5 ms·

I've been using this for the last 6 months or so. Seems pretty good as a client. Stable on the comms side, although short of an audit, I'm just having faith i

by adwf 11y ago

I've been using this for the last 6 months or so. Seems pretty good as a client. Stable on the comms side, although short of an audit, I'm just having faith in the security side of things. What it really needs is some way of having a roaming profile though. Currently you have to have multiple accounts, one for each device. So my friends list has a lot of duplicates depending on whether they're on their work computer, at home, on their phone, etc... I'm not actually that fussed about the encryption side of things. I'm far more happy with the lack of reliance on centralised servers. You don't need an account somewhere to get it up and running, you just send a message to a friend and compare secrets to authenticate.

lockyc 11y ago
Why don't you copy the profile between computers?
- adwf 11y ago
  It's not my computer that's the problem. He has three and has separate profiles for each. Also, asking people to export profiles and import multiple times is a bit too technical and far too much effort to ask all my friends to do. It needs to have some easy way of merging profiles cross-device. Maybe if a friend authenticates two profiles as the same person it will merge them if you agree to it. Or something along those lines anyway.
Sir_Substance 11y ago
I'm a big fan of accountless systems, but utox does need to solve the roaming profile issue. It simply cannot be used in the real world until they nut that one.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  Definitely a crucial feature, but a difficult one for any truly distributed application. I'm actually prototyping a similar distributed messaging app using remotestorage.io to try to tackle this issue of profile roaming and persistence. In theory it should allow profiles to live in the cloud (in any backend supported by remotestorage, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and ofc remotestorage servers) and be sync'd automatically across devices to enable features like roaming profiles and simultaneous logins in a distributed manner. In practice, however, there is still a number of complications such as the need to secure the data being stored from storage providers (remotestorage itself doesn't offer encryption natively), and coordinating communications between accounts with multiple devices (network endpoints) to minimize network inefficiencies. I'm mostly done with the former and steadily making progress toward the latter, so I feel this could be something to consider for the Tox team as well. https://remotestorage.io/ https://remotestorage.io/
  - Sir_Substance 11y ago
    >Definitely a crucial feature, but a difficult one for any truly distributed application. I actually don't see why it need be for a messaging app. I guess it depends on the features you are trying to move with the profile, but I just want a single address people can send messages to. I'm happy to reconstruct the profile (name, timezone etc.) on the other device, but I'll never persuade my friends and family to use it if they have to guess which one of 5 devices I am using each time they want to send me a message, and a messaging service that my friends and family won't use is useless to me.
detaro 11y ago
Yeah, way to many messengers seem to assume "Well, everyone has just 1 phone anyways, and where else would you want to use a messenger". I get that desktop clients etc are not the first thing on the priority list, but still it is very annoying (and the first one which gets that right I'm pushing everybody to.) (Threema actually recommends a workaround: "Just create a groupchat for each of your contacts with all your devices in it and always use that")
- adwf 11y ago
  Thanks, that's a good workaround, I'll try it tomorrow. It should still be a default thing if they want mainstream adoption though.

by adwf 11y ago

lockyc 11y ago

Why don't you copy the profile between computers?

adwf 11y ago
It's not my computer that's the problem. He has three and has separate profiles for each. Also, asking people to export profiles and import multiple times is a bit too technical and far too much effort to ask all my friends to do. It needs to have some easy way of merging profiles cross-device. Maybe if a friend authenticates two profiles as the same person it will merge them if you agree to it. Or something along those lines anyway.

Sir_Substance 11y ago

I'm a big fan of accountless systems, but utox does need to solve the roaming profile issue. It simply cannot be used in the real world until they nut that one.

lewisl9029 11y ago
Definitely a crucial feature, but a difficult one for any truly distributed application. I'm actually prototyping a similar distributed messaging app using remotestorage.io to try to tackle this issue of profile roaming and persistence. In theory it should allow profiles to live in the cloud (in any backend supported by remotestorage, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and ofc remotestorage servers) and be sync'd automatically across devices to enable features like roaming profiles and simultaneous logins in a distributed manner. In practice, however, there is still a number of complications such as the need to secure the data being stored from storage providers (remotestorage itself doesn't offer encryption natively), and coordinating communications between accounts with multiple devices (network endpoints) to minimize network inefficiencies. I'm mostly done with the former and steadily making progress toward the latter, so I feel this could be something to consider for the Tox team as well. https://remotestorage.io/ https://remotestorage.io/
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  >Definitely a crucial feature, but a difficult one for any truly distributed application. I actually don't see why it need be for a messaging app. I guess it depends on the features you are trying to move with the profile, but I just want a single address people can send messages to. I'm happy to reconstruct the profile (name, timezone etc.) on the other device, but I'll never persuade my friends and family to use it if they have to guess which one of 5 devices I am using each time they want to send me a message, and a messaging service that my friends and family won't use is useless to me.

detaro 11y ago

Yeah, way to many messengers seem to assume "Well, everyone has just 1 phone anyways, and where else would you want to use a messenger". I get that desktop clients etc are not the first thing on the priority list, but still it is very annoying (and the first one which gets that right I'm pushing everybody to.) (Threema actually recommends a workaround: "Just create a groupchat for each of your contacts with all your devices in it and always use that")

adwf 11y ago
Thanks, that's a good workaround, I'll try it tomorrow. It should still be a default thing if they want mainstream adoption though.