7 ms·

I want this to take off. I'm tired of having to follow trends because people suddenly think there's a new shinyshinytrendy thing around: IRC to ICQ to MSN to Sk

by pmlnr 5y ago

I want this to take off. I'm tired of having to follow trends because people suddenly think there's a new shinyshinytrendy thing around: IRC to ICQ to MSN to Skype to Google Talk to Facebook Messenger to Whatsapp to Signal. Pidgin is good (I also miss the ancient Trillian, even though it was closed source), but limited to a local device. There are XMPP Transports as well for these (see https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp , https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald , but sadly https://spectrum.im/ https://spectrum.im/ is surprisingly finicky to set up.) EDIT: for encryption fans, I've been wondering for a long time now: why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Are you not aware of OMEMO for XMPP? (See https://omemo.top/ https://omemo.top/ )

txtsd 5y ago
Trillian was awesome! It's just a shell of its former self now.
loriverkutya 5y ago
I don’t run my own service for the same reason I don’t build my own car or I don’t do accounting for my company, I don’t have the time to learn how to do it nor doing it.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  No, this is not the same. You want the utmost privacy, yet you still decide to trust someone over it.
  - lxgr 5y ago
    The threat model is vastly different, though.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I don't want "the utmost privacy". I want something better than raw SMS. I'm not an international secret agent. I encrypt things out of principal more than because I really care if some government force reads them. If a nation-state decides I'm of interest to them for malicious reasons, I'm probably screwed either way.
    - jeltz 5y ago
      Then these bridges are fine. Virtually everything is better than raw SMS.
      - grassjumper 5y ago
        That depends a lot. In a civilized country with low risk of 2G downgrade attacks and sensible telecom laws/law enforcement restrictions, SMS is a lot more secure and private than many other options. Obviously still a long way off actual secure communication though.
      - JasonFruit 5y ago
        But Signal is better than Signal over these bridges, and it's easy too. Just because you don't want to run your own service doesn't mean you have to choose a poor option over a pretty good one.
        axelthegerman 5y ago
        But not everyone I talk to is on Signal. And I don't want to remember which app to open to message a certain person. What's the difference between Element offering these bridges, people deploying their own bridges or others having 3rd party clients that you can't trust with your E2E encryption?
        JasonFruit 5y ago
        Nothing makes that better, you're right. I prefer to just remember who uses what and act accordingly, but you choose convenience instead — and both are reasonable choices.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      remember that xkcd https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ yeahh. thats not exactly a meme but i am personally facing these same state sponsored actions read here https://thekashmirwalla.com/not-pegasus-kashmiris-are-worried-about-next-checkpoint/ https://thekashmirwalla.com/not-pegasus-kashmiris-are-worrie...
  - godelski 5y ago
    You're right, it isn't the same. Instructions on how to build a car don't change every week. As a hobbiest I wouldn't trust my life on getting in a car if that was a requirement. There's more in my life than that single hobby that I need to do and I only have so much time.
  - mdavis6890 5y ago
    I also want utmost security for my money, which is why I put it in a bank rather than holding the cash myself.
    - tigroferoce 5y ago
      And you want utmost security for your body, which is why you go to the doctor instead of self threat. And also doctors go to other doctors when they are ill. The sad reality is that things are complex and you probably get suboptimal results trying to do everything yourself, what other spend their lives trying to accomplish the same. WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers, but there were 50 people working full time to provide what people think they can provide in their spare time? Also as the other end of any communication is quite scaring thinking I am communicating securely with someone, but then finding out that their server is compromised because of an out of date library or service.
      - topdancing 5y ago
        If you've ever used Docker or deployed an nginx server - then you can very easily deploy a chat server. Pretty much the same thing but over a different protocol. Server getting compromised - that's largely unimportant with end-to-end encryption through OMEMO. Distros also apply security patches (just keep things up to date). You do not require 50 engineers to run a chat server for <200 of your friends. In my experience, once you have the software configured and running - it pretty much runs itself. Here's a guide on how to install everything needed onto a raspberry pi: https://samhobbs.co.uk/2016/09/installing-prosody-instant-message-chat-server-raspberry-pi-ubuntu https://samhobbs.co.uk/2016/09/installing-prosody-instant-me... As with anything else, it's a fun learning experience and something new to try.
- tommek4077 5y ago
