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

Signal Is Back

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 158 posts

Re: Signal Is Back

#31

Post by ardy42 »

xfer wrote: post #29
imposterr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not mistaken, signal is specifically hosted on AWS to so that governments can't just blacklist their IPs without blacklisting all of AWS. So moving to bare metal isn't really an option.

Governments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet.

> Governments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet.

They can, but the collateral damage of doing that is high, which is a deterrent. The only regimes where that's realistically an option are ones where they've consciously developed an independent tech ecosystem (e.g. China) or where their power is so secure they couldn't care less about the damage.

Re: Signal Is Back

#32

Post by herodoturtle »

Arathorn wrote: post #21
curiousmindz wrote: post #7

We rarely get to see an app have to grow suddenly like that. And with Signal being open source, it must be very educational to follow. Has anyone found a publication around what they had to do on the technical side (code)? Edit: Their server's repo hasn't been updated since April 2020. Why? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

The lack of development-in-the-open on Signal-Server is a little concerning, in terms of not giving visibility on what's at least theoretically running serverside. If you compare it with Matrix, the last commits to Synapse were ~32 hours ago, Dendrite was ~31 hours ago, and Conduit was 3 hours ago - so you can keep up with where development is at, and of course see what is meant to be running in production (and run i…

> and of course see what is meant to be running in production (and run it yourself if you're able to).

This comment of yours is only the second time I'm hearing of Matrix (the first time was several days ago, in a bunch of comments on an ASK HN discussing the WA policy announcement). And because of your comment (and the implication that Matrix is something one can run independently in production) I am now perusing matrix.org - thanks for sharing.

Also I enjoyed your insight with respect to the Signal dev team and what they're possibly currently frantically busy with.

Mind if I ask you, what your thoughts are on the Signal project long-term?

Re: Signal Is Back

#33

Post by decrypt »

zerof1l wrote: post #25

Can somebody explain their financial model? How are they paying for the servers and stuff. The claim "No ads. No trackers." and that they are "free for everyone".

They are powered by donations [1]

Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, who left Facebook post WhatsApp acquisition, infused 50M USD too. [2] I hear he lent another 50M with 0% interest, repayable by 2068. [3]

[1] https://signal.org/donate

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/signal-foundation-whatsapp-brian...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation

Re: Signal Is Back

#34

Post by Craighead »

Vinnl wrote: post #3

This was a painful episode, but on the bright side, the team is sure to have learned a lot. Hopefully they won't have bled too many users. Looking forward to a more stable Signal in the future!

They. Need. Funding. Signal is as important as the linux kernel. We need to support it.

Re: Signal Is Back

#35

Post by bilal4hmed »

herodoturtle wrote: post #32
Arathorn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of development-in-the-open on Signal-Server is a little concerning, in terms of not giving visibility on what's at least theoretically running serverside. If you compare it with Matrix, the last commits to Synapse were ~32 hours ago, Dendrite was ~31 hours ago, and Conduit was 3 hours ago - so you can keep up with where development is at, and of course see what is meant to be running in production (and run i…

> and of course see what is meant to be running in production (and run it yourself if you're able to). This comment of yours is only the second time I'm hearing of Matrix (the first time was several days ago, in a bunch of comments on an ASK HN discussing the WA policy announcement). And because of your comment (and the implication that Matrix is something one can run independently in production) I am now perusing ma…

Read this https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom

Re: Signal Is Back

#36

Post by swirepe »

faitswulff wrote: post #16
Waterluvian wrote: post #11

Is it technically possible to have end to end encryption with Signal if it evolved to first attempt to use direct connections via RTC or some other method? If they're incurring serious costs to run, that tells me Signal's days are numbered until it has to start commercializing.

This came up on the forum and someone raised a good point - would direct connections require the sender and receiver to be online at the same time? I feel like the architecture has to be more clever than just a WebRTC connection between clients.

There was a really good YouTube lecture about how signal works, and it addresses phones being offline.

Unfortunately there's been a ton of low-quality videos on Signal released in the past few days, and it's taking me a while to find it.

Re: Signal Is Back

#37

Post by xfer »

ardy42 wrote: post #31
xfer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet.

> Governments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet. They can, but the collateral damage of doing that is high, which is a deterrent. The only regimes where that's realistically an option are ones where they've consciously developed an independent tech ecosystem (e.g. China) or where their power is so secure they couldn't care less about the damag…

Unless you are talking about very stable countries(where this is not even an issue to begin with), we have already seen a few(russia, india etc) doing this without a second thought, not just china. The damage can be attributed to someone else when you own the communication channels.

Re: Signal Is Back

#38

Post by j4ah4n »

curiousmindz wrote: post #7

We rarely get to see an app have to grow suddenly like that. And with Signal being open source, it must be very educational to follow. Has anyone found a publication around what they had to do on the technical side (code)? Edit: Their server's repo hasn't been updated since April 2020. Why? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

I would hope it’s due to infrastructure changes required to keep the lights on, not code changes. Concerning at first glance, but less so if I think about the problems they’re likely facing with regards to scaling.

Re: Signal Is Back

#39

Post by kiki_jiki »

brewdad wrote: post #24
skept wrote: post #8

If you're still having delivery issues in any of your private conversations try "reset secure session" from the chat menu. It worked for me with a couple of my contacts.

Does performing a reset impact messages already in the conversation? I don't want to lose chat history but I do have one convo that has missing messages between my phone and my desktop app.

Nope, existing messages are kept.

Re: Signal Is Back

#40

Post by ardy42 »

xfer wrote: post #37
ardy42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet. They can, but the collateral damage of doing that is high, which is a deterrent. The only regimes where that's realistically an option are ones where they've consciously developed an independent tech ecosystem (e.g. China) or where their power is so secure they couldn't care less about the damag…

Unless you are talking about very stable countries(where this is not even an issue to begin with), we have already seen a few(russia, india etc) doing this without a second thought, not just china. The damage can be attributed to someone else when you own the communication channels.

> we have already seen a few(russia, india etc) doing this without a second thought, not just china. The damage can be attributed to someone else when you own the communication channels.

Russia might fall under the category of "regimes...where their power is so secure they couldn't care less about the damage," and it appears they did in fact see a lot of collateral damage during the attempt. India's blocks look to be localized an temporary.

Post reply on HN