this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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Asklemmy

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Open source, and nice for normies.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think in theory it's great. Email already has solutions for:

  • decentralisation
  • push notifications
  • client sync
  • e2ee
  • groups / cc / bcc
  • hierarchical threading
  • mime / attachments

etc

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

I would prefer using a decentralized messenger like matrix or xmpp which can be bridged with other messengers

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'd be curious to see what the UX is for people who recieve these messages as regular emails. Does it look and feel okay? Personally I have my email notifications configured pretty heavily around the assumption that they will be sparse and substantial, so the sort of person who texts by hitting "send" as a punctuation mark (most people I talk to on Discord and WA are like this), could be really annoying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

In DeltaChat regular emails look the same as the encrypted DeltaChat emails except for the tiny green lock icons. Emails from DeltaChat to DeltaChat end up in a separate DeltaChat mail folder so there is no unreadable clutter in the email inbox when using a regular email client. I think DeltaChat could be great for normies because it is not super difficult to install and configure and use, and the messages part looks like the popular chat client WhatsApp.

[–] AlpacaChariot 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't this be quite slow to transmit messages? When you send email between federated servers your mail goes in a queue on your server to be sent and depending on the connection speed and how busy it is you could easily wait 5 minutes before it's delivered at the other end. Not that the messages caused by this app would be big enough to slow things down a lot, but if the server you are using is also being used to send normal emails with large attachments then you could end up waiting a while.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Have not have serious delays here, but would this not delay thing not be the case with any other messenger ?

[–] ace_garp 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It is awesome!

Excellent chat option with very elegant construction.

Text messages are instantaneous. Small images (~200KB) are a few seconds. It is not really built for large files, but that can take up to a few minutes.

Images and video are downsampled to a smaller size before sending, to save bandwidth. (Quality holds up well and there is an option to attach as a 'file' if full resolution is needed.)

Hold mic-button to send voice messages.

Jitsi integration for video calls.

I am also trying the fork: DeltaLab UI that includes a few extra changes.

The setup is easy.

I would recommend using it on a dedicated email account, only for DeltaChat usage. See the docs.

Setting 'delete messages from server' to 'after 1 week' will make sure your online storage is never going to get full. (Server messages can be deleted once transmitted to all clients installs for the recipient)

One of the best FDroid finds over the last year, highly recommended!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Interesting, I didn't think much about it because it relies on Email, you made me want to give it a try

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How does it work ?

And if I know someone e-mail why not send e-mail (I mean, I know it's a pitty that nobody uses pgp over e-mail)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Because when it detects support for encryption or that you are talking to someone using DeltaChat as well, it switches automatically to encrypted conversations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

DeltaChat uses AutoCrypt which needs no user interaction to immediately go for encryption. With traditional emailing with GnuPG and email one would first manually exchange GnuPG keys (or download them from a key server). With DeltaChat this is automated when both users use DeltaChat. With DeltaChat there is no real difference between emailing encrypted with another DeltaChat user, and emailing without encryption with another user which does not use DeltaChat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My email would run out of storage pretty quickly as I don’t self-host email as it serves a different purpose not related to real-time communications for me. I’ll stick with XMPP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Does your XMPP provider have a message retention policy ? It would pile up there I guess. With DeltaChat you can, like in Signal messenger, configure disappearing messages to automatically clean up old messages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Not much besides metadata for free

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Veeery weird.

I used it and it works really well. But either you create a new email account to stop getting bloat in your Deltachat or Chats in your regular email, or... well you get those.

And there is no ability to delete messages on the server, at all. How is this usable? Chats will completely spam Thunderbird etc. and they are not deleted.

I think its only purpose is easy encryption and chat view. Those are key and should come in Thunderbird and K9mail. Like easy easy encryption, and especially automatic "this message contains a PGP key, add it?" (To avoid spam mails sending pgp keys).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

And there is no ability to delete messages on the server, at all. How is this usable? Chats will completely spam Thunderbird etc. and they are not deleted.

You have a few options with DeltaChat to delete old messages.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Logo looks awfully like a vibrator.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Logo looks awfully like a vibrator.

[–] semperverus 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

As someone who is both a massive degenerate AND a math/science nerd, I can confidently say that you are way off base. If a lowercase delta looks like a vibrator to you, that's a 'you' problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I was just making a joke. I successfully graduated middle grade maths, I know what delta is :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

#notallushapedlines

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Oh cmon. When did lemmy become serious?