  That is the kind of comment that freaks me out on HACKER news.
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    If you know a problem is hard and the consequences for doing it wrong are potentially serious, it would be irrational to not consider selecting a well-managed third party solution. Being a hacker doesn't mean being all-knowing and the best hacks are done with the knowledge of human limits (both of the hacker and of the maker of the system being hacked).
  - otterley 5y ago
    Not everybody hacks on everything. Many of us pick and choose our hobbies. I don't sysadmin my phone for the same reason.
  - godelski 5y ago
    Why? Specialization is a thing. Not everyone specializes in security. Which let's be real, being an expert in security is really difficult, especially since it's a constantly moving goal post. Unless you're an expert it's probably not a good idea to roll your own.
    - tigroferoce 5y ago
      Also, to run your own service you must specialize in security AND devops. The two thing overlaps a bit, but not 100%. And you must hope that every contact you are talking to has the same knowledge.
      - xchaotic 5y ago
        so much this - you can make a service 100% secure - by shutting it down. But if you want to stay online and be secure at the same time, there's always some resource tradeoff between the two
jacob019 5y ago
I wrote a bridge between signald and prosody (without spectrum) so I can use xmpp clients with signal. Async python, only non-standard library dependency is slixmpp. It's working well.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  I've seen your project! Congrats, it is very nice. I stopped fiddling with transports because signald doesn't compile/run on freebsd (some of the java libs behind it rely on native libs which have problems compiling), and for now I've put it aside.
  - finnn 5y ago
    https://www.freshports.org/net-im/signald/ https://www.freshports.org/net-im/signald/
    - pmlnr 5y ago
      Huh. I wasn't aware of this. I tried for quite a long time to compile it myself a while ago and failed, I'll give it another go, thank you!
CreateAccntAgn 5y ago
I dont have a PhD in crypography and am not sure I will do a good enough job in covering even potential mid-level vulnerabilities. I still care about privacy and so use Signal.
TheRealPomax 5y ago
Because your own service is not an alternative if you actually need to secure-message others because of the line of work you're in, or the regime you're under. The idea that "just do it yourself" is more secure than a company that can't just be walked into and have their computers taken without it causing a huge problem for everyone from your mom to heads of state is a bit naive.
- phicoh 5y ago
  The advantage of having your servers at home is that when the police shows up with a search warrent you know you can't trust that server anymore. If you use a 3rd party, it can be compromised and you only find out when it is too late.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure my server at home is less secure since I'm not a professional security expert. I can recognize that I'm dumb and going to make a lot of mistakes. The disadvantage of having your server at your home is that you don't know if it's compromised from day one. I may never even find out and just fool myself the entire time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  what about when cisco or "someone" helped india government impose censorship on aroun 8 million people so that they cannot use a vpn or access only whitelisted websites? https://theprint.in/india/us-firm-helps-jk-build-firewall-to-keep-social-media-off-limits-even-when-internet-returns/374096/ https://theprint.in/india/us-firm-helps-jk-build-firewall-to... https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-us-firm-is-reportedly-helping-kashmir-govt-block-social-media-apps-story-WCYBDSBDkDorj01jLf5i9I.html https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-us-firm-is-re... there is a news by arstechnica that updates by cisco who deny the same but these curbs were imposed and i personally suffered so i am not sure if "have their computers taken without it causing a huge problem for everyone from your mom to heads of state is a bit naive"... even a big company like cisco must bow down and bend rules to a dictatorial country like india.
comice 5y ago
> for encryption fans, I've been wondering for a long time now: why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Are you not aware of OMEMO for XMPP? we ran our own XMPP server for over 10 years using the "off the record" plugin for end to end encryption. Development seem to basically stop on open chat clients a few years ago and everything started getting crufty. (I see Pidgin dev has apparently picked back up again to some extent, as has Adium, to a much lesser extent). "off the record" mostly worked ok, between Pidgin users, but failed with other clients. A couple of OMEMO plugins came along but making them work (and keeping them working) was a continual drain - and we're only a small team with only 2 operating systems (Linux and OSX)! My hunch is that enough people just moved to things like Whatsapp and Slack etc that developers were no longer using chat clients they could hack on. People stopped being able to scratch their itches. Not to mention lack of any/decent XMPP client support for syncing histories between multiple clients, or handling inline images and things. All that modern stuff people expect. Things like Mattersmost tried to fit in here but we just didn't get along with them. Eventually Element/Matrix matured enough and while it was far from perfect, it worked and we sadly finally gave up on XMPP.
