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Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

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Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#171

Post by dijit »

saagarjha wrote: post #168
emptysongglass wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement is factually wrong. The server code is not open source but the clients are fully open.

The clients aren’t “fully open”, since their source doesn’t match the binaries that Telegram distributes.

That’s not true at all.

All clients are fully open source, they believe it to be a core requirement for formal verification.

You could make the argument about the play store distributed binary being “unverified”, but that applies to any program that’s distributed in binary form. You never know what additions are made.

FWIW the f-droid version is compiled entirely from source with no binary blobs at all and is still the same client.

You’re not helping anyone by spreading FUD.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#172

Post by Dylan16807 »

StavrosK wrote: post #98
NicoJuicy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is much worse, trying to destabilize Western democracy. And no, it's not FUD

By "western" you mean "US" and by "democracy" you mean "the system that elects presidents with a minority vote"?

> "the system that elects presidents with a minority vote"

A margin of error of about 1% is a very minor issue in having a democracy. And neither of them had over 50% anyway.

The low voter turnout is a far more important issue but even that's not a disqualifier.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#173

Post by saagarjha »

dijit wrote: post #171
saagarjha wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The clients aren’t “fully open”, since their source doesn’t match the binaries that Telegram distributes.

That’s not true at all. All clients are fully open source, they believe it to be a core requirement for formal verification. You could make the argument about the play store distributed binary being “unverified”, but that applies to any program that’s distributed in binary form. You never know what additions are made. FWIW the f-droid version is compiled entirely from source with no binary blobs at all and is still t…

> All clients are fully open source

They’re literally not. The distributed apps update every couple of weeks or even more often while the source they push lags months behind, if it’s even what’s being used to build those binaries.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#175

Post by sschueller »

saagarjha wrote: post #173
dijit wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true at all. All clients are fully open source, they believe it to be a core requirement for formal verification. You could make the argument about the play store distributed binary being “unverified”, but that applies to any program that’s distributed in binary form. You never know what additions are made. FWIW the f-droid version is compiled entirely from source with no binary blobs at all and is still t…

> All clients are fully open source They’re literally not. The distributed apps update every couple of weeks or even more often while the source they push lags months behind, if it’s even what’s being used to build those binaries.

This package [1] on f-droid is built directly of the source on github [2]. Even if the source is old so is the package. F-droid compiles this package not telegram.

I wrote the peertube client Throium which is also available on f-droid [3]. When I Tag a new release on github, f-droid will build the package automatically and publish it the next day. I do not build the packages for f-droid.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/

[2] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS

[3] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.schueller.peertube/

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#176

Post by stunt »

xanipher wrote: post #167
pilif wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing that WhatsApp is using the signal protocol and encrypts all communications by default, I contest the notion that Telegram with its home-grown protocol and clear text by default is a step up.

I thought Telegram was sending messages encrypted (though not E2E) per default?

It isn't by default. You have to enable it yourself.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#177

Post by tialaramex »

zzzcpan wrote: post #105
StavrosK wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So? Only one company can read your chats by default, and privacy is a joke anyway, you need to believe their promises or read the publicly available codebase yourself."

Please explain, how do you think making a promise not to read your messages is different from making a promise by the same company to have a working end-to-end encryption and not willing to compromise it, given the company has a complete control over the app and updates you receive? You can't verify any of it nor that it will be like that with the next update.

Sure. Firstly and most importantly Time's Arrow applies. A promise kept in the past is not a promise kept in the future.

If Signal has kept their promise so far then all of the messages I have already sent were EtoE encrypted and they never had any way to see those messages, indeed if me and my co-conspirators all destroy our devices the messages simply cease to exist altogether. If tomorrow Signal breaks their promise, that promise was already kept in the past and can't be undone, Signal can't read messages that no longer exist.

If Telegram kept their promise that's permanently conditional, they still have the data, and only their continuing promise not to look at it keeps it safe. Tomorrow they can break the promise and previous messages are now available, but you can't retrospectively stop having sent the messages in the past.

Secondly, as I wrote here recently on another topic: Only impossible things don't happen, everything else is fair game. In choosing to do EtoE Signal gets to make certain things _impossible_ whereas Telegram just promises not to do them. This means those things might happen by accident, or a bad guy might do them and I'm sure Telegram would be very apologetic (if anybody found out) but it couldn't undo them.

Thirdly: Signal actually publishes the software component that behave the way they say it does. Reproducible builds are tricky (as a general problem in modern software) but Signal does a pretty good job of convincing you that the binaries you can download are just the code you can see, built for your platform. So then either they need to not only break the promise but also hide the broken promise in the code, or they need to break the promise AND hide the build difference. It's just easier to keep the promise.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#178

Post by tialaramex »

jjeaff wrote: post #54
technofiend wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking to my friends who are heavy WhatsApp users it's less about text chatting and more about voice chat over data because it's far cheaper per minute than crossing the PSTN.

Signal has great voice calling. At least, I rarely have any trouble and the calls are usually crystal clear.

Specifically, Signal's secured VoIP is Ogg Opus (better performance than the technology your phone uses to make actual phone calls) but in CBR mode (compression but with a fixed ratio so that a frame of audio is always the same number of bytes, thus a MITM attacker can't determine anything except how long your call lasted)

An unencrypted voice chat app could do VBR Opus, which would need slightly less bandwidth on average for the same quality but might mess with flow performance estimators in the network and make the experience worse by mistake.

One of the inadvertent benefits of Signal's strong centralisation of control is that they could just go "Opus CBR is great, we're using that now" and do it. No multi-year phase-in with most calls still being "legacy", no need to accumulate "buy in" from third parties who might not prioritize this work, they just did it.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#179

Post by hnarn »

techntoke wrote: post #57
gtirloni wrote: post #49

Say what you want about Telegram, they innovate much faster than WhatsApp with way fewer resources.

Definitely, but they need video chat like yesteryear.

I'd argue they don't need it, out of the 10-20 people I know that use Telegram I've never heard one of them mention it being something that bothers them, especially not since you can send video clips (which arguably is better anyway in my opinion, since it sacrifices near-real time comms for no stuttering, and I vastly prefer the latter). I imagine the ones that really do care about real time video chat will solve it through a different app for the occasions they use it. Hopefully Telegram is aware that they shouldn't sprawl too much, lest they risk being seen as a worse alternative to Snapchat, Duo, Skype etc. in addition to all the lunches they're already eating.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#180

Post by hnarn »

qqn wrote: post #116
johnnycab wrote: post #82

Telegram is a great way to read HN articles, by subscribing to the channel, especially if you can't onboard enough people in your circle, to use it as a primary messenger. It also fires up on iPad, unlike WhatsApp.

I like https://t.me/hacker_news_feed , it posts only the articles that have a score of 100+ so you don't get flooded by goodness, it just trickles in ; ) ... in fact, this is so useful I think it merits its own HN post!

Agreed, I had no idea it's been around for so long, this seems to be the original comment (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15312468
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