41–50 of 103 posts
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The fact that Signal exists, and I can use it every day with friends and coworkers, is evidence that we are not locked in. No one is making money from Signal, and anyone who uses Signal can switch to any of ten different (less secure) apps in five minutes. And if Signal goes away or whatever, we can build our own! The only thing stopping us is that we are a lot worse at designing crypto than Moxie and Trevor ;)
You cannot use it with EVERYONE though, can you? Signal requires Google Play Services and is refusing to remove that dependency - leaving out all those users who cannot install Google Play Services, either for privacy reasons (as moxie calls them: "cryptonerds") or because they live in countries where Google is banned (all of China for example). LibreSignal folks are willing to do the work for removing that dependenc…
So moxie here is claiming to offer the superlative encrypted communication service. On the other hand, he's insisting on a hard dependency that not only compromises privacy, but locks out one of the biggest emerging markets?
That's simply not true. Unless you're Google/Facebook/Apple/Amazon, you'll be unable to get anyone to use your centralized network. Which makes it worse than useless. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work in a world of walled gardens, curated content and censorship.
Nonsense, the www is not stuck in the 90's. Browsers adapt, compete and innovate. And err http is at 2.0. The fact that gopher didn't kick off does not rubbish the idea of common protocols in the first place.
what Facebook did with email What did Facebook do with email?
Whenever I try to communicate with someone under 30, e-mail is simply not an option. A Facebook message is often the only way (or worse).
what Facebook did with email What did Facebook do with email?
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I was using Signal, too. One day it phoned home, got some new instructions from its creators, refused to work any longer, and demanded that I download an upgrade. I was not excited about this, since upgrades generally break things, but after a few days of grumbling I knuckled under. Sure enough, the upgrade is broken: it insists that I have to upgrade Google Play Services, which I can't do, because I deleted it along…
Wisper's arguement here is basicly: you don't matter, and we arn't going to do anything to help you. And due to their walled garden, you can't do anything to help yourself either. so much for "open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols" Unless you mean control for Google.
So: I was the other side of the email conversation that Moxie alludes to in this post, so I'll respond to it here given comments are disabled on the OWS blog :) 1. Totally agreed that federation slows down evolution of the core protocol. However, higher level protocols do NOT have to be stuck in time forever in the manner of SMTP if you design them with a migration/evolution strategy from the outset. For instance, wi…
I couldn't agree more. And it's not just a matter of trusting the host. It's a matter of trusting and liking the clients. If e-mail were hotmail only, I'd hate it. But it's not. E-mail is thousands of clients on dozens of operating systems, which can all talk to each other. Signal, hah, it doesn't even work on my phone, and there aren't even dozens of phone operating systems out there.
I totally get this; federation is hard , and its so much easier and nicer ─ as a developer ─ to have a centralised service. Often centralisation is the right choice for a particular project, and I respect that. That doesn't mean we should give up trying to federate things, though. The major upside (for me) to federated systems is simple: choice . Choice over the client you use. Choice over the servers you use. Choice…
> The major upside (for me) to federated systems is simple: choice. Choice over the client you use. Choice over the servers you use. Choice. For something so fundamental as how we communicate over the internet that's incredibly important. I want to be able to use the app I want without having to figure out if the other person is using the same app, and i don't want to have to have 10 different apps on my phone just t…
Open Whisper Systems pays people to work on Signal. A major reason XMPP video chat never took off is that no popular Windows client supported it. What if the XMPP Software Foundation had funded that work?
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It's precisely the fact that Moxie is so credible on this topic that makes his post so frustrating. I believe that he's telling the truth as he sees it, and I believe that he's as well-situated as anyone could be to pull off a white-hat secure messaging system, so if he says it can't be done with federation, it's awfully hard for me to assert that he's wrong. The problem is that I don't see the point of doing any of…
I hesitate to get all Clay Shirkey here, but I think this is fundamentally different from media conglomerates and Bell Systems, given that now anyone has the ability to build their own overlay service with relatively minimal investment. Part of what I've been noticing is that we have these "walled gardens" today that people consider to be synonymous with "lock in," but it's actually easier for people to move from Vib…