- topdancing 5y ago
  For the past two years; I've been using Conversations (Android), Dino (Linux), and friends of mine have been using Gajim (Windows), Monal/Siskin (iOS). All of these work fine with OMEMO (the iOS ones gained better OMEMO and push support in the past few months) and message history retrieval between clients. Gajim doesn't do inline images, but the rest do. I occasionally use profanity as a console client and that recently had message archive support land in Git. So, yeah, no idea what you mean by developers giving up - if anything, the ecosystem has greatly improved (minus group OMEMO on iOS). Oh, and Dino got support for doing encrypted calls to Conversations a few months ago: https://fosstodon.org/@dino/106228549009869402 https://fosstodon.org/@dino/106228549009869402
  - jeltz 5y ago
    Maybe not developers in general, but development of Pidgin certainly stalled, which is why I stopped using it. Too man features not implrmnted in XMPP and no working support for e.g. Skype.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Encryption fan here, bridging is one more avenue for failure, is why I won't buy in. Security is about odds, and nothing is 100% safe. I'm pretty sure signal is way better than anything I could come up with, so I choose it.
- teekert 5y ago
  Maybe it’s not for you but more for those of us forced onto FB’s WhatsApp and their phone book scanning/uploading by social conventions. This presents a way out without giving up the benefits.
  - hellojesus 5y ago
    Doesn't grapheneos allow some type of sandboxing to wall off your true contacts, etc. for exactly this purpose? https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/nkyzdw/what_is_the_most_private_way_i_can_use_whatsapp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/nkyzdw/what_is_the...
    - ev1 5y ago
      You know people that have the FB app installed. And all their messages and SMS running through the FB app. And you can't get all of them to stop this madness.
      - hellojesus 5y ago
        Maybe. I probably don't relate well because I talk to maybe 10ish people regularly. Everyone else, if they don't migrate to a secure and preferred method, I just use email (with pgp if possible) and call it good.
    - jcul 5y ago
      Shelter can be used for this purpose if desired. https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter
koheripbal 5y ago
> why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data Because trust is not a binary value and I don't have the time to do literally everything myself
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  I'd go further -- absent pressure, there is never any reason to trust anyone. The more pressure one faves, the more one has to trust people.
freeopinion 5y ago
The point of encryption in the first place is to allow an untrusted transport. If you trust the transport, you don't need encryption. OMEMO nor XMPP provide trusted transport. Perhaps the point you are reaching for is that encryption and transport should be different parties. The message should be encrypted before you hand it to the Western Union agent. After that, the decision between Western Union, Union Pacific, or Pony Express hinges on other concerns.
approxim8ion 5y ago
> why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Because end to end encryption means you don't have to trust a third party? The channel goes out of the equation, at least with reference to the content of your messages. Metadata is definitely handled differently by different services but that's a question of threat model.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
MisterTea 5y ago
> I'm tired of having to follow trends Then don't. I have none of those things save for IRC. I get all my work done and live a full life.
user3939382 5y ago
I remember when I first installed Trillian around 2000, it was so cool!
SECProto 5y ago
> I'm tired of having to follow trends because people suddenly think there's a new shinyshinytrendy thing around: IRC to ICQ to MSN to Skype to Google Talk to Facebook Messenger to Whatsapp to Signal. As someone who used trillian, you should recognize that you're likely to need to follow someone to a new trendy messaging service within a few years, regardless of an aggregator taking off.
jakecopp 5y ago
Eric Migicovsky, Pebble founder who now runs https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/: > These bridges are actually just an intermediate step. Since Matrix itself is an amazing chat network, eventually as more people start using bridges on Matrix, they’ll notice that their friends are already on Matrix, eliminating the need for bridges gradually over time. > I really believe that the world will be a better place when everyone is in the Matrix. Matrix is the non-proliferation treaty of chat. https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus-42dfb9a141ad https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus...
efreak 5y ago
Not sure if it's still around, but bitlbee for a long time provided an IRC gateway for almost every chat protocol around at the time (including following Twitter feeds, and Google/Facebook chat via xmpp when they still supported it)

