XSF Discussion - 2018-02-11


  1. Seve/SouL

    Do whe have any "general purpose" mailing list?

  2. Seve/SouL

    I guess JUser will do

  3. Seve/SouL

    I hope many people is subscribed there

  4. jonasw

    Seve/SouL, I’m not subscribed to user, what is your general purpose message?

  5. Ge0rG

    https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-talk.html

  6. pep.

    Nice, I haven't used hangouts enough to know how crap it is I guess

  7. zinid

    pep., there will be no Hangouts anymore

  8. zinid

    not even Allo

  9. zinid

    there will be Android Messages, the third Google's attempt to kill Facebook :)

  10. Ge0rG

    zinid: third dozen?

  11. zinid

    yeah :)

  12. Ge0rG

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16351874 so true, so sad.

  13. jonasw

    so people are actually serious about paying with IM clients?!

  14. jonasw

    holy fuck

  15. daniel

    Ge0rG: is this post a meme? I feel like I have seen the exact same post in every xmpp related thread on HN

  16. pep.

    jonasw: I seriously hope not :z

  17. Zash

    ugh

  18. Alex

    Slack is te best example. I know many of companies which spend thousands of $ every month for IM

  19. zinid

    well, XMPP only shows that open standards cannot compete with commercial protocols created by bussiness monsters

  20. daniel

    > By 2016 nearly everyone could [...] syncing between multiple devices tell that to my WhatsApp

  21. Alex

    I would say it can, we just need some more good clients, and make it easier to install your own server. But we are having this discussion every couple of month ;-)

  22. jonasw

    Alex, but we don’t have funding for "just […] some more good clients"

  23. zinid

    > I would say it can, we just need some more good clients I think that's a contradiction: you cannot create a good client outside a monster like Google or Telegram

  24. zinid

    Not now, it's too late

  25. Alex

    its never too late

  26. zinid

    sometimes it is ;)

  27. zinid

    that's why I'm tired saying that we need to define a goal, a niche, and target it

  28. zinid

    and forget about world domination

  29. pep.

    Also if we always react to what platform do, we'll never be where these articles want us to be. Though I'm not sure I want to be anyway

  30. Alex

    federation is our big advantage

  31. pep.

    to whatever platformX do* (fling smartphone)

  32. pep.

    fking*

  33. zinid

    Alex, so how far did we get with this advantage?

  34. Zash

    flinging smartphones through windows!

  35. pep.

    Zash: I'm not sure why I still inflict this on myself

  36. zinid

    so, who will write the payment transfer XEP?

  37. zinid

    any volunteers? :)

  38. jonasw

    I don’t believe in using IM for payment

  39. jonasw

    so holy fuck no

  40. zinid

    jonasw, that doesn't matter, we don't even have enough competence to write such a XEP

  41. pep.

    What I was going to write. At least for me

  42. daniel

    Well JabberCoin could generate some positive press

  43. daniel

    Sometimes going with the flow is now a bad thing

  44. zinid

    daniel, I'm fine with JabberCoin btw

  45. zinid

    daniel, we have 15k servers, we can spread it really fast

  46. Zash

    Ugh

  47. zinid

    bitcoin has "only" 9k server nodes

  48. daniel

    zinid: but you can't get any transactions through 😀

  49. jonasw

    blockchain!!! the solution to our identity-issue!!!k

  50. Zash

    no no no noooooooo!

  51. zinid

    guys, blockchain is not always as retarded as bitcoin, btw ;)

  52. zinid

    you can choose whatever BFT protocol you want

  53. jonasw hands some valerian to Zash

  54. edhelas

    blockchain is not retarder, it's just that most of the people that are talking about it are retarded

  55. edhelas

    *retarded

  56. pep.

    Power consumption issues?

  57. edhelas

    it's good for the economy

  58. zinid

    pep., the "power consumption" is the issue of BFT protocols based on crypto computation, like bitcoin

  59. pep.

    OK. Do you have an example where it's not the case? (Genuine question) links or stuff I can lookup

  60. zinid

    pep., only academic read, alas, for example: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39028-4_9

  61. zinid

    the paper itself is here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/efb1/a85cf540fd4f901a78100a2e450d484aebac.pdf

  62. pep.

    Thanks

  63. mathieui

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16349897 discussion on the link Ge0rG posted earlier

  64. zinid

    by the way: > and make it easier to install your own server how do you imagine that? I think you still need to be a nerd to install it, you need a server with OS installed at least

  65. jonasw

    that can be solved with RPi images.

  66. jonasw

    but the DNS is tricky

  67. jonasw

    but the DNS is still tricky

  68. zinid

    also, XMPP servers are hard to configure because XMPP assumes complex servers (at least that was the initial moto)

  69. Zash

    Another one of them tech cycles. Complexity oscilating between clients and servers

  70. zinid

    jonasw, not sure about RPi, what target audience are we talking about? house wives or tech-inclined teenagers?

