8 ms·

I have the same issue with chat protocols. Some of my friends are on iMessage, some on Hangouts, some on Whatsapp. None of these talk to each other and I'd real

I have the same issue with chat protocols. Some of my friends are on iMessage, some on Hangouts, some on Whatsapp. None of these talk to each other and I'd really just rather use TextSecure. We had a standard for chat, it's called XMPP, and before that we had IRC. I know they're all non-optimal for mobile use but some goddamn standards (tm) would make my life easier. I can't believe we were better off in the heydays of Trillian - at least all my contact lists were in one program! Maybe I should go back to SMS. Now, on home automation. I came to some of the same conclusions as the author - we're screwed when it comes to being at the behest of big companies and proprietary protocols to control devices we should own. I just dread having to write yet another home automation framework when I do finally automate my doors, windows and lights. Now where did I put my keys again?

buffoon 11y ago
Ugh this is the bane of my life. We use basecamp, hipchat, Skype, Skype for business, email and google hangouts all at once. My kids use hangouts, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger. None of them work properly. None of them has everyone on it. None of them add any value to communication. All of them throw ten minutes to the wind finding everyone to start with. I've missed 20 minutes of many meetings dealing with audio problems, network problems and firewall problems when we could have used a simple dial in conference system that has been around for over 10 years. And I'm treated like a Luddite because you have to call me, SMS me or email me?!? I don't want this any more. After a rant yesterday about WiFi and how it sucks and I've switched back to wired ethernet. I have to suggest that there was a technological singularity around 2005 which was 'peak utility' before the proliferation of sharecropped communications, technology with false utility, high cost and pay-per-everything. To add other things to this problem set is going to cost me more money and time of which both are finite and at least one runs out uncontrollably.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  One of the things I was hoping would take off was SIP: URIs - in theory you could "dial" my email address and the call would be routed to wherever I was at that moment. Texting is built in too. Goddamn standards strike again.
  - buffoon 11y ago
    Yeah that was a great idea. Until NAT, firewalls, your average contracted out MSP at an SME sysadmin who's idea of admin is lock everything down and pay £300 to open a port (I have to deal with this at least one a week).
    - voltagex_ 11y ago
      If normal Skype supported SIP it could just be bounced to Skype in that case. Also, IPv6 FTW!
      - buffoon 11y ago
        Yes that's true although I've lost count of the hours I've thrown out on Skype. Yes IPv6 definitely FTW. We just migrated our office and two data centres to it. Life is good now. V6 firewalls are just packet filters; all our nets are in the public address space.
        simoncion 11y ago
        Stupid question: Just in case you want some nets to not be globally routeable, you guys are aware of the Unique Local Addressing block?
        buffoon 11y ago
        Yes aware of that. There are some gotchas with that, particularly address space collision between two sites with a tunnel between them. I've never seen one in v6 but one of our clients had a 10.0.0.0/8 and so did we and I don't want to get into that state of affairs again. I'd only use that for totally airgapped networks.
        simoncion 11y ago
        There's a mechanism for randomly generating a /48 with a low probability of collision. [0] SixXS maintains a list of "allocated" prefixes, [1][2] but who knows how complete it is? Edit: Also, you might be interested in reading about the NETMAP iptables/ip6tables target. See iptables-extensions(8) for more info. [0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4193#section-3.2 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4193#section-3.2 [1] https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/ https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/ [2] https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/list/ https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/list/
- iraphael 11y ago
  It seems like you're saying that Technology has passed the "Second Watershed". http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/IllichTools.html http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/IllichTools.html "Watershed (figurative definition, as used by Illich): A point in the historical process when a particular “tool” creates a quantum shift in society, like the sudden application of gravity feeding water into a terrain basin (literal watershed)."[0] [0] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4598832 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=...
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  WiFi is a great win, I think. The problem is just that we have allowed ourselves to think it is a complete solution. That everything should be wireless, that wired has no advantages. In reality WiFi and ethernet complement eachother, each with their own strengths. In particular, I've found a 10Mb LAN outperforms a 1000Mb WiFi for networked filesystem access.
- exodust 11y ago
