I'm pretty sure I'll regret making this, but upload your public monstrosity and let's see how it goes. Some fun may be had. I'll watch carefully for now 🕵️
public_html ftw! this beams me right back 30 years ago into a poorly ventilated university lab filled with a bunch sun workstations (i believe). as a teenager i was allowed to come by once a week and was able to log into an account that had this special folder
I just read that FFMPEG supports lufs normalization. That with combination with luveler and MrsWatson allows for nice automatic normalization of recordings. I can use Reaper and tweak everithing, but there are people who just need to get their recordings to relative consistent levels.Luvelerteragonaudio/MrsWatson: A command-line VST plugin host
Lately I've been seeing a lot of lacking alt text on audio posts on mastodon. Guys, audio alt text is just as important as image alt text. Just as we preach at people posting images that "a diagram" or "a funny meme" isn't helpful, "a piece of music" or "strange noises" aren't helpful audio alt texts. Describe the audio, not just the basic outline of what it is. We can't yell at image posters to do something we're not even doing ourselves. Just as image alt texts help more than blind people, audio alt texts help more than deaf people. Please try.
+1 to this. All the damn way. I won't even engage with audio that doesn't have a description if it's posted directly on Mastodon. If it's an off-site file, that's kind of different.
@FreakyFwoof I rarely even engage with off-site files. 1, I don't have energy to click onto who knows what to hear your file, and 2, it likely won't be described on there. But maybe that's just me.
I link directly to mp3's or youtube when I post, and if I do youtube, then yes, I write descriptions, but Many don't. As for mp3's, I've usually written exactly what it is in the text of the post itself.
I try to, unless the description of what the audio is is self explanitory in the post. LIke, say the post is a post talking about someone demonstrating it, youv'e now described what the audio is going to be. I suppose, lol, and no I"M not saying I"M never going to audio caption, because I try to. But, wouldn't it be redundant, to say in the audio description. The sound of my dulset tones, me pressing keys on my keyboard, the sounds from the keyboarding including pianos, bells, drums, demo music, and more. I Already said in the post, that it's a demo of my new keyboard. HYpethetically. Now if I said just... here's a good song, and didn't describe the song? That'd be meh. I'd probably say. Here's a good song... Audio description, a moving 1970's pop song in D major. Featuring a warm female vocalist, lush strings, solid drums, a very good bass, and fantastic vocal harmonies. It is around, 105 BPM.
@cordova5029 Oddly I still alt text my audio, even if it's explained in the post. Repetitive? Maybe, but I don't like to take chances. I feel weird if I don't do it
So on a fresh Windows 11 install, I would need to now run at least 4 GitHub scripts just to make it behave and tamed down to the process plus ram usage of Windows 10. Unbelievable. I'm going to provide links here, you use these at your own risk. I'm also favoriting this post for myself so this is a bit for me, too. All of these require that Defender's "realtime protection" and possibly "tampor protection" stay off. Defender is very yelly.
First thing I do: github.com/ShadowWhisperer/Rem… This removes Microsoft Edge, and I use the WebView remover. If you use JAWS, this one might not be for you, since I believe JAWS relies on the webView. 2. Spicy: Remove defender. Not for everyone, but if you have a 3rd-party scanner and AV you use that's light, or just want to manually scan files and do daily quick scans with a tool of your choice, it's good. Using WSL will reinstall the hypervisor bits. It does a lot, so be cautious. github.com/ionuttbara/windows-… 3. New to the list: github.com/zoicware/RemoveWind… - for getting rid of all AI features. Again, large script, read and consult carefully. 4. My own quick debloat Gist for LTSC: gist.github.com/tgeczy/2d847e2… This does a lot more plumming removal, and disables your search box, so don't be surprised. 5. For search box: Open Menu: github.com/Open-Shell/Open-She… - works really well. Bonus: github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloa…
So regarding search box, what do I need to do to use open shell menu properly? For me, NVDA with Win 10 LTSC that is, it feels rather laggy and inaccessible rather than helpful. What's the trick?
@jonathan859 I just install it, when you first press the windows key it should open the settings for it, then I pick "2-column" view which does the recents + classic menus like the XP days. The only inaccessible (and really triggers my OCD sometimes) is the lack of a label on the search box itself, but search results read as they appear so it's not broken fully.
Hmm, yeah. I never knew which setting to pick there, good to know. And yes, that bothers me as well, like pressing win key and not having that instant feel that it opens, the menu when you searched itself was ok though yes. thanks
Thanks bunches! Taming is under way here - LOL! Glad I went with 32GB of RAM this time around. Guess next time it'll be 64GB to keep up with Microsoft, which is MacroHard on RAM.
@amir oh yeah, 32 GB is very respectible even now, I have 2 laptops here on Win11 with that amount. I think under 32, like 16, can also work because the OS scales back RAM usage a bit, by about 500-600 MB or more, so less aggressive caching policies on the 8 or 16 GB systems help mitigate anything you'd feel. Windows works in misterious ways. Ah wait...
