Tox is now usable and has reached alpha (in other words, it is mostly working, but lacking some features, bugs might be apparent).<p>uTox is a lightweight (minimal dependencies) Tox client for Windows, Linux and (experimentally) Android. It supports text chat, file transfers, audio and video calling, desktop sharing (both as video and as screenshots). It also supports text-only group chats (with audio/video being worked on).<p>For more info about Tox and uTox, see the project links below.<p>Windows updater/downloader:<p>https://jenkins.libtoxcore.so/job/utox_update_win32/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/utox-updater.zip<p>Linux nightlies:<p>64-bit:<p>https://jenkins.libtoxcore.so/job/uTox_linux_amd64/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/utox/utox_linux_amd64.tar.xz<p>32-bit:<p>https://jenkins.libtoxcore.so/job/uTox_linux_i686/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/utox/utox_linux_i686.tar.xz<p>If you use an operating system other than windows or linux (OSX or android) or want to try other Tox clients, see this page:<p>https://wiki.tox.im/Binaries<p>Project links:<p>Official Tox website:<p>https://tox.im<p>uTox Github:<p>https://github.com/notsecure/uTox<p>toxcore Github:<p>https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore<p>Other links:<p>qTox Github:<p>https://github.com/tux3/qTox<p>Antox Github:<p>https://github.com/Astonex/Antox<p>Note about adding friends in Tox: in the settings area of uTox you can find your Tox ID, and you give that out to your friends so that they can add you. To solve the inconvenience of sharing long IDs, Tox also supports "DNS names", for example "groupbot@toxme.se". You can register your own @toxme.se name on toxme.se<p>Tox is alpha software, bugs are expected.<p>Feel free to post any questions or feedback or visit us on IRC: #tox on freenode.
I don't post often on HN, but today couldn't resist. Just tested Utox on Windows as well as Toxy, also on Windows. Both programs are totally inaccessible for people using a screenreader and I'm quite sure as well for people using things like speech recognition.<p>Utox seems to be C++ and a GUI framework I didn't look into. Toxy is .NET+WPF... two different stacks, but two inaccessible programs. I'm quite sure the developers didn't write inaccessible software deliberately, but this makes me wonder if we need either:<p>1. Inform developers better about accessibility
2. Fix tooling: warn/error if you don't label your elements etc
3. All of the above...<p>To give this post some more context, earlier this week I looked at Stellar... their web client is inaccessible. Earlier this week Wunderlist released a version 3... iOS app is nearly inaccessible. Earlier this week I finally wanted to give Foursquare's new Swarm app a shot... inaccessible. Do you see the pattern? I'm sorry for ranting about this, but imagine some random app update did stop the app from working and only displayed a black screen, you would be annoyed at least.
In the spirit of supporting as many individuals as possible, Tox websites are now accessible as a hidden service via Tor.<p>The hidden service mirror has been stripped of Piwik tracking, and forms of Javascript, and soon we'll label outbound links.<p>i2p support will also follow soon.<p>Tox main site: <a href="http://kdzzxucnh4fyovxg.onion/" rel="nofollow">http://kdzzxucnh4fyovxg.onion/</a><p>Tox developer documentation: <a href="http://kdzzxucnh4fyovxg.onion/docs/" rel="nofollow">http://kdzzxucnh4fyovxg.onion/docs/</a><p>Tox wiki: <a href="http://kdzzxucnh4fyovxg.onion/wiki" rel="nofollow">http://kdzzxucnh4fyovxg.onion/wiki</a>
What about its design makes it secure? Do you guys have a design document or a description of how you've implemented security? Have any security experts audited the code?
can someone please explain in easy to understand how alice and bob find each other with temporary public keys in the DHT? I read this (<a href="https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/blob/master/docs/Prevent_Tracking.txt" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/blob/master/docs/Preve...</a>) but I still can't picture it (the wording isn't the greatest either). Thanks!!
NB: the tox project website is unusable w/o JS enabled. Please fix that.<p><a href="https://tox.im/" rel="nofollow">https://tox.im/</a><p>While we're at it, the rest of the suggestions may be useful:
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_f...</a><p>From the FAQ, this I like:<p>"The goal of this project is to create a configuration-free P2P Skype replacement. <i>Configuration-free means that the user will simply have to open the program and without any account configuration will be capable of adding people to his or her's friends list and start conversing with them.</i> There are many so-called Skype replacements and all of them are either hard to configure for the normal user or suffer from being way too centralized."<p>A lot.<p>(Emphasis added).
So, This is pretty cool, however, one thing that I noticed: Addresses are per device. Skype lets you have one name and messages and calls come to all your devices, but as far as I see, Tox is one address per device.
So, what is the difference between utox_linux_amd64.tar.xz and Venom from <a href="https://repo.tox.im/rpm/" rel="nofollow">https://repo.tox.im/rpm/</a> ?
Is toxcore the name of the protocol? Would it be somewhat compatible with XMPP or something like that? I like that it's between FB messenger, gchat/hangouts, viber, what's app, Skype and hosted xmpp.<p>I think it will have a chicken and an egg problem unless there's some kind of tool that let's you talk with other older apps and protocols like gchat/hangouts, or maybe this is planned.
