[HN Gopher] NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat
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NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat
Author : memexy
Score : 59 points
Date : 2020-06-30 18:47 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nova.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (nova.chat)
| todotodo wrote:
| I've built a not for profit multi-platform capable matrix client
| that is now in open alpha called Syphon
| (https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon). This is largely to
| address the issue of proprietary chat clients. Private, secure
| communication (with a decent brand and ui) should be accessible
| to everyone by now.
|
| Signal does a great job of filling the void but if they fail or
| are blocked by a country or community, the application interface
| itself is not a protocol to which people could easily pivot.
| Standing up a viable and federated Signal server is not easy,
| though I know Session is working on it.
|
| I'm hoping that Riot's upcoming rebrand will mark the start of
| this transition. We need centralized efforts to spread usage of
| matrix, or a similarly accessible protocol, while also making it
| easy for people to create or maintain their own personal
| connection to that network.
| myu701 wrote:
| 2 things.
|
| 1) much better name for a matrix client than the others, Nova
| sounds cool.
|
| 2) $10/month is more than Disney+ per month. Could there be the
| option to accept a $5/month for desktop only and a separate
| $5/month for mobile? Then a combined $10/month for both?
|
| Massive kudos on it looking good (even if electron) and doing
| Matrix stuff nicely.
|
| I will be watching this closely, especially when Signal is ready
| to go.
| erohead wrote:
| If you don't want to pay, you can always spin up our entire
| system on your own server. One way is to use Matrix-Docker-
| Ansible https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-
| deploy It is finnicky though. If you promise to give me good
| feedback and bug reports, sign up for the beta and I will waive
| the fee though!
| rtomanek wrote:
| > Eric Migicovsky
|
| Is this the Eric of Pebble fame? I have a lot of warm feelings
| here, I actually still wear one. :)
|
| While I prefer open communication protocols and clients, the
| reality seems to be the world has sadly moved on from this.
| Hopefully Nova will be of as high quality as Pebble was.
|
| Good luck!
| tschellenbach wrote:
| This has been done so many times, I wonder why it never worked
| out
| comex wrote:
| This is _exactly_ the functionality I want from a chat client,
| and have been unable to find.
|
| But it's Electron. Pass.
|
| (Unless I find time to go figure out if it can be used with other
| Matrix clients...)
| erohead wrote:
| (I made this) It works with any matrix client. But the UI
| naturally is not as nice. I use it daily with RiotX on Android
| and it works fine.
| RMPR wrote:
| If the claim of GP is true that your app is electron, why
| mention this?
|
| >NovaChat is not a browser/Chromium solution that opens many
| tabs to different chat networks like Franz, Shift or Station
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Because it's not? It's an app built in Electron that talks
| to their server. It's not an app built in Electron that
| opens up the official webpages for each of these chat apps.
| KishanBagaria wrote:
| We're working on a similar idea at https://texts.com
|
| It supports iMessage as well, isn't based on Matrix and is
| completely local.
| memexy wrote:
| Thanks for providing a link. I signed up. Looking forward to
| when it becomes available. I currently use keybase for search
| and annotation so would like to see keybase included as well.
| Arathorn wrote:
| is not being based on Matrix a good thing? :D
| KishanBagaria wrote:
| :) Maybe? It has a new abstraction so it's kinda competing
| with Matrix as well.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Is it based on Electron? Because if it's _not_ , you have my
| attention.
| KishanBagaria wrote:
| Beta is in Electron but native versions are planned!
| bovermyer wrote:
| This is of interest to me, but the Electron thing worries me. I
| already commit a lot of memory to Electron clients (VSCode,
| Discord, Slack, etc.). Adding another one, even if it replaces
| Slack, makes me a little concerned for memory economy.
| admax88q wrote:
| I was under the impression that WhatsApp pretty aggressively bans
| accounts using third party clients.
|
| How did you get around this? Or is it not an issue afterall?
| 0xCMP wrote:
| Seems like they're running a chrome process controlled via the
| automation APIs.
| erohead wrote:
| not exactly, we're using a library that reverse engineered
| the Whatsapp Web api: https://github.com/Rhymen/go-whatsapp.