I’m currently working on an interesting project. Last year, I met a former homeless man named Peter. He lost all his money to gambling. On the streets, he sold a street magazine, and later he started writing his own book. Today, most of his income comes from selling that book. He wanted to create an audiobook. Since the budget was small, we did it like this: I gave him a Zoom H1N recorder. He locked himself in a relatively quiet room and gradually recorded the entire book. He sent me the raw material, which I ran through @Auphonic to remove background noise and room echo and to balance the loudness levels. Now I just need to remove the mistakes and create the music background. It won’t be full studio quality — but honestly, I’ve heard “studio” recordings that sounded much worse than what we’re working on now.
Recently, I discovered Mynoise.net by @Stéphane (Dr. P). Sometimes, when I cant sleep or need background noise for boring work, I use various background soundscapes. Here is my article about Mynoise from the blind users experience. Long post follows:
Activate, for example, the link windSeaRainNoiseGenerator (wind, sea, and rain noise generator).
Since browsers block autoplay by default, enable focus mode and press the letter p twice. The first press pauses playback, and the second resumes it. At this point, you should already hear the sound of the sea and wind noise.
Here you can also try other soundscapes, such as Rain on a Tent or Fireworks. I recommend opening the Full List. The soundscapes are organized under headings.
Playback Control
At this point, the possibilities of Mynoise are just beginning. Each player can be customized. Although the ambiance differs, the controls are always the same. Let’s take another look at the previously mentioned Wind, Sea, and Rain Noise.
Presets
Under the heading Presets, you’ll find buttons with various predefined settings. Activating them changes the sound’s characteristics. For instance, you can choose Breaking Waves or Irish Summer.
Under User Stories, you’ll find user comments. By activating a comment, the sound’s parameters adjust to the same configuration used by that commenter.
How to Create Your Own Background
Let’s say you want to manually adjust the balance between wind, waves, rain, and so on. Each player consists of ten sliders whose volume you can control. Here’s how:
Enable focus mode in your screenreader.
Press Enter to deselect all sliders.
Choose one of the sliders using numbers 0–9.
Adjust the volume with the + or – keys.
Press Enter twice to deselect all sliders.
Choose another slider (0–9).
Adjust the volume again with + or –.
If you’re satisfied but find the overall sound too loud, you can lower the volume with J and raise it with K.
You can also generate a random setting by pressing the ? (question mark)key.
I Created a Beautiful Ambience—How Can I Return to It?
The author thought of that, too. Press B to find the Save as URL button. After pressing it, a URL containing your custom parameters will appear in an edit field. You can copy this link to your clipboard and save it as a bookmark. That’s how it works in Firefox. Chrome, on the other hand, will automatically reload the page with the new URL. You can share this URL as usual—for this article, I created This Noise as an example.
Can I Combine “Rain on a Tent” and a “Crackling Fireplace”?
Yes, and there are two ways to do it. If you’ve been experimenting with the site for a while, you might have opened one soundscape in one browser tab and another in a second tab. However, this setup is difficult to save or share. Fortunately, you can create a single page that combines multiple generators—up to ten soundscapes in one! This way, you can really make something like a Campfire in the Rain. Here’s how:
Reset the sliders to zero and adjust them as you wish, as described earlier.
Press C to save your current setting. – In another tab, open the main Mynoise page and find your second soundscape. – Open a new generator, for example Fireplace. – Adjust everything again as you like. – Press C again to save it. – Use Shift+C to save all settings together. – The page will ask for a name. – Enter a name and confirm. – You can now save the page as a bookmark or copy and share the URL.
Mobile App
Unfortunately, Mobile app is not accessible for blind users yet. You can still use Mynoise in your smartphone’s web browser. The easiest way is to share the custom links you prepared on your computer. That way, you’ll always have your favorite sounds at hand—for example, to help you sleep.
The author also offers online radios featuring some of the sounds. You can find them in the RadioBrowser database by searching for Mynoise. Additionally, there’s a podcast called Pomodoro Sessions, so you can enjoy your favorite soundscapes right in your podcast app.
Conclusion
The author is open to discussing accessibility. Thanks to this, button labels have already been added to the player pages. To celebrate finishing this article—and your reading it all the way through—you can listen to Fireworks.
Podcast · myNoise · No ads, no talking. This podcast provides a wide range of background noises and music formatted for the Pomodoro technique: stop procrastinating and get the job done, 25 minutes at a time! These sounds won’t interfere with your fo…
On my side Microsoft 365 generates NDR when I send the message to non existing email address using outlook online but does not generate NDR when sending a message to same non existing email address from thunderbird or other app sending emails through microsoft 365 SMTP server. This sounds strange to me and I can't find a way to make it generate NDR aka bounce messages for messages submitted through SMTP.
Oh, those NDR message are actually generated but they are delivered to spam folder. Even after disabling backscatter protection under advanced antispam settings it's working like that. These automatically generated messages can't be manipulated using transport rules, so I have no workaround for this issue.
yeah, it's annoying, I remember one saturday morning when someone from office called me because i forgot to send something. I actually did but by made mistake in email address. Then I realized that I have delivery status notification in spam.
