BitTorrent, Inc. has unveiled a chat client that is serverless and fully encrypted. It is currently in alpha and only works on Windows 7 & 8 but with more platforms expected soon.
BitTorrent Inc., the company behind the popular file-sharing client uTorrent , unveiled its serverless chat client today. BitTorrent Bleep allows users to communicate via text or voice, fully encrypted and without the need for central servers
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I'm running a fresh install of Mint 17 Cinnamon, and have been using Transmission for torrent downloads. I suspect that my ISP is throttling Bittorrent traffic, as things seem rather slow. Right now I'm downloading a file with dozens of seeds, and hundreds of peers, and it's topping out at 300k DL, and is usually struggling to stay above 100k.
I've been Googling this, but most advice seems to be at least two or three years old an eternity on the Internet, so I'm looking for current advice.
1) What are the recommended Bittorrent clients these days? And why is your choice better?
2) Can anyone point me to current specific advice on how to handle downloads without my ISP slowing everything to a halt?
Please note, when I say "current", it's because I've wasted way too much time the past chasing down leads which turned out to be out of date or which no longer were usable. And FWIW, almost everything that I download is actually legal Linux ISOs etc.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by doublerot13 on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:34PM
Instead consider http://utox.org/ [utox.org].
Or run your own Openfire server.
(Score: 4, Funny) by d on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:40PM
How dare you suggest that proprietary security software is inferior! It is safer because if nobody knows how it works, it cannot be hacked! Have you never heard of security by obscurity?!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:31PM
Might be a good tactic - come up with some secure comms service, get bought up lots of money. The problem is Bittorrent Inc is based in the USA. The company and owners etc can't be in the USA or US citizens. If your company is in the USA they can take the cheap way out by issuing you an NSL.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:20PM
Direct Link to WTF is Tox: https://wiki.tox.im/FAQ [wiki.tox.im]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tramii on Thursday July 31 2014, @08:30PM
I WANTED to consider uTox, but when I visit their website I can't find out what to do or get any information about it at all.
Seriously? No FAQ? No installation instructions? NOTHING???? Not even a short description about what uTox is. What IS this page anyways? Is it a login page? If so, how come there's no password field? Who make this webpage? What is it's purpose?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 31 2014, @10:59PM
Yeah, the choice of links to post wasn't the best for an introductory link.
https://tox.im/ [tox.im] is probably the best place to start, then come back to the above link to get your client.
Do I know anything about it? No. It seems to be the "secure IM client of the week" like Telegram, which after you join, you realize there is no one to talk to on the service.
The good thing is that there are a bunch of these secure im systems being created and sooner or later one of them will emerge and the new standard.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Tramii on Friday August 01 2014, @12:03AM
Tox sounds really cool. I currently run my own IRC server just so I have a decent way to chat with friends (needs to be semi-secure and allow multiple people to drop in and out at will but still read what others said when they weren't online). Tox sounds like a GREAT alternative. However, it looks like it's not quite ready for primetime. I couldn't find any working OSX binaries. (I downloaded a couple of the nightly builds and they both kept crashing.)
But, I will definitely be keeping my eye on Tox. Once there are stable binaries for OSX/Linux/Windows, I can see my circle of friends switching over.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 01 2014, @05:18AM
I installed both the linux and windows binaries. Seemed to work fine.
Then I got brave and side loaded the android binary.
That worked too. Mostly. It wouldn't accept a voice call, BUT it accepted file transfers without asking.
Voice calls worked between linux and windows, but android just ignored the camera and voice.
Still early days, but quite cool.
The hard part is getting that big wonky key distributed to your friends. Its a public key so you can just email it to them.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrcoolbp on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:55PM
While I'm surprised this isn't already a widely solved problem already, I'm glad to see someone working on a project like this. This might even be useful for SN community communication in lieu of IRC due to the decentralization and encryption.
That being said, I doubt there will be even an iota of traction around here until the code is audited, and *.nix operating systems are supported (although I currently use Winblows).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 31 2014, @11:03PM
On the other hand, people are running away from uTorrent for the same reasons you mention, non-Opensource code, so it probably doesn't have much of a chance of becoming mainstream.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:45PM
I'm starting to think it's a cursed chat implementation.
Alright, it has a server/client model, but most communications are client to client, including chat sessions (with extra security if you use OTR). You can run a server easily enough, or register for a third party service (Duck Duck Go run a decent one). Plus it's open source, there's video/audio support with some clients, confrencing support, and you can get anything from console based chat (Freetalk) to all singing all dancing GUI software (Jitsi).
