AIM will shut down after 20 years • Hacker News Board

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#301

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:45 AM UTC

dancodes wrote: post #295

Zarel wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"correct horse battery staple" doesn't fit in 16 characters, and has has much better recall than basically all similarly-secure passwords that do. Longer passwords let you optimize passwords for ease of recall and security, rather than fitting in arbitrary requirements.

Even though that phrase password is 16 characters long, it has the same entropy as a 9-10 letter long alphanumeric random password (according to KeePass' generator). I agree that it's easier to recall, but it's half as secure as a properly random 16 character one.

I've used Debian's xkcdpass to generat 50 sets of 100 million passwords, then then checked for duplicates. The algorithm uses six words and a large dictionary, but otherwise resembles the xkcd original.

There were no duplicates in any of the 50 sets. (About a week's runtime on a fairly modest Intel processor.)

Given that 100m accounts is a fair fraction of the world's active computer users, that's a pretty good start.

(There are further reasons for finding passwords alone insufficient for security, but at least these are strong, and yet potentially memorable, passwords.)

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#302

Post by cJ0th » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 8:14 AM UTC

conceptme wrote: post #38

hackbinary wrote: post #26

What I do not understand is how has AOL Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, ICQ, and Google Chat all managed to be displaced by Whatsapp? I guess it is loss of 'business focus', but the idea of a "messenging app" is incredibly simple, so one would think it would be simple enough to do.

what's even worse whatsapp is the only one without a desktop client even the webclient requires your phone :(. I guess Line is the best alternative it works on all platforms and without phone number as identifier except it's mostly popular in Asia

Personally, I think XMPP with Omemo is the best you can use today.

You have classic desktop clients for all operating systems (e.g. Gajim for Linux and Windows) and there are clients for android (conversations) and iOs (Chatsecure). Most of the clients (pc+mobile) are open source. What's more, you don't need to disclose your phone number and the privacy enabled by OMEMO is great without any usability nightmares.

On top of that, the network is highly decentralized. There are many providers for free and paid accounts and you could also host your own server.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#303

Post by craigds » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

avtar wrote: post #57

conceptme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's even worse whatsapp is the only one without a desktop client even the webclient requires your phone :(. I guess Line is the best alternative it works on all platforms and without phone number as identifier except it's mostly popular in Asia

There's an official Whatsapp Electron app for MacOS and Windows.

Which doesn't work unless your phone is on

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#304

Post by etplayer » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 9:12 AM UTC

Banthum wrote: post #281

menerva wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so isn't this capitalism working as it should? they literally killed their own golden goose with stupidity. why shouldn't others disrupt corrupt crap business?

Yes it is. They didn't get the job done, so other firms stepped in and did it better. Contrast this with communism, be where we'd all just be forced by law to use whatever AOL gave us, forever.

I know you're being facetious, but under a Communist society it's likely that there would be several popular hobby projects, similar to open source community's efforts. Things like AIM would be developed in private or cooperatively, just as modern software is written, but without the influence of capital and wage labour.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#305

Post by mcculley » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:07 AM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #247

J5892 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did they switch from forcing all employees to use Yahoo Mail? When I left in 2015, they had disabled POP for internal mail, so we were forced to use the actual Yahoo Mail website.

> forced to use the actual Yahoo Mail website I left in 2016 and in practice we just didn't use email at all because it was so painful to use.

What kind of work did you do that didn’t require email?

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#306

Post by dingaling » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:32 AM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #118

Angostura wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... that's exact;y why I don't use Whatsapp - the mandatory total contacts slurp.

Not mandatory in Android. I denied the permission and it still works. Just had to add the few people I wish to write to manually

The latest version of WhatsApp that I tested on Android, last week, starts OK without Contacts permission but can't add a contact manually; it constantly reprompts for access to Contacts in order to save it. So basically useless.

One workaround would be to export all Contacts to VCF, then prune the list to only those for WhatsApp, run it, let it import, then deny permission and then merge all the exports back into Contacts. But then that's only a keypress away from an accidental full-slurp and you still can't add newer contacts manually.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#307

Post by bandrami » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 11:05 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #241

bandrami wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it hosted on the AIM server though?

It was sold to Mail.ru a long time ago. I think Mail.ru sold them a couple of years ago. They say they still have millions of users

I still keep it on my pidgin account list, though I can't recall actually sending a message on it for years.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#308

Post by chiefalchemist » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 11:22 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #276

chiefalchemist wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But aside from Amazon who has gotten away with that? Yes, it's a great example. But it's an outlier's outlier.

Toyota's another great example. They went from Japan's post-WWII decimation to the world's largest car company. They did it through an intense focus on increasing customer value and reducing waste. US automakers couldn't come close to matching their quality or effectiveness. This despite Toyota's attempts to teach them through efforts like NUMMI. I think their unique culture has declined over time, but it was still p…

Toyota owes A LOT to Bell Labs. I'm not so sure they can thank Wall Street for being unnaturally forgiving.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#309

Post by whiskyant » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 12:28 PM UTC

I used to have dozens of people on my friend's list active at a time. After Facebook, that number dropped to only a handful. The few stragglers left eventually migrated to gmail chat. Now the only ones on it are those that happen to use multi-login clients.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#310

Post by memossy » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 12:41 PM UTC

crsmith wrote: post #217

A lot of hedge fund traders still use AIM. The sell side is going to use whatever the buy side wants, and the buy side has some tech dinosaurs. Symphony is trying to tap into that market. Also interesting, Bloomberg is coming out with a cheap version of their instant messenger ($10/month)

No way, a whole bunch of people have full terminals just for the instant messaging service (sales people in particular)