Daniel Gultsch

Project lead on https://Conversations.im and https://Ltt.rs

„Offensichtlich als Programmierer tätig“

3.0 W/kg

Public Key

npub1ypgz3qavuftxd7jduyhldlqpk2n2v4xcnc5rgtk4y0paycky5t7qfjpqu5

NIP-05 Address

daniel_at_gultsch.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszq5pgswkwy4nxlfx7ztlklsqm9f4x2nvfu2p59m2j8s7jvtz29lqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qd6u4s4

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub1ypgz3qavuftxd7jduyhldlqpk2n2v4xcnc5rgtk4y0paycky5t7qfjpqu5

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Last Notes

2024-05-26 06:38:13

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Maintenance took way longer then anticipated but we were done late last night. Unfortunately something else happened early this morning. We are working on it.

2024-05-24 06:24:26

We are finally going to upgrade our #ejabberd running on conversations.im, tomorrow, Saturday May 25th.
Unfortunately we won’t be able to do this without some down times throughout the day.
You can visit https://status.conversations.im/ for a simple up/down check or follow this thread for the occasional status update / progress report.

2024-05-01 06:47:11

Continuing a tradition #Conversations_im is available for free on the Google Play Store for the next 7 days.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations

2024-02-15 15:54:12

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@npub14kt…vcm8 'refuses to connect' is extremely generic. What error message are you getting?

2024-02-15 05:48:35

To celebrate Conversations being back on the Play Store and to deny Google their 15% cut I made the app free for the next ~48 hours. 😜
If you are new here: Check out #XMPP. It's federated, provider and vendor independent instant messaging. It’s great!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations
Or get it from #fdroid - That version even has address book integration and public channel discovery! 😂

2024-02-14 18:05:13

I hastily threw together a version of #Conversations_im that has no address book integration and doesn’t ask for Contacts permission.
This seems to have made it through Google Play review just now meaning the app is no available on Google Play again.
No indication from Google that they were in the wrong and hallucinated the whole "uploads contact list" thing. Instead I had to walk the path of least resistance and remove the useful and entirely harmless feature of address book integration.

2024-02-14 16:10:10

Let’s not forget that #Conversations_im was a paid app in Google Play. I made Google tens of thousands of Dollars in revenue over the years. You would think that this somehow entitled me to speak to a human for half an hour but you'd be wrong.

2024-02-14 14:38:05

Since people are asking how the can help with the situation.
· It’s a long shot but consider up-voting the Hacker News post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39368233 (I’m mostly just saying this to point out the absurdity of the situation that the only possible way to talk to an actual human at Evil Corp is to get enough traction on Hacker News.)
· I’m definitely not trying to solicit donations. I really like how Play Store sales shifted the financing away from "hardcore fans" to regular / more casual users.

2024-02-13 09:48:43

Here is some important context you need to understand Quicksy:
· It’s not successful at all. The user count has stagnated at just under 1,500 for years.
· It’s very expensive to run. While Quicksy doesn’t have that many users it has a good amount of registrations. Sending SMS is really expensive. There are months in which I’m paying ~100 Euro for server cost + SMS. I receive a few donations that reference Quicksy alongside Conversations but nothing close to 100 Euro / month.

2024-02-06 08:23:40

Despite the testing I’m currently doing on Android 6 & 7 Conversations 2.14.0 will bump the minimum Android version from 5 to 6. (API 21 to API 23)
However a 2.13.1, which brings improved P2P file transfer, will be released later today (pending PlayStore review).

2024-02-06 08:19:42

Quick update on the "I’m looking for old Android phones to test Conversations" situation (A little delayed because I had a very enjoyable winter holiday followed by the XMPP Summit and FOSDEM).
Thanks for the many offers and the boosts to increase visibility! Two phones, a Nexus 5 (Android 6) and a Galaxy S6 (Android 7), made their way to me. Special thanks to those two people.
Preliminary testing looks good. Expect the improved call integration to be merged soon!

