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Motivation

For some time I'm a bit unhappy with existing instance messenger apps for smartphones. All chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Threema and similar have a couple of flaws in common. On the other hand, alternatives usually have a hard time to gain relevant market-share. Users will only use it once market-share is already high.

• Components out of users control
• Metadata is available to service provider
• No inter-connectivity with other vendors

The root cause of all of these flaws is centralized infrastructure. To mitigate these issues, we would need a
chat application satisfies following criteria:

• Use well established protocol
• Enable users to host their own servers with connectivity to other servers
• Support end2end encryption
• Support text-, picture-. audio-, video-messages
• Voice chat (voip call)
• Speed (more or less instance message delivery, if possible)/li>

Following features are not required:

• Online Status
• "typing" notification
• read-notification

Concept

Essential features:

• Messenger uses a standard (existing?) email account, preferably one supporting IMAP
• Messages are sent as email, plus a predefined tag in header, e.g. "X-IM: true", and an identifier in subject line ("IM:")
• Mail server is monitored for incoming messages, preferably using push-notifications. Only messages matching the criteria subject="IM:..." are downloaded.
• Encryption is implemented using existing standards, like PGP. Session keys can be supported once it is established the counterpart uses a messenger as well
• Existing key-servers for public-keys can be used
• People are identified by email address
• voip calls are point2point connections initiated via a message containing the current IP

Optional features:

• Delete messages from server once downloaded, to prevent cluttering the inbox
• A dedicated mail-server could be provided to register $INTERNATIONAL_PHONENUMBER@imap-im.org, supporting SMS-verification. (To keep costs down, server could reject any message not having the "X-IM:" tag and "IM:" subject line. It could also delete all messages once they are received by the client. Retention policy could be set.)
• Whitelisting: For new sender not in phonebook, only one message is accepted and shown in a separate screen. If the user rejects the initial message, the sender is ignored until manually unblocked. If the user accepts the sender, ze's offered to store in address-book
• Read-notification

Pro/Contra
Pro

• No centralized infrastructure makes it more challenging to mass-surveillance communication, even meta-data
• Protocols are well established
• Virtually everyone has already an email-address. If the recipient doesn't use the messenger, ze should still be able to read the message and reply via favorite email client

Contra

• Email is conceptually not developed for instance communication, delays are always possible (although usually it is pretty fast)
• Message overhead (email headers etc.) is enormeous for short messages

Mainly, the idea is to implement a mail-client with a UI looking like an instance messenger, plus some features like an embedded voip-client, parsing of messages to support stickers, etc. Any showstopper I overlooked? What does an instance messanger provide, anyway, that an email-client doesn't? Any additional ideas?

Since the huge wave of refugees started to role into Germany last year, concerned citizens were painting horror scenarios about how thousands of terrorists might be among these refugees and Germany would probably already be doomed. There were some attacks already, although it was hardly possible to link them to islam terror:
The shooting in Munich was performed by a very nationalistic German-Iranian guy (born and raised in Munich) whose parents had Iranian roots, and targeted at mainly Turkish looking youths.
The bombing in Ansbach was perpetrated by a suicidal guy after his asylum was denied and he was about to be deported to Bulgaria.

However, now, finally we found our first Syrian Terrorist.

Well, good work from the German police, yes? One could think so, reading the praise our "Minister of the Interior" twittered. But the facts are more interesting:

He had asked another Syrian man for a bed for the night at Leipzig main station, who didn't know initially who Al-Bakr was and took him to his flat. But Al-Bakr was recognized by the housemates of his host, who tied him up and went to the police.

Thanks to our refugees in Germany, not only the three Syrian individuals who finally captured and delivered him, but also the thousands of Syrians who supported the hunt via Facebook, sending a great signal that we should not give up our humanitarian values just for some deluded jerks (aka terrorists).

Maybe I'm the fool...
I have my set of daily comics I check in the morning, to provide me with a light chuckle. Somehow I never considered the authors as a network of interacting or cooperating people (maybe friends); if anything I would have considered them competing with each other.

The more todays April Fools of some of them caught me off guard and intrigued me:

Maybe I'm the fool... [deathbulge.com]

Maybe I'm the fool... [explosm.net]

Maybe I'm the fool... [www.mrlovenstein.com]

Any other web-comics following the same meme?

Following the discussion in https://soylentnews.org/meta/article.pl?sid=16/02/16/1210215 I thought there should be a way even without code changes to have private messages. Well, actually it's easy. Not user-friendly, but not complicated either. So, here is a gpg public key in case you want to send a message for my eyes only. Import the key and post your message as a reply to this journal entry.

