web browsers should be redone from the ground up

[operand@todon.nl]

@be @aeva @hipsterelectron I don't think you can argue that the Signal desktop experience is first-class when the only way to use the desktop app is through registering with an Android or iOS device first

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@operand @be @aeva i think that's because of the phone number restriction—which i think is really frustrating because there should be a detailed description of why and how signal uses that, because users deserve that and it signals a degree of contempt/unprofessionalism not to do so

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hipsterelectron @operand @be so wait is that why I can't just fire up pidgin and use signal there? funny seeing all my foss friends cream themselves over a proprietary messaging system

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aeva @operand sms is required exactly once for signup. molly exists because signal is an extremely open protocol and my grouplink extensions drop the server part and add a message type which performs the x3dh handshake. it's much easier to understand how it works without the central server and textsecure the predecessor to the signal app used sms as a transport layer.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aeva @operand the server approach is harder to surveil and censor and i think it was an appropriate decision, but what i don't agree with was moxie's decision (moxie is corpo as fuck btw i have receipts) to demonize the idea of a protocol (2016 blog post https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/), because this creates a ridiculously adversarial relationship. i think it was a misstep that whittaker now has to handle.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aeva @operand signal is described by a set of protobufs in the libsignal repo which are 100% reusable without any server assumptions (it's literally just that the initial diffie hellman handshake is more complex on the server). the centralization was moxie's decision and moxie is a fuckboy who blocked me on twitter after he got crazy fucking mad about a twitter security eng making a completely non-hyperbolic claim about poor UX (she was a woman) and when he said "it's open source" (as if that fucking matters at all here) i mentioned it was undocumented until i fixed his shit for him.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aeva @operand the documentation was added for my fork using signal outside of the server context and if i hadn't added that and if jordan rose from signal hadn't been extremely helpful for months essentially giving me free lessons in PR comments when i added docstrings i would not be stanning it so obnoxiously. since those comments exist and since i can describe the precise assumptions of centrality and since i have a fork that works without any network, arbitrarily spawning local identities, i do not consider it a proprietary protocol. there is a lot of obnoxious fuckboy heritage remaining in the system but it's very easy to excise and their public specifications are something a human being can implement.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hipsterelectron @operand ok so can i or can't i use a different client for signal

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aeva @operand you can, molly exists. they don't support it

[be@floss.social]

@hipsterelectron @aeva @operand as do Flare and Whisperfish

[meejah@mastodon.social]

@aeva @hipsterelectron @operand @be I think in principal someone could use signal-cli https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli to write a pidgin/LibPurple plugin?

Looks like there _were_ a few attempts, with this being one that's not "archived"? https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-presage

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@meejah @hipsterelectron @operand @be ah wonderful! the readme makes it sound like it has some rough edges but probably more or less supports the basic feature set I actually use. I will try it out some time this weekend. thanks!

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@be @hipsterelectron @operand following up on this, whisperfish appears to be a client for another OS(??), molly is another android client and my laptop isn't running android. one of the two pidgin plugins is abandoned, the other one the build instructions don't work as written (and only provides prebuilt binaries for Windows, lol), which leaves flare which is taking an astonishingly long amount of time to install on flathub and has negative reviews saying "doesn't work"

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@be @hipsterelectron @operand an interesting side note, molly's website has some mud slinging claiming that signal is proprietary 🍿

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@be @hipsterelectron @operand flare at least appears to work, though it doesn't launch by opening it from the "software" application I used to install it, which is probably where the negative reviews were from. I had to look up the not obvious flathub command to do it.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@be @hipsterelectron @operand and flare does not seem to be able to synchronize conversations between it and signal running on my phone :| i'm installing signal desktop now because I could have sworn signal desktop could do that but I might be mistaken, I'll edit this post once I've confirmed

EDIT: confirmed that the official client does not have this problem