  Might your issue with WIFI be specific to your setup than a problem with WIFI itself? I replied to your comment yesterday, but just how noisy can WIFI get anyway? There's a finite number of people who can live within 50 metres of our homes. So there's a limit to how noisy it can be. I'm saying this because I have no issues with WIFI in a cluttered inner-city suburb full of WIFI. I just got myself a good WIFI modem router, and it's smooth and no drop-outs for multiple users in the house. Nobody expects super reliable HD video to stream through without ever glitching, but it actually does a good job of that anyway using Netflix, Youtube, and Chromecast and other methods like iPads. I would suggest getting a better router, and making sure other factors are set correctly to maximise signal strength rather than blaming WIFI. Location of the router, whether you use a range extender and so on.
  - buffoon 11y ago
    I've had inssider running, channel hopped, tried three different routers (netgear, router board, Asus) to no avail. I've tried several client devices too from high end centrino, apple and Motorola kit. I don't stream any media, just do file copies. It sucks whatever I try.
simoncion 11y ago
> Maybe I should go back to SMS. In my experience, SMS and Hangouts are equally unreliable messaging protocols. Messages sent through either transport can be delayed for arbitrary lengths of time or lost entirely. Everything that's happened with Hangouts that's unrelated to video calling just makes me so sad.
- josteink 11y ago
  I tried Hangouts v1 and more or less instantly backed out. I was having none of that. Not for IM nor for SMS. After that Google Talk (and thus XMPP) was dead to me. For SMS I could at least revert to the stock AOSP messaging app.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Google Talk is still alive, well, and performing bi-directional message delivery between XMPP clients with a Google Talk account and Hangouts clients. (Or maybe alive but for the fact that a Google VP hasn't noticed that it's still up and running. shrug) Any client that speaks XMPP should work just fine to reach into Google's IM silo for direct messaging. I make frequent, daily use of Pidgin for this purpose. Sadly, the only way to access group chats is through the official client. Also: If you haven't already, check out TextSecure by Open Whisper Systems. It has the best group-SMS handling of any MMS client I've tried. It's also made and maintained by a group of folks who are really concerned with making secure software that also happens to be as easy to use as is possible.
kefka 11y ago
I'm rolling out a test network at the university of IoT. Instead of going with XYZ expensive setup, I'm rolling my own using an Arduino (clone) nano, sensors, and nRF24L01+ using mysensors library. On the acquisition end, I'm using node-red with the mysensors en/decoder. I have node-red generating dynamic HTML, and dumping it in var/www/html and apache serving it up. All I'm waiting for now is 30 more setups for testing purposes. (nRF24L01+ can generate a self-healing mesh network. Given the weird shape of our building, makes this ideal. And a small change turns a sensor node into a sensor/gateway.)
mahouse 11y ago
XMPP was fucking crap, whether you like it or not.
leni536 11y ago
Why your fallback is SMS and not e-mail?
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Most of my non-programmer friends don't check their email addresses, if they maintain one at all. They use Facebook instead.
- wernercd 11y ago
  Email is the same as Voicemail: ignored, neglected, filled with spam more often than real messages and on the way out.
  - oneweekwonder 11y ago
    SMS is also filled with spam these days. To be honest what medium is not filled with spam/ads?
    - eropple 11y ago
      SMS is filled with spam? That's honestly news to me - I think I've gotten one spam SMS in the last two years? I get a lot more spam calls, though Google Voice filters them for me now.
    - Spivak 11y ago
      If your SMS is filled with spam then you need to talk to your carrier and get a new number
roflmyeggo 11y ago
This is the reason I am pushing myself towards simpler solutions, even if I end up losing some functionality/connections out of it. The added cognitive load of dealing with managing all of these services is becoming really painful. Yes, I may not have push via the cloud to my latest iGizmo, but at least I don't have to worry that I forgot an important calendar, todo, file, or chat message on one of 5 services that mix and match between what they offer. Org-mode can run calendar, todo, notes, habits, journal, etc. Chat is where I still haven't found a solution. Switching to XMPP/SMS semi-exclusively is probably the next step.
- stinkytaco 11y ago
  I would like that, but the thing with calendar, todos, etc, is that syncing with my iGizmo is what makes them most useful for me. That iGizmo is on my person at all times. At the doctor's office and need to make an appointment or talking to a contractor about getting away during the day to meet them at home? Calendar is right there so I won't schedule over a meeting or other engagement. Grocery shopping? My shopping list is there, no way I'd forget it at home. The syncing is precisely what I need it to do to be useful. Before my iGizmo I carried around a notebook, but that was larger, more cumbersome and had less flexibility (I can add a grocery list item from my PC in the kitchen or even input it by voice if I realize I need something). That means that for some of us, a better solution rather than a simpler one is what we desperately hope for.
profinger 11y ago
Hey, at least we've finally gotten to the point where I can reliably guess that probably 80+% of the android phones I encounter will have a microUSB plug!!
- g8oz 11y ago
  You can thank EU regulations for that.
swsieber 11y ago
It's really too bad that the mythical man-month is really mythical, otherwise everybody here on HN could pitch in 5 minutes and make a successor to XMPP that is optimal for mobile...