Apparently, it is expensive to peek into C structures from Python via pygobject, so better to cache the result in Python if it is going to be reused. My function is now more than 3x faster now that I'm doing this. gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/at-spi2…
Cool so there's a new attack against the Signal protocol, specifically the PFS. You can keep requesting PFS prekeys from a user and once theyre drained you have a better shot at being able to break that layer of security but more interesting is that the time it takes to get the new prekeys indicates if the device is online or not, so this is a metadata leak
Whatsapp published the research. Unclear if this is only Whatsapp's implementation that they're discussing.
Oh wow. Some companies have a way to let their mail servers tell me they no longer want to work with me it seems 🙈 Was just sending out my updated profile to a list, and from one I got this:
450 4.7.1 The reputation filter deemed your email unworthy
F*CK AI, I guess? 🙊
OK, I'll have to accept that. If someone out there thinks I _might_ be worthy: after being in a project for almost 5 years, I'm available again for new projects – be it as Oracle DBA, or as coach in the Android section 😉
@pvagner So i#ll get some more of those "delivery failed" notifications, yeah. I also wondered about 4.7.1 – isn't that usually 5.7.1, when the mail filter rejected something? The rules do not change that frequent, so what use is it to retry? Max is usually something around 4..7 days. But well, let's see…
@IzzyOnDroid ✅ Yes 4.x.x codes are for temporary errors such as message filtering issues including grey listing, user quota being full and similar. 5.x.x should include rejecting the message.
@pvagner I know, I'm running a mail server myself. My toot was rather about the message text, not the code 😉 But thanks for the explanation, appreciate your being helpful! 🤗
For other readers:
* 5xx: permanent error * 4xx: temporary error (try again) * 3xx: further action required (by the client, not the human; like, "send the next package", or "go there to continue") * 2xx: all fine
We fork Mumble server. We change the chat to be IRC. We use Obsidian IRC (web irc clone of discord) as the client. IRCv3 SASL EXTERNAL will let us auth the user using the same key identity mumble uses. Convert the Obsidian web to Tauri for cross platform desktop app.
That's it. Self-hosted Discord, now just improve the UI and invite people to rewrite in Rust and add storage backends for the chat history and nobody needs Discord ever again.
the call quality of discords calls isn't even close when compared to mumble. with mumbles echoey hell unless you know to configure noise cancelling, random n number of second delays with 50 - 80 ping, hell I've even had problems getting mics recognized on arm macs, it just isn't pleasant if you're not prepared for unexpected issues to arise at basically any time. aaaagh
@kirby all you have to do is spark enthusiasm and these problems will be worked out. Mumble is a perfect foundation but has like zero contributors, it's crazy. Imagine what could be done with a little funding. They already have stuff like hooking games for positional audio and the video overlays ... so much potential
@neopolitan I covered persistent accounts. Your mumble certificate is used for the TLS client certificate and then IRCv3 uses SASL EXTERNAL auth to log you in with that reserved account for chatting meanwhile regular mumble works fine at the voice connection like it currently does for identifying registered users
@anna Getting this onto the front page of HN would probably attract so many interested people that this would go from theory to prototype in like two weeks
especially if you could get some kind of normal account system bolted on to it (nobody wants to deal with certificates, if any pervert wants to do that shit they can already use matrix)
@anna the certificates would still exist, I don't know if that can easily be ripped out as Mumble is using TLS client auth essentially to identify you. But we could hide it better and streamline account backup / admin capability to help people recover accounts.
Bleibe weiterhin der eSpeak treu. Als ich Ende letzten Jahres von dir erfahren hab, dass es nach über 2 Jahren dafür ein Update gab, bin ich fast an die Decke gesprungen xD
@trison Ja, nutze sie auch als Androidsprachausgabe. Sie hat zwar immer noch den nervigen Bug, dass sie hin und wieder plötzlich auf eine andere Sprache schaltet, aber ansonsten ist sie sehr stabil.
Something very important to know in your threat model if you use Tor Browser on Windows:
By default it installs to your Desktop folder, which is by default mirrored to OneDrive at Microsoft. Microsoft has access to your OneDrive content for cybersecurity analysis via privacy carve outs. The Tor folder contains sensitive content.
Při své #degoogle jsem narazil na problém Waze. Používal jsem ho ještě za krále Klacka, nějaký cesty jsem se tam taky nakreslil, tak to byla srdcovka. Dlouho jsem hledal, aktuálně zkouším Magic Earth. Privacy oriented, založené na #osm, ukazuje to hustotu provozu a trasy super. #ios i #android
After testing github.com/shazow/wifitui, I’m convinced it’s a great alternative to running nm-applet all the time.
For setups like mine (Slackware + Fluxbox + Alacritty + tmux), there’s no reason to keep a GTK applet sitting in memory just to manage Wi-Fi.
wifitui is a fast and friendly terminal Wi-Fi interface written in Go that works perfectly with NetworkManager or iwd — no GUI, no clutter, and full keyboard control.
Now I only open it when I need to change networks, and the rest of the time my system stays lighter and cleaner — exactly how I like it.
