Notices by MattJ (mattj@floss.social)

:terminal: Tip for #shell users: if you don't already know about 'Alt+.' then you should! It inserts the last argument of the previous command where you are typing. Press it multiple times to step back through the command history.

Even if you know this, you may not know that if you press it too many times, you can flip the direction (i.e. step forwards instead) by pressing 'Alt+-'.

Finally, if you want e.g. the 2nd argument instead of the last one, press 'Alt+2' before you press 'Alt+.'.

@whynothugo
"Snikket". Aware of the potential for bias because I started the project, but also important to note that it's *why* I started the project 🙂

Unless you're in a technical discussion, pitching a protocol to someone has a 10% success rate or less in my experience. What people want is a name they can search for in app stores, and get something user-friendly that just works, with the features they expect. Not protocols, XEP lists and server compatibility charts.

@stanford
OTR usage in XMPP has long been replaced by OMEMO, which supports multiple devices, offline messaging, groups, encrypted file transfers, audio/video calls and so on.

OMEMO is based on the protocol Signal uses.

Google have been quietly de-listing #XMPP apps from their Play store one-by-one for made-up reasons. Today they finally came for Conversations (https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111929074071688694 ).

@fdroidorg doesn't have these problems, and they additionally rebuild from source, supporting reproducible builds (so unlike the Play store, you know the published source code matches what's in the app you download). With their recent enhancements (https://f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.html ) I'll be recommending it to more people.

@moanos
I'm an XMPP person (e.g. I founded the Snikket project). I think I would objectively recommend Matrix/Element to people looking for something like a self-hosted Slack or Discord, while I would recommend XMPP/Snikket to people looking for a self-hosted WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/etc.

The main complaint I hear about Matrix from people switching to XMPP is that the servers are too heavy on resources. I know that Matrix scales differently to XMPP though (by room and not by user).
@jr @shxdow

@mattj
So I'm quite sure a Matrix server that is used only to access small rooms can perform quite well (maybe not quite as well as XMPP though 🙃).

But XMPP doesn't currently have a good answer to Slack/Discord-like UIs in the ecosystem. Eyes are on https://prose.org/ as a hopeful solution though!
@moanos @jr @shxdow

@Revertron
Why?
@pettter @muelli @KekunPlazas @garrett

@Revertron
Here is a screenshot of Gajim from the early 2000s (it didn't exist in the 1990s, but maybe they inspired it) and a screenshot of a recent release for comparison.
@pettter @muelli @KekunPlazas @garrett

@Revertron
Dino, Gajim and Beagle are all desktop XMPP clients used daily by many people.

Of course "decent" is not something you can measure objectively - everyone has their own requirements and preferences in practice. Just as some people don't consider Element or DeltaChat "decent".

But that's why interoperable open ecosystems are essential: people can choose software that works for them without sacrificing the ability to communicate with their contacts.
@muelli @KekunPlazas @garrett

@muelli
I'm curious on what you base this, as the #XMPP community is actually very active in both standards and software development 🙂

You can get an idea of some of the activity at https://xmpp.org/categories/newsletter/

If you have any questions about the world of XMPP, I'm happy to answer them!
@KekunPlazas @garrett

@clacke
Generally anyone with an interest in development of the XMPP protocol is welcome ?

This year has been shaken up a little due to various factors including a last-minute venue change, so space is limited. If you're really interested, drop me a message on XMPP ('me' @ 'matthewwild.co.uk') and we'll see what we can do.

Otherwise, come find us at the realtime lounge stand at FOSDEM and we'll happily answer any questions you have about XMPP ?

@clacke
This is a very detailed write-up of the XMPP summit experience from the perspective of a new participant: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/XMPP_summits_for_dummies

@evan I went down a rabbit hole recently, trying to determine the ideal temperature of our home. It turns out that "thermal comfort" is a whole extensive field of research, and there are multiple standards defined for it.

Spoiler (or not): there is no ideal temperature that suits everyone! Instead there are ways to calculate (estimate) the percentage of people who would report as being comfortable/uncomfortable given certain parameters (temp, humidity, air speed, etc.).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_comfort

This evening I pushed a #Prosody community module that acts as a #UnifiedPush server. It allows apps on your phone to receive push notifications, using #XMPP as the delivery channel instead of Google's proprietary FCM or regular polling.

It uses a protocol devised and implemented by @daniel and all credit goes to him for this idea and first implementations.

It's all experimental stuff, but I'm already using it to get realtime notifications in #Fedilab ?

https://modules.prosody.im/mod_unified_push

@downey
Sadly, for every anti-Matrix post I can show you an anti-XMPP post. But apart from singling out #XMPP, I totally agree with your point.