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Signal Desktop

whispersystems.org

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31–40 of 288 posts

Re: Signal Desktop

#31

Post by frayesto »

codemac wrote: post #23

The join the beta button isn't working? I click and nothing happens. I looked at the page source, but then I realized I don't know how the fuck javascript works.

Also make sure an ad/popup blocker isn't shooting it down?

I think it's using a third party system to run the invites.

Re: Signal Desktop

#34

Post by hackuser »

> Signal Desktop is a Chrome app

That surprises me. I don't trust Chrome for confidentiality; I assume it collects data for Google and I don't know that it protects my data from others.

If Chrome isn't trustworthy for confidentiality, it would seem to fatally cripple the security of Signal Desktop. However, I believe the people at Whisper Systems would see that obvious flaw so I suspect that I'm misunderstanding something - what is it?

Re: Signal Desktop

#35

Post by lewisl9029 »

lucidstack wrote: post #19
aw3c2 wrote: post #11

This is a Chrome app. I miss the days of native apps. :(

True. Although, I don't understand why it has to be a Chrome app. Why not just a NW.js app? Maybe for the whole "connect with your phone" functionality? Perhaps somebody could shed some light on this?

My guess is it uses Chrome's Native Client [1] for crypto. It's understandable why they might want to do this at this point in time, because the only other way to use native code for crypto in the browser is through the the Web Crypto API [2], which is still very young and implementations aren't very consistent across browsers yet anyways.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/native-client

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/

Re: Signal Desktop

#36

Post by guelo »

leonhandreke wrote: post #27

Why incentivize spamming my friends with links before I've even seen the app, only to refer them to a waiting line? Sure, launch day momentum and all that, but I wish that as an entity that wants to be "the good guys", they can find a way to gain a broader audience for their app based on the app itself, not the buzz around it. On a sidenote, does anyone know who funds their full-timers? https://whispersystems.org/wor…

The buzz about a chat app is more important than the app itself. The usefulness of the app is proportional to the size of the social network. The most difficult thing to build and the most valuable part of a chat app is the social network. WhatsApp wasn't worth $19 billion because of the quality of the software.

Buzz, marketing, promotion, virality, user aquisition in general, are the most important thing for Signal to be working on.

Re: Signal Desktop

#38

Post by newman314 »

gue5t wrote: post #32

Why are all these encrypted chat programs (Signal, Telegram, &c.) still centralized and not TOR-style onion-routed?

Agreed.

As I mentioned in a previous thread, my idealized program is Signal+Ricochet.im+Burner-like resettable identity endpoints across desktop and mobile.

Re: Signal Desktop

#39

Post by Strom »

gue5t wrote: post #32

Why are all these encrypted chat programs (Signal, Telegram, &c.) still centralized and not TOR-style onion-routed?

Maybe because an excellent centralized encrypted chat doesn't exist yet. All options, including Signal, have lots of problems. Some chat apps are great, but really questionable security. Other apps have seemingly great security, but really questionable chat experience. After this duo problem of chat+encryption has been done well, we can start looking into adding additional problems like centralization.
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