

DuckDuckGo just launched a DDG branded XMPP service - mike-cardwell
https://duck.co/#Topic/28469000000637077

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ritonlajoie
I'm sorry but I don't really understand the utility of that service ? Is there
any link to other protocols ? What are the benefits of using this server
instead of something like gtalk or some other widespread service ? Why should
I jump to this service and make my friend so the switch as well ?

Thanks :)

edit: I know perfectly what is DDG and I really love this search engine, but
still.. don't get me wrong, I'm just asking for answers there, not being rude

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gettygermany
You dont need to convince them to switch! You can still talk to your gtalk
friends, its all XMPP/Jabber! This is not a service just for inside
duckduckgo. Inform yourself a bit more about XMPPP/Jabber :-).

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pbhjpbhj
>Inform yourself a bit more about XMPPP/Jabber :-).

I think that perhaps, like me, they were hoping that you would be interested
in sharing a couple of use cases for XMPP with us ...?

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AdamGibbins
For those that haven't tried before, running your own XMPP server is
incredibly easy on even a small VPS. I'd recommend ejabberd, its pretty solid,
light weight and fast.

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gettygermany
I always suggest prosody :-) And we use this as our XMPP server cause its the
modern way to use XMPP :)

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HedgeMage
I second the Prosody recommendation. I'm in the process of migrating my Jabber
server to it, and it's quite slick.

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thristian
I'm most interested this oblique reference: "...add our DuckDuckGo Jabber
Conference, it will soon be linked to the IRC channel #duckduckgo on
freenode".

Where's the technology for linking an XMPP conference to an IRC channel? I
lurk in some IRC channels that would love to migrate to a more modern
protocol, and that seems a good way to bridge the gap.

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gettygermany
We use a Perl Bot for this. It will uses POE-Components to connect to the IRC
and to the XMPP and then dispatches the messages to one from the other.

If you are interested, just join us on IRC and we talk about it :)

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p4bl0
A friend did this: <https://gitorious.org/irctk> ("irctk is a general-purpose
IRC wrapper written in C with libircclient"). I think it could be pretty
straightforward to do the job using it.

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gettygermany
We prefer Perl, cause we got one solution for everything and can easily
combine the thousands components offered. Just cause a lib does IRC doesnt
help us much :-) It must be easy! :)

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va_coder
There are many secure ways to use XMPP. What is so great about ddg doing it?

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mike-cardwell
I can't answer that question. However, I did leave the following comment on
their announcement page:

Will you be following the same principals in regard to privacy as the DDG
search engine follows? Personally, I would love to see the following:

1.) No connection logging. Ie, don't log when people log in and from which IPs

2.) No chat logs

3.) High profile information and instructions on how people can use OTR (Off
the Record) for end to end chat encryption

4.) A Tor hidden service gateway to the XMPP server

Regarding 1 and 2, the least that is required IMO is a privacy policy
detailing which information is stored and for how long.

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drdaeman
I think, general (tech-savvy) audience would more enjoy encrypted logging
(message archiving), using some variant of XEP-0136, but storing messages
encrypted to user's public PGP/GPG key.

So the messages are kept (in case you want to refresh your memory, but don't
have locally-stored history), but are unaccessible by third parties.

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mike-cardwell
I'm not sure about that. People who want chat logs can simply generate them on
the client side. That way, even if they're using OTR they still get the chat
logs.

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drdaeman
Yes, but how they're going to access logs when connecting to XMPP service from
multiple machines?

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mike-cardwell
By checking the logs on the machine the logs are on.

Besides, anyone who is tech savvy enough to mess with public key encryption is
going to be using OTR anyway, making server side logs useless.

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drdaeman
I'm using OTR, but only for conversations that are worth protecting. IMHO
securing typical chat with friends (mostly consisting of funny/interesting
link exchanges) is almost pointless.

But having the history is still useful ("remember that article I've sent you
yesterday").

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mike-cardwell
Not as pointless as most people intuitively think. What if the chat server
you're using is compromised by a hacker trying to make a name for themselves
and they publish all of the chat logs on bittorrent?

Some examples of comments in a private chat that might at first appear like
they don't need encrypting, but might come back and bite you in the arse if
they ever get published:

"God work is boring today. Need to update my CV/Resume"

"Bob was a bit of an idiot last night wasn't he"

"Thinking of skiving off work tomorrow."

"The wife has been nagging at me all afternoon. Fancy a pint later?"

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throwaway32
apparently Google pointed duck.com at the Google search main page after Duck
Duck Go inquired about it. I guess this is why its duck.co

EDIT

See this post by yegg, the duck duck go founder

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/epd59/google_poi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/epd59/google_points_duckcom_at_google_search_after_duck/c19v4cz)

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jimktrains2
The URL make me cry:(

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gettygermany
Why?! :-)

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jimktrains2
<https://duck.co/#Topic/28469000000637077>

Note the #. Now, remove it and everything after it and reload the page.

Why am I being downvoted? Didn't we all just throw shit at gawker for doing
the same thing?

EDIT: This fundamentally breaks the web. The # and everything after it are
_not_ sent to the server. It relies on javascript and extra-protocol
information to get the document, which breaks the idea of a resource having
its own name. The # was suppose to denote a section of a resource, not a
resource in-and-of itself. I'm sure everyone here knows this, but I had to get
it off my chest.

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almost
Very cool, although it could probable use a name. Maybe "DuckDuckChat"?
"DuckDuckGo XMPP Service" is not going to be used by all but the most
technical of users I think...

Even "DuckDuckGo Jabber Service" is better, XMPP just sounds so unfriendly.

~~~
sudont
Quack?

