WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

Flowdalic's comments

Flowdalic | 7 years ago | on: Welcome to DNS, or Saving the DNS Camel [pdf]

First, let me say thank you for your efforts towards making DNS more accessible for implementors. Could you elaborate on "CNAME chasing to other zones: let’s not" and "Adding glue from other zones: let’s not"?

Flowdalic | 8 years ago | on: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

That is a very pessimistic view on the current state of LN. There are three independent open-source LN implementations [1, 2, 3] out there that are being worked on and already implement basic functionality. All three contribute to an document, called Basics Of The Lightning Network (BOLT) [4], which forms an open standard for LN.

I wouldn't call it vaporware. Yes, there are unsurprisingly open questions. But nothing which can't be solved.

1: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd 2: https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair 3: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning 4: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc

Flowdalic | 8 years ago | on: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

A common mistake made by "self-appointed" bitcoin experts and IMHO a good indicator for more red flags.

> On one side are those who believe that Bitcoin is … money, currency, …. On the other side are those who believe that it is a commodity, ….

That is the other red flag: Trying to construct two different exclusive camps. This goes along with not mentioning the Lightning Network (LN). Some people still don't see that LN could enable bitcoin to be both: A currency and a commodity.

Flowdalic | 9 years ago | on: The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016

As of now I recommend everybody to use Prosody stable as XMPP server running on Debian stable. Enable the Prosody modules that provide the XEPs mentioned in Daniel's blog post and/or in XEP-0375: XMPP Compliance Suites 2016[1]. You can either run it at home, which means you have the full stack incl. hardware under your control, or rent a cheap vServer for this, which eventually makes the initial setup easier, as you don't have to deal with dynamic IP addresses. Maintaining a Prosody stable installation on Debian stable means usually nero zero effort. Make sure to have the "security" apt sources and eventually Debian's unattended-upgrade[2] enabled. That's it.

1: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0375.html 2: https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades

Flowdalic | 9 years ago | on: The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016

Your claim that XMPP is a bandwidth-hungry, but in my experience, if XMPP based systems drain battery and consume a lot of bandwidth, then it's because of a poor implementation and design decisions, and not because of the protocol.

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: OX (OpenPGP for XMPP): A New OpenPGP XEP

OTR [1], Axolotl [2] and OMEMO [3] all provide Perfect Forward Secrecy, which in turn means that you can't (or should not be able to) read your archived messages. And with OTR can't send messages to offline contacts. OpenPGP does not provide this property, which allows you to read your encrypted messages in the archive as long as you have access to your OpenPGP secret key and it allows you to send messages to offline contacts.

1: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ 2: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/wiki/Protoc... 3: http://conversations.im/omemo/

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

Addendum: As Zash pointed out[1], this is documented behavior for offline messages, i.e. messages send while the user was offline. Those are only send if the user announced availability via a presence or if XEP-13: Flexible Offline Message Retrieval is used. This is to prevent storms of offline messages when the client (re-)connects.

But it's certainly not true that you "won't receive any message despite ... successful connection".

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043962

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

I don't think that aspect is intentionally ignored, it's just that most FOSS projects are seriously understaffed, and the UX/UI part is not a high priority item compared to getting it to work.

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

Course, you shouldn't poll and if those mechanisms aren't coordinated, then you you will suffer. But that's why Android provides the AlarmManager API and I would expect other mobile platforms to provide something similar.

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

I use my mobile XMPP connections without a TCP keepalive but send a server ping if there has been stanzas received in the last 30 minutes and get a useful and reliable XMPP connection without a noticeable impact on battery. If you use Android's AlarmManager to trigger the check, then Android will even take care of scheduling the "alarm" with other alarms for efficiency.

> Multiply that by the number of connections your application will have and by the number of background application you run on your phone, and the radio will never truly sleep or enter the "low" mode.

Why would X x Y idle connections (X: TCP connections per app, Y: applictions) prevent your radio from sleeping?

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

> I don't know how accurate Android's power estimates are, but I consistently have people telling me that they are switching back to proprietary messengers because every XMPP client they've tried drained their battery. Whatever causes it, there's a real problem here.

You have to differentiate between the specification and the implemetation. Nothing in the XMPP specification prevents you from implementing a battery friendly XMPP client. But some implementations suck/have room for improvement.

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

tl;dr It's being worked on (or already solved), but I'm sure the XMPP community welcomes additional contributors.

1-3. Could be solved with upcoming versions of XEP-313 MAM.

4. e2e There is currently a XSF GSOC project running, bringing axolotl to Conversations (and eventually describing the protocol as an XEP).

5. There are a few standards on how to perform encrypted file transfers, but implementations are lacking. You are invited to code one.

6. XEP-357: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html

Flowdalic | 10 years ago | on: XMPP Myths

Idle TCP connections do not consume any battery.

And on a data connectivity change, e.g. GSM <-> WiFi switch, there is a good chance that a dozen other components start trying to re-establish their connections, which means the radio is awake anyway (for, usually, at most a few seconds).

page 2
newer more