by pmlnr 5y ago

txtsd 5y ago

Trillian was awesome! It's just a shell of its former self now.

loriverkutya 5y ago

I don’t run my own service for the same reason I don’t build my own car or I don’t do accounting for my company, I don’t have the time to learn how to do it nor doing it.

pmlnr 5y ago
No, this is not the same. You want the utmost privacy, yet you still decide to trust someone over it.
- lxgr 5y ago
  The threat model is vastly different, though.
- noirbot 5y ago
  I don't want "the utmost privacy". I want something better than raw SMS. I'm not an international secret agent. I encrypt things out of principal more than because I really care if some government force reads them. If a nation-state decides I'm of interest to them for malicious reasons, I'm probably screwed either way.
  - jeltz 5y ago
    Then these bridges are fine. Virtually everything is better than raw SMS.
    - grassjumper 5y ago
      That depends a lot. In a civilized country with low risk of 2G downgrade attacks and sensible telecom laws/law enforcement restrictions, SMS is a lot more secure and private than many other options. Obviously still a long way off actual secure communication though.
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      But Signal is better than Signal over these bridges, and it's easy too. Just because you don't want to run your own service doesn't mean you have to choose a poor option over a pretty good one.
      - axelthegerman 5y ago
        But not everyone I talk to is on Signal. And I don't want to remember which app to open to message a certain person. What's the difference between Element offering these bridges, people deploying their own bridges or others having 3rd party clients that you can't trust with your E2E encryption?
        JasonFruit 5y ago
        Nothing makes that better, you're right. I prefer to just remember who uses what and act accordingly, but you choose convenience instead — and both are reasonable choices.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    remember that xkcd https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ yeahh. thats not exactly a meme but i am personally facing these same state sponsored actions read here https://thekashmirwalla.com/not-pegasus-kashmiris-are-worried-about-next-checkpoint/ https://thekashmirwalla.com/not-pegasus-kashmiris-are-worrie...
- godelski 5y ago
  You're right, it isn't the same. Instructions on how to build a car don't change every week. As a hobbiest I wouldn't trust my life on getting in a car if that was a requirement. There's more in my life than that single hobby that I need to do and I only have so much time.
- mdavis6890 5y ago
  I also want utmost security for my money, which is why I put it in a bank rather than holding the cash myself.
  - tigroferoce 5y ago
    And you want utmost security for your body, which is why you go to the doctor instead of self threat. And also doctors go to other doctors when they are ill. The sad reality is that things are complex and you probably get suboptimal results trying to do everything yourself, what other spend their lives trying to accomplish the same. WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers, but there were 50 people working full time to provide what people think they can provide in their spare time? Also as the other end of any communication is quite scaring thinking I am communicating securely with someone, but then finding out that their server is compromised because of an out of date library or service.
    - topdancing 5y ago
      If you've ever used Docker or deployed an nginx server - then you can very easily deploy a chat server. Pretty much the same thing but over a different protocol. Server getting compromised - that's largely unimportant with end-to-end encryption through OMEMO. Distros also apply security patches (just keep things up to date). You do not require 50 engineers to run a chat server for <200 of your friends. In my experience, once you have the software configured and running - it pretty much runs itself. Here's a guide on how to install everything needed onto a raspberry pi: https://samhobbs.co.uk/2016/09/installing-prosody-instant-message-chat-server-raspberry-pi-ubuntu https://samhobbs.co.uk/2016/09/installing-prosody-instant-me... As with anything else, it's a fun learning experience and something new to try.
tommek4077 5y ago
That is the kind of comment that freaks me out on HACKER news.
- aeturnum 5y ago
  If you know a problem is hard and the consequences for doing it wrong are potentially serious, it would be irrational to not consider selecting a well-managed third party solution. Being a hacker doesn't mean being all-knowing and the best hacks are done with the knowledge of human limits (both of the hacker and of the maker of the system being hacked).
- otterley 5y ago
  Not everybody hacks on everything. Many of us pick and choose our hobbies. I don't sysadmin my phone for the same reason.
- godelski 5y ago
  Why? Specialization is a thing. Not everyone specializes in security. Which let's be real, being an expert in security is really difficult, especially since it's a constantly moving goal post. Unless you're an expert it's probably not a good idea to roll your own.
  - tigroferoce 5y ago
    Also, to run your own service you must specialize in security AND devops. The two thing overlaps a bit, but not 100%. And you must hope that every contact you are talking to has the same knowledge.
    - xchaotic 5y ago
      so much this - you can make a service 100% secure - by shutting it down. But if you want to stay online and be secure at the same time, there's always some resource tradeoff between the two

