jdev - 2025-02-04


  1. Soni

    mathieui: we disagree with the premise that admins should own users and be able to do whatever they want with them.

    πŸ‘ 1
  2. Soni

    the problem is we already have account portability and it just isn't good enough

  3. Soni

    because whatever instance you move to, has its own policies which might be incompatible with your existing stuff. the *only* valid solution is one that lets you keep what you have *and also* get what you want.

  4. Soni

    sure it might piss off a few (abusive) admins but the users are more important here.

    ❀ 1
  5. singpolyma

    The solution is to run your own instance πŸ™‚

  6. Soni

    singpolyma: we would rather die than run our own instance

  7. singpolyma

    πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

  8. mathieui

    Soni, I disagree with the premise, admins do not own their users, users are supposed to trust their admins to do some of the nitty gritty parts for them, such as banning spam domains (as an example)

  9. mathieui

    (also account portability on mastodon is indeed not good enough, but it could be; on XMPP it is not great, though there are plans)

  10. singpolyma

    On XMPP we have great portability so long as you own a domain, which is fundamental to any internet identity plan anyway

  11. Soni

    mathieui: and what account portability do you have in mind that doesn't involve crossposting? how do you solve the problem of "current instance bans half the friends, alternative instance bans the other half"

  12. mathieui

    Soni, "maybe try to find an instance where admins aren’t dipshits"

  13. Soni

    mathieui: every solution involves tradeoffs. every instance involves tradeoffs.

  14. Soni

    we would prefer the bruteforce solution.

  15. Soni

    it doesn't try to be optimal, it "just works". it's like the Happy Eyeballs (yes, that IPv6 thing) of social media.

  16. Soni

    "if you can't solve the problem, just use every option"

  17. mathieui

    Yes, but making it an UI problem of clients is a very expensive solution (in terms of development, testing, and maintenance costs) to something that is not currently a problem

  18. mathieui

    I mean, we have enough real problems to solve as it is :D

  19. Soni

    you can always come to fedi if you want real problems to solve :p

  20. Soni

    (okay maybe that was a little mean... sorry)

  21. moparisthebest

    Soni: if I may ask, why don't you want to run your own server

  22. Soni

    moparisthebest: we don't enjoy server maintenance

  23. moparisthebest

    Soni, what about paying a couple dollars per month for someone else to do that for you ? with the option to move providers or self host whenever you want ?

  24. Soni

    moparisthebest: sure, there are options. what about explicitly disrupting the admin-user power dynamics?

  25. moparisthebest

    isn't the best way to do that to just... be your own admin ?

  26. moparisthebest

    by paying a hoster or doing it yourself

  27. singpolyma

    The only way indeed

  28. Soni

    nah, there are plenty of admins who act like they have all the power and use their position to abuse vulnerable users

    πŸ‘ 1
  29. moparisthebest

    unlike fediverse and every other thing I host, XMPP is both easy and *very* light on resources

  30. moparisthebest

    > nah, there are plenty of admins who act like they have all the power and use their position to abuse vulnerable users not in XMPP land there are not, I think because of what I said above

  31. singpolyma

    > nah, there are plenty of admins who act like they have all the power and use their position to abuse vulnerable users Sure that's why I'd never let someone else be admin

  32. Soni

    the only solution is redundancy

  33. Soni

    or does your provider not count

  34. hyol

    Soni, It sounds like you are talking about something like Nostr

  35. Soni

    nah, we don't do p2p

  36. hyol

    It's not p2p

  37. singpolyma

    Yes, the proposed model is exactly nostr I think

  38. hyol

    But it's also not instant messaging. It's social media

  39. singpolyma

    Spray messages around a lot of relays and let clients pick up wherever they like

  40. Soni

    we wouldn't touch nostr with a lightyear pole

  41. singpolyma

    > But it's also not instant messaging. It's social media Well this whole discussion is about Mastodon so that seems correct

  42. hyol

    > we wouldn't touch nostr with a lightyear pole Why not?

  43. hyol

    What about SimpleX?

  44. hyol

    or Cwtch?

  45. Soni

    okay so nostr is key-based identity but with instances?

  46. hyol

    yes

  47. Soni

    why bother with the instances at that point

  48. singpolyma

    Relays exist because sometimes people are offline

  49. Soni

    okay but consider: instance-based identity but with multiple instances

  50. hyol

    why?

