[HN Gopher] Show HN: Beeper - All Your Chats in One App
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Beeper - All Your Chats in One App
Author : erohead
Score : 347 points
Date : 2021-01-20 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.beeperhq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.beeperhq.com)
| erohead wrote:
| While working on Pebble, we ran into a lot of issues as we tried
| to enable messaging from the watch. For example, we never figured
| out how to send an iMessage or WhatsApp reply. While digging
| around for a solution to that problem, I thought it was odd that
| no one had built a Adrium/Trillian/Meebo chat app for modern chat
| networks. I buried that thought for a while, until I learned
| about Matrix two years ago.
|
| Matrix is the holy grail of chat. It's end-to-end encrypted by
| default, federated and open source. The only problem is that not
| a single one of my friends or family was on it! Luckily the
| Matrix folks had already envisioned a solution to this problem -
| they built an API enabling 'bridges' between Matrix and other
| chat networks. This struck a chord with me, maybe we could
| finally build a single app that I could use to chat with all my
| friends, regardless of which chat app they used. Through the
| Matrix community I met Tulir, the most prolific bridge developer
| and we started working together on what would become Beeper. I've
| been using it as my primary chat client for almost 2 years now. I
| could not imagine going back to the hot mess of 12 different chat
| apps I had before!
|
| Beeper is a paid service because I think it aligns interests
| between us and our users. We make a featureful and secure app, in
| exchange you pay us money. For those who prefer to self-host, you
| can run the entire Beeper backend stack on your own server. The
| vast majority of the code we've written for Beeper is open source
| on gitlab.com/nova. Our desktop client is closed source, but you
| can use Element (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer.
| See our FAQ for more info or I'd be happy to explain more.
| pinusc wrote:
| As someone who self-hosts a bunch of bridges-great work! Really
| appreciate seeing a simple solution for people who don't know
| or don't want to self host.
|
| Also, seeing that Tulir is not working entirely pro-bono but
| that his efforts are backed by a company makes me more hopeful
| that the bridge development will continue!
| sarthakjshetty wrote:
| Holy! I don't remember the last time I was this excited for a
| chat app. I just saw your tweet and came to HN to post it but
| this was already on the front page haha.
|
| Just a quick question (completely noob question, I apologize in
| advance), do bridges work like APIs? Where can I read more
| about this protocol?
|
| Really looking forward to this Eric!
| erohead wrote:
| Simplest way to learn about the API is to look at several bot
| implementations https://github.com/maubot/maubot
| sarthakjshetty wrote:
| Awesome! Thanks a ton!
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| This feels too good to be true. It feels a "Shut up and take my
| money". I thought with effective demise of XMPP and myriad
| differing standards and proprietary apps & protocols, this
| could not happen anymore.
|
| I'll check out your site and you may have some very happy paid
| users soon :)
| wsinks wrote:
| Ha, when all those apps started breaking out, I knew that there
| would be a day when someone would finally connect them. Thank
| you for the story about how Matrix enabled you here, we're all
| standing on the backs of turtles!
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Hey, does it support Telegram stickers?
| kitkat_new wrote:
| I don't know about the app, but you can use Telegram stickers
| in Matrix - somewhat. However, it requires a few minutes of
| work: https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker For video
| watchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0
| have_faith wrote:
| How "brittle" are the integrations? I guess I mean is this a
| supported feature of all the 3rd party services or do you have
| to rely on hooking into undocumented apis that could change at
| any time etc.
| erohead wrote:
| I've been using it for the last year straight and I think we
| only experienced one unforeseen breaking API change.
| have_faith wrote:
| Just chiming in, I probably wouldn't pay for $10 a month
| for this service (maybe I'm not the target market). I do
| use various messaging apps and it is annoying though.
|
| This jumped out at me:
|
| >we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app
| installed which bridges to iMessage
|
| I couldn't tell if that was some sort of joke or if it
| meant something different to how I was reading it?
|
| Being open source is great, but to be honest I lack the
| time (and expertise) to see how all the integrations work.
| A page that describes a high level overview of how this
| works exactly might build more trust.
|
| Good luck!
| spamalot159 wrote:
| How does your iMessage integration compare to AirMessage?
|
| I've been using AirMessage for a couple months now on my new
| Android phone and it is about 80% reliable. Images and videos
| also take significantly longer to processes than if I were to
| use an iPhone.
|
| I wonder if Beeper would be an upgrade over AirMessage or if it
| is essentially the same.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Beeper requires a Mac like AirMessage. Or they'll send you a
| jailbroken iPhone.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| How old are these iPhones cause that's the oddest part of
| that setup I've heard.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| iPhone 4.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Thanks for that! It's kind of funny to me, but also kind
| of cool. I guess you just have to be sure to charge the
| iPhone every now and then.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I think the idea is you leave it plugged in at home.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Couldn't all of these chat apps change their TOS and forbid
| Matrix bridges like Discord forbid running through 3rd party
| client? You depend on all of those chat providers to allow you
| to hook everything in one app.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| t2bot.io hosts a Discord bridge and to my knowledge it is
| officially allowed by Discord (else they could not have more
| than 100+ bridge users).
| luplex wrote:
| Yes they can! But it's unlikely they would all do it at the
| same time.
| bluesmoon wrote:
| As an answer to your first question:
|
| Between 2000-2003, I worked on components of the cross protocol
| IM backend used by many of the multi-protocol messengers back
| in the early to mid 2000s (eg: Adium, Trillian, Fire, Ayttm,
| and more). Each of the frontends had different ways to
| integrate. Trillian used 2 processes with TCP communication
| between them to get around the GPL licensed backend), Fire,
| Adium, Ayttm released everything under the GPL.
|
| Eventually most clients moved to using libpurple as the backend
| (developed by the team behind Gaim), but the devs also started
| getting older, busier, and having other responsibilities
| outside of work. The only apps to survive were those that had a
| business model that allowed them to reuse open source code
| without having to release any of the code they developed
| themselves.
|
| I personally stopped working on instant messaging in April
| 2004, the night before I became a Yahoo employee, though I
| continued blogging and doing conference talks about the
| experience:
|
| - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html
|
| - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-
| ayttms-m...
|
| - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-
| collaboration-...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Wasn't this NovaChat before? I signed up for the beta and was
| thinking of planning a session with you for enrolment as you
| mentioned in your last email, hasn't had time yet, sorry. Saw
| it here at the last HN post.