jacob019 5y ago

I wrote a bridge between signald and prosody (without spectrum) so I can use xmpp clients with signal. Async python, only non-standard library dependency is slixmpp. It's working well.

pmlnr 5y ago
I've seen your project! Congrats, it is very nice. I stopped fiddling with transports because signald doesn't compile/run on freebsd (some of the java libs behind it rely on native libs which have problems compiling), and for now I've put it aside.
- finnn 5y ago
  https://www.freshports.org/net-im/signald/ https://www.freshports.org/net-im/signald/
  - pmlnr 5y ago
    Huh. I wasn't aware of this. I tried for quite a long time to compile it myself a while ago and failed, I'll give it another go, thank you!

CreateAccntAgn 5y ago

I dont have a PhD in crypography and am not sure I will do a good enough job in covering even potential mid-level vulnerabilities. I still care about privacy and so use Signal.

TheRealPomax 5y ago

Because your own service is not an alternative if you actually need to secure-message others because of the line of work you're in, or the regime you're under. The idea that "just do it yourself" is more secure than a company that can't just be walked into and have their computers taken without it causing a huge problem for everyone from your mom to heads of state is a bit naive.

phicoh 5y ago
The advantage of having your servers at home is that when the police shows up with a search warrent you know you can't trust that server anymore. If you use a 3rd party, it can be compromised and you only find out when it is too late.
- godelski 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure my server at home is less secure since I'm not a professional security expert. I can recognize that I'm dumb and going to make a lot of mistakes. The disadvantage of having your server at your home is that you don't know if it's compromised from day one. I may never even find out and just fool myself the entire time.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
what about when cisco or "someone" helped india government impose censorship on aroun 8 million people so that they cannot use a vpn or access only whitelisted websites? https://theprint.in/india/us-firm-helps-jk-build-firewall-to-keep-social-media-off-limits-even-when-internet-returns/374096/ https://theprint.in/india/us-firm-helps-jk-build-firewall-to... https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-us-firm-is-reportedly-helping-kashmir-govt-block-social-media-apps-story-WCYBDSBDkDorj01jLf5i9I.html https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-us-firm-is-re... there is a news by arstechnica that updates by cisco who deny the same but these curbs were imposed and i personally suffered so i am not sure if "have their computers taken without it causing a huge problem for everyone from your mom to heads of state is a bit naive"... even a big company like cisco must bow down and bend rules to a dictatorial country like india.

comice 5y ago

> for encryption fans, I've been wondering for a long time now: why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Are you not aware of OMEMO for XMPP? we ran our own XMPP server for over 10 years using the "off the record" plugin for end to end encryption. Development seem to basically stop on open chat clients a few years ago and everything started getting crufty. (I see Pidgin dev has apparently picked back up again to some extent, as has Adium, to a much lesser extent). "off the record" mostly worked ok, between Pidgin users, but failed with other clients. A couple of OMEMO plugins came along but making them work (and keeping them working) was a continual drain - and we're only a small team with only 2 operating systems (Linux and OSX)! My hunch is that enough people just moved to things like Whatsapp and Slack etc that developers were no longer using chat clients they could hack on. People stopped being able to scratch their itches. Not to mention lack of any/decent XMPP client support for syncing histories between multiple clients, or handling inline images and things. All that modern stuff people expect. Things like Mattersmost tried to fit in here but we just didn't get along with them. Eventually Element/Matrix matured enough and while it was far from perfect, it worked and we sadly finally gave up on XMPP.

