
Eve Online Chat Is Moving to Ejabberd - mickael
https://medium.com/processone/eve-online-chat-is-moving-to-ejabberd-8e73d40fa887
======
y0ghur7_xxx
I am happy that XMPP gets some love. Centralised messengers are a real problem
now. People on whatsapp are only reachable on whatsapp, same for viber,
messenger, skype, ... We are in a really stupid situation. XMPP works now, is
decentralised, has secure E2E encryption, is not controlled by a single
entity, and has good clients for android and desktop (iOS is unfortunately
missing).

I am rooting for an XMPP comeback.

~~~
digi_owl
What people seem to value is inline media, being able to vomit emojis
everywhere, and chat syncs across multiple devices/OSs.

~~~
foepys
WhatsApp, the most popular messenger, does not allow chat sync. It's single
device even. I don't think that's part of the features the average user
values.

~~~
dijit
Not true in all cases. They have a wonderful backdoor into your the phone app
so you can use the webchat/desktop app. You scan a code and it will allow the
website to connect to your phone and download all your messages/photos/etc and
talk real time to friends.. Funcionally identical to telegrams desktop app
(except, obviously, using your phone as a gateway of some kind).

This functionality makes me nervous honestly, because if the app allowed
connections like this silently and downloads your details then wouldn't it be
possible to just bypass the QR code for WhatsApp's server team?

(Also, when I point this out I always get downvotes, so, maybe a response this
time?)

~~~
def_true_false
How is this different from e.g Telegram web client? I don't see a reason why
this couldn't be done safely. I wonder if it's possible to prevent Whatsapp
from serving some people a modified web client though.

Anyway, as much as I dislike Telegram, their desktop client is UX-wise miles
ahead of web clients or electron trash.

~~~
dijit
Secret chats never leave the device basically.

The problem I have with telegram is that /by default/ it's security is very
poor. It's stored and relayed by their servers so you can have a unified chat
history.

However, if you hit the secret chat button I don't see a reason to think that
this is stored in any way by them (and auditing the client I use confirms this
for Qt linux desktop/iOS)

------
f055
I could not find a definitive answer on Twitter, but does that mean Eve
players will become one of the biggest XMPP users group? I wonder if Eve
enables federation and chatting with outsiders using regular XMPP clients.

~~~
Mashimo
> I wonder if Eve enables federation and chatting with outsiders using regular
> XMPP clients.

It's not planned. To be precise in the beginning nothing will change for the
players. They might be able to send messages which are four times as large.

As far as i know a modern more modular design was the main reason. And thus
offload some of the CPU utilisation to not-game server.

More comments from the Dev here [0] and partly [1] here.

[0] [https://forums.eveonline.com/t/dev-blog-new-chat-backend-
com...](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/dev-blog-new-chat-backend-coming-with-
the-march-release/58715/) [1] [https://forums.eveonline.com/t/dev-blog-
preparing-for-the-fu...](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/dev-blog-preparing-
for-the-future-retirement-of-eve-voice/58460/)

(Filter by clickning on the blue [DEV] avatar near "Frequent Posters" and
select 'x post in this thread' to only see posts from that developer.

~~~
mickael
Yes, that makes sense. I guess they can focus on developing the core game that
way.

------
jayd16
As someone who's worked with ejabberd I was about to suggest they're in for a
headache but it looks like the peak player count for Eve Online is something
like 65k users. They might not even have to cluster.

~~~
mickael
Well, the most difficult part is to understand how the Erlang VM / Environment
works. Once you have set it up, ejabberd just works. You can have massive
scale and large uptime. This, ultimately, saves bigger headaches.

~~~
jayd16
That's the promise but in my experience getting mnesia happy and keeping
things clustered is huge pain for ops.

~~~
mickael
Well, in practice, it is more than a promise. You are not forced to use
Mnesia. You can use other backends to simplify the ops. Yes, it is as simple
and make managing the platform a breeze. You need to be as stateless as
possible.

------
w0de0
An interesting aside for the unfamiliar: Eve Online's server is a monolithic
app built in Python 2.7 [0]. Anecdotally, it is a hellscape of spaghetti code,
sparse documentation, and features whose implementation details are quite
literally lost (in that no current maintainer knows how they work or where in
the codebase they exist).

0 - [https://www.eveonline.com/article/stackless-
python-2.7/](https://www.eveonline.com/article/stackless-python-2.7/)

------
mxuribe
I'm wondering if this isn't a lost opportunity by not leveraging something a
little more modern like the matrix protocol (which is still decentralized)??

------
okket
Original source: [https://blog.process-one.net/eve-online-chat-is-moving-to-
ej...](https://blog.process-one.net/eve-online-chat-is-moving-to-ejabberd/)

~~~
dang
Normally we'd change it but since the author posted the medium.com link I
assume he prefers that one.

------
kbwt
Signal is also problematic.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Signal also requires biometrics to be shared with the govt for 1/6th of the
world's population (India) by insisting on a phone number for registration.

~~~
justin66
How does India's government collect that information?

~~~
sn0opy
Best guess is that it is similar to Germany. In Germany, there are no
anonymous prepaid SIM cards anymore. They're now registered to your name.

Thus, in theory, the gov has access to it too.

~~~
fnord123
I wonder if there would be interest in sim swap parties. This is an idea I had
with Oyster cards in London where you get together and swap Oyster cards with
other people to confound the profile building.

~~~
feintruled
I suppose a problem with that might be if someone who takes your SIM does
something illegal with it. Then you are on the hook for it.

~~~
rlpb
> Then you are on the hook for it.

This is a myth. If you didn't commit a crime, you aren't on the hook for it.
For example: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/08/publi...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/08/public-wi-fi-forget-the-scare-stories-read-this/)

You might, however, get investigated (search warrant etc) because unless such
mixing becomes really common, it's reasonable for the authorities to suspect
you for the crime in the first instance.

Edit: perhaps a better example is [https://torrentfreak.com/eu-court-open-
wifi-operator-not-lia...](https://torrentfreak.com/eu-court-open-wifi-
operator-not-liable-for-pirate-users-160916/)

~~~
ge0rg
_This is a myth. If you didn 't commit a crime, you aren't on the hook for
it._

This is a nice theory. In Germany, if you are the owner of a SIM card
associated with a crime, it is well possible that a prosecutor will consider
this sufficient for a warrant, and the police will visit you early in the
morning, taking away all your digital devices for something between three
months and some years.

Regarding the Wi-Fi hotspot examples you provided (which are not quite the
same), in Germany there is a nice legal construct called the "Störerhaftung"
(liability for interference), in which you have a civil liability for e.g.
copyright violation commited over your uplink.

(IANAL)

~~~
rlpb
> This is a nice theory. In Germany, if you are the owner of a SIM card
> associated with a crime, it is well possible that a prosecutor will consider
> this sufficient for a warrant, and the police will visit you early in the
> morning, taking away all your digital devices for something between three
> months and some years.

Like I already said: just because you aren't already on the hook for it
doesn't mean that you won't be legitimately suspected of the crime in the
first instance.