buffoon 11y ago

Ugh this is the bane of my life. We use basecamp, hipchat, Skype, Skype for business, email and google hangouts all at once. My kids use hangouts, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger. None of them work properly. None of them has everyone on it. None of them add any value to communication. All of them throw ten minutes to the wind finding everyone to start with. I've missed 20 minutes of many meetings dealing with audio problems, network problems and firewall problems when we could have used a simple dial in conference system that has been around for over 10 years. And I'm treated like a Luddite because you have to call me, SMS me or email me?!? I don't want this any more. After a rant yesterday about WiFi and how it sucks and I've switched back to wired ethernet. I have to suggest that there was a technological singularity around 2005 which was 'peak utility' before the proliferation of sharecropped communications, technology with false utility, high cost and pay-per-everything. To add other things to this problem set is going to cost me more money and time of which both are finite and at least one runs out uncontrollably.

voltagex_ 11y ago
One of the things I was hoping would take off was SIP: URIs - in theory you could "dial" my email address and the call would be routed to wherever I was at that moment. Texting is built in too. Goddamn standards strike again.
- buffoon 11y ago
  Yeah that was a great idea. Until NAT, firewalls, your average contracted out MSP at an SME sysadmin who's idea of admin is lock everything down and pay £300 to open a port (I have to deal with this at least one a week).
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    If normal Skype supported SIP it could just be bounced to Skype in that case. Also, IPv6 FTW!
    - buffoon 11y ago
      Yes that's true although I've lost count of the hours I've thrown out on Skype. Yes IPv6 definitely FTW. We just migrated our office and two data centres to it. Life is good now. V6 firewalls are just packet filters; all our nets are in the public address space.
      - simoncion 11y ago
        Stupid question: Just in case you want some nets to not be globally routeable, you guys are aware of the Unique Local Addressing block?
        buffoon 11y ago
        Yes aware of that. There are some gotchas with that, particularly address space collision between two sites with a tunnel between them. I've never seen one in v6 but one of our clients had a 10.0.0.0/8 and so did we and I don't want to get into that state of affairs again. I'd only use that for totally airgapped networks.
        simoncion 11y ago
        There's a mechanism for randomly generating a /48 with a low probability of collision. [0] SixXS maintains a list of "allocated" prefixes, [1][2] but who knows how complete it is? Edit: Also, you might be interested in reading about the NETMAP iptables/ip6tables target. See iptables-extensions(8) for more info. [0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4193#section-3.2 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4193#section-3.2 [1] https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/ https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/ [2] https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/list/ https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/list/
iraphael 11y ago
It seems like you're saying that Technology has passed the "Second Watershed". http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/IllichTools.html http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/IllichTools.html "Watershed (figurative definition, as used by Illich): A point in the historical process when a particular “tool” creates a quantum shift in society, like the sudden application of gravity feeding water into a terrain basin (literal watershed)."[0] [0] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4598832 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=...
sliverstorm 11y ago
WiFi is a great win, I think. The problem is just that we have allowed ourselves to think it is a complete solution. That everything should be wireless, that wired has no advantages. In reality WiFi and ethernet complement eachother, each with their own strengths. In particular, I've found a 10Mb LAN outperforms a 1000Mb WiFi for networked filesystem access.
exodust 11y ago
Might your issue with WIFI be specific to your setup than a problem with WIFI itself? I replied to your comment yesterday, but just how noisy can WIFI get anyway? There's a finite number of people who can live within 50 metres of our homes. So there's a limit to how noisy it can be. I'm saying this because I have no issues with WIFI in a cluttered inner-city suburb full of WIFI. I just got myself a good WIFI modem router, and it's smooth and no drop-outs for multiple users in the house. Nobody expects super reliable HD video to stream through without ever glitching, but it actually does a good job of that anyway using Netflix, Youtube, and Chromecast and other methods like iPads. I would suggest getting a better router, and making sure other factors are set correctly to maximise signal strength rather than blaming WIFI. Location of the router, whether you use a range extender and so on.
- buffoon 11y ago
  I've had inssider running, channel hopped, tried three different routers (netgear, router board, Asus) to no avail. I've tried several client devices too from high end centrino, apple and Motorola kit. I don't stream any media, just do file copies. It sucks whatever I try.