2024-01-24 06:46:11

10 years ago I made the first commit¹ to Conversations.im
To 24 year old me working on one project for 10 years would have been unbelievable.
These days making commits at 2:00 in the morning is almost unbelievable 😂
Happy birthday Conversations! 🎂 🥳
(Someone should teach these kids how to write .gitignore files 😜)
¹: https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/commit/35f8ab58f4b6f97f02031b056d2a5f6f993672cf

2024-01-16 10:36:39

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@npub10kv…5urk even their 'Using your own instance of the Vonage SGX'¹ tutorial has a "now add cheogram.com to your roster" step. While what ever runs on cheogram.com seems to be open source² I have no idea what that even is as it doesn’t seem to have any documentation. What other bits do I need from the soprani.ca project? Presumably cheogram-sip and a patched Asterisk?
That’s all fine but self hosting doesn’t seem to be a focus of theirs.
¹: https://wiki.soprani.ca/VonageSetup
²: https://git.singpolyma.net/cheogram

2024-01-16 09:04:27

The reason I’m thinking about #XMPP<->Telephone Network is that I’m currently reworking how Conversations A/V calls integrate into the operating system and I’m one small step away from being able to tell Android "hey I can route normal phone calls for you"; However if one proprietary provider is virtually the only sensible way to do this I’m not interested. Given users the ability to easily self host is very important to the design philosophy of #Conversations_im.

2024-01-16 07:40:49

Is there any XMPP<->Telephony Network transport other than JMP/Soprani.ca that allows me to make calls with Conversations (or any other modern Jingle #XMPP client)
Soprani.ca seems like a pretty convoluted stack to set up if one wanted to self host.
TBH I don’t even know enough about the problem space to formulate what I’m looking for.
I think I already have a SIP account (comes with my internet at home / but never used it) so I guess I’m just looking for a 'modern Jingle'<->SIP gateway?

2023-12-24 07:03:23

As it is a long, long tradition Conversations is available for free on the Google Play store for the last week of December.
This tradition was originally born so that when I meet people at Chaos Communication Congress and they ask what I do, they have an easy way to install Conversations. In that regard it's a very special year as we are seeing the return of CCC.
However if you are meeting loved ones to celebrate something else these days that’s fine too.🎄
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations
#37C3 #XMPP

2023-12-20 08:56:24

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@npub1h2n…k25t Ich beziehe "regionalen" Ökostrom vom lokalen Versorger. Ich gehe trotzdem davon aus das das ein Scam ist. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

2023-12-20 08:53:06

Let’s give Meta the benefit of the doubt for one second and assume they want to embrace and extend but not extinguish #ActivityPub. Where do they go for the extend part? XMPP has the XMPP Standards Foundation that gives a diverse set of stakeholders a framework to collaborate on new extensions.
From standing on the sidelines for a year it looks a lot like #Mastodon is pretty much just doing their own thing.

2023-12-20 08:21:39

Intellectually I realize that Google Talk using XMPP was a big deal but personally I never experienced it like that. In the late aughts, during the peak of Google Talk, I had ~1 contact on it. My other contacts were all using regular Jabber servers.
You can stay here. Nobody forces you to migrate to #Threads. And if 1 or 2 interesting people are on Threads and I can follow them from here that’s good, no?

2023-12-19 16:42:59

I just finished a refactor of the Jingle File Transfer code in #Conversations_im.
The P2P file transfer code was probably one of the oldest code in Conversations.
The new code should be a lot more resilient and brings support for XEP-0343: Signaling WebRTC datachannels in Jingle¹. This means we should be able to exchange files directly with #XMPP web clients.
Due to the better NAT hole punching of WebRTC vs Socks Bytestreams we now have a higher chance of actual P2P.
¹: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0343.html

2023-12-16 10:26:00

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@npub188w…eqpn to be clear I’m not saying that Conversations’ method is more efficient. It's just that @npub1qml…mdus speaks of their own method as 'destroying the user’s battery' while I know for a fact the implementation in Conversations is not.
My assumption is rather that they vastly exaggerate the battery impact of their own implementation to make GCM seem like something they absolutely have to use.
Signals battery impact might be completely acceptable and Conversations’ only very marginally better

