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Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

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Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#321

Post by detaro »

jhasse wrote: post #149
notatoad wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Skype seems to be the go-to solution for talking to infrequent business contacts. If you don't want to give somebody your personal number or your WhatsApp or similar, and they're not on your slack, but you want something quicker than email then Skype is the usual solution. If you suggest some app they don't already know, it might feel like you're inconveniencing your contact. but everybody knows skype an…

What about something like https://appear.in ?

Way less reliable, no persistent chat history, ... Helpful in some cases, but not a replacement.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#322

Post by tobylane »

Systemic33 wrote: post #177
paule89 wrote: post #160

The thing is. How will Microsoft and Skype handle backdoors now. As far as I understood the reason Microsoft broke Skype so badly was because they used centralised servers with backdoors for countries who wanted them. Not always the good countries. But this. This baffles me. Deeply.

Microsoft used centralised servers because the Skype prior to that was a curse to mobile devices running on battery power. Particularly cellphones. Skype worked as a p2p network, where some peers where marked as super peers and would help with peers behind firewalls (UDP-holepunching), and routing through the super peer. If your phone became a super peer, you could expect to essentially work like a server, with the "…

Why were mobile devices candidates for superpeers?

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#323

Post by riffraff »

ethics_gradient wrote: post #312
Arcsech wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was just a comment thread (on the slack outage article) recently discussing why there are no good p2p chat programs. This might be one reason why. Fuck software patents.

It is more that without centralized servers, if that's what you mean, you have a lot of ux disadvantages.

and offline delivery, which is a big big thing.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#324

Post by qznc »

beaconfield wrote: post #254

yeah... um. Why would Signal (OpenWhisper) sully their name by coordinating efforts with MS? MS doesn't have a great track record at being an advocate for privacy or user security...

The mission of OpenWhisper is to bring e2e encryption to the masses, not to make Signal the messenger the dominant IM tool. They succeed spectacularly by making the popular IMs adopt Signal the protocol.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#325

Post by kriro »

jrhurst wrote: post #209
bitcoinusername wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a patent issue. No one is allowed to use p2p for chat.

It does look like IBM does own a p2p instant messaging patent[1]. So I think this checks out. - https://www.google.ms/patents/US7675874

Are there any European p2p instant messengers that don't accept non-EU customers? That patent obviously wouldn't apply and it would be a good move to capture a nice market.

Edit: There's https://tox.chat but I have never used it/always forget it exists. Antidote/Antox fas clients for iOS/Android.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#326

Post by erikb »

Whitestrake wrote: post #269
erikb wrote: post #87

You know, before Microsoft Skype had end to end encryption.

For a minute, I thought your comment had simply trailed off without finishing your thought. Then I realised it wasn't "Microsoft Skype", but rather, "before Microsoft, Skype had..."

I see, thanks for the info. Comma setting in English is rather unexpected for me. It works different in German, but I'll try to adapt. Maybe in English you would also say "end-to-end encryption" rather than "end to end encryption", is that correct?

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#327

Post by javindo »

nyolfen wrote: post #311
somberi wrote: post #302

If anyone from Skype product-team is reading this - Please bring back the ability to dial from the local contacts, without having to Sync my entire address book. This is my minimum request. If possible, just put the old Skype interface back. The new design with all its jazz-matazz and sparkles have made the product unusable. It is not a first-world unusable I am talking about. The product is not usable, as in I am mo…

it's unbelievable how badly skype functions as a PC IM client. it just keeps getting worse and worse. there's zero reason an IM client should be using hundreds of megs of ram and a hideous, garish UI that you can't turn off. the only workaround i found was the pidgin skype-web plugin, which can be a little buggy, but it's far preferable if all you use skype for is IM.

Not sure if it's the same client, but the Skye for Business client is also just as bad.

I used to work on a virtualised Windows machine (work mandated) and the only usable accessibility option was a high DPI setting. The old Lync client worked perfectly with this, obviously dating back to an age where they cared about accessibility. Skype for business completely ignored system DPI settings, made certain things huge with other things being tiny.

The spacing was the biggest issue - literally 30-40% of my 43" monitor would often be taken up by spacing around icons etc on the app.

It really felt as though they just stopped putting as much effort into UX, accessibility, usability. Lync felt like a professional IM client, Skype for Business felt like a half baked bodge.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#329

Post by zimpenfish »

lukedoolittle wrote: post #268
afuchs wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is difficult to make a p2p app on a mobile device work even between devices on the same LAN . A simplified explanation: Mobile devices will often ignore almost all incoming network traffic to reduce battery usage. The only way to reliably communicate with the device is through a centralized push notification service (e.g. APN and GCM).

I tried to make a demo app to perform very simple HTTP p2p and found this difficult on iOS. When an app is backgrounded you have ~17 seconds to stop execution or the OS will kill any active threads UNLESS the activity is among the Apple permitted exceptions. (Note that there is no iOS SyncThing app). In Android it is possible to use IntentService as a single threaded background HTTP server. It works for the most part…

> there is no iOS SyncThing app

There’s fsync() but it only syncs when you launch the app - what I think you meant is “there’s no continuously syncing iOS SyncThing app”.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#330

Post by richardwhiuk »

huhtenberg wrote: post #210
Systemic33 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft used centralised servers because the Skype prior to that was a curse to mobile devices running on battery power. Particularly cellphones. Skype worked as a p2p network, where some peers where marked as super peers and would help with peers behind firewalls (UDP-holepunching), and routing through the super peer. If your phone became a super peer, you could expect to essentially work like a server, with the "…

This doesn't explain why after the change Skype started routing calls between machines on the same LAN through Microsoft servers.

They had huge stability problems with peering nodes running outdated software causing huge instability which they couldn't fix.
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