@cjd none of that other stuff matters if I can't get my parents to use it.

After the initial configuration, Signal, Delta and Element are not significantly different from each other. Press icon, click on name, type message, send. Most people who are not technical need a bit of help getting anything set up, even Signal.

@cjd @freakazoid yeah the main hurdle I've had to help people over as far as element has been when using the mobile client the home server terminology is confusing. I think maybe just giving people the full address (@user:server) might help avoid that confusion because I think it will automatically update the home server.

I'm actually really bullish on DeltaChat, the only serious hurdle is that you can't use it until you have a mail account, and you can't just hand those out to anyone or you will be kicked off of the internet or RBL'd into oblivion.
But if you can hand someone an email address, Delta is a really slick UX once you're on-boarded.

@cjd @freakazoid I'll have to look into it. Getting people to try new things is always tough

@cjd I have never had to help anyone set up Signal.

Ok so my mom, for example, generally prefers to have a friend help her setup new software - just because while she could figure it out, having help reduces any risk of it going wrong somehow and reduces the needed tinkering.
I get that there are a fair number of people who can setup Signal with no help, but can't figure out Element or Delta, but I think that's actually people at a more intermediate skill level, and they could probably do it if there was a nice document or howto video.

@cjd Anything that requires IMAP and SMTP setup is a non-starter. I don't understand how you can put Delta and Signal in the same category in good faith.

@freakazoid @cjd Then they won't have any problem setting up Quicksy when Signal goes under as silos always do.

So far chat-wise nothing approaches how good XMPP is.

Hmm, no iOS :(

@cjd @freakazoid Snikket for Android and iOS, you send them an invite, they install from the app store and are automatically logged in.

@cjd @freakazoid my friend is experimenting with dendrite. Not sure of his thoughts as of yet, but I'm interested.

@cjd @freakazoid Why not XMPP? I don't like random startups inventing their own protocol instead of building on (and thus improving) existing internet standards.

@kaip @cjd XMPP is one of the dumbest protocols I've ever seen tbh. It's from the "XML is the future" era.

@freakazoid @cjd So what's wrong with it if you get over the fact that it's XML?

@kaip @cjd It's streaming XML, not just XML. It's verbose and slow to parse. And it can't handle binary data; you have to base64 encode it, which again makes it verbose and slow to parse.

@freakazoid @cjd You really think the XML parsing speed is the bottleneck in IM? If you want to send any amount of binary data where this starts to matter it's done out of band.

@kaip @cjd On a low power device RAM and CPU cycles matter. And on the server it means you need more of both per connection. It's network bound, so bottlenecks aren't usually what matter, but parsing XML at wire speed on a 10G link is certainly going to use a lot of CPU that you could be using for other things.

AFAIK no protocol before or since has used streaming XML.

1. Saying you "support XML" means you have to support all of it, and it's a very complex protocol. I believe Xerces is 10MB.
2. Streaming without any framing is just asinine, and that's why XMPP had to write their own XML parsers (which don't fully support XML anyway)

Trash heap of history.

@cjd @freakazoid 1. XMPP restricts itself to a reasonably sane subset of XML, not all of it (see RFC3920).

2. A quick look at the source code of some XMPP clients shows this is false. Not fully supporting XML would be the correct way of doing it because of (1).

Current XMPP server (and client) implementations are orders of magnitude more RAM and CPU efficient than let's say Matrix.

Saying it's better than Matrix is not exactly a shining endorsement.

@cjd @freakazoid Maybe so. What other messaging protocols do you know of that offer federated, E2E encrypted chat, A/V calls etc.?

None 😭