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Signal Is Back

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Re: Signal Is Back

#101

Post by foolmeonce »

jsilence wrote: post #76
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…

A couple of days ago an old long forgotten friend popped up apparently using Telegram now. Looking at the profile picture it became very clear that friend must have abandoned this phone number a while ago. Not really a privacy issue for the new user, since this is his public avatar, but a nice reminder for this issue that phone number are ill suited as identifiers

> phone number are ill suited as identifiers

Yes and no.. I think a resource like a phone number is better than the yahoo/etc email reallocation situation. So far it seems to be rarer that someone tries to get allocated a number to impersonate a previous owner's identity.

Re: Signal Is Back

#102

Post by rglullis »

deathgrips wrote: post #79
rglullis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, not really "free for everyone". TANSTAAFL. Downvoters, kindly explain what is so wrong about my statement. There are costs to run the operation, having generous benefactors writing big checks (a) do not change this, (b) makes Signal's operation dependent on the source of revenue and (c) hide these externalities long enough to hinder the development of cheaper/more efficient alternatives. IOW, "depending on donati…

Downvoted because... TANSTAAFL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a...

Re: Signal Is Back

#103

Post by minot »

decrypt wrote: post #23
divbzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know if these commits are already in App Store and Google Play? I looked for a Signal update on iOS just now and did not see one.

From what I understand, this affects only Android devices, thus the Android 5.2.1 rollout. None for iOS.

Not that I speak for the project but this isn’t privileged information anyways: If you have TestFlight, you will see there have been several updates pushed to TestFlight over the last few days.

Re: Signal Is Back

#104

Post by rglullis »

yorwba wrote: post #92
xster wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take this with a grain of salt since it's not too clear how much money they got exactly from OTF, but they seem to have been partially seeded initially with the CIA spin-off Radio Free Asia money ( https://pando.com/2015/03/01/internet-privacy-funded-by-spoo... ). Since the OTF's own spin-off from RFA, it seems to have continued being non-trivially involved in regime change while funding communication initiatives lik…

Good. Let them put their "regime change" money into generally useful infrastructure like Signal instead of propaganda for their favorite rebel group or some other narrow political goal.

Signal runs on AWS with the excuse that if a state actor decided to block Signal by blocking IPs, they would have to block all of AWS.

It all sounds fine, until we are reminded that AWS itself blocked Parler, no chance of recourse and completely within the law. With that in mind, how confident are you to think that CIA's support of Signal goes as far as they can ensure they can control the network?

Re: Signal Is Back

#105

Post by footrot »

jsilence wrote: post #76
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…

A couple of days ago an old long forgotten friend popped up apparently using Telegram now. Looking at the profile picture it became very clear that friend must have abandoned this phone number a while ago. Not really a privacy issue for the new user, since this is his public avatar, but a nice reminder for this issue that phone number are ill suited as identifiers

Phone numbers make sense for quick onboarding, but for multiple numbers, identities, it all becomes a mess.

I am not even that interested in having a fixed phone number, I would rather ever changing throwaways for many contacts.

As soon as my number gets into the wrong hands, the fight against spam is painful, and I have to drop it.

Re: Signal Is Back

#106

Post by 1_player »

rglullis wrote: post #84
strken wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted because your comment doesn't add anything to the conversation. To claim something isn't free to the user just because it has externalities is a cheap rhetorical trick that doesn't give any new information or perspective.

Of course it does. OP asked "how do they manage to have a business". "Depend on donations" is not viable for a large-scale operation that has costs that grows with the customer base.

It has worked for Wikipedia.

It's hard to live on donations, but as a user it is still better than Signal being a for-profit company, as their goal would then be to increase the YoY revenue and eventually making unsavoury decisions.

No, there is no such thing as free lunch: either the user is at future risk or the company is at future risk. This is the best arrangement for users.

Re: Signal Is Back

#107

Post by dindresto »

arianvanp wrote: post #90
adamddev1 wrote: post #88

I would say one of the most important things they need to compete with WhatsApp is a better desktop client. WhatsApp's client is great because it works in the browser and is a joy to use. It would be nice if people didn't have to be burdened with downloading a big Electron app and then sit through the slow process where it syncs contacts etc. (kind of makes the user feel like it's broken)

Telegram's desktop client is the best I ever used. It's so extremely responsive. It is written in Qt instead of memory-hogging electron and the difference in how it feels is night and day. If signal were to develop a new client I wish they'd do native toolkit as well.

Technically the Telegram desktop client and libsignal are both open source, so maybe someone could hook them up? :)

Re: Signal Is Back

#108

Post by laurencei »

Is there any way to send messages via Signal using an API to a previously approved number? i.e. someone accepts my chat, then I can send messages via an API?

I cant find much (good) documentation on it..?

I have a system that needs to send alerts from an enterprise system, and we need a more secure way than Telegram...

Re: Signal Is Back

#109

Post by bbernhard90 »

laurencei wrote: post #108

Is there any way to send messages via Signal using an API to a previously approved number? i.e. someone accepts my chat, then I can send messages via an API? I cant find much (good) documentation on it..? I have a system that needs to send alerts from an enterprise system, and we need a more secure way than Telegram...

Not sure if this fits your needs, but I am maintaining this project here: https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api

Re: Signal Is Back

#110

Post by rglullis »

1_player wrote: post #106
rglullis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. OP asked "how do they manage to have a business". "Depend on donations" is not viable for a large-scale operation that has costs that grows with the customer base.

It has worked for Wikipedia. It's hard to live on donations, but as a user it is still better than Signal being a for-profit company, as their goal would then be to increase the YoY revenue and eventually making unsavoury decisions. No, there is no such thing as free lunch: either the user is at future risk or the company is at future risk. This is the best arrangement for users.

Wikipedia's costs do not grow linearly with the amount of people accessing it. Signal has to run servers and store the data for every user it has.

Also, if the wikimedia foundation closed tomorrow, Wikipedia's content would live on mirrors and IPFS gateways. It would still be useful - perhaps even more efficient than it is. Signal's outage yesterday that this logic does not apply for them. If they run out of money or infra, everyone is out in the cold.

> This is the best arrangement for users.

I'd argue that the best arrangement would be to stop hiding the operational cost per user and charge them for it. Donations can come later to cover users who can't afford the service. WhatsApp was doing just that with their $1/year fee and subsidizing market growth markets before Facebook got them.

I'd also make the case that part of the reason that we (as users) should not accept a centralized solution is due to the fact that a distributed/federated system gives room for competition and diversity. Switching from WhatsApp to Telegram or Signal or iMessage brings us no real progress in the aspect that we are still at the mercy of one single monopolistic entity.

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