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Signal Foundation

signal.org

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Re: Signal Foundation

#81

Post by spappal »

mapgrep wrote: post #71

This is very very good news. As a heavy Signal user, from where I sit I personally see the following clear needs: -Better group support. Right now, to do a group in Signal you have to name the group, which makes it kind of a pain to create ad hoc quick groups. I'm forever naming them "John Sue Bill" or "Jane Roger Amanda". iMessage, by contrast, just automatically makes a group without a name. You get a thread for th…

Signal has no per-group notification settings

Yes it has, at least on Android. Within a group, press the three-dots-menu on top and choose mute notifications. You can choose for how long they shall be muted, similarly to other apps.

Adding to your list:

- Working backups for text and media.

Re: Signal Foundation

#82

Post by leshow »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #45
mattl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-Droid wants to compile their own binaries, and Signal/OWS/Moxie want to provide checksums and the like for Signal binaries.

That's an argument for reproducible builds; building the same source should give the same checksum.

Theoretically, but when you throw in things like build systems often not being deterministic, minor versions of dependencies changing, different OS or slightly different OS version with different libraries; there's a multitude of places to throw the final binary off by a few bytes or more and end up with a different checksum.

Signal wants to distribute a binary with a checksum. Once the checksum is different all bets are off, that's why it's not in F-Droid

Re: Signal Foundation

#83

Post by kuschku »

tptacek wrote: post #42
cornholio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they eventually develop a federated , privacy oriented messaging protocol, once the rapid technological evolution settles down. I know Moxie's position on federated protocols [1], but I think we must eventually agree that an open environment with a multitude of providers and implementations is the only way to provide long term privacy - any single provider is vulnerable. It would also be a very useful tool in…

Signal Protocol is one of the best documented cryptographic message protocols on the planet, and is accompanied by multiple GPL'd implementations. https://signal.org/docs/

And Moxie disallows people from building third-party clients for the server where 99% of Signal users are on, and without that, group chats aren’t useful.

Re: Signal Foundation

#84

Post by vader1 »

baby wrote: post #58
tptacek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal Protocol is one of the best documented cryptographic message protocols on the planet, and is accompanied by multiple GPL'd implementations. https://signal.org/docs/

which sounds like it could be used to develop a federated protocol. I've heard there is an effort to do an RFC on the subject, but I'm not sure it uses the Signal protocols (for some reason), also there are two of them (I'm confused): * https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-barnes-mls-protocol-00 * https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omara-mls-architecture-01

Using OMEMO on XMPP is a federated implementation of the Signal protocol. I believe Matrix' e2e encryption is also based on it.

Re: Signal Foundation

#85

Post by cornholio »

sneak wrote: post #76
cornholio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they eventually develop a federated , privacy oriented messaging protocol, once the rapid technological evolution settles down. I know Moxie's position on federated protocols [1], but I think we must eventually agree that an open environment with a multitude of providers and implementations is the only way to provide long term privacy - any single provider is vulnerable. It would also be a very useful tool in…

Users don’t want federation. See also: Adoption failure of Google Talk XMPP, massive adoption of Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp, and AIM before it. I wish it were different, too.

Users "want" what everybody else is using so they can communicate. If everybody is using a federated protocol, like email, that's what they will want.

You might say it is fundamentally easier to build closed systems and entice users to adopt them, but that's a business aspect not a user preference. Exactly the type of business that's of interest to regulators.

Re: Signal Foundation

#86

Post by izacus »

leshow wrote: post #82
JoshTriplett wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an argument for reproducible builds; building the same source should give the same checksum.

Theoretically, but when you throw in things like build systems often not being deterministic, minor versions of dependencies changing, different OS or slightly different OS version with different libraries; there's a multitude of places to throw the final binary off by a few bytes or more and end up with a different checksum. Signal wants to distribute a binary with a checksum. Once the checksum is different all bets…

So why don't they just also list checksum of the F-Droid binary?

Re: Signal Foundation

#87

Post by kuschku »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #45
mattl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-Droid wants to compile their own binaries, and Signal/OWS/Moxie want to provide checksums and the like for Signal binaries.

That's an argument for reproducible builds; building the same source should give the same checksum.

The funny part is that Signal and F-Droid both have their own reproducible build system, but they’re incompatible (part of that is that Signal requires proprietary code in its binary)

Re: Signal Foundation

#88

Post by dwighttk »

nickik wrote: post #64
zapita wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't keybase a for-profit startup leveraging advances in cryptography to build yet another social network?

Keybase is not really a social network. It feels much more like a sort PKI with a Slack client on top of it. The focus seems very much on Teams. However they could go into more of a social network direction, the features are basically there.

is it for profit?

Re: Signal Foundation

#89

Post by baby »

carussell wrote: post #48
walterbell wrote: post #22

What is Signal Foundation's vision for interoperable, open-standard E2E messaging between different central services?

A null vision. Moxie is against federation, and he's against interoperable clients. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37

I don't think he's against federation, it just doesn't make sense to federate an experiment. Once you've got something really really really solid, then it does make sense.

They've been able to iterate their protocol really fast thanks to it not being an RFC or something.

Re: Signal Foundation

#90

Post by jkarneges »

sneak wrote: post #76
cornholio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they eventually develop a federated , privacy oriented messaging protocol, once the rapid technological evolution settles down. I know Moxie's position on federated protocols [1], but I think we must eventually agree that an open environment with a multitude of providers and implementations is the only way to provide long term privacy - any single provider is vulnerable. It would also be a very useful tool in…

Users don’t want federation. See also: Adoption failure of Google Talk XMPP, massive adoption of Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp, and AIM before it. I wish it were different, too.

I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email.

Do people want federation enough to have to take a principled stance in order to force change? Heck no. And that's the problem: there's no reasonable way for their desire to impact the producer side of the market. Can't vote with your wallet since public IM service is universally free, plus network effects are strong.

Users are being worn down, too. I remember when Pidgin, Adium, Trillian, etc were rather popular. Now most people don't even use those kinds of consolidation apps either, and resign themselves to literally running many separate apps.

This is a crazy mess we got ourselves in, and there is no easy fix. Time machine to 1980 to get a standard out before ICQ, maybe.

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