@delta Add newbies mode to onboarding flow which show tutorial how to add to contacts a person who is not in current room, or generally speaking, online-only / remote contact.
I think having

@delta I agree, #Deltachat is awesome for superfast account creation, then sharing the account by QR code. No password set or stored, no phone number or email given, no password manager grumbled about necessitating

@delta Surely, I am not the only one blocked on the decision which server to pick for a new account and what kind of trust in metadata goes into the server?

@delta Onboarding is cool until step 4.
People don't like scanning QRs: when people add my Signal, even if the username is shown on my screen right below a QR code, nobody scanned the QR yet. Everybody just typed the username. Scanning QRs kinda sucks.
And it's rather impractical when the person is not next to me. At which point sending a long link also is meh (or, depending on context, just not possible).

@delta I did create the profile but I honestly don't understand so much how it works. As for accessibility, I didn't find it so easy to learn. I am a blind user and would like to learn more and help others join in.

@delta i would use you ... if you had Perfect Forward Secrecy.

Until them don't expect me to use or recommend your app

@delta
So why would I use delta chat rather than signal? /gen

@delta will Deltachat one day be interoperable with Matrix and XMPP ?

@delta I was going to rant "another mobile only"... but then I did look first and found there's also AppImages, deb/rpm/FlatPak/Snap packages, and even .tar.gz - so one does NOT need to "1. Install app".

@delta is now possible to use my own mail address for it?

@delta the last step can be challenging. You need to be close and have working camera (yes, people have broken cameras) to scan QR, or have an already established communication channel to send the link, which in slme situations defeats the purpose.

There should be some human readable / easy to memorize or pronounce "nickname", "username", "ID" or something, so than you can tell someone "just type John Doe once you install DeltaChat to find me".

@abolitionmedia Hello, I was just appreciating your work. Maybe we should set up a couple of these servers. I have an extra vps and will test one this week. Thought it worth a mention. I installed this, and it looks pretty good. The fact it's not fully p2p seems a disadvantage, but it looks like the server is not hard to set up. Hopefully not. https://chaos.social/@delta/115479392746850836

@delta hey now xmpp is basically the same in that regard... depending on the client

@delta what is the disk space allowed for this kind of user? i'd like to promote the solution to my social neighbourhood

@delta I work in a marketing department. Because of what I have learned about how QR codes can be used/abused, I absolutely will not scan a QR code. I would rather type a random 40 character string than expose my device.

Ugh, I’m old. The Eagles released “Desperado” 52 fucking years ago. The western that they made in England. And wasn’t a hit for the Eagles until Linda Ronstadt covered it.

@frankiezafe default onboarding currently has 700MB per user but that's rarely ever reached and might be lowered again. Messages are removed server-side unconditionally after 20 days. More info https://nine.testrun.org/info.html
Other relays have different limits (often higher) https://chatmail.at/relays and people can onboard through the respective relay website after installing delta chat.

@frankiezafe messages are stored on the device, the relay which transfers the message stores it only temporarily. So the disk space on your end device is more relevant. If you run out of local storage space, you can configure Delta Chat so it deletes all messages after a year or so.

@delta thanks for the details!

@vort3 you have a point and it's kind of funny that even though #chatmail uses the email system, one can't just give out an email address. The challenge is to establish automatic end-to-end encryption while maintaining identity privacy (in Delta Chat we want chat profiles to be fully private and decentralized so can't just do some central registry). There are some ideas on how to bring back the ease of telling your address and people contacting you. Just more involved than it sounds :)

@delta hope I see this issue solved some day :-)

Thank you for great app.

@rootnode yes, you can use email addresses from any modern email service that provides a certain level of security. Just make sure you use a *dedicated* address. Using email addresses that are simultanously used by non-chatmail clients are not supported, however. In prior times we tried to make it work but it detrimental to security outcomes and easily gets confusing for users. So email addresses are fine but need to be dedicated for chatting via chatmail clients.

@delta what if the email address is self-hosted? Does it need to be whitelisted or just fulfill certain requirements?

@rootnode self hosted email address is fine as long as it's exclusively used by chatmail clients (who were setup using the 'add second device' work flows or exporting/importing a backup file)

@delta from a UX perspective “add second device” doesn’t sound like “enter alternative address”. It sounds like “Inwent with one of the big ones and am entering a second device”. Unless there is a clear guidance on which requirements need to be fulfilled to self-host, Inwould not call it decentralized.

@rootnode "add second device'" is found in settings of an established chat profile. It's about setting up multiple devices for the same chat chat profile.