  51. Soni

    no keys!

  52. singpolyma

    Sounds like nostr

  53. Soni

    *no key management*

  54. singpolyma

    If you have key management your app is broken just make a better app. That's not protocol related imo

  55. Soni

    exactly! nostr is broken by design!

  56. hyol

    how would you authenticate across multiple servers without keys?

  57. Soni

    linked accounts

  58. hyol

    hmm

  59. Soni

    bonus! you get effective moderation!

  60. hyol

    how so?

  61. singpolyma

    > exactly! nostr is broken by design! No? It's the same design you are proposing

    πŸ‘ 1
  62. Soni

    you get to moderate just like on mastodon, you control what goes on your instance, but without the power dynamics between admins and users!

  63. hyol

    same with nostr relays?

  64. Soni

    nostr requires key management, lose key lose account

  65. Soni

    well it doesn't even have the concept of accounts but anyway

  66. singpolyma

    You could have a recovery system

  67. hyol

    oh, I see. "bonus! you get effective moderation!" was about your idea in general, not a response to "how would you authenticate across multiple servers without keys?" "linked accounts"

  68. singpolyma

    Anyway I feel like this stopped being on topic quite some hours ago...

  69. hyol

    It's on topic here: xmpp:technopolitics@conference.macaw.me

  70. Soni

    tbh, we're just looking for someone who'd be willing to do to xmpp what we did to irc

  71. Soni

    (or to matrix. maybe this would fix matrix.)

  72. Soni

    (but we digress)

  73. hyol

    Matrix was planning on implementing p2p iirc. Maybe they would be interested in implementing your idea.

  74. jjj333_p (any pronouns)

    > Matrix was planning on implementing p2p iirc. Maybe they would be interested in implementing your idea. as someone who has hosted matrix, p2p matrix is the most laughable idea ive heard

    πŸ‘ 1
  75. jjj333_p (any pronouns)

    i feel like xmpp you could p2p reasonably enough with some server for groups, matrix is just a performance and resource consumption nightmare

  76. jjj333_p (any pronouns)

    my single user server with one of the lighter implementations uses 3+gb ram, 4 cpu cores regularly maxxed out, and 60gb just for the database, and this is for an always online server without having to catch up from offline

  77. Soni

    out of curiosity, how many xmpp users come by here to talk about the kinds of things they'd like to see resolved?

  78. Soni

    at least with mastodon, we notice very few actual users get involved in the development process

  79. singpolyma

    More probably go talk to actual projects and implementations. This is more like a space for coordinating between implementors

  80. Soni

    that makes sense. we wonder if any (which) of the implementations actively reach out to users to include them in the development process when figuring out their next steps...

    πŸ‘ 1
  81. moparisthebest

    > nah, we don't do p2p Soni, oh well you wouldn't like XMPP then since servers talk to each other over XMPP S2S which is fully P2P, fediverse and matrix are P2P at a server level too

  82. moparisthebest

    nostr on the other hand is *not* p2p, it's clients publishing to any number of relays that *do not* talk to each other

  83. Soni

    ah, so nostr is like bittorrent if it was a social network

  84. Soni

    that's even worse, but we digress

  85. moparisthebest

    > that makes sense. we wonder if any (which) of the implementations actively reach out to users to include them in the development process when figuring out their next steps... many (probably most?) of us here, and this includes me, were just users looking for a good chat system to use, found XMPP, and have over the years improved protocols & clients & servers to meet our own needs

  86. Soni

    (and we don't understand why the hostility)

  87. moparisthebest

    there's no hostility here, it just seems like to me you are projecting problems that exist only in other networks onto XMPP where they don't exist at all...

  88. Soni

    well... yes, in some ways. tho we disagree on the "don't exist at all" part

  89. Soni

    like, y'all proposed literally ban evading when we brought it up

  90. moparisthebest

    even that is a bit of a misunderstanding I think

  91. Soni

    maybe, but this is what you've given us to work with

  92. moparisthebest

    I've seen 2 kinds of bans on XMPP: one is users mass spam scam messages in 1:1 chats, it's fairly rare nowadays, but used to be a bunch of carder spam etc, obviously these accounts were reported to admins and banned - I don't get the impression you are after evading these kinds of bans

  93. Soni

    yeah we've come across those

  94. Soni

    what's the other kind?

