Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

trustedreviews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 100 posts

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#41

Post by menzoic »

sli wrote: post #33
snazz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right and I agree with you, but as to point 1, they don’t really act like a proper open source project and it seems more like a “source dump” than anything. It’s hard to compile on your own and they don’t like forks connecting to official servers either.

That, and "just go contribute" is really just a cop out answer. Users can desire features without it requiring that they learn to develop software. And really, does anyone want brand new, fresh developers contributing to a privacy-oriented product? Of course not. We need experienced and skilled developers to do that, because mistakes can be costly.

To be fair he was talking about usability and not encryption/privacy features. I agree mostly though, even capable developers don't have time. Feature requests make software better. If you want people to use your app, you should build for the user. It seems they want people to actually use it and didn't open source just to share knowledge of the code. They probably open sourced it to inspire trust.

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#42

Post by atoav »

YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #7
Zhenya wrote: post #5

Isn't that called Signal? Maybe just put the funding into extending that?

I tried signal, much more inferior to WhatsApp in terms of functionality and usability

I use it nearly every day since nearly two years and I have had not many problems. The voice calls are actually higher quality than via Skype (when calling the same person at roughly the same time).

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#43

Post by chipperyman573 »

IshKebab wrote: post #26
chipperyman573 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the issues can't be solved without relying on an authoritative 3rd party (which is what facebook, whatsapp, skype, etc do). For example, because all messages are p2p, you can't view conversation history that isn't stored locally or sent by the other party upon request (which may not include deleted messages, etc).

Signal relies on an authoritative third party to exactly the same extent that WhatsApp does as far as I know.

Isn't signal peer to peer? How can there be an authoritative 3rd party, unless they get rid of all the advantages of using p2p?

I don't know anything about signal, I just assumed it was exclusively p2p based on 30 seconds of googling. But assuming it is all p2p, my above statement should be correct.

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#44

Post by JohnFen »

kolbe wrote: post #15
YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried signal, much more inferior to WhatsApp in terms of functionality and usability

A 500 billion dollar corporation will always be able to beat nonprofits on usability. The question you should ask yourself is whether the marginal difference in usability makes up for all the negative consequences of being a Facebook user.

> A 500 billion dollar corporation will always be able to beat nonprofits on usability.

You'd think. And this is often true, but not always. I am frequently surprised by how bad applications from major companies can be when it comes to usability.

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#46

Post by amelius »

YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #14

Aside from the typical encryption worries here are some features I would love to see being offered on a alternative messenger app -ability to give out your alias or username to people to reach you on whatsapp instead of a phone number, something you can change later after banning the contact. -transcribe voice messages to enable search among them. -ability to hide the fact that i have listened to their voice message.…

- ability to add custom emoticons to your library, and ability to share them

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#47

Post by pathseeker »

SEJeff wrote: post #34
YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried signal, much more inferior to WhatsApp in terms of functionality and usability

Yes, because there is an inverse relationship to usability and security. Signal won't add a feature until they can call it entirely vetted and secure.

>inverse relationship to usability and security

Not necessarily. You can easily have all kinds of shitty usability without it having anything to do with security.

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#48

Post by meruru »

YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #14

Aside from the typical encryption worries here are some features I would love to see being offered on a alternative messenger app -ability to give out your alias or username to people to reach you on whatsapp instead of a phone number, something you can change later after banning the contact. -transcribe voice messages to enable search among them. -ability to hide the fact that i have listened to their voice message.…

I think most if not all of that is possible with matrix.org.

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#49

Post by anthony_doan »

They should invest in the BEAM virtual machine. IIRC, Whatapps is built on Erlang and its VM.

There are many benefits in helping an existing project with active developers. If dealing with the politics of managing existing project is annoying, just fork it and make their own branch. The original owner can deal with the merging if they want the contribution.

Re: Darpa wants to make a better, more secure, version of WhatsApp

#50

Post by Zhenya »

seppin wrote: post #38
neonhat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Signal inferior to WhatsApp "in terms of functionality and usability"?

It has almost none of my contacts on them. Pretty useless as a messenger as such.

Invite users and explain why? I went from zero contacts to every single person i need to reach at any frequency is now on Signal.
Post reply on HN