  71. jonasw

    why not both?

  72. zinid

    jonasw, because I don't think a house wife can afford to install and configure RPi ;)

  73. Zash

    afford to?

  74. zinid

    *is not able to

  75. zinid

    damn, a typical (TM) internet user doesn't understand URLs, what are we talking about? :)

  76. jonasw

    zinid, do something else with your sunday except making me sad pls. kthxbai :)

  77. zinid

    sorry

  78. Holger

  79. Holger

    Oops.

  80. zinid

    > There is at least one major attempt at addressing this fragmentation with a modern protocol

  81. zinid

    always such types of comments on ycombinator in the corresponding IM-related thread ;)

  82. mathieui

    I twitched a little while reading that

  83. Zash

    Hm? Pro-Matrix as usual?

  84. zinid

    ah, sorry, I didn't copy-paste it completely: There is at least one major attempt at addressing this fragmentation with a modern protocol, that being the Matrix protocol (matrix.org).

  85. Zash

    Who could have guessed?

  86. zinid

    the only stuff comes at my mind in this moment is https://xkcd.com/927/

  87. Zash

    We need more XEPs, so we can reach XEP-0927

  88. zinid

    > All these people bemoaning the loss of jabber. Xmpp is awful for mobile connections. There's a reason no one else is using it. Google tried the longest and they get the most flack for it.

  89. zinid

    another perl

  90. Zash

    Did they now?

  91. Seve/SouL

    Could someone ping the moderator of the JUser mailing list, please? I sent an email and I'm wating for it to be published.

  92. Seve/SouL

    So, I sent the following email https://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/juser/2018-February/007156.html to JUser, but that's because I didn't know where would fit best. Can you guys tell me if you think I should post it in some other mailing list, please?

  93. zinid

    not sure what solution they can find with their requirements

  94. marc

    "Stickers are available"

  95. marc

    LOL

  96. zinid

    "FOSS server implementation"

  97. zinid

    "not tightly controlled by a single company"

  98. zinid

    so this is definitely not Matrix

  99. Zash

    Writing requirements, step 1: Pick the solution you want. 2. Describe its properties. 3. Make up additional reasons to reject all other canditates.

  100. SaltyBones

    marc, I consider enlarged emojis to be stickers...

  101. marc

    SaltyBones, they use the term "emojis" in other places to I guess stickers are something else (see telegram)

  102. zinid

    > Telegram- or Slack-like GUI available (e.g. user avatars next to messages, whitespace between messages)

  103. daniel

    Juser? Is anyone even subscribed to that list?

  104. daniel

    Also mailman archives are impossible to read on a mobile browser. Sigh

  105. zinid

    yeah, mailman archives look like shit from 90s

  106. daniel

    And that pastebin is even worse

  107. zinid

    from what I remember there used to be an XMPP server at kde.org, no?

  108. Zash

    allowing text reflow and zoom tends to go a long way

  109. Zash

    Bunneh: ping kde.org

  110. Bunneh

    Zash: Pong from kde.org in 1.916 seconds

  111. Zash

    Still appears to be

  112. zinid

    Bunneh, version kde.org

  113. Bunneh

    zinid: kde.org is running Prosody version 0.9.10 on Linux

  114. zinid

    so what's the problem?

  115. Zash

    IRC users

  116. Zash

    IRC users will never give up IRC (insert xkcd reference)

  117. SaltyBones

    maybe they don't have to with a nice transport?

  118. daniel

    Good bridges to other protocols seems like an oxymoron

  119. zinid

    True, I was the author of some bridges (AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Mail.ru) and it's a nightmare

  120. Zash

    IRC is just enough subtly different from MUC to make it real tricky to translate.

  121. daniel

    Yes. Though I think IRC is possible if you really know what you are doing. But anything else is just bound to fail

  122. SaltyBones is Bunneh: https://xkcd.com/1782/

  123. daniel

    That's coming from someone who just implemented an SMTP2xmpp gateway. Lol

  124. SaltyBones

    daniel, I'm waiting for the FAX2XMPP gateway to really make fun of...

  125. Zash

    I think that to get MUC to work from an IRC perspective, you have to constrain it, eg enforce the same nickname in every channel.

  126. Zash

    Probably other things that I can't think of right now

  127. zinid

    I touched IRC last time in 2004 or so, LOL

  128. daniel

    Zash: yes there is a lot of trickery to be made. But I think it would be possible.

  129. SaltyBones

    Hm...maybe the transport should be the other way round.

  130. SaltyBones

    Offer an IRC server that connects to MUCs.

  131. Zash

    SaltyBones: There was talk, long long ago, about adding an XMPP s2s interface to Freenode.

  132. zinid

    Zash, and? XKCD-1782 happens?