  95. moparisthebest

    the other is in a MUC like this one, where someone either spams or doesn't follow the rules - I don't actually get the impression you mean to evade these kind of bans either, do you ? this is akin to coming into someone's house and smashing things and being asked to leave and being like NO I WON'T, pretty rude :)

  96. moparisthebest

    this second one is what I think 99% of us think of when someone says "ban evasion" and so we have an instant reaction to not liking it :P

    πŸ‘ 1
  97. moparisthebest

    it's mainly because the kind of ban you are talking about on fediverse, the petty dictator admins banning entire domains, simply doesn't happen here ever

  98. Soni

    nope, our idea wouldn't allow us to "evade" those in the first place

  99. Soni

    yeah, the kind of ban we're talking about is like, "oh this is an instance full of traumatized transfems *block*"

  100. moparisthebest

    check https://github.com/JabberSPAM/blacklist for instance, 18 domains blocked in the first 4 years, none since, and only after *extensively* trying to contact the admin and get them to handle the first kind of spam coming from their domains

  101. moparisthebest

    yes, that kind of domain block simply doesn't exist here, it *could* even be because we don't tend to have, uh, themed servers ?

  102. Soni

    maybe

  103. Soni

    on the other hand, having a way to sidestep this kind of domain block could actually *encourage* this kind of domain block

  104. moparisthebest

    conversations.im jabberfr.org chatterboxtown.us etc etc are just generic servers anyone can use

  105. Soni

    "oh it won't affect my users *block*"

  106. moparisthebest

    the only reason any of them would ban each other is if one became unmaintained and a ton of spam started coming from there

  107. Soni

    *nod*

  108. moparisthebest

    then the other class of server is just the private server like mine which I run for me and my family, no one would block that whole thing either

  109. Soni

    maybe it's just fedi trauma, but "it hasn't happened yet" doesn't feel very reassuring tbh

  110. moparisthebest

    all that said, if you really want to do this "send from multiple accounts simultaneously and de-duplicate on the reciever" anyway, it's actually very easy in XMPP because of it's eXtensible nature, you can add custom payloads in stanzas that will be delivered, I'd recommend something like `<xmulti xmlns="soni:1" id=uuid-here>` and then all messages with the same id you could de-duplicate of course you have to take into account "attackers" who might also inject the same UUID or whatever but that's your deal :)

  111. Soni

    *nod*

  112. moparisthebest

    the important part is your own namespace, other than that you can do whatever you want

  113. Soni

    alright

  114. Soni

    uh, thanks. also we're sorry about earlier

    πŸ‘ 1
  115. Soni

    we got a bit worked up

  116. moparisthebest

    no problem at all, like I said I'm 99% sure it was our gut reaction to what "ban evasion" usually means vs the totally different thing you meant :)

    πŸ‘ 1
  117. moparisthebest

    and personally I think the best solution is making servers trivial to self host, but that's ok too, we can both work on our own things (: only makes XMPP better for all

  118. Soni

    yeah!

  119. Soni

    ... we do need to try to avoid taking on more projects tho, and try to actually finish a few >.<

    πŸ‘ 1
  120. moparisthebest

    boy do I know that struggle...

  121. singpolyma

    Don't worry. I quadrupled my free timer and thought aha! Now I can finish some of these? Haha jokes I just started 20 more

  122. Soni

    well, we're gonna sleep, trans rights o/

  123. Schimon

    Good afternoon! Are there people here who are interested in a moderation bot with support for xmppbl? I am working on a bot. I am interested that people would test it.

  124. moparisthebest

    Schimon: yes but it already exists

  125. Schimon

    moparisthebest. Which projext do you know of?

  126. Schimon

    I know Sid Kaliko https://kaliko.gitlab.io/sid/rtbl.html

  127. moparisthebest

    Schimon: oh hey 2 now scroll to bottom https://xmppbl.org/channels

  128. Schimon

    moparisthebest. Thank you.

  129. Schimon

    Link https://code.matthewwild.co.uk/riddim is offline.

  130. MattJ

    Yeah, sorry

  131. MattJ

    Will try to fix that soon

  132. Schimon

    I want to add my bot to the list. Do you know who is the administrator of xmppbl.org?

