Our end-to-end encryption engine rPGP just got a big update, fully supporting OpenPGP "cryptorefresh" RFC9850 ... Many thanks to @hko and dignifiedquire for fearlessly pushing ahead in the security machine room ... Please give them a 💜 and also @NGIZero who funded it ! https://fosstodon.org/@hko/113198947595455844
Delta Chat 1.38 releases: WebXDC apps can now exchange data with other tools and run on other messengers! We've implemented a little Calendar and Draw app to showcase the two new APIs and besides have other good news for the nascent privacy-guaranteeing Next-Generation-Internet ... just a "start" button for chat-shared apps with no GDPR or cookie-consents, no coins, no app or account hosting and thus no logins ;) https://delta.chat/en/2023-06-28-webxdc-import-export
A major milestone in our 6+ years long project history: With the rolling 1.46 #deltachat app releases you can start chatting without a pre-existing e-mail address, and benefit from push notifications (instant message delivery) also on Android. We also highlight ways to get in contact with bots and humans, and how #chatmail makes e-mail cheap again https://delta.chat/en/2024-05-31-instant-onboarding
While we do have criticisms of its centralized architecture and other choices we highly regard Signal for ushering in a decade of popularizing end-to-end encryption. We particularly appreciate @Mer__edith doing excellent communication work there. It's disingenuous that tech-billionaires Musk/Dorsey fuel attacks on her and another female colleague, hinting at Telegram as a more secure messenger. Comparing security of Signal with Telegram simply results in "Type Error: incompatible arguments".
#DeltaTouch, the native #UbuntuTouch version of delta chat just announced they are going for full webxdc app support in the summer .... There also is an experimental way to run it on #nixos to get a desktop that is not based on Elektron. Shout-out to @lk108 who is heading this great work even if it's "niche" for now .... DeltaTouch is pretty close to mainline features and arguably the best messenger on that os! https://social.tchncs.de/@deltatouch/112446568813809144
Often overlooked from our "but e-mail!" skeptics: Any sufficiently advanced P2P messenger will eventually re-invent a custom, partial form of e-mail ... because users want to communicate when their apps are offline or not foregrounded and active at the same time. See https://briarproject.org/download-briar-mailbox/ for a recent example.
Delta Chat goes the reverse route by providing a secure and interoperable e-mail based messaging experience and then adds P2P tech like https://webxdc.org on top.
The problem with asking the experts about something genuinely new is, according to Heinz von Foerster, that they will only explain to you why it can't work or why it is a bad idea. We had no shortage of such experts in the past years :) However, common objections like "e-mail is too slow", "secure e-mail is not possible", "you can not do a Whatsapp-style interface on top of e-mail" are having an increasingly hard time to be upheld because of the reality of Delta Chat apps working :)
Delta Chat is an in-between project: often ignored as a messenger by e-mail companies/experts and then ignored by messenger companies/experts because of its use and interoperability with e-mail. As Heinz von Foerster once said: "If you are doing something genuinely new then don't ask the experts. If you do something that has already been done, then, by all means, ask the experts." FWIW many experts have verified Delta Chat's security mechanics https://delta.chat/en/help#security-audits :)
@crepererum@stillgreenmoss@ben@besendorf OpenMLS is an almost decade- long effort with the IETF work starting in 2018. We have studied it and are following developments but one known big issue is its dependency on "total message ordering" which can not be easily obtained in federated settings. Several people, including Matrix folks, have tried to remedy it but we do not know of any practical solution to make OpenMLS work reasonably well for non-centralised settings.
#deltachat just got four major usability improvements as the 1.44 releases are rolling out 💗 Reactions on all platforms 💗 iOS Push notifications 💗 Multi-account desktop sidebar 💗 share invite links via other messengers. Enjoy :) https://delta.chat/en/2024-03-12-jumbo44
The last #deltachat 1.44 release round did not only contain a lot of UI/UX milestones but also 20 security fixes based on a deep analysis from Yuanming Song and colleagues of the Applied Cryptography group at ETH Zuerich https://delta.chat/en/2024-03-25-crypto-analysis-securejoin
Given the experiences of the last decade it's healthy to distrust #decentralized tech if
- it's mainly developed by a centralized power structure - the involved technology is very complex - there is coin or VC funding involved
#deltachat has 1/100th, if even that, of what other popular messenging projects have in terms of moneys. But our distributed top-notch expertise in UI, crypto, networking tech and our federated collaborative practises across these concerns, try to make up for it ...
@clacke@geerlingguy You might try sending the "editor" app into saved-messages or one of your groups. It's an actual editor you can use then in a multi-device setting, to keep and modify notes. https://webxdc.org/apps/
While certain platform billionaires chatter about "everything" or "super" app architectures, we prefer to deliver and improve them — message "Hi" to xstore@testrun.org :) #deltachat#webxdc
@pixelcode we have had our troubles with fdroid classifications as well due to some automated code scanners (some code built but not linked into the final artifact) disabling fdroid releases retroactively (causing troubles foramy users). We scrambled to fix and adapt and remained doubtful of.the precise reasoning and procedures. Then again, fdroid has a lot of things to cope with and we respect and depend on their work.
@nx it's conceptually similar but API/protocol-wise quite different. If someone would try to implement another transport layer in our Rust Core library then a big part of the apps would "just work". But that is a big if, and not a trivial undertaking.
@nx@LemmyDev I asked around in a dev chat - whether it's possible depends a lot on whether ActivityPub offers additional fields for metadata. In E-Mail you can just add more headers, not sure how easy that is with ActivityPub. Maybe the @LemmyDev folks know it out of their head?