Soon we’ll have a SlackBuild for wifitui on SlackBuilds.org :)
Time to introduce my last new project for this year:
«Zeroform» ... is a tool for generating minimalistic, self-hostable forms, with a twist: It can generate both static (html/css/js) and/or dynamic (php augmented) online forms.
My main motivation for zeroform is to create tooling that helps me gather more precise feedback while designing and developing (especially) #faircamp and #hyper8, and to do this in a way that reflects the values of those projects: Independence, simplicity, minimalism, freedom from maintenance, absence of tracking, etc.
Basically you start with a thought, put it down as a plaintext blueprint of the form/questionnaire/doodle/survey you have in mind, zeroform turns it into finished code and design, you can upload it, use it as long as its useful/needed, and then you can just delete it.
Think of it as your own google forms, without bigtech, without dependence on any infrastructure besides the cheapest of hosting plans, commissioned and decommisioned in a mere minute.
I'm now one week into the project, since today I'm developing in the open at codeberg.org/simonrepp/zerofor…, and I will put it to use in the next days already! I have roughly one more week reserved until the end of the year for making this usable for the general public - I'll announce when it's ready. ʕ◜0ᴥ0ʔ
@Steffen When long clicking @Delta Chat for android allows multi selection. Action buttons are on the top similar to SMS apps or signal. Accessibility actions are context sensitive, so perhaps this design change requires a bit more thinking. CC @Marco Zehe
Thanks for looking into this @Marco Zehe. As I am following @Delta Chat for a few months screen reader #a11y is really improving on all the platforms. Except user feetback it has under gone an #a11y audit. For non accessibility related features, in the 3.22 version which may not yet be available in the apple store there are opt-in one to one video calls available for testing. I assume screen reader users will like such a feature at least I do.
@pvagner The desktop app is quite decent, although it's an Electron app. The one thing it is mising is a quick way to move between the panes, like the message pane and individual chat message history, and the entry field, via the keyboard, and a more efficient way than pressing tab a zillion times. Arrow key navigation within those lists and chats is already there.
S IM se roztrh pytel. Klasickěmu XMPP dnes konkurují služby jako Matrix, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp a další. Je tu však jedna služba, která v této záplavě komunikátorů vyniká - DeltaChat.
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
@koteisaev yes the "setup chat" or "setup group chat" parts can still be improved and better guided, especially when not in the same room and not having a friend who guides.
I considered myself "tech-savvy", but DeltaChat was my first software of that kind (e2e private messenger) and my contact was far from me, and not a "tech-savvy" person. So it was not obvious for me that I had to instruct my contact who is far away about additional "off-the-band" actions need for us to add each other to contact. Now i aware of all that, but my contact got discouraged with that complexity and don't want to try again. Have to keep using whatsapp (it sometimes get blocked).
@koteisaev sorry it didn't work out. IIt's clear there is room for improvement, and to make it more obvious how to setup contact. Currently, it helps a lot if someone guides the process for a group aka "Now click this link/scan this QR to join our group" after which the person immediately has secure contact to everyone in the group. Already, we spent hundreds of hours to arrive at where we are. Will be some effort to improve it further across all platforms.
@koteisaev no worries, we already discussed several possible improvements. It will take some time to get around to tackle them. Onboarding and getting in contact are topics worth getting back to.
@koteisaev I appreciate all your work on the onboarding process, especially for groups. I have a group of very non technical people who are committed to WhatsApp which makes me 😬 so I am slowly preparing to shift them one at a time to Delta Chat. :)
@scott @koteisaev we think we know pretty exactly what you mean and why you hesitate. It's a healthy approach! Also some of our own contributors hold off on introducing it into some of their groups and for good reasons. It's important to understand and read the room before suggesting. There usually is only one try. An interesting related read ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/09/welc…
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
servce choice is a tricky question right now and one which we carefully avoid confronting initial users with, during the default onboarding experience. Right now, we regard it as safe to use any of the listed chatmail.at/relays (manually curated). We are working towards "randomized" onboarding by further minimizing metadata seen by relays, and introduce multi-relay support so that choices don't easily leave you stranded in case of blocking/failure.
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
we hear you but it's the truth: by onboarding to #deltachat today you are diving into an experimental testrun of "the future of email" , also known as #chatmailchatmail.at
Finally we, as app distributors, want to fully disentangle from any "default" server. Testrun will become history :)
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
@Elena Brescacin Thanks for asking. I am screen reader user too and the @Delta Chat is verry appealing to me. What platform are you on? Perhaps I might be able to give some hints on how I am using it. I am on linux, android and I know windows to an extend.
@Elena Brescacin For matrix and XMPP there are some decent so called puppeting bridges for telegram, facebook messenger / instagram. I am using these and the other party even doesn't know I am using matrix behind the scene. Then there are other bridges such as whatsapp and discord working reportedly well. For @Delta Chat there is telegram relay for groups github.com/simplebot-org/simpl…
#deltachat has reliable and audited end-to-end encryption but reliable message delivery is equally crucial in times of shutdowns and increasing Internet fragmentation.
@Delta Chat 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?
