Signal is having technical difficulties • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#291

Post by lucb1e » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #282

lucb1e wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence my writing of > Even if we don't know what services they use and it merely helping to find > what language the [server] stuff is written in

I don’t understand how that will help you figure out the equivalent of a post mortem for a service outage.

You said you asked them about their "tech stack and ability to scale". A tech stack consists of frameworks and languages used, which can be found on GitHub, so there's part of your answer.

Indeed I'd be interested in the post mortem here and I also don't expect anything from them (depending on how large this turns out to be, though, and so far it's actually a rather huge outage so maybe we'll get some info after all).

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#292

Post by slenk » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

I like how you put it. You convinced me to throw a donation at them :)

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#293

Post by zamadatix » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #86

Guess who is not having technical difficulties, ever: Telegram They are going to be the next Facebook. I don't understand why people underestimate them so much. When they rolled their own crypto in some areas, people made fun of them, yet no one could break it. When they published their source code openly, people say they aren't open source like signal. When FB bought WhatsApp, people seriously continued to choose it…

How big was the bounty for disclosing the encryption was broken?

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#294

Post by ossusermivami » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

Thanks I just gave 50 bucks, well worth it, that makes me happy!

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#295

Post by coolspot » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #264

caturopath wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand what the tax play is?

If I give you a gift, it is income and you owe taxes on it. If I give you a loan, it is not income and no taxes are owed. But tax man will expect you to pay it off! If I forgive you a loan, that is also taxable income, in the amount that you have not yet paid off, so no loophole there.

It may be different between an individual and a business, but for gift between individuals it is the donor who pays the tax:

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#296

Post by caturopath » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #264

caturopath wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand what the tax play is?

If I give you a gift, it is income and you owe taxes on it. If I give you a loan, it is not income and no taxes are owed. But tax man will expect you to pay it off! If I forgive you a loan, that is also taxable income, in the amount that you have not yet paid off, so no loophole there.

But the Signal Foundation is a 501(c)(3), so their donors don't owe taxes on the donations, right?

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#297

Post by caturopath » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #295

dmitrygr wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I give you a gift, it is income and you owe taxes on it. If I give you a loan, it is not income and no taxes are owed. But tax man will expect you to pay it off! If I forgive you a loan, that is also taxable income, in the amount that you have not yet paid off, so no loophole there.

It may be different between an individual and a business, but for gift between individuals it is the donor who pays the tax: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

This is between an individual and a charity, though, right?

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#298

Post by thepasswordis » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

chopin24 wrote: post #265

For all of you saying we should switch to Matrix, please outline the user sign up flow in your comment. Be detailed. Your audience is your 50 something aunt who calls her iPad her Facebook.

Can we please stop it with the sexist/ageist "old lady as a standin for incompetent" tech bro stereotype here? Not really befitting of this place.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#299

Post by rvz » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

spiznnx wrote: post #106

EGreg wrote: post #86

Guess who is not having technical difficulties, ever: Telegram They are going to be the next Facebook. I don't understand why people underestimate them so much. When they rolled their own crypto in some areas, people made fun of them, yet no one could break it. When they published their source code openly, people say they aren't open source like signal. When FB bought WhatsApp, people seriously continued to choose it…

It's not e2ee by default. If you exclusively use e2ee (secret chats), it becomes less featureful than signal/whatsapp/iMessage. No group chats!

They (WhatsApp users) don't care. They just want it to 'just work' and stay online.

Signal has just encountered the worst usability issue today (Which is by going down) which is costing them users to look elsewhere.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#300

Post by sneak » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

Daniel_sk wrote: post #288

sneak wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notifications transport for these on iOS is necessarily centralized as push notifications have to be sent from an apple developer client cert to Apple's APNS system. There is no such thing as decentralized messaging on iOS for this reason. The matrix developers run a push service, which all servers have to talk to to push notifications to their iOS app, even if you run your own instance. [ EDIT: The following sta…

No. You can send a data push notification type with an encrypted payload, decrypt it on device and display it. Same on Android.

I stand corrected, this is a new feature. Still, the push message itself is centralized via a single dev account, and of course Apple, even if you are running your own homeserver.