simoncion 11y ago

> Maybe I should go back to SMS. In my experience, SMS and Hangouts are equally unreliable messaging protocols. Messages sent through either transport can be delayed for arbitrary lengths of time or lost entirely. Everything that's happened with Hangouts that's unrelated to video calling just makes me so sad.

josteink 11y ago
I tried Hangouts v1 and more or less instantly backed out. I was having none of that. Not for IM nor for SMS. After that Google Talk (and thus XMPP) was dead to me. For SMS I could at least revert to the stock AOSP messaging app.
- simoncion 11y ago
  Google Talk is still alive, well, and performing bi-directional message delivery between XMPP clients with a Google Talk account and Hangouts clients. (Or maybe alive but for the fact that a Google VP hasn't noticed that it's still up and running. shrug) Any client that speaks XMPP should work just fine to reach into Google's IM silo for direct messaging. I make frequent, daily use of Pidgin for this purpose. Sadly, the only way to access group chats is through the official client. Also: If you haven't already, check out TextSecure by Open Whisper Systems. It has the best group-SMS handling of any MMS client I've tried. It's also made and maintained by a group of folks who are really concerned with making secure software that also happens to be as easy to use as is possible.

kefka 11y ago

I'm rolling out a test network at the university of IoT. Instead of going with XYZ expensive setup, I'm rolling my own using an Arduino (clone) nano, sensors, and nRF24L01+ using mysensors library. On the acquisition end, I'm using node-red with the mysensors en/decoder. I have node-red generating dynamic HTML, and dumping it in var/www/html and apache serving it up. All I'm waiting for now is 30 more setups for testing purposes. (nRF24L01+ can generate a self-healing mesh network. Given the weird shape of our building, makes this ideal. And a small change turns a sensor node into a sensor/gateway.)

mahouse 11y ago

XMPP was fucking crap, whether you like it or not.

leni536 11y ago

Why your fallback is SMS and not e-mail?

voltagex_ 11y ago
Most of my non-programmer friends don't check their email addresses, if they maintain one at all. They use Facebook instead.
wernercd 11y ago
Email is the same as Voicemail: ignored, neglected, filled with spam more often than real messages and on the way out.
- oneweekwonder 11y ago
  SMS is also filled with spam these days. To be honest what medium is not filled with spam/ads?
  - eropple 11y ago
    SMS is filled with spam? That's honestly news to me - I think I've gotten one spam SMS in the last two years? I get a lot more spam calls, though Google Voice filters them for me now.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    If your SMS is filled with spam then you need to talk to your carrier and get a new number

roflmyeggo 11y ago

This is the reason I am pushing myself towards simpler solutions, even if I end up losing some functionality/connections out of it. The added cognitive load of dealing with managing all of these services is becoming really painful. Yes, I may not have push via the cloud to my latest iGizmo, but at least I don't have to worry that I forgot an important calendar, todo, file, or chat message on one of 5 services that mix and match between what they offer. Org-mode can run calendar, todo, notes, habits, journal, etc. Chat is where I still haven't found a solution. Switching to XMPP/SMS semi-exclusively is probably the next step.

stinkytaco 11y ago
I would like that, but the thing with calendar, todos, etc, is that syncing with my iGizmo is what makes them most useful for me. That iGizmo is on my person at all times. At the doctor's office and need to make an appointment or talking to a contractor about getting away during the day to meet them at home? Calendar is right there so I won't schedule over a meeting or other engagement. Grocery shopping? My shopping list is there, no way I'd forget it at home. The syncing is precisely what I need it to do to be useful. Before my iGizmo I carried around a notebook, but that was larger, more cumbersome and had less flexibility (I can add a grocery list item from my PC in the kitchen or even input it by voice if I realize I need something). That means that for some of us, a better solution rather than a simpler one is what we desperately hope for.

profinger 11y ago

Hey, at least we've finally gotten to the point where I can reliably guess that probably 80+% of the android phones I encounter will have a microUSB plug!!

g8oz 11y ago
You can thank EU regulations for that.

swsieber 11y ago

It's really too bad that the mythical man-month is really mythical, otherwise everybody here on HN could pitch in 5 minutes and make a successor to XMPP that is optimal for mobile...