|
| If it's available now I'll gladly use it. Since the Whatsapp
| thing a couple weeks ago even more of my contacts have spread
| out to different apps and it drives me nuts.
|
| Pricing sounds good too, I know these bridges need work to
| maintain. I've tried to run them myself using the docker script
| but it's not ideal. And supporting the maintenance is great.
| gtf21 wrote:
| How does this play with the security of e.g. Signal? Security
| and privacy is the main reason many of us will use it so I
| wouldn't want to compromise it.
|
| Would love to use this on Linux, I find all the desktop apps
| really rubbish (and very happy to pay for it).
| feanaro wrote:
| Matrix's encryption is based on the same cryptographic
| ratchet technology used by Signal. The protocols involved are
| called Olm and Megolm.
|
| Olm is used for establishing 1-on-1 sessions between pairs of
| users (or rather, their devices). This is then used as a
| secure channel to share Megolm keys. A Megolm key is
| ratcheted with each room message sent and is used to derive a
| symmetric AES key with which the message is actually
| encrypted. Periodically (every N messages) a new Megolm key
| is created and re-shared with room participants.
|
| So the end result is that it has roughly the same security as
| Signal, except that a single compromised Megolm key will
| reveal N messages to the attacker instead of just a single
| message. In return, the protocol is much more scalable,
| enabling relatively efficient large end-to-end encrypted
| groups. Otherwise, all the session self-healing, forward
| secrecy properties of Signal are retained.
|
| TL;DR: Approximately the same as Signal, trading a tiny bit
| of security in the event of a key leak for more scalable
| encryption in the setting of large groups.
| foolinaround wrote:
| is the N configurable by the user? ( different paid tier)
| feanaro wrote:
| I don't know much about Beeper, but I do know more about
| Matrix in general. And yes, the N is configurable there
| (as in, you can change it in a client implementation,
| even if it isn't particularly common to have it exposed
| as a setting).
| kevincox wrote:
| I believe this is true for Matrix-to-Matrix communication.
| However if I understand correctly the bridges terminate the
| e2e encryption and then connect to the third party service
| (possibly with a different e2e session).
| feanaro wrote:
| Yes, I was talking about native Matrix specifically.
| km3r wrote:
| you can self host the bridge between matrix and signal,
| allowing e2e to a host you control, and e2e from that
| host to your device. Perhaps not ideal, but likely
| unavoidable if you want an all in one app like this.
| gtf21 wrote:
| So, essentially, if I self-host the bridges then there's no
| security issue (otherwise it looks like a third party has
| access to the keys to decrypt messages, unless the
| negotiation just creates a tunnel through which the signal
| connection occurs)?
| erohead wrote:
| yes, it's a secure tunnel to your self-hosted bridge from
| client
| rStar wrote:
| so the answer is: yes this reduces security over signal for
| both myself and whomever i'm chatting with. due to this,
| seems like a questionable choice to include signal.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Thanks! Beeper looks amazing.
|
| > _Our desktop client is closed source, but you can use Element
| (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer._
|
| I see most bridges are licensed AGPLv3 [0]: Aren't you required
| to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too?
|
| [0] For ex:
| https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE
| [deleted]
| erohead wrote:
| The bridges do not run inside the client, they either run on
| your own self-hosted server or our cloud.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| > Then aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too?
|
| Only if the desktop client is legally a derivative work of
| the bridges.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I would love to pay you for this (though I think $10 is a bit
| steep), but I don't want you to be able to read my messages,
| which you are since you run the bridges.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Beeper is a paid service
|
| It took me multiple times searching that page to find the "$10
| monthly fee" hidden in the FAQ section. You desperately need an
| obvious pricing section.
| foolinaround wrote:
| $10 monthly for a chat service is a bit steep for users from
| Asia and other places..
| viewer5 wrote:
| Is it a just plain high price (e.g. if this was $50/month
| that would be expensive for me, here in the US) or is it
| high comparable to other things (e.g. "other messaging apps
| would be closer to $3/month")?
| pinusc wrote:
| It's comparably high-other messaging apps are _free_.
| Don't get me wrong, this is awesome-I've been doing it
| myself manually by hosting bridges myself for a while,
| and it seems like a very nice solution for non-tech-savy
| users.
|
| But $10/month is steep, given that in practice you're
| paying that much just for the convenience of having your
| (pre existing chats) in the same app.
|
| What I don't get is that hosting your own bridges
| requires the same $10/month subscription. If there was a
| $2/month fee for "power users" instead, letting you host
| your own... I would most likely get a subscription for
| the convenience of using their better integrated
| software.
| troydavis wrote:
| > What I don't get is that hosting your own bridges
| requires the same $10/month subscription. If there was a
| $2/month fee for "power users" instead, letting you host
| your own... I would most likely get a subscription for
| the convenience of using their better integrated
| software.
|
| Those features may require extra engineering and support
| effort, not less.
|
| (Even if these changes actually reduced the cost of
| service delivery, it's usually a small part of the price.
| In consumer SaaS, you're not paying for the cost of goods
| sold, you're paying for everything else - particularly
| software engineering, support, and marketing AKA customer
| acquisition. A reasonable analogy is a restaurant, where
| 20-30% of the meal price goes to food costs. In consumer
| SaaS, the "food cost" is often 10%-20% of the "meal
| price.")
| smarx007 wrote:
| I think generally paying for a messaging app subscription
| more than you pay for your phone subscription (ARPU) is
| going to be hard to sell to a wide audience.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/668966/mobile-
| average-re...
| donclark wrote:
| Good point. Maybe their pricing could be location based?
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Thank you, I am very glad to pay you money to solve this
| problem!
|
| Without an open source client, how can I be assured that you
| aren't harvesting user data through it?
| erohead wrote:
| At first, you have to trust us though we will perform
| auditing eventually. If you would like to use an open source
| Matrix client, that works as well!
| raunakdag wrote:
| Do you guys plan on continuing with the jailbreakable iPhone
| method for iMessage bridging for the foreseeable future, or is
| there an alternative one can expect that is being worked on?