To use a different email address it's "create new profile" and then "use other server". If you have further questions or suggestions maybe better use https://support.delta.chat

@delta so, when I tried to first start the app, it only allowed on your server, no other systems. Then when I try to change it it tells me that changing accounts is not supported yet and I should check back in a few MONRHS. Sorry, but this is fishy at beet6.

@rootnode in the second screen tap "use other server" if you don't want to use the default server.

@crazy_pony

1) there are bridges ("matterdelta") which provide interop with Matrix, XMPP, Telegrram, ssh and anything that Matterbridge provides. It doesn't preserve end-to-end encryption and so bridging bot choice is tricky.

2) There are growing efforts around 3rd party #chatmail clients https://chatmail.at/clients. Interoperability is "free" between all chatmail clients (#deltachat being the prominent one). Unlike #Signal we welcome third parties to the party :)

@delta @crazy_pony wow, I see a KaiOS Chatmail Client.
I wonder if there are any comments how it works.

@delta

I use DeltaChat on my tablet and ArcaneChat on my phone. Other than branding, is there any real difference between them?

@crazy_pony

@ratcatcher @crazy_pony in terms of core functionality there is no difference between ArcaneChat and Delta Chat -- both are chatmail clients using the same core library which performs all networking/encryption/contact/group/chat/realtime-setup etc.
ArcaneChat is maybe a bit more of an experiments-pushing client, and some of its features made it back to mainline, and arcanechat is continously rebasing on mainline, in turn.

@shuro @delta
Afaik no, Delta suggests only the default nine.testrun.org instance

@darkcat09 @shuro we are working on randomizing onboarding to the growing set of chatmail relays. See also https://chaos.social/@delta/115362144863345662

@delta this likely won't help much against censorship but is certainly welcome for other reasons. So I get it right that it will be possible to migrate between servers?

@darkcat09

@shuro yes, migration between servers is coming back, and better.

@delta @shuro As I understand, there are non-disclosed chatmail servers in Russia? But if the server addresses were to be disclosed, they could be shut down by the authorities? This is obviously a dilemma...

@kallekn @shuro publishing existence of relays and someone using them for a block is a tricky issue, indeed. We have preliminary discussions mostly around learning about new relays during chatting with others, and then being able to automatically use those, without any central list anywhere. IOW, the information which chatmail relays exist should be distributed across the planet with no central oversight.

@kallekn sadly our censors are not completely dumb and run device farms to detect even undisclosed servers which apps connect to one way or another. This way they managed to render Tor practically non-functional without private bridge servers as all public ways to distribute them eventually lead to blocks. So it doesn't matter much :(

@delta

@shuro @kallekn fair points but there is one key difference with Tor: people already form social private contexts in their messaging groups. Using chatting between actual people for distributing relay knowledge can not be replicated by having thousands of device robots in some cellar because the app will only give you the same initial relays. New information comes in through chats, and not even we, as developers, see those relays.

@delta @shuro It would be nice to have a very large amount of relays, of course. But if I lived in Russia I would be very wary about setting up my own relay, because eventually the authorities could find it and I could be charged for whatever crime they make up, like aiding terrorists.

@delta @shuro Sounds like a good plan!

@lexinova @delta Message retention more or less negates the benefit of forward secrecy. If an attacker gets your secret key information they for sure are going to get your old messages. Since most people want to keep their old messages around forward secrecy is not very important for encrypted messaging.

https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:forward_secrecy (my article)

@upofadown @delta second red flag (but sadly too often seen on this kind of app) ... ELECTRON, nope thanks i pass have a nice day

@lexinova @upofadown FWIW there are some non-electron clients https://chatmail.at/clients and an upcoming post about an experimental Tauri one. The current #deltachat desktop electron-based client tries to both size-bloat/ram wise do better, and also e.g. bars the frontend rendering process from doing any Internet connections which are purely done via the Rust core library, for all #chatmail clients.

@delta @upofadown oh tauri one i would use it when it go out thanks :)

for once an app is willing to use it :)

@delta @upofadown the issue i have with electron is it's well known catastrophic security

@kbruen Scanning QR codes is a pretty well known UX metaphor these days but indeed not well suited for setting up a chat with a remote person (unless in a video call). We are certainly going to circle back to this UX issue. Meanwhile in reality it's often the case that two people start to chat, then do a group chat, and invite others to join that group which allows to instantly get access to all people in the chat without having to do the qr/link dance with each member.

@delta Perhaps I'm the odd one here, but I don't have a group with my friends, since most of them are friends with me but not with each other