2023-12-15 16:18:46

Version 0.4.0 (Codename „All Engines Running“) of Ltt.rs not only brings support for #UnifiedPush but also a UI refresh. The e-mail client for Android now supports Material U / dynamic colors.
#autocrypt #opensource #email
Note that Ltt.rs requires an e-mail server that supports #JMAP. (There aren’t many providers that support it so Ltt.rs is currently more for the adventurous / self hosting type user.)
https://gultsch.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/585/314/793/984/224/original/7e89a2aac2d418af.png
https://gultsch.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/585/315/130/995/019/original/3305d3021dc04dbc.png
https://gultsch.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/585/315/537/708/680/original/b7acc45a79713e4b.png
https://gultsch.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/585/321/306/654/926/original/ba4064c6e51e3493.png

2023-12-15 10:27:48

I didn’t realize that @npub1ue3…kryc had their own #fdroid repository¹ for a while. Now - through the magic of reproducible builds - Threema Libre is even available in the official @npub1z2j…r69f repository.
That’s pretty cool! I like it when developers work with the open source instead of having nothing but despite for the »FOSS libertarian dream«².
¹: https://threema.ch/en/faq/libre_installation
²: https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/111579163465376420

2023-12-14 15:51:17

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@npub1eec…xp4f indeed. Once you have a reasonable implementation the largest factor is quality of network (less wifi vs mobile but more just general quality)
That's for idle connections. The amount of pushes/messages obviously plays a large role too. But that's true for Google Push too.
The screenshot above was taken in what I would call 'average' conditions. I've been traveling all day so connection quality is 'mixed'.

2023-12-14 15:14:49

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@npub13dc…5aw9 @npub1ynl…873s my earlier criticism (see https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111565910462764838 ) went entirely unnoticed. So yes tone is important 😉

2023-12-14 14:43:32

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@npub1eec…xp4f disclaimer I'm well aware that measuring battery impact is hard but according to Androids own battery stats the one picture I took today had a more significant battery impact than Conversations had running in background. So did listing to podcasts for a few minutes.
https://gultsch.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/579/300/141/336/499/original/48315f290b9d9bf0.png

2023-12-14 14:36:55

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@npub1eec…xp4f You are 100% correct.
In practice the impact of a well implemented, persistent TCP connection is insignificant compared to other things that drain your battery like screen time etc. At least insignificant enough that I consider talking about "destroying your battery" as framing.
I also believe that not every app developer should have to go through the process of "implementing it well" - so push definitively has it's place. But it is also not without alternatives.

2023-12-14 08:52:47

If @npub1qml…mdus wanted to they could easily build support for #UnifiedPush and let the professionals (Conversations in that case) maintain the persistent TCP if their implementation would otherwise (and that's their wording) destroy the users battery.

2023-12-14 08:49:58

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@npub1d73…0w5x I have my own PeerTube instance over at @npub1953…zu2j and was planning to upload it there.
That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to mirror it though.

2023-12-14 08:48:49

Do I have to give another talk on how push notifications work? With @npub1ynl…873s of @npub1qml…mdus spreading lies and news outlets like @npub185n…luq0 amplifying their nonsense I feel like their is a lot of confusion out there on how push works. Google’s push notifications aren’t delivered by fairy dust and don’t consume any battery.
TLDR: You can de-google your phone. Install Conversations. It is the only app running in background. It will use #UnifiedPush to wake up other apps like Tusky and Ltt.rs.

2023-12-14 08:05:15

Had a good 1.5 days in Berlin.
Met up with @npub176s…9ezp to work on Jingle File Transfer.
Gave a talk at the Berlin XMPP Meetup about the recent attack on jabber.ru.
Thank you for having me.
(The talk was recorded. Not yet processed and I gave it in German. Sorry international audience 😕)
https://gultsch.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/577/706/621/835/261/original/c358fed9ccd7d34c.jpg

2023-12-12 05:48:22

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@npub1ynl…873s if your persistent TCP connection drains the phone's battery I think you might have implemented it wrong. How do you think Google Push works under the hood?

2023-12-08 10:53:51

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@npub1pue…dpuv the short answer is they don't know yet. They are still talking to stakeholders and trying to figure that out.
It might end up looking like this though:
https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111528938093114289

2023-12-07 09:58:51

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@npub1m29…khl9 The other 75% is F-Droid. Yes you can build the app yourself but the 5 people who do are irrelevant for these statistics.