@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.
@Kalle Kniivilä 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 :(
@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.
@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.
@Elena Brescacin Okay, so you are with your @Delta Chat app running on windows and you are about to start a new chat.
You have these options:
Press ctrl+n or find a new chat button.
Once the dialog comes up you can search your existing contacts. You have just started so most likelly you have the list empty.
You can then use tab and shift+tab to navigate and find New contact button.
As the new contact dialog comes up it's ready to take a photo of a QR code. So if this is an initial contact with a friend sitting next to you you can just point your camera to his phone and it will beep once the QR code is captured properly.
Or if you have no one around you can paste an invite link (use tab or shift+tab key to navigate to find a paste button) and paste the link someone has given to you.
Or you can visit the link anyone has shared with you in your web browser without using deltachat new conversation / new contact features. If delta chat is installed on your system, you will be prompted to open it to join a chat someone has invited you into.
Conversely if you are about to invite someone else to chat with you on deltachat, you can invite them like this:
Use tab and shift+ tab key to navigate on the main screen of the deltachat desktop app until you find the button saying Scan QR code.
It opens a tabbed like interface with two features viewing your QR code and allowing to scan QR code from your chat partner.
If you have no one else to scan your QR code with their camera, use tab or shift+tab to navigate and look for copy link button. Pressing that will allow you to generate an invite link you can share with someone you wish to chat. You can make this initial contact details exchange through SMS, through email or any other platform.
If you enter the chat, as an addition to standard navigation shortcut keys such as tab, shift+tab, arrow keys, applications key, deltachat has some usefull shortcut keys on its own and those are:
ctrl+m: chat text input entry
ctrl+f: conversation search
ctrl+shift+f: message search in an conversation
ctrl+slash: key commands reference
If you like to try this right now, here is an invite link to screen reader users chat I have created a few months ago when other screen reader users were interested in trying out deltachat.
I am alone lurking in this chat for now, so bear with me if I won't be able to respond in real time.
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).
@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.
@kbruen indeed it's generally true probably that a lot of us don't have lots of friends that are also friends with each other. Wherever groups do something together (parent/school councils, sports associations, political groups, all kinds of shared hobby groups) Delta can more easily help, probably.
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 chatmail.at/clients. Interoperability is "free" between all chatmail clients (#deltachat being the prominent one). Unlike #Signal we welcome third parties to the party :)
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
@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.
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".
@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.
@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)
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 support.delta.chat
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.
@lexinova @upofadown FWIW there are some non-electron clients 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.
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
@lexinova 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.
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".
@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 :)
throwing a random idea in: if your camera doesn't work, how about sharing the invite through NFC? I believe LINE does this, not to mention it's similar to how you can exchange contacts between iPhones.
@Elena Brescacin For me there are multiple reasons why to prefer @Delta Chat over other similar apps and platforms.
It's free, open-source, self-hostable, respecting privacy, giving control to users rather than to someone else who might have the whole platform under his control.
However most prominent reason why it's so appealing to me is that screen reader #accessibility is being taken so seriously and actionably from the dev team. They have no contracts, no investors, no one time opportunities pushing for accessibility features and they are working on these features from the bottom of their hearts.
Do you think so called gate keepers would care to implement some of their accessibility if they have not been pushed to do so? Why do you think it takes so long to fix some accessibility related discrepancies in the most popular messaging apps?
I think this invisible message should be warmly understood by the blindness community and other communities where it makes such a significant impact.
Aren't you happy you do have verry accessible messaging app at your disposal you can freely use to its maximum?
XMPP is good however it's not yet screen reader accessible on the major platforms. Matrix is also good it's even fully accessible technically however it still can be improved in this regard and it's more difficult to adopt. Further accessibility improvements are more difficult to get implemented when I am comparing to delta chat.
There were other attempts at a messaging app such as tox in the past that were verry promising however screen reader accessibility has never been recognized like this.
@Elena Brescacin Well, to say a metaphor, I understand it looks as we are standing on the opposide side of the bridge. Verifying your mobile phone and your email address with facebook / whatsapp / telegram / fill in other platform of your choice is not an issue for you, but exchanging a QR code or a link is. If you like you can even print the QR code on your t-shirt and get your chat partners to scan it from there. Of course I am trying to joke here, but @Delta Chat does allow such a flexibility.
@lexinova glad you have such a privacy conscious family, most people don't want to put the efforts of saving every family photo or important message in Saved Messages, and then you are not protecting those with PFS anyways
also, for PFS to work your enemy needs to control or have access to the server you use, which is easier with a centralized server but not so much with decentralized platforms like Delta Chat,
@lexinova I didn't say it is not good to have, I say it is not a reason for you to upfront reject any solution if it doesn't have the typical fusswords out of context
about the operator of the relay I use, yes, I trust him, it is MYSELF, I don't need to trust a 3rd party...