  133. Zash

    -xkcd 1782

  134. zinid

    I think trying to force users to migrate from IRC to XMPP is the same as trying to do this from XMPP to Matrix

  135. zinid

    https://community.kde.org/Matrix

  136. zinid

    LOL

  137. zinid

    > One of the most interesting features of Matrix is the native support for bridges to other protocols, such as IRC

  138. zinid

    marketing bullshit

  139. SaltyBones

    zinid, marketing bullshit makes the world go round

  140. Zash

    zinid: Especially considering that was the original purpose of Jabber, way back in the day

  141. zinid

    SaltyBones, "world go round" = "spinning wheels"?

  142. Zash

    1999 called and said it wasn't that great an idea after all.

  143. daniel

    zinid: unfortunately a lot of people believe this bullshit. This plays a huge part in the popularity of matrix

  144. zinid

    daniel, I know :)

  145. daniel

    But you can probably just wait 5 years and see it fail

  146. zinid

    I thought they already did, but then was bought by some obscure cryptocrappy company

  147. daniel

    So only sad thing is the wasted resources that go into something that is bound to fail

  148. daniel

    I'm not talking about the money or the venture capital they receive - I don't care about that - but the volunteers that work for them

  149. zinid

    daniel, I frankly don't understand the volunteers, why they believe this shit about "open protocol", but whatever

  150. daniel

    Well people do stupid things. That's just how it is

  151. zinid

    yeah ;)

  152. daniel

    I mean think of xmpp what you want. But matrix didn't solve any of the actual problems xmpp has aside from putting a lot of venture capital into a few clients that look somewhat polished on the surface

  153. daniel

    You could have just as well put the same money into some xmpp clients

  154. SaltyBones

    daniel, the imho only thing that matrix has is somewhat working calling.

  155. SaltyBones

    And the aforementioned marketing...

  156. daniel

    SaltyBones: sure. That's what I meant by somewhat polished clients.

  157. daniel

    Calling is basically a client feature

  158. daniel

    Take a third of the resources they had and you could have voip in xmpp clients as well

  159. zinid

    no surprise, they have 11 full-time programmers, and how many devs do XMPP clients have?

  160. daniel

    I mean from an end user perspective that's cool and all. If you are looking for an IM solution that runs in your web browser and consumes like 2 gigabytes of RAM and that you can do voice calls with then why not use matrix

  161. daniel

    </rant>

  162. SaltyBones

    daniel, since I don't know ANYTHING about the topic please forgive the naive question: Why do video calls not work in Conversations?

  163. marc

    SaltyBones, because it is not implemented ;)

  164. zinid

    and complex

  165. marc

    zinid, depends

  166. marc

    I have a PoC

  167. daniel

    marc: are you still working on that per conversation media thing by the way?

  168. marc

    daniel, what media thing?

  169. marc

    ah, the shared media thing?

  170. zinid

    marc, well, it's not complex for me as well (because I wrote sip proxy, stun/turn server and an RTP translator/mixer) ;)

  171. daniel

    Show images for that conversation

  172. daniel

    Yes

  173. zinid

    marc, but I can see how hard to a regular developer voip would be

  174. daniel

    zinid: the UX is a pain

  175. daniel

    Or the ui

  176. zinid

    daniel, probably, I'm not a gui guy, so cannot say anything

  177. marc

    zinid, the big problem for me was/is the media information mapping and some android stuff

  178. marc

    daniel, I would like to improve it and use the database backend etc. but at the moment I'm working on xep-401

  179. daniel

    The thing for me is that I very rarely call people anyway. And if I do I just use my phone.

  180. zinid

    daniel, same for me, but I like voip just as a technology, so I have fun just implementing this stuff (server-side)

  181. zinid

    and if you don't use it and don't like it a lot, then of course there will be a lot of pain, and the resulting quality would be suboptimal, to say the least ;)

  182. daniel

    Given that xmpp is usually 10 years behind the rest of the world we might as well skip the voip thing and start developing VR stufd

  183. daniel

    *stuff

  184. zinid

    LOL

  185. zinid

    we should finish the blockchain first!

  186. Zash

    A blockchain transport!!

  187. daniel

    I mean like meeting in a virtual pub or Café I could actually get behind. If it somehow transfers you facial expression into your virtual avatar or something like that. That could actually be a pretty cool way of meeting people that is way more personal than a telephone call

  188. daniel

    And you could pay with crypto currency in that virtual pub

  189. daniel

    So win/win

  190. SaltyBones

    daniel, regarding calling people: I agree, outside of calling the tax office I never call anybody. I do use video calls and slack conferences, though...

  191. SaltyBones

    So it either needs video or screen sharing.... :)

  192. marc

    For the record, we should define the XMPP URI (omemo-sid-...) for in XEP-0384

  193. marc

    I would suggest something like xmpp:foo@bar.com?roster;omemo-sid-...