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| This is fantastic stuff. Thank you for building it. Matrix
| truly is a wonderful piece of software.
| arendtio wrote:
| How about XMPP support? I mean, you are talking about Matrix
| being the holy grail of chat and at the same time you do not
| support the IETF standard for instant messaging (which is also
| federated, supports E2E encryption, can use bridges to other
| networks and has several open source implementations)...
|
| In general, my biggest issue with the Matrix community is that
| they chose to build something new, instead of fixing something
| existing. Granted, at the time when Matrix started, XMPP wasn't
| fit for the mobile revolution. But instead of improving the
| XMPP standard (which other people did afterward), the Matrix
| people decided to build something new from the ground up. They
| took a few different design decisions, but in my opinion,
| nothing that would justify building a competing solution and
| splitting the already thin developer community.
|
| Now we have too solutions, both failing to find significant
| adoption. I understand that the matrix people probably built
| their eco system as a hobby, so who am I to criticize them. I
| just feel so depressed, seeing so much work being done on a
| very important subject, not fulfilling its potential due to
| missing focus.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Speaking as a Matrix person: we're quite happy with our
| adoption, which is accelerating exponentially, and we didn't
| build Matrix as a hobby: it's been the team's fulltime day
| job since 2014. Before that we used XMPP (ejabberd + spark +
| XMPP.framework etc) and eventually decided to build a totally
| different architecture: one focused on syncing conversation
| history, rather than sending instant messages. I don't think
| it dilutes or splits the thin developer community: instead
| it's increased interest in open comms enormously (as well as
| helping spur the XMPP community into improving their stuff).
| Just as Linux didn't somehow destroy BSD.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I can only thank you for your work. Open messaging
| ecosystems are much better off for it.
| arendtio wrote:
| Well, even if I prefer XMPP over Matrix and still disagree
| over the developer ressources, I wish you the best of luck,
| because both solutions, being federated, are inherently
| better than the competition by design.
| acct776 wrote:
| Was XMPP improved at that time?
|
| Or a mess of nonstandard addons/plugins that you had to match
| up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| They said XMPP improved afterward. The point is a combined
| effort would be in better shape than XMPP or Matrix now.
|
| The problem with XMPP was every client implemented
| different parts of the standard. The problem with Matrix is
| every client implements different parts of the standard.[1]
|
| [1] https://matrix.org/clients-matrix
| Semaphor wrote:
| Close. It's a mess of standard addons/plugins that you have
| to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame.
|
| Sadly for me, it's also the only modern messenger that has
| decent desktop clients that don't look like discord. But I
| guess that this will never change as I seem to be pretty
| lonely with my want of those.
| jiofih wrote:
| Because XMPP sucks. It had 20 years to succeed, and failed.
| Maybe it's time for you to move on?
|
| Last company I worked at that used it internally had
| thousands of employees in IT and _still_ considered
| maintaining the jabber server not worth it - a million XEP
| extensions cannot bring it to the same level as a modern chat
| client. On every matrix post the xmpp crowd comes out of the
| woods, but what have you got to show? What's the best cross-
| platform or web client for it right now? They all look like
| half-baked ports of long abandoned QT apps made for Linux and
| still don't support syncing /multi-presence well.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Did the company switch to Matrix?
|
| XMPP was pretty successful in the 2000s. More than Matrix
| so far. There were missed opportunities but the main reason
| it declined was Facebook and Google decided closed was more
| profitable than open.
|
| Why exclude native clients?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Messaging underwent an earth-shattering paradigm shift in
| the past 20 years, so numerous features considered optional
| back in 2000 are now mandatory when you want any mass
| market appeal (which is the whole point when messaging is
| dominated by network effects).
|
| A rework of the FOSS messaging ecosystem was much needed,
| and Matrix was the one to deliver it and not XMPP. I say
| the winner takes the crown, especially when the end result
| is more coherent for users.
|
| The fact is that sometimes the kind of tool you need is a
| solid monolith built from the ground up with specific
| objectives in mind, and not a loose accretion of small
| utilities and extensions.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I wish Matrix delivered what it promised. But it hasn't
| yet.
|
| Matrix is coherent if you use the reference server and
| clients. But so is XMPP if you get them from the same
| source. And the Matrix reference server needs pretty
| powerful hardware.
| arendtio wrote:
| > And the Matrix reference server needs pretty powerful
| hardware.
|
| That is not a bug, its a feature (or so the Matrix people
| say).
|
| In fact, part of the Matrix design is a fat server which
| has a lot more responsibilities by default than an XMPP
| server. However, I guess a full-featured XMPP server
| (with MAM, Push, etc.) probably has similar requirements.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The Matrix people don't say it's a feature. They say the
| rewrite will fix it.
|
| XMPP with MAM and push doesn't have similar requirements.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| > They took a few different design decisions, but in my
| opinion, nothing that would justify building a competing
| solution and splitting the already thin developer community.
|
| I'd argue that the design decisions are key to the success of
| Matrix. However I do not think that there must be any
| splitting. Checkout the XMPP Bridge that matrix.org hosts.
|
| > I just feel so depressed, seeing so much work being done on
| a very important subject, not fulfilling its potential due to
| missing focus.
|
| As long as there are people like Eric, there is hope :) I
| think we have more focus than ever before, even within the
| XMPP community :)
| upofadown wrote:
| >Checkout the XMPP Bridge that matrix.org hosts.
|
| Is there a description of how to generate an address on the
| other network? This sounds awesome. A working bridge gets a
| Matrix user access to the tens of thousands of federated
| XMPP servers.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Yes, there is: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| bifrost/wiki/Address-sy...
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The XMPP bridge means the user communities don't have to be
| split. The developer communities are.
| michaeljelly wrote:
| Honestly so glad it's a paid service. I'm happy to pay for
| something I can trust to handle my messages, rather than using
| them against me to sell ads/send to shady data brokers!
|
| Awesome work Eric, Tulir, and the whole Matrix team too!
| pimeys wrote:
| I've been in the past few nights trying to build my own
| Matrix server with integrations to Signal, WhatsApp,
| Telegram, IRC, Slack et.al. It is quite a lot of work, even
| with the Ansible script. First was the DNS SRV record, that
| is needed to federate with matrix.org. And the Signal
| integration happily sent messages to my friends, but I never
| got any messages back.
|
| I have quite a lot of experience with Linux and server
| maintenance. And I know if I put enough time to this, I'll
| get everything to work eventually. I'm still saying that
| paying money for somebody else to do this feels like a nice
| investment at this point. The task of doing everything by
| yourself is quite tricky.
| pimeys wrote:
| Need to add now I got everything working. Element running
| in my own domain, connecting Signal, Telegram, Matrix
| federation and IRC in a beautiful way.
