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Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

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Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#151

Post by mjburgess »

nukeop wrote: post #123
mjburgess wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, people can be very very very sure. The 20th C. tried both of those experiments and in the totalitarian system 10s of millions -- at least -- died. Having your choices restricted by social cooperation and negotiation (in a market places) is NOT the same as having them restricted by a bully with a military. This false equivalence is a defense of genocide whether you are willing to own up to that or not.

This sums up this stance accurately: https://i.imgur.com/Rgvqkln.jpg

Oh no, I'm both British and leftwing.

My sympathy with state action ends however, when the leaders are murders, dictators and rutheless pilliagers of the public's wealth.

Russia's oligarchy stole Russia's wealth after the dissolution of the SU, and here you are equivocating objecting to regimes of murder and abuse with "muh food idle dont be having no choices fur me1112"£""11¬11223

The entitlement and ignorance is overwhelming. You arent owed two major search engines. "Bing" not being bigger is not the same as having to use apps which in encrypt your commnunication because you fear the police will imprison or murder you.

You are owed your political freedom. Which is de jure removed from you in Russia, and the suppression of telegram is state action to supress it further.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#152

Post by abhiminator »

huhtenberg wrote: post #131
kokx wrote: post #121

So, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.

This may also mean that Facebook is complying with the Russian government demands for at-will access to WhatsApp and Messenger content.

> WhatsApp and Messenger content. (emphasis mine)

Isn't WhatsApp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted making it next to impossible even for developers (Facebook Inc. in this case) to access the transmitted messages' content?

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#154

Post by redler »

24gttghh wrote: post #126
nh2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One argument might be "because Signal * has (almost) no tests, * has no CI (at least I could find none), * lacks some basic features competitors have, * sometimes doesn't ring when you call, and * they just closed all 1100 open issues without reading their contents [1]." Don't get me wrong, I think Signal is a great idea and have contributed some code to it, but these look like some red flags to me. Obviously hard to…

To your last bullet point, these seem like a good reasons to me. This does not seem to have happened with the iOS version. >However, the sheer volume of legacy issues, combined with submissions that completely ignore the provided issue template, has created a situation where there are currently more than 1,100 open tickets. Most of these issues have been inactive for several years and they reference versions of Signa…

They essentially declared "issue bankruptcy", in the Lessig/Turkle sense.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#155

Post by adventured »

Keloo wrote: post #127
tici_88 wrote: post #91

Maybe the goal of the Russian government was to block the Amazon and Google APIs in the first place, and they used Telegram as a convenient excuse. Just a thought.

Usually Russia don't play that smart. Wondering how would they replace those services.

It would actually seem like an ideal way to force the adoption of native cloud service replacements (regardless of quality or competitiveness of the offering). Russia has tended to go that way with most things, whether Mail.ru, VK or Yandex. Russia has a very long history of being insular like that and the powers that have dominated Russia the last century have a vested interest in keeping it that way.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#156

Post by falcolas »

vetinari wrote: post #129
falcolas wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To identify a particular user so you can send them messages? IIRC, Signal has never claimed to be anonymous. True anonymity in a messaging service is hard to achieve, and not even remotely user friendly.

Threema generates random IDs. Users then show each other QR codes and scan them.

If the ID is not unique for each message, then they are still tied to a specific person. At best, the identity is obfuscated.

As a practical example, would you say that bitcoin wallets are anonymous, given that they use random IDs?

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#157

Post by MajorSauce »

kokx wrote: post #121

So, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.

As other have said, maybe the others are easier to compromise.

I would also adventure that it might have been seen as an easy target by the Russian intelligence agencies and they anticipated Telegram to secretly comply.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#158

Post by pmlnr »

madez wrote: post #60
BubuIIC wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Telegram-FOSS from F-Droid doens't have GCM support so won't be notified about DC updates via push messages. I this particular case the centralization around the push service of google actually helps.

> I this particular case the centralization around the push service of google actually helps. No, it does not, and you even argued why. This centralization makes it harder to make the system more resilient. We need an alternative to GCM.

> We need an alternative to GCM.

It's called SMS.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#159

Post by falcolas »

nh2 wrote: post #136
falcolas wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: What do tests and CI have to do with the usability and usefulness of a program? I agree that the other issues could be worrying, but those first two throw me for a loop.

Tests and CI help you make sure that functionality actually works, that buttons you press have the desired effect, and that if I as a contributor ship you a pull request for a UX/feature improvement, both your and me can check that it doesn't break anything before merging. The grandparent poster also wrote about security/privacy, for which I think tests are pretty important. Finally, having CI would allow the develop…

This is still looking at it from a developer's or contributor's point of view. Developer velocity has no practical impact on the user experience. In a way, the constant addition of features or tweaks to the user experience is a net negative, since the user has to re-learn how to do things in the app.

This also makes the assumption that since there are few automated tests, that there are no tests done on a build at all. I disagree that it is a valid assumption. Most security vulnerabilities are not found by unit or functional tests, but instead by linting and code reviews.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#160

Post by vetinari »

falcolas wrote: post #156
vetinari wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threema generates random IDs. Users then show each other QR codes and scan them.

If the ID is not unique for each message, then they are still tied to a specific person. At best, the identity is obfuscated. As a practical example, would you say that bitcoin wallets are anonymous, given that they use random IDs?

Yes, it is obfuscated, the pairing of real person and random id would be much more work, than pairing phone number with real person, and you can throw away and generate as many as you want, whenever you want - unlike your phone number.

Still beats using your phone number for chats, or your SSN in place of bitcoin wallet.

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