  133. Guus

    Schimon, is there no contact info on the page itself? If not, then I assume that the admins of that page do not wish to make them publicly known (as they could face personal backlash of people not very happy with the tool that's created being effective). I suggest that you announce your tool in a few of the better-known places (like this MUC, maybe a mailinglist or Mastodon post) and there'll be a good chance that it will be picked up.

  134. Schimon

    Guus. That you for the advise. I will work on publishing the bot.

  135. Schimon

    Guus. Thank you for the advise. I will work on publishing the bot.

  136. dusty

    Been wanting to get into Dev for awhile and I know some but mostly Automation coding like ladder logic, and some structured text. What are the best ways to self learn to get a job in Dev?

  137. singpolyma

    Hmm, depends a bit what kind of dev you want to do. Apps? Web? Server? Etc

  138. moparisthebest

    The best way right now appears to be something like "lie and put 'AI prompt engineer' on your resume" πŸ˜”

  139. singpolyma

    Only if that's the job you want. Not really the same as dev

  140. doge

    i also want a job

  141. kalkin

    doge: how is your cv coming along? I offered you a few month ago an latex template.

  142. kalkin

    doge: how is your cv coming along? I offered you a few month ago a latex template.

  143. squiddie

    kalkin: isnt it jabber dev only chat? To me you seem to be violating rules by being too offtopic

    βœ– 1🍿 1
  144. squiddie

    https://upload.yax.im/upload/3a6_rJ8Eg6yNPPiglDN0IUCR/zb2rhZgwsYf4fv68vW291RXMgzcxdqGuz5diHUWGkotNrWuST.jpg

  145. squiddie

    kalkin: is this you

  146. hyol

    To continue the conversation Soni started:

  147. hyol

    > and personally I think the best solution is making servers trivial to self host, but that's ok too, we can both work on our own things (: only makes XMPP better for all 1) I don't think this is the best solution because a lot of people have multiple identities. Should they have to host a whole new server with a whole new IP address for each identity?

  148. moparisthebest

    hyol: you can host unlimited identities and/or servers on 1 IP

  149. hyol

    2) On admins being assholes: This does happen. I was on a server run by someone with a groupchat. He had a breakdown and banned everyone (incl. me) from his chatroom and at least me from his server.

  150. hyol

    I lost a lot of connections that way.

  151. hyol

    Yes, I can rebuild them again. But that involves trusting new OMEMO keys if you want to use that.

  152. hyol

    Not ideal.

  153. hyol

    > hyol: you can host unlimited identities and/or servers on 1 IP Then they can be connected by IP address.

  154. doge

    Is there a xep for b64 encoded inline soyjaks?

    βœ– 1
  155. Cynthia

    no, because that'd be highly specific

  156. Cynthia

    maybe b64 encoded inline images?

  157. doge

    I think we could utilize xmpp's great expressivity to optimize a soyjak delivery mechanism, for example: ``` <message from="romeo@capulet.li" to="juliet@hrt.paradise"> <soyjak xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html"> <soy-tag xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#tags">gem</soy-tag> <soy-tag xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#tags">markiplier-soyjak</soy-tag> <soy-tag xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#tags">gapejak</soy-tag> <soy-tag xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#tags">chudjak</soy-tag> <soy-tag xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#tags">closed</soy-tag> <soy-tag xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#tags">mouth/soy-tag> <soyjak-payload type="inline"> <data xmlns="https://booru.soyjak.st/xep/001.html#inline-payload"> {b64} </data> </soyjak-payload> </soyjak> </message> ```

    βœ– 1
  158. Soni

    hyol: did you catch up on the discussion?

  159. hyol

    Trying to find messages from before I joined in. Gajim can't find them. I'll try the web-based logs on xmpp.org

  160. doge

    why would that happen..

  161. hyol

    Is there some way I can go straight to when Soni first joined?

  162. Soni

    it was 2 days ago

  163. hyol

    > hi Found it

  164. dusty

    > Hmm, depends a bit what kind of dev you want to do. Apps? Web? Server? Etc Apps or server

  165. theTedd

    Learn general programming first, then you will gain experience of various areas, and then you can decide which interest you most

  166. singpolyma

    dusty: there's a lot of fine tutorials around for early jetpack compose stuff if you're looking to play with android and kotlin

    πŸ‘ 1
  167. dusty

    yes sir

  168. dusty

    thanks

  169. hyol

    > _TwO Users CHatting_ _TwO Users CHatting GRacefully About Simple Sausages_