| I haven't had any problems with the API and I've been using
| it for a year straight.
| imrelaxed wrote:
| Seems like your cloudflare got hugged a few hugs too many.
| erohead wrote:
| haha yeah, I did not expect this so I hadn't paid $5 for
| more workers. Should work now :)
| admax88q wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the info!
| stonogo wrote:
| Closed-source, single-dev Matrix frontend that doesn't even
| mention MS Teams. I want to like it, but for a monthly service
| fee it needs to be absolutely flawless and it needs to have
| enterprise auth nailed -- including O365/Exchange. I also can't
| figure out what this does that XMPP did not do -- XMPP did all of
| the above and still didn't really last.
| erohead wrote:
| it's (mostly) open source, actually: https://gitlab.com/nova
| 0xCMP wrote:
| There's so many apps and many don't work on the desktop. It's
| just trying it's best to simplify keeping in touch with people
| where they want to talk.
| addajones wrote:
| Trillian, Adium, Pigdin for 2020? Lol. What a mess the internet
| has become.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Somehow they are still around.
| https://blog.trillian.im/introducing-trillian-6.3
| loceng wrote:
| Those were all free too if I remember correctly?
| coding123 wrote:
| Yes they were, except I think Trillian had a pro version.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| IRC was free too..
| m12k wrote:
| Can anyone comment on how this compares to Ferdi?
| stryan wrote:
| I'm interested to see how they handle the Facebook messenger
| bridge since FB seems to rather aggressive about the bridge from
| logging in.
|
| I've been running Tulir's bridge [0] for a few months now and my
| Facebook account gets locked out every week or so (requiring
| unlocking and a new password).
|
| EDIT: Looking at the code, they use Tulir's bridge as well. I'd
| be..cautious about claming production level support with it due
| to the afore mentioned logout issue. Which is a shame since all
| of Tulir's bridges are high quality.
|
| The bridgebox repo appears to be a bunch of bridges in docker
| containers. I wonder if it's really worth running the bridgebox
| and not a homeserver, versus using matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
| [1]. You already need the VPS space.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-facebook [1]:
| https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
| djsumdog wrote:
| I just setup my homeserver as was going to add a FB bridge.
| That's an interesting thing to note. My server is located in
| another country so I was weary of launching the bridge to being
| with since that would probably immediately trigger a security
| alert. Not sure if it's worth it having my account continually
| locked out and needing to change my password.
| erohead wrote:
| Ah well I make no claims to this being production level
| reliability. It's very much beta software. Very beta :) For
| those who have the capability of setting up a web server and
| configuring DNS, I would recommend using matrix-docker-ansible
| and host it all yourself.
|
| The bridgebox is actually designed to run on a raspberry pi, my
| plan is to give each user a free Pi to run their bridgebox.
|
| Send me a note on matrix, I'd love to chat! @eric:nova.chat
| kutorio wrote:
| NovaChat lists WeChat in the "Coming Soon" section. Out of
| curiosity is it even possible to write a 3rd party client for
| WeChat? Last time I checked their APIs are extremely limited.
| meddlin wrote:
| While I'm sure it's a fine app, this oddly looks like a
| graduation of using Thunderbird in ~2006 as a multi-email client.
| lowmemcpu wrote:
| > NovaChat is a paid app with a monthly fee of $10 (price may go
| up after beta period)
|
| Wow $10/mo?! Pidgin was the multi-network chat tool, and was
| free! I'd understand $10 one-time, but not per month. And the
| price may go up? No thanks
| usbfingers wrote:
| I've built a not for profit multi-platform capable matrix chat
| client that is now in open alpha called Syphon
| (https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon) to largely address the
| issue of proprietary chat clients.
|
| Private, secure communication (with a decent brand and ui) should
| be accessible to everyone by now. Signal does a great job of
| filling the void for now but if they fail or are blocked by a
| country or community, the application interface itself is not a
| protocol to which people could easily pivot to the "gmail" of
| Signal.
|
| I'm hoping that Riot's upcoming rebrand will mark the start of
| this transition. We needed centralized efforts to spread usage of
| matrix, or even a similarly accessible protocol, but make it easy
| for those to create or maintain their own connection to that
| network. If all else fails, I guess we'll have Syphon.