|
| It is a lot of work, some of the documentation can be a bit
| tough if you don't know how things work together and
| especially the DNS setup can take a bit of time to get the
| federation working.
| aloisdg wrote:
| If you achieve it, it could be nice to improve the
| existing documentation.
| spiffytech wrote:
| $10/mo is steeper than I like for a chat app, but this is so
| huge to just roll everything into one place, and I like that
| it's OSS, so I'm happy to pitch in and support the devs even
| if I'm capable of self-hosting the backend.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| The messages still go through the "free" networks, so they're
| still being used exactly like that.
| pimeys wrote:
| Thank you for Pebble! It was my main Diabetes app for seeing
| the current blood glucose directly from my wrist until my
| Pebble 2 finally died a year ago. It was almost like magic and
| had a week of battery life.
|
| The commercial matrix bridge is an excellent idea. I was able
| to get my homeserver running, but it is a hell of a job to get
| everything working. When it does work, oh boy, it again feels
| like magic!
| erohead wrote:
| So good to hear that! Have you considered buying one off
| ebay? Still some good deals there :)
| littlehugie wrote:
| Will you Support Threema in the future?
| liminalsunset wrote:
| On the website it looks like it says Android and iOS via
| Element [appears to be the renamed Riot.im matrix client]. Is
| there no custom iOS or Android application for Beeper that this
| will ship with?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah riot was renamed, as they finally admitted that it was a
| weird name with negative connotations.
|
| Never understood what was wrong with the name vector by the
| way. That was even nicer IMO.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Where is the open source code for the iMessage bridge?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| It doesn't exist yet.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040
| ibeckermayer wrote:
| This is amazing. I had precisely this idea ~6mo ago (but never
| actually built anything). Excited to see you've done all the
| heavy lifting for me. I also love the paid model to align
| interests and the ability to self host. I will definitely be
| giving this a test run.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Kudos to Tulir!!!
| yters wrote:
| Why isn't there a single app to aggregate and integrate all
| social media and messaging and email and voice chat platforms?
| Then it doesn't matter which ones come and go, and people don't
| need to worry about the plethora of ways to communicate..
| selfishgene wrote:
| ... because divided you are conquered.
| mrleinad wrote:
| Because a long time ago, Microsoft bought Skype and created its
| own communication protocol. It was all downhill from there
| on...
| yters wrote:
| But couldn't an app reverse engineer the frontends for all
| these communication services and create an aggregation
| overlay? E.g. what Dropbox did with the Mac osx filesystem.
| ivanche wrote:
| An app definitely _can 't_ reverse engineer the frontends
| for all these communication services. A skilled developer
| (or, more realistically, developers) probably can. They're
| not cheap though.
| yters wrote:
| Doh of course! Hah I meant devs ;)
| codebutler wrote:
| Looks awesome, I'm looking forward to trying it out! A couple
| questions: 1) Is the desktop app electron or native? 2) Is the
| Mac iMessage bridge open-source?
|
| Thanks!
| erohead wrote:
| Desktop app is Electron. We will open source the iMessage
| bridge in a few weeks.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Dang, was hoping it wasn't electron.
| Hamuko wrote:
| So much for that "Native Chat Is Better".
| jnsie wrote:
| This looks really neat. Would love to know more about how
| iMessage is integrated and get thoughts on the likelihood of
| Apple blocking it in the future. But kudos!
| dmcc7897 wrote:
| I have signed up and will happily pay for this the very second I
| receive an invite. This is exactly what I need.
|
| The UI appears to be top notch, too.
| ggrelet wrote:
| I submitted my infos to Nova.chat (same form) a while ago. Do I
| need to do it again?
| erohead wrote:
| Nope!
| ggrelet wrote:
| Waiting for the beta, then.
| gcblkjaidfj wrote:
| you are only enabling marketers and spammers.
|
| No user will ever use this in the way you are advertising here.
| acct776 wrote:
| You won't.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I may be missing something; I'm jumping at the bits to use
| something like this, and I'm quite the opposite of spammer -
| I'm just a nerd with heterogeneous family and friends who
| refuse to all magically switch to my recommended and
| _obviously_ superior chat app :P
| jmarinez wrote:
| Beeper bridges with WhatsApp. Does it mean that one can bypass
| the upcoming Facebook data sharing requirement by just using the
| Beeper client?
| jcul wrote:
| No, it just uses WhatsApp web.
|
| Even if it didn't the data is still passing through WhatsApps's
| servers.
| philsnow wrote:
| I mentioned bitlbee elsewhere in this thread, but in case people
| haven't heard of it, it's a similar beast to Beeper but it
| bridges chat systems to an IRC client of your choice (you can use
| an IRC bouncer or whatever else you want to connect to bitlbee).
| It supports several chat systems https://wiki.bitlbee.org/
| including apparently Matrix.
|
| I mostly mention it as a historical note because bitlbee's use of
| IRC as the bridged protocol means that it's of limited usefulness
| on mobile. It was fantastic for me in the days before smartphones
| became a thing, but I do at least 50% of my "chat" on my phone
| these days.
| donio wrote:
| The use of IRC as the bridge protocol is actually the best
| feature for me because of the multitude of client options of
| available including several for Emacs.
|
| I love the text focus and at least for the protocols I care
| about images and videos are presented as URLs so they are
| easily accessible.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| I thought WhatsApp banned thirdparty apps some time ago? How does
| this work exactly?
| episteme wrote:
| Could be a wrapper around WhatsApp Web.
| jcul wrote:
| It is, the matrix WhatsApp bridge uses a reverse engineered
| WhatsApp web library.
|
| > A Matrix-WhatsApp puppeting bridge. Written in Go using the
| Rhymen/go-whatsapp implementation of the sigalor/whatsapp-
| web-reveng project.
|
| https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/mautrix-whatsapp
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| I'm sure it could be done that way, but if it violates TOS
| then I would be wary that the bridge will be unreliable.
| hansdieter1337 wrote:
| I had that thought, too. That's the reason that stopped me
| from implementing sth like that. I think a definitive
| solution to a cat-and-mice game would be an automated
| reverse-engineering of the chat apps.
| noxer wrote:
| 10$/month is absurd
| scrollaway wrote:
| Absurdly low.
| sarthakjshetty wrote:
| Another quick question, the webpage looks a lot like Mighty's. Is
| it designed by the same folks or is it like a design language?