if I would need to do some dangerous business I would create a new account which takes 3 taps and use that then easily delete it with all its chats and contacts, you never replied to this point of using multi-account, well
@lexinova you don't need perfect forward secrecy... first of all, it is useless if you don't use short-term disappearing messages, second, it is useful if you can have only a single profile like on Signal, where you mix sending memes to your mom with planing a government boicot in the same account, any serious activist will use a dedicated profile they can just throw away, together with all its suspicious chats, this is super easy to do in Delta Chat, impossible with Signal
@lexinova (and by "you don't need" I mean this shouldn't be the reason for you to not use Delta Chat, PFS is appealing on paper but hardly ever useful in practice, more in chats with family and friends where you want to keep chat history, not everything to disappear)
even if you had a state level attacker coming after you they're more likely to compromise the software supply chain and backdoor your virtual keyboard or be able to screenshot and exfiltrate without you knowing. Then they don't need your key anyway because capturing the traffic is so much harder
With delta, your client to server is TLS 1.3 with PFS anyway so they gotta break that first
@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. chaos.social/@delta/1154793927…
> They have no contracts, no investors, no one time opportunities pushing for accessibility features
I am afraid this is not true. Most of the accessibility work in the past ~year has been funded by NLnet, as part of nlnet.nl/project/DeltaTauri/ project. Of course the developers were the ones to request a grant for that, but the work wasn't done for free. I think Delta Chat wouldn't be where it is right now without the money.
What is Delta Chat? Delta Chat is a reliable, decentralized and secure messaging app, available for mobile and desktop platforms. Delta Chat feels like Whatsapp or Telegram but you can also use and...
@WofWca Oh, I've idealized it too much. Please accept my apologies for spreading inaccurate info.
The other feelings from my previous post are still true, it's very usefull, I like it and the screen reader accessibility is improving even further beyond that project.
Let's see if your dedication pays off and more people will be able to adopt using it and motivate you to keep up with the accessibility related work.
@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 nine.testrun.org/info.html Other relays have different limits (often higher) chatmail.at/relays and people can onboard through the respective relay website after installing delta chat.
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
@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.
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.
@BoloMKXXVIII If the QR code contains no invite details or other @Delta Chat related data, you are notified to the fact and the content of that QR code is ignored. Scanning with the deltachat client apps is not malicious or vulnerable to attacks I think.
it doesn't parse or load anything else; it's completely safe.
QR codes are not inherently dangerous. They just hold text. No different than a link you click on, but we aren't going out of our way to avoid sharing links to things either
Delta has funding and funding is absolutely crucial for the project to be able to keep people focused on the work instead of $DAYJOB. But none of the funding has strings attached where undesirable features or backdoors can be foisted upon the users.
Some of the funding in the past was by the Open Technology Fund who also funded Signal, Tor, and others.
if some flaw like that appears, it's not me that's cooked -- it's the entire internet, corporations, governments...
encryption HAS to withstand being in the hands of an adversary. Otherwise what good is full disk encryption? If they have their hands on your disk and you really think that it could get cracked in a week or a year, why waste your time? It would be better to just take extreme caution to physically protect access to it.
I trust the math. And I also don't have any faith at all in quantum CPUs. Until I can order one and it does EXACTLY what they claim it can do, it's a fantasy. I say this all the time: the quantum CPU is the new cold fusion.
why not just wrap even more layers around everything then? You already suggesed that if it doesn't break it you must add it. So let's do AES-256 inside EC inside Twofish and sprinkle some ROT13 in there with a little ML-DSA on top to appease the people afraid of the boogeyman
> making 2 encryptions without making the ridiculous thing you just said ...
ahh, but that's exactly what we're doing! They've standardized PQC as a hybrid, not as a standalone. It's two layers of encryption when one should be sufficient if it's any good.
> And the reason why some people are freaking out about quantum computers is because there are known algorithms that can potentially break RSA far quicker than regular computers and cut security of AES by half at best.
but ONLY if quantum computing can leave the "theory" stage and we can produce a real CPU with enough qubits to do the work and store the state duplicated across enough other qubits for error correction purposes. And keep them in the state we want. Which will require extremely clean and reliable power.
> New research: RSA-2048 encryption keys can be broken with single qubit and 3 oscillators. The catch? You’ll need about 10 followed by 45 million zeros joules of energy—roughly comparable to several medium-sized stars, or 10^44,999,986 Hiroshima bombs. Good luck! arxiv.org/pdf/2412.13164
And people think AI is a waste of fucking energy? I'm not holding my breath.
Look at it this way, if AES-256 wasn't random enough, banks wouldn't use it to secure connections your TLS sessions and likely communications between them. There are known attacks against AES-128 which leak information in a few rounds and are very far from working at full 10 rounds. They don't completely break the encryption. There are known attacks against Chacha20 which leak information at ~6 rounds, far from the full 20 rounds.
The reason why you can blindly trust modern-enough encryption is because it is known how hard the math problems are. Same with large primes (like in RSA) and EC cryptography. It is approximately known how difficult the discrete log problems are.
And the reason why some people are freaking out about quantum computers is because there are known algorithms that can potentially break RSA far quicker than regular computers and cut security of AES by half at best. But quantum computers capable of running those algorithms are at best 5+ years from even potentially existing. If they will ever exists, nobody knows yet.
