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snvzz

It does the job, and it isn't centralized. It "just works". Resource usage is also pretty low.

I can't comprehend why this isn't widely used.

I wish this was a thing _before_ crap like WhatsApp, Skype or Discord got so popular.

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>I can't comprehend why this isn't widely used.

Maintaining the DHT connection is "expensive", expensive meaning a few packets a minute. That means mobile clients can't enter sleep and stay connected, (without corp backed push notification services. Which we can't use/trust) So it'll kill expected battery life on mobile. Add to that, multidevice isn't supported, (I implemented the feature, but it didn't get merged before my will to work was killed by trolls) and Tox can be a bit frustrating to use. :(

> Maintaining the DHT connection is "expensive", expensive meaning a few packets a minute.

Could power be saved by batching messages?

For example, in Bluetooth Low Energy, much power is saved by the radio waking up infrequently, and only staying on for a brief duration. That's how one makes sensors that run for a year off of coin cells.

I wonder if it would improve the power situation on mobile if the DHT was maintained by far less frequent but larger bursts of network traffic.

Just curious, how does Matrix solve this problem?

Matrix is centralized, the server does all the heavy lifting.

Matrix isn't centralized, though it's true servers do the heavy lifting for now (eventually you will be able to run the server on the clients)

But how does that solve getting notifications to a mobile device? Does the phone just poll the server all the time? Wouldn't that eat a lot of battery?

The phone polls only one server, in p2p it will need to poll a good chunk of whole network.

It wasn't a thing before Skype, but it predates Discord, and might predate Whatsapp, or at least predates me hearing about Whatsapp in the US.

It was a hobby project originally started by a bunch of anons in 4chan, and every time it gets attention, people point out it hasn't been audited, and no one has their reputation at stake. And it doesn't have any desktop/mobile sync.

Not being audited is key here. Would you trust closed source software to live up to its security promises without audits? I sure wouldn't!

Well this is free software, but u less you're competent to audit it yourself, it's still unwise to rely on its security promises. But for people who don't need the guarantees, it would be nice if Tox were more convenient to use.

What are the benefits of Tox without the guarantees?

Not intended as snark. Genuinely interested.

Does it have some features there that are superior to other systems? (Outside of the obvious features that are not guaranteed via audit.)

Wait, there's a lot in the obvious features.

But security and privacy are not really guaranteed. (Unless you are a person capable of performing an audit yourself.) Presumably those who need security and privacy would need the guarantee. So I was wondering outside of those two, are there other compelling features Tox could be marketing?

I understood it that features that are not guaranteed via audit are features other than security and privacy. And features outside of features that are not guaranteed via audit are two features - security and privacy.

Even if the security is half as good as they claim, it's still much, much better than proprietary chat apps that do no encryption whatsoever and store all your messages on their servers in plaintext.

Also, there will only be real incentive to audit it if it becomes more popular.

Sure, but Tox has to beat Signal and self-hosted Matrix, not Telegram.

Afaik it has no support for receiving messages while offline, at least this was a blocker for me to consider it. Solutions with some mail box protocol on a DHT could work, but maybe it's not a hot research topic how to do this anonymously and reliable?

Offline messaging is important for a lot of people. Previously, my hope was with multidevice support, if you could have on device online, it could hold/route messages for the rest of your devices. Doesn't really solve all the problems, but it's an easy way to get closer. Anonymity and reliability isn't the problem. The issue we've always been blocked by was abuse. How do you prevent someone from DoS'ing the whole network. Evicting valid messages, or exhausting space for new ones.

I can't comprehend why this isn't widely used.

It doesn't have an iOS client.

It's hard to tell your employees to standardize on Tox when a good portion of them don't have a working client to install.

I'm no Apple fan but the world does not run on Android alone.

Yeah, this is a big problem as well. There used to be an iOS client, but it's developer moved on to other projects. So it's woefully unmaintained at this point.

If my employer wants me to use a piece of software then they have to provide the hardware on which it will run. Then it isn't a problem for the employee what hardware it runs on.

Because discord has a target market that does not care about encryption (gamers) the fact that others are using it as well isn't really their fault.

> crap like WhatsApp, Skype, or Discord

I agree up until you mention Discord. It works really well across all platforms (including the browser) and provides a very generous suite of features for free, some of which would be difficult to implement without centralization.

It also doesn't make money off selling user data; there is no actual evidence this has ever or will ever occur. Back when it was still floating on venture capital funds, it didn't need to make money. When it realized it needed to become profitable, instead of introducing invasive tracking and ads like other chat apps, it took a different approach: introducing the "Nitro" subscription which offers a slightly upgraded Discord experience (animated emoji, extra profile customization, etc) for $9.99/mo while keeping the core features free. It would be more comforting if they published the sales numbers so we could verify that Nitro is profitable, but I have no reason to doubt this approach is successful -- Nitro may not seem valuable to the average HN reader, but many users (including friends of mine) do find a lot of value in the features it offers.

By the way, I'm all for decentralized/encrypted chat apps and wish Tox success. It definitely irks me that all my Discord messages are stored on a corporate server outside my control, where Discord employees, the government, or any hacker who manages to break in to either my individual account or Discord's servers can freely read over them. However, I think the approach Discord is taking is different than the one taken by most chat apps and it's probably the best among the proprietary ones.

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