I wonder why we need to reinvent the wheel every time we want a chat service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @06:43PM
If we didn't then we wouldn't have xmpp :) which, by the way, is even half-assedly supported by facebook. Anyway, what with assholes always trying to take down our services, we need to be kicking out the server-client model in favor of peer-to-peer. For everything.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday July 31 2014, @09:19PM
If you don't want to reinvent the wheel you basicly get e-mail.
The biggest problem is not technical, its a PR thing. e-mail seems to be for old farts only ;)
I tried building something like this: I called it 'quickmsg' (see http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/ [vreeken.net] )
It works just fine, but getting a substantial userbase is the big problem...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday July 31 2014, @10:21PM
Ironic given the context - XMPP is one of many re-inventions of IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
IRC also needs a central server for initial connection but mostly operates peer-to-peer, and IRC traffic can be easily encrypted as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @06:34PM
Chat is too small to be both secure against government/corporate intervention and to make money with.
Nobody who pays attention is going to trust the application unless it is fully open sourced which means you can't make money selling the software. So they need to come up with an ancillary service that will pay for the development. Advertising won't cut it either because of all the privacy problems with the modern implementation of advertising.
What they ought to do is create a P2P facebook. Facebook's biggest problem is that they are "in the loop" because they provide centralized storage for photos and other communications from 'friends.' But the nature of 'friends' perfectly matches the nature of a bittorrent swarm. They are both clusters of users who share data mostly between themselves.
Build an encrypted P2P client/tracker that runs on people's phones and stores their photos in the swarm of their friends. Save money by making it smart enough to throttle when on cellular data but go full-blast on wifi. The more friends you have, the more of them will be on wifi at any given point in time.
And here is where you make your money: Commercial users (like music artists, movie promotions, etc) will be very high-bandwidth and will want that 99.999% uptime so you can sell them hosting services using high-performance, propriety software with gigabit connections and fast hard disks. You'll never be in a position to make as much money as facebook, but you can probably make enough money to keep a small development shop very comfortable.
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @07:51PM
Good idea. However, practical issues with such an open source implementation is that a lot of services like this will crop up (bittorrent trackers an excellent example). The only way I can see this really working is if they somehow mangage to be interoperable. Independent of the service your friends have 'signed up' for you can all connect just the same.
Then you've something with a real chance of killing off facebook for good
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @10:01PM
> lot of services like this will crop up (bittorrent trackers an excellent example).
> The only way I can see this really working is if they somehow mangage to be interoperable.
Perhaps you don't know that .torrent files can contain multiple trackers, with different priorities even, and they all interoperate just fine. All clients can talk to all trackers and even with 'non-trackers,' like DHT. Interoperability is more than just a given, it is mandatory, for a P2P network.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @08:12PM
Someone tried creating a decentralized social network: https://diasporafoundation.org [diasporafoundation.org]
It never really caught on. Social doesn't work without friends with whom to "socialize."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @08:36PM
One of the biggest problems with diaspora is that it is still centralized and hackery. You still have to sign up with a server or set up a server of your own. It was like they took the worst of both worlds. No surprise it did not catch on.
What I am proposing is something that "just works" - you download the app from the app store, send a text message to a friend to get started and now both of you are part of the network and talking to each other.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tramii on Thursday July 31 2014, @08:42PM
Diaspora also failed because it's simply too hard for your average user to get signed up and running.
Getting signed up for a new Facebook account is simple. You go to www.facebook.com, fill out the Sign up form and hit the "Sign Up" button. Literally takes like 2 minutes.
Getting signed up for a Diaspora account is hard. You go to diasporafoundation.org, and start reading. After about 20 minutes of getting totally confused, you give up and go back to Facebook.
If you want to replace Facebook, it's gotta be easy enough that your parents/grandparents can figure out how to use it.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday August 01 2014, @04:07AM
Is that why no one ever made any money from SMS?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01 2014, @05:30AM
> Is that why no one ever made any money from SMS?
How many people do you know of who have made money with encrypted SMS?
Or are you one of those people who don't grasp context?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01 2014, @05:52AM
>> Chat is too small to be both secure against government/corporate intervention and to make money with.
>
> Chat is too small to make money with.
>
> Is that why no one ever made any money from SMS?
Your dick is too small to make money with.
Why the hell did you deliberately misquote that?
What is your major malfunction?