| cw wrote:
| This is the future.
| koiz wrote:
| Why are we repeating the past!
| spullara wrote:
| I'm sticking with Adium.
| Polarity wrote:
| we have still captialism
| granitDev wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is needed...looks to me like a solution in
| search of a problem.
| RMPR wrote:
| There's a blog post talking about the why
|
| https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus...
| anthonyko wrote:
| Been using this client for a few months and am pretty happy with
| it.
|
| Have looked for a replacement for Adium for quite a while and
| Nova Chat is looking like it will be it. So much relief from not
| having to juggle multiple desktop chat clients and mobile
| notifications.
|
| Looking forward to the upcoming features! App is getting some
| nice updates every few weeks.
| elchin wrote:
| I remember using Trillian back in the day, and the problem was
| that they couldn't keep up with features of each chat network, so
| I had go back to using ICQ, MSN Messenger, etc. separately.
| coding123 wrote:
| The target customer seems a bit odd. Typically people will have
| exactly 1 paid service for chat. Like, probably Slack. And that's
| already $$ per month per user. So is this for individuals that
| have their company pay for slack, and then like, what also pay
| for the luxury chat client that let's the employee add like a
| bunch of personal chat accounts?
|
| On the other hand, if they're expecting individuals to pay for
| this (at $10/mo and that's during beta) just like, because,
| that's going to be a challenging market.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Cool, I'm running a Matrix service like this myself but it's been
| a bit hit and miss. Keeping all those different bridges running
| over time is difficult. Especially the signal one is a real PITA,
| often contacts stop getting my messages from matrix while I still
| get theirs.
|
| And Whatsapp requires whatsapp web so you need to keep the client
| running on your phone 24/7 _or_ run it in an Android VM which is
| pretty heavy.
|
| And finally the whole Matrix experience is a bit lacking IMO. It
| doesn't really do 1:1 chats so every time someone chats with you
| you get a 'room invite' from the bridge, which you have to
| accept, and all those old rooms stay forever cluttering up the
| system.
|
| I wouldn't mind outsourcing all that work, but $10/month is a
| lot.. Good idea though! There's definitely a need for this, which
| is why I've been looking into it too. I'm just getting so sick of
| all these different chat apps screaming for attention all day,
| each with their own difficulties. Some don't work on the desktop,
| others only work on 1 client at a time. And each milking as much
| data as they can. Why can't people just stick to IRC :)
| cyphar wrote:
| > Keeping all those different bridges running over time is
| difficult.
|
| The issue is that most of the services Matrix tries to bridge
| to are basically hostile entities (except IRC and Slack). I'm
| honestly shocked how _well_ Matrix bridging works when you take
| that into consideration -- and unsurprisingly the Slack and IRC
| bridges are the nicest ones to use. But I will admit that I
| think Matrix 's marketing around bridging as being core to
| their chat model is a bit of a stretch -- while all of the
| bridges do work, most are a bit dodgy (and some require you to
| self-host).
|
| For instance, the Signal bridge is actually a hacked-up version
| of the Signal Chrome App with a bunch of hooks added so that
| they can simulate you doing things through the web app. There
| is a project that uses libsignal-service-java directly to
| create a more usable CLI and DBus interface[1], but
| unfortunately they haven't switched to using that (and if it
| became widely used, Moxie would probably decide to block it).
| Whatsapp is probably similarly hacked-together.
|
| > It doesn't really do 1:1 chats so every time someone chats
| with you you get a 'room invite' from the bridge, which you
| have to accept, and all those old rooms stay forever cluttering
| up the system.
|
| Maybe this is bridge-specific, but I have several long-lived
| IRC 1:1 chats that are all in one room. There's nothing
| stopping a bridge from doing this correctly (as far as I know).
| As for old rooms cluttering up the system, I believe that (non-
| joinable) rooms with no members get garbage collected but I
| might be mistaken.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
| akaktsn wrote:
| Man if we could get something like this for snapchat.
| Ocha wrote:
| for a minute I thought I had notion app open due to novachat
| using same favicon.
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(page generated 2020-06-30 23:00 UTC)