| vini808 wrote:
| This is really cool however I'm worried about getting banned from
| discord using for using your service as I believe it's not
| authorized on discord to use third party client
| acct776 wrote:
| Write them, tell them to fuck off with that.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| I assume some part of the iMessage faq is a joke ?
|
| > This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of
| enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we
| send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed
| which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always
| connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app
| which acts as a bridge.
| Groxx wrote:
| Nope: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25852034
| [deleted]
| zufallsheld wrote:
| I just installed matrix and bridges for telegram, slack and
| whatsapp using the linked ansible playbook. I used my own domain
| and a new cheap vps. this took me about an hour. I connected
| Element on my android phone to my new matrix server and now I
| have all chats in one app and on desktop. That is totally great
| and worked far better and easier than I imagined. Well done.
| mrweasel wrote:
| How does it work? Most of those protocols are't exactly open.
|
| Also please add support for Google Chat.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| >This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of
| enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we
| send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed
| which bridges to iMessage,
|
| is this not a joke?
| dyeje wrote:
| Yea, I'm really confused by that FAQ item.
| erohead wrote:
| Not a joke
| https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
| heroHACK17 wrote:
| WUPHF.com 2.0
| olah_1 wrote:
| If Matrix / Element had a better UX, it wouldn't need "bridges"
| as the best selling point.
|
| I use other messengers because I find their features to be
| better. If I preferred Matrix, I would use that without the need
| for bridges.
| pryelluw wrote:
| wuphf.com ?
| scottcorgan wrote:
| this
| jonplackett wrote:
| 1) Is this actually live or just a concept. All I get a a survey
| when signing up
|
| 2) This seems like a security nightmare. Is it?
| asiando wrote:
| I spent a lot of time and effort merging my chat clients in the
| Meebo era and afterwards with XMPP proxies and I tried to keep
| friends from messaging me in 3 apps at once.
|
| I gave up and that's fine. I have at least 4 messaging apps on my
| phone and I still prefer that over debugging a proxy. A missed
| message causes real-world problems, so it's important not to mess
| with the delicate balance that IM already carries.
|
| If the benefit is easier archival and search, give me a solution
| to that that works in the background rather than a real-time
| proxy.
| vessenes wrote:
| Oooh, this is so exciting.
|
| I went down the bridged chat rabbit hole earlier this year when I
| realized I had to be checking signal, telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat,
| iMessage and multiple emails to be on top of communication. I
| stopped when I realized how difficult WhatsApp and WeChat were
| going to be, though.
|
| I want to pay for this, right now. Ideally double if it will help
| you launch. :)
| WorldPeas wrote:
| For those that don't use a macintosh(or don't care about
| imessage), ferdi is a great free alternative
| recursive wrote:
| There's a list of logos for supported chat networks. But it
| doesn't give the names. I recognize about half of them, but it
| would be nice if they were written in words somewhere.
| bhandziuk wrote:
| Scroll down to the FAQ Whatsapp
| Facebook Messenger iMessage Android Messages
| (SMS) Telegram Twitter Slack
| Hangouts Instagram Skype IRC
| Matrix Discord Signal Beeper network
| recursive wrote:
| I see it. Thanks.
|
| Still though, I'd like some alt text. It wouldn't even
| disrupt the layout.
| e-clinton wrote:
| iMessage integration is interesting but I can't imagine it will
| last. Not sure what type of wizardry you guys pulled but a cease
| and desist is likely on its way. Either way, congrats. Really
| hope it works out as this is very much needed.
| aabbccsmith wrote:
| I wouldn't use this for Discord, as it requires you to insert a
| user token (aka self botting - which is against the terms of
| service). Bar that, the app looks quite promising, but I would be
| wary of what they are offering.
| uoflcards22 wrote:
| How do I get started? I put in my email like 10 minutes ago and
| have received nothing...
| mouldysammich wrote:
| I was also a little confused, you'll get an email in a bit
| explaining that there is a queue for signing up and they'll
| inform you when you're in and that kinda thing.
| uoflcards22 wrote:
| Yup, just got it. Thanks.
| soheil wrote:
| If there is an iMessage bridge that would be considered a zero-
| day exploit. There is no official or un-office API for iMessage
| outside the Apple ecosystem and this is part of security measures
| by Apple to ensure privacy.
| acct776 wrote:
| Maybe it works differently than that
| soheil wrote:
| Looks like they actually send you a jailbroken iPhone
| physically in the mail to enable iMessage. Not sure how
| scalable that is.
| acct776 wrote:
| I think the news they'll generate from it alone will be
| worth it.
| trinix912 wrote:
| How exactly does this work?
|
| I find this interesting as it raises so many questions:
|
| Do they just give away free iPhones, or reset it for each
| user and have them mail it back? What if it gets lost /
| damaged during shipping? How do they cover the costs of
| this?
| soheil wrote:
| I may be wrong on the physically mailing you the iPhone.
| It could be that they ask for your Apple login and just
| log you in to a jailbroken iPhone on their premise.
| andoriyu wrote:
| Well, no. iMessage protocol was reverse engineered, but they
| patched it and make really hard to do crypto part of it. Hard
| enough that people stopped trying - after all you still
| required an existing registration from Apple's device and there
| was no guarantee it stops working again.
|
| What they do is run ichat2json every time there is a new
| message in a folder and AppleScript to send outgoing messages.
| It requires a macOS with already authenticated Messages.app.
|
| It's not using any unofficial APIs, it's just a wrapper around
| iMessage client on a mac.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Not sure how it would be a zero-day exploit.. you're allowed to
| run whatever code you want on your Mac, and if you bypass the
| sandbox by giving Full Disk Access or whatever other
| permissions this uses, it follows that it will be able to read
| your iMessage database.
|
| As for the iPhone bridge, that does use a jailbreak which is,
| of course, an exploit--one that Apple has patched and the patch
| deliberately not applied to the device in question.
| dilly_li wrote:
| "Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users
| to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the
| Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a
| Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install
| the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge."
|
| This answers my question! One iPhone for each Beeper user, no
| wonder the $10 monthly fee!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Multiprotocol clients and transports are a dead end.
|
| Most walled garden messaging service developers are openly
| hostile to third-party clients - this goes back to early 00s and
| ICQ war against QIP and other much better clients. Modern
| technology and app distribution model has made it far easier for
| service owners to enforce their rules of using their service.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| This is a single protocol client, which can be replaced by any
| Matrix client.
|
| This is why it is so good
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| What you refer to is called 'transport',such transports for
| xmpp exist for more than 20 years.
