3 ms·

In a sensible world, we would be using this, instead of whatsapp. It is amazing that even really a vast majority of, even technical people, not once stopped and

In a sensible world, we would be using this, instead of whatsapp. It is amazing that even really a vast majority of, even technical people, not once stopped and looked at whatsapp, and said "Wait, e-mail can do this, we just need a pretty UI".

mab122 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
drpossum 2y ago
To say nothing of the fact that most people are not running their own email servers so that messaging is going to reside in places they don't own and the fact that relays get to read about everything exacerbating that problem, so you cannot really expect forward secrecy: Does this solve all the other problems with encrypted email, which is not widely used for a reason? Here's a discussion https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted/ https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypte...
- lxgr 2y ago
  > most people are not running their own email servers I honestly don't care about what the people I communicate with do, as long as I have the capability to at least own my persistent identifier (i.e. my TLD). Just having that capability exerts just the right type of pressure on large service providers to maintain a baseline quality of service, regardless of whether the majority actually makes use of it or not, just like phone number portability has done in that domain.
- em-bee 2y ago
  messaging is going to reside in places they don't own but that is the case with every messenger that stores messages on your behalf. telegram, whatsapp, signal... with those ALL people are not running their own servers. whatsapp and signal store encrypted copies of the messages, and so does deltachat. beyond that each client also stores a copy of each message locally. as does deltachat. in difference to all others at least with deltachat i have a choice to use a different server that i trust. with whatsapp and signal i don't have that choice.
- em-bee 2y ago
  Does this solve all the other problems with encrypted email it doesn't solve all of them but a few at least. i don't believe using pgp itself is a problem. if it was deltachat could replace it with another better encryption. metadata is a problem. that could be solved by removing messages from the email server and storing them elsewhere. (or storing them back on the server with the metadata removed). that doesn't prevent intermediate mail forwarders from keeping a copy though. i think that is the real problem. deltachat doesn't control the communication channel and can't prevent leaking. i don't know how matrix or jabber compare here. if they use intermediate servers to forward messages the problem would remain. message content leaking is not a problem because messages won't ever be decrypted on the server. long term secret leaking is a problem tied to the current implementation of pgp. deltachat could change that (and maybe it does?)
wink 2y ago
From the website: > Reliable instant messaging If it's based on e-mail, it's just not. (if we assume generally close-to-realtime delivery and not being blocked by random recipients)
- foul 2y ago
  Email is a communication system with a lot of moving parts. You can't have reliable IM through existing MX servers but you may have it if for example SMTPs are running on your machine and you poll their data more (it's just an example, I know that with an SMTP running on your phone you'd have more problems).
  - hkt 2y ago
    See earlier on today's front page, another all in one mail server. It is much, much simpler than it was to do this. I've been self hosting email for nearly 20 years and the state of the art is considerably better now. Latency is virtually nonexistent and federation works.
    - wink 2y ago
      I'd say it's good enough - but I refuse to call a conversation over email "reliable" as in the properties I expect from a realtime messenger.
      - foul 2y ago
        It's reliable, it conveys messages, but not instant at all.
jasode 2y ago
>It is amazing that even really a vast majority of, even technical people, not once stopped and looked at whatsapp, and said "Wait, e-mail can do this, we just need a pretty UI". WhatsApp lets people find each other with phone numbers instead email addresses. This has a profound difference in real-world usability because it decreases friction. Before WhatsApp, people texted each other using cell companies' SMS service. Why did Person A (who already had an email address) send a SMS text to Person B (who also already had an email address) to chat?!? Because both people already had each others' phone number in their smartphone's address books. Recording each other's email address is less likely so it won't be used as "ids" to chat -- especially between friends & family. To wit, my mother has already memorized my brand new phone number that I've only had for a few years but she doesn't know my email address at all even though I've sent it and re-sent it to her multiple times. To normal people, the phone numbers are more sacred than email addresses. WhatsApp was a continuation of the conveniences of SMS -- without paying 10 cents per message to the mobile phone carriers. Friction from cognitive overhead is a big deal in technology adoption.
- wisienkas 2y ago
  I mean you could simply setup a registry of Aliases for emails to achieve the same effect? On the same note, isn't phone numbers being more sensitive information than email nowadays, hence you might not want to share it.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    That ship seems to have largely sailed and the trend will be hard to reverse given how cell number has started to become all-purpose ID number tracker.
- sras-me 2y ago
  >both people already had each others' phone number in their smartphone's address book... Look if it is saved in the smartphone's address book, why does it matter if it is email or a phone number. I bet that people don't actually memorize even the phone numbers of people close to them these days. >Why did Person A (who already had an email address) send a SMS text to Person B (who also already had an email address) to chat?!? I think it is because we didn't have near universal internet access in smartphones for a long time. If Whatsapp (or something like that) was a little bit late to appear, and the tech crowd was actually a bit more smarter, things like Delta Chat had a much better chance to be in Whatsapps current place.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
I mean... WhatsApp is literally XMPP / Jabber... It's amazing that we didn't stop and said, wait, Jabber can do this, we just need a pretty UI... Hell, Jabber can still do this. I'm not convinced of the other modern alternatives that don't have half the functional capabilities that Jabber do. The only "downside" of Jabber is that it's XML based, but really if you think about it, that's a strength. Anyone here could probably parse the protocol effortlessly. There's also lots of fully functional clients out today, and servers that scale like nobody's business. I'm more ashamed we don't invest more into XMPP: Google Talk, Facebook Chat and WhatsApp were built around it. These are companies with insane to scale userbases, tried and tested. Here's a 2008 article from Facebook on using their chat with a Jabber client: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/110/ https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/110/
- thiht 2y ago
  > it's XML based, but really if you think about it, that's a strength Nope. Another downside is the X. The protocol being extensible means that no two clients implement the same subset of extensions making it useless. I’ve been scolded in the past for using the "wrong" client, making my messages look weird for people using the "right" client. Just make a good protocol.
fsflover 2y ago
> "Wait, e-mail can do this, we just need a pretty UI" This reminds me on this nice comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19217818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19217818
- em-bee 2y ago
  i have been arguing this ever since ICQ became popular. back then i got a lot of angry reactions. i already explained it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38029579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38029579 that generic server backend that i am describing in my linked comment is something i am using here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159045
lxgr 2y ago
No, if anything we'd be using XMPP or Matrix. Email is the completely wrong protocol choice for instant messaging. It's just a completely different use case. You wouldn't send a letter to the fire department if your house is on fire either.
- immibis 2y ago
  Only because we choose it to be. When you use XMPP or Matrix you know your message will be delivered instantly. When you use email you don't. But that's only because we haven't defined an extension that tells the client whether the server can deliver messages instantly. It's not really that inherent to the system. Surely you've had at least one real-time conversation by email because both of you happened to be online at the same time and nothing went wrong necessitating a message delay.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Yes, it's theoretically possible to adapt many protocols to many use cases, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Email and XMPP are just geared towards very different use cases. In particular, Email has a lot of assumptions about acceptable delivery delays, bidirectional (non-)reachability etc. baked in that would be very hard to globally undo.
    - immibis 2y ago
      As programmers, is it not our natural instinct to create a ChatSystem and MailSystem on top of a GenericMessageDeliverySystem? When did we stop doing that? Creating a brand new GenericMessageDeliverySystem for each purpose comes with substantial costs. We don't reinvent the Internet to create WhatsApp.
      - lxgr 2y ago
        What generic message delivery system are you talking about, though? SMTP is optimized for the use case of email; XMPP is optimized for one-to-one instant messaging; Matrix is optimized for "Slack-like" chat. I highly doubt that these three use cases are similar enough to warrant introducing an additional common protocol/layer.