This is great! Is there an Android version, and if so, are you OK with me writing a telepresence bot control API for it? (It's just a couple of hooks to a control app, if you're not releaseing source, I can just give you them).
For those that don't already know, this project comes from 4chan's technology board. While there's a lot of inane trash, there are also some real gems if you're patient enough. I find lots of really cool stuff there that doesn't seem to be anywhere else.<p>More technically-capable people are always welcome to help drown out the inanity. :)<p><a href="http://boards.4chan.org/g/catalog" rel="nofollow">http://boards.4chan.org/g/catalog</a>
Posts without URLs are penalized. You might want to repost this using the most appropriate URL, then add your text as a comment to the post. If you like, email us at hn@ycombinator.com with a link to the new post and we'll look it over for you.<p>Edit: this one seems to be doing fine.
I guess you've settled on a name, pretty completely, but tox evokes all sorts of bad feelings like "Toxin", "Detox" - generally feelings associated with the idea of poison or of poisoning yourself. From a marketing perspective this might not be the least sinister name you could have chosen. I realize this comes out of 4chan and we make a point of not giving a shit about marketing but...
This project has largely disappointed me in many ways. I know HN doesn't care much about software licensing and that kind of stuff, but there are many legal issues behind the project that remain unsolved and have remained unsolved for majority of the project's lifetime.<p>1. The people behind Tox don't seem to be the copyright holders of their logo as admitted by one of the main developers[1]. The logo is the one also used on their website.<p>2. Tox project is now attempting to (falsely) claim to be the copyright holders of the logo.[2] Wikimedia Commons deleted the project logo for legal concerns, and to date it remains deleted.[3] There is no concrete proof for Tox's copyright claims on the logos, while there's pretty concrete proof that the project indeed does not hold the copyright on the logos. For those unaware of how our legal system works, "works without license" are considered copyrighted work of the author (e.g. anonymous user on linked /gd/ board).<p>3. Creative Commons licenses are also incompatible with their choice of software licensing, GPLv3+,[4] which means they cannot legally redistribute current logos under the current licenses with Tox software even if they were copyright holders to those logos.[5] As far as I know, the logos are already being redistributed with the software.<p>4. The documentation also cannot be legally redistributed with the software, and in theory nobody outside the project has practical freedoms to modify the documentation.[6] "I'm le troll! :-)" was most likely added by the developers.<p>5. Because of the above mentioned issues, Tox cannot be accepted to Debian GNU/Linux repositories because of DSFG guidelines.<p>6. The above mentioned issues also create false advertising; "Tox is both free for you to use, and free for you to change. You are completely free to both use and modify Tox."[7]<p>7. A developer quit the project because of other serious issues in the project.[8][9] The developer criticized the design of DHT (distributed hash table) used to find users, which leaked a lot of data about users. There's a large reddit thread about these DHT issues somewhere too, but I seem to be unable to find it myself right now.
Fortunately, the leak was patched a long time ago. Unfortunately, the patch was a large hack which the Tox developers solved by reinventing the wheel and reimplementing Tor onion routing.<p>8. I haven't verified this (so don't count on me), but the Tox core (or core + clients?) is now ~100k lines of code. It's not entirely lightweight per se, which was one of the initial goals as far as I remember.<p>9. Another minor thing that upset me was that during Tox's conference talk (forgot which conference, but it was related to YouBrokeTheInternet), the speaker forgot to introduce himself and what he was doing. This probably led to some confusion.<p>10. Possibly controversial too, but the first radio talk show Tox was introduced in was... could I say, maybe slightly cringeworthy. Or something. See it for yourself.[10]<p>Sorry if I went a little bit too political, knowing the rules. I wanted to point out these issues to let you know how everyone involved in the project can be a help.<p>[1]: <a href="https://rbt.asia/g/thread/40445107#p40449131" rel="nofollow">https://rbt.asia/g/thread/40445107#p40449131</a> - you can scroll down and read the replies too
[2]: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Tox_logo.svg" rel="nofollow">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests...</a>
[3]: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Archive/2014-03#File:Tox_logo.svg" rel="nofollow">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_reques...</a>
[4]: <a href="https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/blob/master/COPYING" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/blob/master/COPYING</a>
[5]: <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ccbysa" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ccbysa</a>
[6]: <a href="https://github.com/Tox/Docs/issues/7" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Tox/Docs/issues/7</a>
[7]: <a href="https://tox.im/" rel="nofollow">https://tox.im/</a>
[8]: <a href="http://www.tox-chat.com/2013/08/tox-developer-fed-up-quits.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.tox-chat.com/2013/08/tox-developer-fed-up-quits.h...</a>
[9]: <a href="https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/493" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/493</a>
[10]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdR3SVcBbq0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdR3SVcBbq0</a><p>Disclaimer: I'm <i>not</i> the author of any of the links above. It's what I have gathered from numerous discussion threads Tox has had on 4chan.
Does Tox have plans to offer telephone numbers so that POTS subscribers can call Tox users?<p>If not, I don't see how it can be a replacement for Skype.