|
| They didn't fly because service owners don't really want them
| to. Sometimes services resist actively, sometimes passively.
| The protocol you use is irrelevant, xmpp, matrix, email,
| whatever - this is never-ending game of catch up which the
| service owner will win, because he _needs_ users to use their
| stock app and all their metadata.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Bridges make the server a multi protocol client.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| not really, they are all individual pieces put together -
| independent of the server
| philsnow wrote:
| The problem is not the client at all. Look at the history of
| libpurple/gaim. My chat setup used to be an irc client
| connected to bitlbee (which uses libpurple), and (way back
| when) the various chat system owners would either
| intentionally or unintentionally break the integrations
| fairly regularly.
|
| They have no incentive to keep their API stable since they
| control their official client.
|
| On top of this, when you try to bridge disparate comms
| platforms together, you end up with the client having only
| the common subset of functionality, or with the client
| emulating functionality clumsily.
|
| The example I'm thinking of is in iMessage, if you're on a
| group text thread with people who are on SMS instead of
| iMessage, "tapback" reactions (the thumbs-up, exclamation,
| haha, etc ones) show up as "<name> emphasized '<the full text
| of the message they !!ed>'".
| kitkat_new wrote:
| it's way harder to make all Matrix clients support all
| protocols and somehow sync them properly than to write a
| App Service that can be plugged to a server.
| bkovacev wrote:
| Is there a plan for supporting Viber?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| can you give us a ballpark figues of how much of a vps is needed
| to get started? you have given an ansible script and all but
| minimum specs would be nice along with users it can handle
| erohead wrote:
| 2-3gb RAM + 50GB disk. Small CPU is ok.
| tylermenezes wrote:
| I've been using this for several months now, and it's one of the
| biggest digital quality-of-life improvements I made in 2020.
| Getting modern chat networks to interact is never something I
| thought I would see. Congrats to Eric and co!
| acct776 wrote:
| What's the worst glitch you've had, if you don't mind me
| asking?
| tylermenezes wrote:
| In the very early days the bridges were less reliable, and
| there was no warning if a bridge disconnected, so there were
| a few times when I didn't realize a message didn't go through
| for a few hours.
|
| That's been fixed now :)
| kevincox wrote:
| I love the idea of hosted bridges (in fact I was thinking about
| starting my own service like this) and I'm glad that the bridges
| themselves are open source. However I would much rather that the
| client was open source as well (It would make it way easier to
| get all my friends to Matrix with a well polished client).
|
| Basically $10 a month for access to bridges that funds bridge
| development is great however I don't want some of that to fund
| the development of a closed-source client. If the client was
| opened, or had work upstreamed to an open source client I would
| be all on board.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I use weechat for this and it works fine. Slack, Discord, Signal,
| etc. all bridge fine (though Signal is a bit messy). And of
| course, IRC. The one thing I haven't figured out how to connect
| is MS Teams, and it doesn't look like this service offers it
| anyway; is there a reason to use it?
| acct776 wrote:
| Not for you, apparently.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Does this support RCS flavours of SMS?
| yingbo wrote:
| Are there already many similar apps? I used two: Rambox
| https://rambox.pro/ and Franz https://meetfranz.com
| 50 wrote:
| https://texts.com - it's not released yet but you can sign up
| for early access.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| Anyone who is already in the early-access?
|
| This looks like an interesting alternative and I am looking
| forward to trying both of them out once I get in
| KishanBagaria wrote:
| Yep, check out some tweets by our users here:
| https://twitter.com/TextsHQ
| navanchauhan wrote:
| Ah you are the creator! I had a couple of questions:
|
| 1. Are you using unofficial APIs or do you have custom
| bridges much like Beeper?
|
| 2. How would you deal with messaging apps like Snapchat?
|
| Also, you were right in saying "app invites are the new
| currency of SV"[0]. Keep up the good work!
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/KishanBagaria/status/129475427399
| 8172160...
| KishanBagaria wrote:
| > Are you using unofficial APIs or do you have custom
| bridges much like Beeper?
|
| All platform integrations were developed in-house from
| the ground up. We don't use the Matrix protocol but
| support it.
|
| > How would you deal with messaging apps like Snapchat?
|
| We don't plan on supporting Snapchat since it's single
| session only.
| folkrav wrote:
| Those are glorified browsers wrapping the web based clients in
| dedicated "tabs". AFAIK it looks like Beeper hosts a
| matrix<->service bridge between those platforms, and their
| client actually unifies messages in a single inbox. Seems to be
| different.
| smt88 wrote:
| No, those are totally different. They're just Electron shells
| around web versions of chat apps. They're also extremely
| resource-intensive and buggy.
|
| Someone forked Rambox and kept it FOSS, and it's called
| Hamsket.
| folkrav wrote:
| There is also an OSS hard-fork of Franz called Ferdi, for
| anyone interested. Been using it for some time, I don't love
| nor hate it.
| halfjew22 wrote:
| >How in the world did you get iMessage to work on Android and
| Windows?
|
| >This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of
| enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we
| send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed
| which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always
| connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app
| which acts as a bridge.
|
| Can you elaborate? Surely this is satire or I'm missing something
| super obvious.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Does this solve the whole security issues with WhatsApp and such?
| It seems like just a proxy so it's not any more secure than the
| apps it accesses right?
| whycombagator wrote:
| I thought I'd seen this before[0]
|
| Also:
|
| > I make no claims to this being production level reliability.
| It's very much beta software. Very beta
|
| @erohead does this quote from you 6 months ago still hold
| true?[1]
|
| This is a software I'd definitely use & pay for if it was
| polished/worked.
|
| I quickly looked at the GitLab source and couldn't find the code
| for the iMessage bridge. How does that integration work?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693371
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23694933
| erohead wrote:
| It's 6 months better now! We haven't open sourced the iMessage
| bridge yet, will do that in a few weeks.
| meibo wrote:
| > we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app
| installed which bridges to iMessage
|
| Huh, I wonder how this is sustainable. I assume there is a
| greater cost than 10 bucks a month for this option? I wouldn't
| want to be the one managing the logistical effort of that!
| gpmcadam wrote:
| Expect Apple to come down on this like a tonne of bricks and
| render the whole thing impossible very quickly.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Never gonna happen as long as checkra1n can pwn the latest
| iOS. Cat and mouse game. MobileSubstrate/Substitute/libhooker
| is too powerful a platform.