mab122 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

drpossum 2y ago

To say nothing of the fact that most people are not running their own email servers so that messaging is going to reside in places they don't own and the fact that relays get to read about everything exacerbating that problem, so you cannot really expect forward secrecy: Does this solve all the other problems with encrypted email, which is not widely used for a reason? Here's a discussion https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted/ https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypte...

lxgr 2y ago
> most people are not running their own email servers I honestly don't care about what the people I communicate with do, as long as I have the capability to at least own my persistent identifier (i.e. my TLD). Just having that capability exerts just the right type of pressure on large service providers to maintain a baseline quality of service, regardless of whether the majority actually makes use of it or not, just like phone number portability has done in that domain.
em-bee 2y ago
messaging is going to reside in places they don't own but that is the case with every messenger that stores messages on your behalf. telegram, whatsapp, signal... with those ALL people are not running their own servers. whatsapp and signal store encrypted copies of the messages, and so does deltachat. beyond that each client also stores a copy of each message locally. as does deltachat. in difference to all others at least with deltachat i have a choice to use a different server that i trust. with whatsapp and signal i don't have that choice.
em-bee 2y ago
Does this solve all the other problems with encrypted email it doesn't solve all of them but a few at least. i don't believe using pgp itself is a problem. if it was deltachat could replace it with another better encryption. metadata is a problem. that could be solved by removing messages from the email server and storing them elsewhere. (or storing them back on the server with the metadata removed). that doesn't prevent intermediate mail forwarders from keeping a copy though. i think that is the real problem. deltachat doesn't control the communication channel and can't prevent leaking. i don't know how matrix or jabber compare here. if they use intermediate servers to forward messages the problem would remain. message content leaking is not a problem because messages won't ever be decrypted on the server. long term secret leaking is a problem tied to the current implementation of pgp. deltachat could change that (and maybe it does?)

wink 2y ago

From the website: > Reliable instant messaging If it's based on e-mail, it's just not. (if we assume generally close-to-realtime delivery and not being blocked by random recipients)

foul 2y ago
Email is a communication system with a lot of moving parts. You can't have reliable IM through existing MX servers but you may have it if for example SMTPs are running on your machine and you poll their data more (it's just an example, I know that with an SMTP running on your phone you'd have more problems).
- hkt 2y ago
  See earlier on today's front page, another all in one mail server. It is much, much simpler than it was to do this. I've been self hosting email for nearly 20 years and the state of the art is considerably better now. Latency is virtually nonexistent and federation works.
  - wink 2y ago
    I'd say it's good enough - but I refuse to call a conversation over email "reliable" as in the properties I expect from a realtime messenger.
    - foul 2y ago
      It's reliable, it conveys messages, but not instant at all.