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.
@ferrex you are right. #Olvid is pretty well done regarding UX for boarding and getting in contact, largely similar to how #deltachat does onboarding, with interesting differences. Something to learn from (we think in bot directions). Thanks for pointing this out to us! Do you happen to know any olvid people in the fediverse? It's not an open source project and work with a central transport server, no federation etc, but still interesting to engage with from a UX standpoint.
I remember testing delta chat some years ago, back then I could just use any email address to use it. 😊 Did that change? Do I have to use a chatmail instance instead now?
What is Delta Chat? Delta Chat is a reliable, decentralized and secure instant messaging app, available for mobile and desktop platforms. Instant creation of private chat profiles with secure and i...
I worked for a while at a place that had some pretty cool CNC machines, so I took videos of exciting stuff like tool changing, and high speed machining, and put them on a spare USB drive. Around this time I bought a brand new car, and driving on the freeway, I tried out the stereo by plugging in a USB drive. After a few songs, I started hearing these clunking and grinding and high pitched squealing sounds, so I pulled over, stopped the car, and got out to see if I could spot the problem. I actually called the dealership to discuss getting towed back to their workshop before I realised … 🤦♂️
🖥️ Počítač nemusí běžet jen na Windows. Existují otevřené systémy jako Linux, které zvládnou všechno od běžného používání po práci i kreativitu — a bez reklam, telemetrie nebo nucených účtů.
☁️ A data nemusí být v cizích rukou. Služby jako Nextcloud umí nahradit Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft 365 i iCloud. Sdílení souborů, kalendář, kontakty, poznámky, chat, videohovory… všechno běží otevřeně a s respektem k uživatelům – tak, jak to děláme na Oscloud.cz.
💡 Oscloud.cz nabízí Nextcloud i další open-source aplikace pro běžné uživatele, firmy i komunity. Bez reklam, bez sběru dat, s podporou v češtině.
Změna nemusí bolet. Jen začít pomalu — třeba od synchronizace souborů nebo kalendáře. A zjistit, že svoboda není jen slovo, ale způsob, jak si technologie znovu přivlastnit. oscloud.cz/ #opensource #nextcloud #linux #oscloud #privacy
#OpenAlt2025 was the first conference I took my six-year-old daughter to. She really enjoyed it. She wasn't interested in the talks, but she loved the swag at the booths. She'll grow into them, though. You have to start early to raise a new generation of open-source enthusiasts. 🙂
@bogo My daughter like OpenSSL booth the most because it was the richest in terms of swag. But I can recommend Fedora key chains with a token for shopping carts. These are useful in real life. :)
Zítra nám držte palce. Čeká nás první velká streamovací akce. Ve spolupráci s @openalt budeme streamovat přednášky ze všech 7 místností konference #OpenAlt. Pokud budete mít čas a nějaká přednáška v programu vás zaujme, zkuste se mrknout. Při sledování videa jej zároveň sdílíte s ostatními diváky jako u torrentu (pokud nejste na mobilním zařízení) a každý peer se tak počítá!
It’s hard to believe, but courtesy of @jcsteh today NVDA 64-bit alpha builds finally added something truly interesting and useful. Technically, it’s not listed under New Features but under Changes, and it says: In browse mode in web browsers, NVDA no longer sometimes treats controls with 0 visual width or height as invisible. This technique is sometimes used to make content accessible to screen readers without it being visible visually. Such controls will now be accessible in browse mode where they weren't before. What this means in practice is that some previously inaccessible controls in browsers are now reachable. For example, when renewing my home internet plan, I had to complete a captcha. The audio option for it never appeared in NVDA, even with object navigation. I had to rely on Be My Eyes volunteers to read it for me. Now, with NVDA Alpha 53246, I can finally access that control and hear the audio captcha myself. Sometimes small changes make a huge difference. github.com/nvaccess/nvda/pull/… @NVAccess
Link to issue number:
Fixes #13897.
Summary of the issue:
Currently, in web browsers, NVDA treats controls with a 0 width or height and no children as invisible. While this makes sense in theory, t...
I don't get why it wouldn't have appeared in object navigation though. This change only stops browse mode rendering from ignoring 0 width/height objects, but object navigation never ignored those in the first place. Simple review might skip the object of interest for other reasons, but not 0 width/height, and disabling simple review should have picked it up. Still, it's much harder to find things that way on complicated websites.
Believe me, I did try hard with this audio captcha, but with object navigation/ exploration there was 0 chance of finding and activating it. Strangely, it appears as a blank line in NVDA's page buffer. So I should press Enter on the blank line to have the audio captcha played.
@MostlyBlindGamer Gawd that's so overkill for a database with like 3 tables where I'm entering all data by hand though. Just tracking some metrics over time. I could use excel but the programmer in me hates that.
@jscholes Yeah probably. I just was hoping not to build a custom thingy, you know? Especially not a custom thingy that will get new data entered once every day or two for the next $years. Until something needs to change and someone, somewhere, will have to figure out the thingy again.
