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

Telegram Voice Chats

telegram.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 126 posts

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#81

Post by ValentineC »

upofadown wrote: post #35
echelon wrote: post #2

Telegram, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Hangouts/Voice/Talk/Meet/Allo/Whatever -- who will win? And without ads deeply ingrained (or highly addictive paid features like Discord has), does it matter? With the recent scrutiny of the DOJ, I wonder if Google and Facebook's business models are really all that sustainable or desirable. Discord seems to have the healthiest setup here.

No one will win. That's not how this works. Things will continue to be an ongoing example of XKCD-927 until the world as a whole cares enough to fix things. The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email.

> The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email.

Isn't the opposite of xkcd 927 a monopoly?

If we're talking about a federated standard, we had XMPP [1], but nobody who can create user-friendly apps seems to want to adopt it.

[1] https://xmpp.org/

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#82

Post by spicybright »

berkes wrote: post #58
adkadskhj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish Telegram would embrace open source, security audits, etc. It's one of, if not the, best UX chat message apps with so many features it's sort of mindblowing. I'd love to use them. But.. i avoid it, because something doesn't smell right. Allowing me to pay would be yet another right direction for Telegram, but i just can't move past the audit (and to a lesser extent, FOSS)

Telegram, the client, is fully FLOSS. You can even find it on f-droid¹, contrary to e.g. Signal, which is only available for installation via closed app stores. Do you refer to the server-stack? How would that being Open Source help you when you cannot ever verify what a server actually runs? ¹ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/

That's totally false. Here's the client you can download, compile, and side-load yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android

And here's the server implementation you can also run yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

Telegram has also been exploited multiple times, while signal has held up against a US federal subpoena.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13161026/signal-subpoena-...

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#83

Post by oarsinsync »

ffpip wrote: post #79
oarsinsync wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it’s possible to do in the same way WhatsApp does for media uploads. When you send a video to a contact on WhatsApp, it takes some time to upload the video. When you then forward the video a few minutes later, it’s near instant. This set off red flags for me, as that can’t be E2EE if so. Someone explained that the media is encrypted using one key, which is stored locally. The key is then encrypted and tra…

>When you send a video to a contact on WhatsApp, it takes some time to upload the video. When you then forward the video a .. It's actually not instant. I've tested this multiple times. Maybe you had a spike in upload speeds suddenly when forwarding?

Thanks, I’ve edited the comment to better reflect that it’s near instant rather than actually instant.

I’ve done a packet capture to verify that my phone is not uploading the entire payload a second time when forwarding media I’ve recently uploaded or received, which is what compounded my original concern.

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#84

Post by smabie »

ajconway wrote: post #26
tmakks wrote: post #22

Unpopular opinion & OT: Synchronous communication (eg. calls, video calls, real meetings) with more than two people rarely add value. Edit: Dear Downvoters, it's ok that you downvoted as it was expected but please share why you think different and give examples what value a 2+ meeting adds

You're thinking business, but this is more like Teamspeak (or Discord).

Telegram is also used for business. In fact, my firm uses it as the primary method of communication

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#86

Post by mminer237 »

ValentineC wrote: post #81
upofadown wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one will win. That's not how this works. Things will continue to be an ongoing example of XKCD-927 until the world as a whole cares enough to fix things. The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email.

> The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email. Isn't the opposite of xkcd 927 a monopoly? If we're talking about a federated standard, we had XMPP [1], but nobody who can create user-friendly apps seems to want to adopt it. [1] https://xmpp.org/

The advantage of XMPP is that you don't have to use the official site/app. It's not surprising that Facebook and Google removed support when they both rely on ads on their sites to fund their businesses.

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#87

Post by timwis »

tsjq wrote: post #71
timwis wrote: post #63

This reminds me of how I used to use Teamspeak with a gaming organisation I used to be part of. It was a completely different dynamic than a video call. You could "hang out" in a room, chime in when you wanted, say nothing when you wanted. It was a lot more like working separately but with physical proximity to one another. I'm optimistic that, applied to a work context and with the same norms, this could go a long w…

that's interesting, indeed. is it like everyone puts their mic on mute except when they want to speak ?

Yep it’s push to talk, so you’re muted except when pressing the talk key

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#88

Post by riedel »

spicybright wrote: post #82
berkes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram, the client, is fully FLOSS. You can even find it on f-droid¹, contrary to e.g. Signal, which is only available for installation via closed app stores. Do you refer to the server-stack? How would that being Open Source help you when you cannot ever verify what a server actually runs? ¹ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/

That's totally false. Here's the client you can download, compile, and side-load yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android And here's the server implementation you can also run yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server Telegram has also been exploited multiple times, while signal has held up against a US federal subpoena. https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13161026/signal-subpoena-...

There is also fdroid repos such as [1] that contain signal. Fdroid policy requires approval from the author to be included, which is a bit weird take at FLOSS.

[1] https://calyxos.gitlab.io/calyx-fdroid-repo/fdroid/repo?fing...

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#89

Post by upofadown »

escalt wrote: post #30
MatthiasP wrote: post #23

No mention of any kind of encryption?

Telegram keeps talking about how private and secure it is, but all group and private chats are not encrypted by default. Its end to end encrypted chats are very limited (only direct messages and only on one device) and rely on self-baked crypto. Their voice chat is also almost definitely not end to end encrypted, as I'm not aware of a way to do e2ee voice chat with many participants without linearly increasing bandwi…

>...rely on self-baked crypto.

I always wondered why Telegram gets criticism for their boring cryto based on well respected algorithms while Signal gets hardly any criticism for their crypto based on unique concepts.

Re: Telegram Voice Chats

#90

Post by elliebike »

nikivi wrote: post #4

I found Durov's plans to monetize Telegram most interesting. https://t.me/durov/142 Team features (competing with Slack/Discord?), ad tools for telegram channels and premium stickers. Whilst keeping all the existing Telegram features.

I joined this, replied to the post, and now I'm being sent lots of creepy messages and dick pics from the men of the internet :/

Telegram has no option for "Only allow contacts to message me", it turns out.

After lots of messages, they eventually offer to auto archive and mute people not on your contacts, but it's still fairly visible on the app.

Perhaps Telegram should work on better abuse management before adding voice chat! I used to love the app but now I am considering uninstalling.

Post reply on HN