| bredren wrote:
| It says you can run a Mac app but presumably this is to bridge
| in users outside the Apple ecosystem.
|
| So probably it is the cheapest iPhone that has a year or two
| worth of iOS support left and just sits plugged in.
|
| While a novel hack, I would never want my iMessage
| conversations being bridged to a service outside the Apple
| ecosystem.
|
| While I have no doubt this service will do their best with
| security, it relies on leaking data from Apple.
|
| Imagine if someone built an insecure bridge for FaceTime Audio,
| and the caller did not know the recipient was using a bridge
| service.
|
| Any reliance on Apple's massive investment in the privacy and
| security of a FaceTime transmission goes out the window and
| into the hands of an unknown 3rd party.
|
| It also tricks the sender into thinking that their secure
| iMessage conversations are what they look like.
|
| I know when i see a green chat bubble, that low level people at
| Verizon can access the content of the messages.
|
| I see this as a big problem, where the goal of letting more
| people in for UX reasons undermines expectations of privacy
| from those uninvolved in the use of the product.
|
| People are mention Discord being unhappy with this, but I
| imagine Apple would see this as an abomination.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| > It also tricks the sender into thinking that their secure
| iMessage conversations are what they look like.
|
| If you send a message to someone, you are assuming that
| anything can happen to it unless you have a legal agreement
| to the contrary. They could have a keylogger (malware or
| device-management), someone looking over their shoulder, take
| a screenshot, forget to sign out of the library computer,
| etc.
|
| The end-to-end-encryption on iMessage gets defeated for most
| people anyway if they have iCloud Backup on.
| bredren wrote:
| You are right, this has always been true with taking a
| photo of a screen and printing it out on your printer.
|
| This defeats any truly end-to-end encrypted conversation.
|
| I think you are also right to compare this service to
| malware.
|
| It takes content intended for a secured environment
| maintained by one party and exfiltrates it into another.
|
| This other environment is protected by an entity that is
| neither bound by the reputation damage of failing to keep
| the information secure, nor on the receiving end of funds
| that can be directed to keep it secure.
|
| Since 100% of the iMessage content, text and photos flows
| through this environment, it is not like occasionally
| taking photos of conversations. It is the wholesale
| duplication of the data.
|
| iCloud Backups are also encrypted, and are the security of
| that system is maintained by the first party the
| conversations were originally sent by.
| jiofih wrote:
| > The end-to-end-encryption on iMessage gets defeated for
| most people anyway if they have iCloud Backup on.
|
| iCloud backups are encrypted using a unique key which is
| only unlockable with the user password, which is itself
| protected in hardware. So no, it doesn't defeat the
| purpose.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Syncing messages through iCloud uses end to end
| encryption. Backups don't.[1]
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
| jiofih wrote:
| Keep reading:
|
| > Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If
| you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a
| copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures
| you can recover your Messages if you lose access to
| iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn
| off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device
| to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| >I would never want my iMessage conversations being bridged
| to a service outside the Apple ecosystem
|
| I think setting up an API outside the Apple ecosystem would
| be fine. It's crazy that we not only don't have a standard
| protocol for messaging anymore, the primary services don't
| even allow for integration.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| They're using unsupported iPhones.[1]
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
| lxe wrote:
| I was wondering how this is solved... and here's the answer!
| Wish there was a free/foss DIY solution to this.
| khimaros wrote:
| this is a really cool project, and a great curation effort. there
| are ansible scripts which they recommend for self-hosting:
| https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy --
| most of the bridges (mirrored to their GitLab org) appear to be
| unmodified from upstream.
| erohead wrote:
| The upstream bridges are written and open sourced by our lead
| developer Tulir https://github.com/tulir/
| yur3i__ wrote:
| The main appeal of this to me is the whatsapp part. If I can
| reliably self host this and get rid of whatsapp on my phone,
| replacing it with an open source app then that's awesome
| scrollaway wrote:
| Holy crap, this is inspiring. The blog post
| (https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus...)
| really says it all.
|
| I've sent you an email. It's great to see the problem being
| addressed the right way.
| saltybytes wrote:
| Isn't Beeper similar to Franz [0]?
|
| [0] https://meetfranz.com/
| dundercoder wrote:
| I was just looking yesterday for a unified chat client,
| specifically for slack and discord. Looks interesting.
| AnonHP wrote:
| This looks nice, but $10 a month is a tough sell for me (I use
| only two of the supported platforms everyday, with about 20
| messages total in a day, on average).
|
| Also, why does the site ask for an email address to get started?
| An explanation of why along with the on boarding process would be
| useful.
|
| That aside, the Meet Our Team section on the homepage shows "This
| is some text inside of a div block." on the right. Is this an
| oversight or is it some inside joke?
| anoa_ wrote:
| Looks like that's a bug that occurs when javascript is
| disabled. It should have another two entries.
|
| I assume they're now aware of it :)
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Charging per network makes sense to me. I would only use this
| for iMessage and signal, so it's only worth a buck or two a
| month for me. If I was using everything offered I would gladly
| pay $10 a month.
| smt88 wrote:
| I would pay $100/mo for it.
|
| I think it's just not a pain point for everyone. In a lot of
| countries, "everyone" uses a single platform and it's not a big
| deal.
|
| As a US user of 5 apps, some for business, it's just a mess and
| a constant source of friction.
| trinix912 wrote:
| > In a lot of countries, "everyone" uses a single platform
| and it's not a big deal.
|
| > As a US user of 5 apps, some for business, it's just a mess
| and a constant source of friction.
|
| Depends on what countries you have in mind, but it's pretty
| much the same elsewhere. Messenger, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp,
| Snapchat, Viber, Discord, Telegram, Signal... You just need
| to have all of them and this seems like a very elegant
| solution for having all your messages in one place.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Agreed. I would kill to not have to use Snapchat's app to
| talk to some of my friend groups. Same goes for Instagram.
| scrollaway wrote:
| > _I would pay $100 /mo for it._
|
| For a good quality one? Same. Signed up.
| soheil wrote:
| What happens if I have an iPhone and want to send/receive text
| (not iMessage)? Is this officially supported or text messaging
| only works if you have an Android?
| BFatts wrote:
| Trillian!