jasode 2y ago

>It is amazing that even really a vast majority of, even technical people, not once stopped and looked at whatsapp, and said "Wait, e-mail can do this, we just need a pretty UI". WhatsApp lets people find each other with phone numbers instead email addresses. This has a profound difference in real-world usability because it decreases friction. Before WhatsApp, people texted each other using cell companies' SMS service. Why did Person A (who already had an email address) send a SMS text to Person B (who also already had an email address) to chat?!? Because both people already had each others' phone number in their smartphone's address books. Recording each other's email address is less likely so it won't be used as "ids" to chat -- especially between friends & family. To wit, my mother has already memorized my brand new phone number that I've only had for a few years but she doesn't know my email address at all even though I've sent it and re-sent it to her multiple times. To normal people, the phone numbers are more sacred than email addresses. WhatsApp was a continuation of the conveniences of SMS -- without paying 10 cents per message to the mobile phone carriers. Friction from cognitive overhead is a big deal in technology adoption.

wisienkas 2y ago
I mean you could simply setup a registry of Aliases for emails to achieve the same effect? On the same note, isn't phone numbers being more sensitive information than email nowadays, hence you might not want to share it.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  That ship seems to have largely sailed and the trend will be hard to reverse given how cell number has started to become all-purpose ID number tracker.
sras-me 2y ago
>both people already had each others' phone number in their smartphone's address book... Look if it is saved in the smartphone's address book, why does it matter if it is email or a phone number. I bet that people don't actually memorize even the phone numbers of people close to them these days. >Why did Person A (who already had an email address) send a SMS text to Person B (who also already had an email address) to chat?!? I think it is because we didn't have near universal internet access in smartphones for a long time. If Whatsapp (or something like that) was a little bit late to appear, and the tech crowd was actually a bit more smarter, things like Delta Chat had a much better chance to be in Whatsapps current place.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

I mean... WhatsApp is literally XMPP / Jabber... It's amazing that we didn't stop and said, wait, Jabber can do this, we just need a pretty UI... Hell, Jabber can still do this. I'm not convinced of the other modern alternatives that don't have half the functional capabilities that Jabber do. The only "downside" of Jabber is that it's XML based, but really if you think about it, that's a strength. Anyone here could probably parse the protocol effortlessly. There's also lots of fully functional clients out today, and servers that scale like nobody's business. I'm more ashamed we don't invest more into XMPP: Google Talk, Facebook Chat and WhatsApp were built around it. These are companies with insane to scale userbases, tried and tested. Here's a 2008 article from Facebook on using their chat with a Jabber client: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/110/ https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/110/

thiht 2y ago
> it's XML based, but really if you think about it, that's a strength Nope. Another downside is the X. The protocol being extensible means that no two clients implement the same subset of extensions making it useless. I’ve been scolded in the past for using the "wrong" client, making my messages look weird for people using the "right" client. Just make a good protocol.

fsflover 2y ago

> "Wait, e-mail can do this, we just need a pretty UI" This reminds me on this nice comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19217818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19217818

em-bee 2y ago
i have been arguing this ever since ICQ became popular. back then i got a lot of angry reactions. i already explained it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38029579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38029579 that generic server backend that i am describing in my linked comment is something i am using here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159045

lxgr 2y ago

No, if anything we'd be using XMPP or Matrix. Email is the completely wrong protocol choice for instant messaging. It's just a completely different use case. You wouldn't send a letter to the fire department if your house is on fire either.

immibis 2y ago
Only because we choose it to be. When you use XMPP or Matrix you know your message will be delivered instantly. When you use email you don't. But that's only because we haven't defined an extension that tells the client whether the server can deliver messages instantly. It's not really that inherent to the system. Surely you've had at least one real-time conversation by email because both of you happened to be online at the same time and nothing went wrong necessitating a message delay.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Yes, it's theoretically possible to adapt many protocols to many use cases, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Email and XMPP are just geared towards very different use cases. In particular, Email has a lot of assumptions about acceptable delivery delays, bidirectional (non-)reachability etc. baked in that would be very hard to globally undo.
  - immibis 2y ago
    As programmers, is it not our natural instinct to create a ChatSystem and MailSystem on top of a GenericMessageDeliverySystem? When did we stop doing that? Creating a brand new GenericMessageDeliverySystem for each purpose comes with substantial costs. We don't reinvent the Internet to create WhatsApp.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      What generic message delivery system are you talking about, though? SMTP is optimized for the use case of email; XMPP is optimized for one-to-one instant messaging; Matrix is optimized for "Slack-like" chat. I highly doubt that these three use cases are similar enough to warrant introducing an additional common protocol/layer.