver(s) can filter out their messages.
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