Comment by hnlmorg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnlmorg | Hacker News Reader

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> I saw that, and it's simply a ridiculous and narrow minded viewpoint

No need to be abusive. And lets not forget I'm basing my views on technical arguments, which is the opposite of being narrow minded. If you want to convince me that XMPP is worth trying then you need to provide me with technical reasons why I should.

> I myself have rediscovered XMPP in the past two years (whilst using other tools like Matrix for other roles). The experience has revolutionized the way I view chats apps and even I host my own server on my own bare metal.

Good for you. I wasn't suggesting nobody should use it though. I was only answering why I wouldn't be investing any more of my own finite amount of free time on it. That doesn't make me narrow minded. That just makes me busy enough that I need to make trade offs with my time.

> The thing quite simply flies and is rock solid. I've also seen multihour WhatsApp and Signal outages go by whereas my friends and I have kept chatting on my reliable server.

You can't compare a personal chat server for friends with a service with multi-national infrastructure used by millions. Problems grow exponentially with scale.

> Never had an issue with STARTTLS.

Then you've not spent enough time working with SMTP. :) But my point wasn't that STARTTLS sucks (though it does) but rather that STARTTLS should have been a warning sign that we need to abandon SMTP for something better.

> XMPP has silently evolved with the times and is far better than ever and should simply be the go to if you want to have control over your own comms.

Maybe but I haven't yet heard what any of these improvements are from you though. You've talked about how XMPP makes you feel, you've talked about how my previous post made you feel, but you've not actually talked about XMPP itself. For a technical conversation your reply lacked a lot of detail about the tech and a lot of abuse towards the person you're trying to persuade.

> And lets not forget I'm basing my views on technical arguments

You're not, you just simply have a strong opinion about something you haven't even tried (in the last decade) and thus basically know nothing about it. It's a view based on ignorance.

You're just throwing insults around again and still haven't posted a single technical argument. You haven't even posted a rebuttal to my own technical points aside saying "it's better and you're a dick for not trying it" -- to paraphrase. And frankly it is my personal time we are talking about so it is none of your business whether I do decide to try it again or not (for reference, I'm busy working on open source projects to benefit people like yourself while also holding down a full time job and raising two young kids. So I make trade offs of what interests me and what doesn't or might cost my productivity. That is why I don't have time for all the fanciful projects that random people on HN claim I should be doing. Not that that is any of your business).

If you want a grown up conversation then I'm happy to engage. But don't waste my time with petty insults and vague claims of greatness when you're unwilling or unable to add any technical detail to back up your bluntness.

> still haven't posted a single technical argument

Have you even tried reading the original article that this thread is literally linked to at the very top?

Yes. It's an interesting article but doesn't specifically address the points I've been making and nor does it explain your point.

- They talk about evaluating extensions but extensions was one of the things I raised as being a turn off.

- They talk about clients, but there's no shortage of other chat solutions out there with decent clients these days. A list of platforms and links to clients doesn't tell me whether XMPP clients are buggy or well polished. Let alone why I should use XMPP over another solution with a well polished client.

- They talk about privacy but even on XMPP that's not a given and there are other solutions out there if you're interested in privacy.

- They talk about voice and video calls, and that at least is new from when I last tried. So that's one thing in favour of your point. However I already have a half a dozen platforms that do that -- platforms that already have my friends and family on it. Why should I set up another? And moreover how am I going to convince my friends and family to install this other chat client if you can't even convince me, a fellow technology geek, to try it?

This is why I talk about XMPP missing the boat. People gave XMPP a try and moved on. And for all my asking, neither the article nor yourself can explain why XMPP is a cut above the rest. Worse yet, all the talk in the article of "evaluating extensions" and "reviewing privacy" doesn't convince me that it's any less annoying to set up either.

> - They talk about evaluating extensions but extensions was one of the things I raised as being a turn off.

They can be daunting at the start (as it is with learning any new technology ecosystem), but once configured; it's not something one thinks about.

> - They talk about clients, but there's no shortage of other chat solutions out there with decent clients these days. A list of platforms and links to clients doesn't tell me whether XMPP clients are buggy or well polished. Let alone why I should use XMPP over another solution with a well polished client.

My personal favourite is conversations.im, but these days, with the notable exception from Pidgin, they all tend to interoperate fine. iOS clients still has issues with push notifications (thanks to the OS level) that are being fixed: https://snikket.org/blog/snikket-ios-public-release/

> - They talk about privacy but even on XMPP that's not a given and there are other solutions out there if you're interested in privacy.

Disagree on this point:

- Other solutions generally require a number or email address. On XMPP, you can simply create an account by pointing a client at a server and asking for an account (you can even create a completely random pseudonym).

- Other solutions do not generally allow you to self-host (Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, etc), so they're not private even to begin with.

- Other solutions don't generally have the flexibility of federation to let you talk to other servers (such as Mattermost).

- XMPP clients also have optional support for Tor, and servers can be hosted on hidden services and can talk to servers over Tor too - which is much better than Signal and others should you desire an elevated level of privacy (I do not bother with this point, but if I met someone who did - good to have as an option)

- Things like Briar that do P2P do exist, but their clients are lacking in other areas such as voice calls, multi-platform support, etc.

> - They talk about voice and video calls, and that at least is new from when I last tried. So that's one thing in favour of your point. However I already have a half a dozen platforms that do that -- platforms that already have my friends and family on it. Why should I set up another? And moreover how am I going to convince my friends and family to install this other chat client if you can't even convince me, a fellow technology geek, to try it?

It's just chat at the end of the day, and as I said - I did not want to rely on a third-party for something as crucial as my personal, private comms.

Another thing that I enjoy about XMPP is that the clients support multiple accounts as a first-class feature (something you cannot do on Signal/WhatsApp). Theoretically; from the same app; I could have accounts for personal, work, a neighborhood chat, and an account over at sfconservancy[1], whilst being able to enable/disable as and when I want to.

This last point is more pertinent as people become fatigued and bored of having to have multiple apps for different contacts across multiple platforms (a pain point made worse as new chat apps come into life every other year and contacts decide to move over). In my case, I know that there will be open-source XMPP clients that I can use to log into my server and still have the same contact list.

Tools like https://quicksy.im/ also exist to make it easier for normal people to adjust to an XMPP client before moving them over to non-number based accounts.

[1]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jun/21/chat-options/

I really appreciate you taking the time to post that. It was a really interesting read and filled in a lot of blanks I had as to why people are still pushing XMPP. Thank you :)

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