On my flight home yesterday a free, but limited, wifi option was available that allowed only for messaging (WhatsApp, Messenger, and I think the Google and Apple ones were specifically mentioned), but not web browsing. I checked and, sure enough, I couldn’t get web browsing to work, but WhatsApp and Messenger worked fine. I decided to try my XMPP client and I was pleasantly surprised to that that worked fine as well.
I know it’s a limited use case, where XMPP is one of the few unblocked protocols, but are there things I can do with it besides chatting? Could I use it to receive status updates from my server? Is there a way to use it for SSH somehow? I guess some sort of bot running on my server would be required. Seems like there are lots of possibilities, like bots that fetch websites or interact with ActivityPub. Has anyone found or tried anything like that?
cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/598286716239948208
Dog on a plane
My wonderful neighbor, Juicy, on our flight home.
In theory, you could make a XMPP bot that can do all these things. Status information and executing simple commands shouldn’t be that hard but interactive commands might need a custom wrapper.
RMS uses email to fetch websites instead of using a browser, you could easily do the same with XMPP.