| bfors wrote:
| If I had a social life I'd be really excited about this
| bichiliad wrote:
| I've been really excited for something like this, and seeing that
| it's built on top of Matrix is also exciting. One of my biggest
| gripes as of late is how hard it is to, for example, limit your
| time on Instagram without cutting yourself off from Instagram's
| chat. I can tell my friends to send me texts as much as I want,
| but there's always a message or two in Instagram that I don't see
| until a day or two later than I want to.
| michaeljelly wrote:
| I have this exact problem too! Having tried Beeper, and now
| using it every day, I can confirm it achieves this perfectly.
|
| I now just check Beeper in batches (there's a great shortcut
| for cycling through unreads), rather than having endless apps
| to check.
| bichiliad wrote:
| I can't tell you how great this is to hear! I'm really
| excited to give it a try.
| kuter wrote:
| Some of the supported messaging apps doesn't allow automation or
| provide APIs. I appreciate the work that went into supporting
| those. But I don't think it would be possible to have consistent
| support for some of those chat apps. Things like API changes or
| just getting you server ips banned would disrupt service.
| css wrote:
| I used to use an app for this called IM+ in the early days of
| iOS, looks like they're still around: https://www.plus.im
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Is this actually active now?
|
| The FAQ implies it's an available product. Going through the form
| indicates I may be invited to use at some unspecified point in
| the future... :-/
| soheil wrote:
| Interesting that "eroheard" comment seems to be pinned to the top
| of this thread. Is this a new feature by HN and only available to
| YC company founders?
| flyGuyOnTheSly wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| Probably just a lot of upvotes in a short period of time.
|
| It's a pretty cool idea.
| soheil wrote:
| As far as I remember every time I post a comment it always
| shows at the top for about a minute saying "0 minute ago",
| but in this case it was the second comment right after I
| posted. Anyone else noticed this?
| usbfingers wrote:
| While I think the core focus of Beeper as a cross platform
| messenger is great, the bigger positive here in my opinion is a
| matrix client with good UX and design.
|
| The user experience portrayed here is much more in line with what
| is required to get people less technical on one
| decentralized/federated network, such as matrix.
|
| I'm currently working towards the same effort, in a very
| different stage of development, in that regard with
| https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon.
|
| Props to Eric, Tulir, and the team for making such a good looking
| client!
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Wait, did they do anything for the Matrix client? Their "Get
| Beeper" section makes it seem like they just use the normal
| Matrix client.
|
| > Available on MacOS, Windows, Linux iOS and Android via
| Element
|
| Which i assume is https://element.io/ ?
| erohead wrote:
| I've been following Syphon, it looks great!
| npmisdown wrote:
| Could someone shed a light on economics of working on such kind
| of a project?
|
| Aren't developing third-party client for the entity which you do
| not control and somehow compete with is typically a futile
| experience?
|
| Doesn't it go against most of ToS-es directly (e.g.
| Discord/WhatsApp happily ban accounts using third-party clients)
| or indirectly (I guess no proprietary chat platform will be
| exactly happy having third-party clients that compete with their
| official and controlled app).
|
| I mean how people justify building a business on it given that it
| essentially means that they have to play on the other's people
| playground by the rules which can be changed at any time. Like
| tomorrow Slack would decide to disallow any third-party apps and
| you're done.
| anticensor wrote:
| Discord allows relay bridges (using bot accounts), but not
| puppeting.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Doesn't using this with Discord run a risk of your account
| getting banned for using a third-party client? That's why the
| Cordless developer shut down the project:
| https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless
| kitkat_new wrote:
| t2bot.io hosts a Discord bridge and to my knowledge it is
| officially allowed by Discord (else they could not have more
| than 100+ bridge users).
|
| So I imagine there might be the possibility of it being allowed
| for Beeper as well.
| Half-Shot wrote:
| t2bot.io uses webhook/bot based bridging which at least
| doesn't trigger the "no custom clients" clause (as you aren't
| using any real user account tokens)
|
| The broader question of whether bridges are allowed seems to
| be broadly yes as there are many other bridges out there for
| Discord (IRC/slack ones) and those haven't been shut down
| either.
|
| I think so long as you aren't abusive, Discord don't care.
| stryan wrote:
| They're using HalfShot's appservice bridge I think, which works
| entirely through the standard Discord API with bot users. IIRC
| Discord is very much aware of the project.
|
| Discord's generally fine with anything using it's API/gateways
| as long as it's NOT logging in as a "real" user.
| acct776 wrote:
| After a disclaimer, that sounds like a problem between the user
| and the Discord people.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yes -- I would be the user, and I would like to avoid that
| problem.
| maelito wrote:
| > Interesting, please tell me this is based on matrix
|
| > Oh, the matrix logo among others, good thing at least
|
| > YES !
| xx4xx4 wrote:
| i hope the company supports parity purchasing power for the 3rd
| world countries... idk maybe $5 a month.. it would be very
| helpful..
| arsome wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, if you're using this with Signal you'd
| better be running the bridge yourself or your messages are
| unencrypted on someone else's server.
| dkman94 wrote:
| Is this the wuphf rebrand?
| xlance wrote:
| Just watched this episode earlier today, my exact thought ^^
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Please, someone do this for email.
| tracyhenry wrote:
| Doesn't your phone's email app support multiple email accounts?
| Gmail and Outlook both support mail forwarding too?
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| The cross-platform client aspect of it (linux in particular)
| is what I'm interested in.
|
| I used mailspring for a while but it just was too buggy for
| me unfortunately.
| erohead wrote:
| Already in the works :)
| https://github.com/JojiiOfficial/Matrix-EmailBridge
| fangyrn wrote:
| what do you mean?
| jcul wrote:
| This looks great.
|
| I'm just in the middle of trying to set up a home server using
| dendrite to do exactly this (mainly for fun).
|
| This looks really well done and polished though.
|
| It's great to see services like this using matrix as it can only
| mean positive feedback for the protocol / server code.
|
| Is it using synapse or dendrite (or something else) for the
| server?
| erohead wrote:
| we use synapse right now. Hopefully moving to dendrite when
| appservice support is added
| lc3sim wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! My understanding of the space is that
| there is a great desire for "super powered" messaging -
| especially over text. Any chance "send later" is a part of your
| roadmap? Or possible to implement using your API?
| erohead wrote:
| definitely on roadmap
| hansdieter1337 wrote:
| I guess it's only a matter of time until Facebook et al fight the
| bridges in form of lawsuits and API changes. Some years ago
| Facebook's chat was accessible via the Jabber protocol. I think
| they won't like users switching away from their apps and miss the
| control and ad revenue.
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