2023-12-07 09:54:59

Only a minority of Conversations users (maybe 20-25%, extrapolated from crash reports) use the Google Play version and thus use Firebase Cloud Messaging (and only if their server supports it too)

2023-12-07 09:50:45

In light of recent events: We have always been very transparent on how Conversations.im interacts with Google Firebase Cloud Messaging.
https://github.com/inputmice/p2
„The sender jid for the push is the the jid of the server. Since the app server didn’t store the account jid and since the account jid is not included in the push it won’t know for which account the push is actually for. It will just be able to look up the corresponding FCM token based on the node id.“

2023-12-07 07:00:08

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@npub105l…urlm Gnome auf dem Handy sieht ja schon ziemlich hübsch aus. Aus Usability Sicht auch ein cooles Konzept das ich die vom Desktop gewohnten apps einfach weiter benutzen kann. (Bin kein Gnome user aber trotzdem 😉)

2023-12-05 17:15:40

I don’t know what I was expecting but it looks more and more like the Messaging Interoperability the EU promised will be each gatekeeper essentially publishing their client to server protocol and then you can either use multi protocol messengers or transports. No s2s federation.
Looks like one might be able to log in (through the propriety) c2s API with third party IDs though.

2023-11-29 19:18:44

✅ Ticket

2023-11-18 10:34:36

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@npub14dl…2rjr @npub1pvl…ejy3 @npub1592…v2y9 ironically the eventually consistent graph of #Matrix might not be a bad choice for the Fediverse.

2023-11-18 06:53:29

The federation model of #ActivityPub is based on random chance. Yes, being on a larger instance increases your chances that you can see all replies in a thread but it doesn’t guarantee it.

2023-11-15 15:56:17

Will Google accept privacy polices written entirely (including the HTML and CSS) by ChatGPT?
Let’s find out
https://privacy.ltt.rs/

2023-11-12 10:45:07

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@npub196a…6anz I don’t have any insights into the iOS app but the Android app has been heavily modified from it's humble Kontalk origins so it is very plausible that by now they have the resources to write the iOS app from scratch.

2023-11-10 20:56:31

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@npub1hd8…pd64 that's the worst part. This solves absolutely nothing. What benefit does it have to know the postal address of Facebook / Meta? It's not like I can go there and politely ask them not to steal my personal data.

2023-11-10 20:36:41

Why does nobody who works for Google understand that forcing indie app developers to publish their home address is a really fucking stupid idea?
This will literally get people killed.
Are they doing this on purpose?

2023-10-29 07:30:56

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@npub1rrk…jayf Yes. You should do this regardless of whether or not you are using Conversations as a #UnifiedPush distributor.

2023-10-29 05:37:49

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If you have a minute can you help me do one final round of testing? #Conversations_im 2.12.12-beta.3 is out on F-Droid and the Google Play beta channel.
To test DNS properly you have to set up a second account (It doesn’t have to have valid credentials; running into 'Unauthorized' is enough to validate DNS).
I forgot to mention this last time but Conversations does cache the last successful address it was able to connect to as a last resort endpoint. (Caching is per account)

2023-10-25 13:35:41

For Conversations 2.12.12 I refactored how DNS resolution works including adding support for "Private DNS" (That’s what Android calls DNS over TLS). Obviously DNS is vital to Conversations functioning correctly.
Please help us test this - especially, but not just - if you connect through a VPN and/or are using Private DNS! 🙏
Conversations 2.12.12-beta.2 is now available on F-Droid (if you allow Beta updates) and on the Google Play Store Beta Channel.
#XMPP #DOT #Conversations_im

2023-10-25 05:56:23

Automattic, the company that owns wordpress.com just bought, what can best be described as a Pidgin.im knockoff, for $50 million.
Silicon Valley innovation in a nutshell.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/24/23928685/automattic-texts-acquisition-universal-messaging

2023-10-22 14:58:10

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@npub17cv…ms7z In this particular case they used Lets Encrypt. Having CAA entries means they need to involve more and more people (Certificate Authorities, DNS providers, etc). It’s not about preventing all attacks it’s about putting up more barriers.

2023-10-22 12:17:51

We should thank German authorities for reminding us of the importance of CAA records. I've set mine up today (and tested them).