For those interested in airport and airplane communication, here are interesting recordings. Note to Screenreader users, it takes a while to load liveatc.net/recordings.php
I have another sizable update to my Image Description Toolkit available. In addition to supporting geolocation when available on photos, this version allows for the specifying of a web page and having images downloaded and described. Read more on this at theideaplace.net/image-descrip….
With more AI-driven development I have another sizable update for my Image Description Toolkit or IDT. There is a full What’s New document available. Highlights for this beta release include …
{Edit: Numbered instructions.} For anyone who does not want to use Vispero Accounts: 1. if needed, uninstall JAWS 2026 without removing shared components. 2. Create a new file named AdditionalSettings.ini in the same folder where you saved the setup package containing data starting from the ;. 3. launch the setup. 1/2
Thanks to @DavidGoldfield and @BTyson for reminding, to apply this file to an install, you must do the following: 1. This file must be named AdditionalSettings.ini. 2. This file must be copied into the same directory with the setup package before launching the install. 3. This file must be applied for every install and update. 2/2
I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out.
If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand.
I am trying to contribute to an app.
I'd like to parse ipv4 addresses given as command line argument values. I have got two arguments accepting ipv4 address. If I specify single such option all is fine. If I specify both, I 'm getting error like this:
thread 'main' (624061) panicked at /home/peto/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/clap-3.2.25/src/parser/matches/arg_matches.rs:1879:13:
Must use `Arg::allow_invalid_utf8` with `_os` lookups at `[hash: A8F400C40154F09]`
This is simplified version of my code showcasing the issue: ``` use std::net::{IpAddr, Ipv4Addr}; use clap::{App, AppSettings, Arg, value_parser};
#[tokio::main] async fn main() -> Result<(), Error> { let mut app = App::new("Server APP") .about("My super cool app") .setting(AppSettings::DeriveDisplayOrder) .setting(AppSettings::SubcommandsNegateReqs) .arg( Arg::with_name("socket") .required(true) .takes_value(true) .long("socket") .help("Unix socket path"), ) .arg( Arg::with_name("relayaddress") .required(false) .takes_value(true) .long("relay-address") .value_parser(value_parser!(Ipv4Addr)) .help("External relay ipv4 address used together with --listen-address to run behind a nat"), ) .arg( Arg::with_name("listenaddress") .required(false) .takes_value(true) .long("listen-address") .value_parser(value_parser!(Ipv4Addr)) .help("Local listen ipv4 address used together with --relay-address to run behind a nat"), ); let matches = app.clone().get_matches(); if matches.is_present("relayaddress") & matches.is_present("listenaddress") { let external_ip = IpAddr::V4(matches.get_one::<Ipv4Addr>("relayaddress").expect("Invalid address")); let local_ip = IpAddr::V4(matches.get_one::<Ipv4Addr>("listenaddress").expect("Invalid address")); println!("Listening on local IP: {local_ip}"); println!("Relaying through external IP: {external_ip}"); }} ```
I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.
Sensitive content
is this clap 3? Is there a reason not to use the latest version?
I had to make a few changes to make your code compile with clap 3.2.25, but passing both options works fine and it prints them out as expected.
I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.
@Federico Mena Quintero Oh, huge thanks for taking a look. Yes it's clap 3. It's not my decision, I'm attempting to contribute to an existing project so if I can make it work without major changes that might be helpfull. As I don't feel qualified for making decisions when it comes to this. I'm novice when it comes to #rust. --socket argument is required, other two arguments are supposed to be used together and this condition is tested at runtime. So if I specify all three command line arguments, I am always getting that error. I have attempted using os::str and casting but the issue remains. I am simply compiling the app with cargo build --release. Have you been just adding stuff I may have overlooked when trying to simplify for posting or did you actually changed something please?
I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.
@Federico Mena Quintero I've figured it out finally. The issue was not parsing ipv4 addresses but using matches.from_os() on the socket argument. I have changed it to use std::path::PathBuf and it's working fine for me now. Huge thanks for friendly hint and looking at my code.
I am the guest on this week's Penny Forward podcast. I talked about my journey in terms of finding work that aligned with my values as a blind person and attempted to give some general advice for blind people who are looking for work or looking for a job that better aligns with what they would like to be doing. I also talked a little about investing and about moving across the country. To be clear, nothing that I said was intended as a linear "if you do this, then you will find what you're looking for," but, from the point of view of doing what we can as individuals, it is about positioning ourselves to increase our chances of finding opportunities.
The podcast is available from pennyforward.org/podcast-2/, or search for "Penny Forward" wherever you get your podcasts.
Today, we were nicely surprised by @gianmarcogg03 with a new comprehensive (italian) #deltachat introduction video, going through initial setup, groups and chatting, second device setup, #webxdc apps, bots, calls and playing Quake -- all the nice things you can do these days :)
Ho fatto un tutorial su @delta@chaos.social, un sistema di messaggistica istantanea libero e privato basato sulle e-mail, ma con un'esperienza utente molto simile a WhatsApp, se non migliore.
:peertube: PeerTube: https://videos.gianmarco.
Cleverson
in reply to Jonathan Rodriguez • • •