Warning: I tend to lose my gpg keys once in a while. If I do, I will update the one in this journal entry.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1

mQENBFbENecBCADR4M3vJRAiH0tieDqiNlwRo93SAZm6bqKS9W2XCJfHo4jL+Qoi
r/vKhcoqcyUdravnuNwZeCa+YEm3rhp5OzTinUiQ0UjGsax4ju9yb8JvCLMN2f7D
DNv+2uG7QoE0A9yBZieSqz8ApGDQzQeMs/h56h2gCVpsnVP4GQkoYxIG73WpcmZE
2WVDKCIt3OOqbYss+/q0s3BLUN8Irv/0IaMMltsb3+b7n1ZHIm6DCmxPsJ6193Kb
vJfGonKN5KTCF2PWUDExM6zIAWYQIdAYtIktXZLQ6BtHPHOXVu0TK19MezBLeSQ3
/ePpGfP0xv9t7Uvu3VHYNpMbLs9+2LUqo/ylABEBAAG0KVEgS29udGludXVtIDxx
LmtvbnRpbnV1bUBzb3lsZW50bmV3cy5vcmc+iQE4BBMBAgAiBQJWxDXnAhsDBgsJ
CAcDAgYVCAIJCgsEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAAKCRDcwM82d2/d0rw2CADC+fM+IMML9M9g
3nM3DTYzFvm1LdaDLvQK3nWVJftlyy2pT3Y490oYeOEK0VtLFpRGL04ONqVVfW2U
eQz6ImdGQYNipZmE9HHLhti2vqLR1HnATlDFkkMWbDzSzTl0kKjljW/jaBAdK7h8
ZByWBVr9pOTka0r8E3Illr2YXjGl6ZTqbOkeCCj91QDJHJ9QSU20byJ8miw+r921
T20VtuZl5o8BEwVqWdiFcKmNo7kZjBR7Kj57phGlLh9A9jgrdhOlky+PBWh0OxgI
/Na66pnL5D0HEZ/+xU4q50wHHPN6ofGk16E//gcyEou+Li3rZE5wBIDOexUHJY0e
YElshp8YuQENBFbENecBCACopGX0nFArqjGT4lN2Ups0CzOVTE63G+gofDYcwIsa
JS/aFg4r2DZ5GLVDMmHhGh6df2U/ZnND1IMHrH1ww245VPablYVQvXAZ/qleHE8+
NOuhnKTb7YvIzx3amySMfQGxFpFaVJqx+Gfl0OkK3MV8/ltIV/bWH8U3AMrCkUpf
WoL+b32wUkuZyH9uC1fVxS35LQ5xeHBkfQUw+2aDd3CS6xkGL+kCt9oicKj3lppM
rCSuu0KWlDH74GlgCu+VCMCnmkqYQWtk9R/+R+PgoD8AGiFmjC+QsLPTmI4G1/2d
BJkP9r/nrYxxmhK3X+mlv7nf33P3HRlpHXydnnXTWIdLABEBAAGJAR8EGAECAAkF
AlbENecCGwwACgkQ3MDPNndv3dIDfAgAom610F+0/i9xZeEhRbc3Hl7QCW4xJIox
x71BPvYQpij+SIRNimz0Ewi88gB8uhutzWwk8JUYelrhfCLMeuYNj9VjDlziTA2E
lyAsPoJK9iCM0+kJ7z6OeRB/H3suKkfqYHmCZo0EWn7hJtycxS2Pthc/wm+wzcaZ
rgu+7uSiiFyqA+5Qmbz39a1WiUcmv/M+G3yki5FkZYqcXHAutK7YE3RfKkejuipB
iJMQFxKcnSX33Kp1fVOI2cyDK1XNy63JLOsGoSJUoqgJJ71CUQfo5eB+GHCexd9r
57kPAYOhau8QlrLfENtOBO+vYapXXwl7L5wlSMVACOP4ewagTWkwdA==
=u25j
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Finally, a worthy successor. We waited a long time for a follow-up. To be accurate: We waited 28 years to see a sequel of this great movie. Thinly disguised as a serious successor of the Star Wars epic, this hilarious parody of the old classics has great entertainment value. The scrap-collector, Ray, with a mimic range of Harry Potter in the first movie¹: I counted approximately 3 or 4 different facial expressions, and nearly half of the time the expression fitted to the scene. A Darth-Vader wannebe who was nearly as intimidating as Lord Dark Helmet in the first parody, spaceballs. And as a climax to the death-star from episode 4 and the even bigger death star in episode 6: Now an even biggerer death star!!!11!1! That they again had to fly through thin channels to fire the terminal bomb was not that original, but at least they kept the scene short and didn't humiliate themselves by attempting to compete with the original version.

The only let-down was the missing singing and dancing. Being a Disney-film, I'd have expected at least one scene where the storm-troopers dance their emotions and express themselves in musical ways.

<1> This verdict is about Daniel Radcliffes performance in "The Philosophers Stone"; he imo got much better later on.

I personally had an encounter with the great FSM. I'm not writing here to convince anyone, just to have an article to cite when modding other religious believes as "incorrect", should the new incorrect-mod with mandatory citation be implemented. If it should be decided that I'm not allowed to cite myself, could I ask someone to copy this journal entry and post it again? Or do I have to create a second account myself?