topdancing 5y ago
For the past two years; I've been using Conversations (Android), Dino (Linux), and friends of mine have been using Gajim (Windows), Monal/Siskin (iOS). All of these work fine with OMEMO (the iOS ones gained better OMEMO and push support in the past few months) and message history retrieval between clients. Gajim doesn't do inline images, but the rest do. I occasionally use profanity as a console client and that recently had message archive support land in Git. So, yeah, no idea what you mean by developers giving up - if anything, the ecosystem has greatly improved (minus group OMEMO on iOS). Oh, and Dino got support for doing encrypted calls to Conversations a few months ago: https://fosstodon.org/@dino/106228549009869402 https://fosstodon.org/@dino/106228549009869402
- jeltz 5y ago
  Maybe not developers in general, but development of Pidgin certainly stalled, which is why I stopped using it. Too man features not implrmnted in XMPP and no working support for e.g. Skype.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Encryption fan here, bridging is one more avenue for failure, is why I won't buy in. Security is about odds, and nothing is 100% safe. I'm pretty sure signal is way better than anything I could come up with, so I choose it.

teekert 5y ago
Maybe it’s not for you but more for those of us forced onto FB’s WhatsApp and their phone book scanning/uploading by social conventions. This presents a way out without giving up the benefits.
- hellojesus 5y ago
  Doesn't grapheneos allow some type of sandboxing to wall off your true contacts, etc. for exactly this purpose? https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/nkyzdw/what_is_the_most_private_way_i_can_use_whatsapp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/nkyzdw/what_is_the...
  - ev1 5y ago
    You know people that have the FB app installed. And all their messages and SMS running through the FB app. And you can't get all of them to stop this madness.
    - hellojesus 5y ago
      Maybe. I probably don't relate well because I talk to maybe 10ish people regularly. Everyone else, if they don't migrate to a secure and preferred method, I just use email (with pgp if possible) and call it good.
  - jcul 5y ago
    Shelter can be used for this purpose if desired. https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter

koheripbal 5y ago

> why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data Because trust is not a binary value and I don't have the time to do literally everything myself

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
I'd go further -- absent pressure, there is never any reason to trust anyone. The more pressure one faves, the more one has to trust people.

freeopinion 5y ago

The point of encryption in the first place is to allow an untrusted transport. If you trust the transport, you don't need encryption. OMEMO nor XMPP provide trusted transport. Perhaps the point you are reaching for is that encryption and transport should be different parties. The message should be encrypted before you hand it to the Western Union agent. After that, the decision between Western Union, Union Pacific, or Pony Express hinges on other concerns.

approxim8ion 5y ago

> why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Because end to end encryption means you don't have to trust a third party? The channel goes out of the equation, at least with reference to the content of your messages. Metadata is definitely handled differently by different services but that's a question of threat model.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

MisterTea 5y ago

> I'm tired of having to follow trends Then don't. I have none of those things save for IRC. I get all my work done and live a full life.

user3939382 5y ago

I remember when I first installed Trillian around 2000, it was so cool!

SECProto 5y ago

> I'm tired of having to follow trends because people suddenly think there's a new shinyshinytrendy thing around: IRC to ICQ to MSN to Skype to Google Talk to Facebook Messenger to Whatsapp to Signal. As someone who used trillian, you should recognize that you're likely to need to follow someone to a new trendy messaging service within a few years, regardless of an aggregator taking off.

jakecopp 5y ago

Eric Migicovsky, Pebble founder who now runs https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/: > These bridges are actually just an intermediate step. Since Matrix itself is an amazing chat network, eventually as more people start using bridges on Matrix, they’ll notice that their friends are already on Matrix, eliminating the need for bridges gradually over time. > I really believe that the world will be a better place when everyone is in the Matrix. Matrix is the non-proliferation treaty of chat. https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus-42dfb9a141ad https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus...

efreak 5y ago

Not sure if it's still around, but bitlbee for a long time provided an IRC gateway for almost every chat protocol around at the time (including following Twitter feeds, and Google/Facebook chat via xmpp when they still supported it)