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Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#191

Post by emptysongglass »

maqp wrote: post #166
emptysongglass wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is such a loaded and unthoughtful comment. It assumes you have to make a choice. You don't, at least per technical reasoning. When Signal provides these features, please feel free to ping me back here but until then, the proof is in the pudding and the Signal pudding doesn't taste like the Telegram pudding. As Signal's client is open source and its server is whenever they feel like it, I'm sure they'd also val…

So to return to your original post: >"Actual multi-session clients across devices." Not available with E2EE >"No Electron." Sure, because you need all 32GB of RAM but not your human right to privacy. Also, this is an argument against Signal's client, not excuse why you can't have E2EE on non-electron native client. >"Truck loads of features and thoughtful touches everywhere." So, eye candy. Not very strong argument.…

Hey bud, you're really writing aggressively. I'm not really here for that. But I do think it's important to debunk misinformation and this:

>>"video chats"

> Not E2EE

...isn't true. Please see https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end/video-calls

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#192

Post by ddevault »

tialaramex wrote: post #178
ddevault wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLS/SSL is a better comparison, and it's a protocol which has enjoyed widespread and unprecedented success in securing the privacy of users worldwide, despite being decentralized. The tradeoffs Moxie was thinking of when rejecting federation had more to do with centralizing his power over Signal rather than any kind of technical limitations.

For TLS we've had to drag everybody along, kicking and screaming. You call this "widespread and unprecedented success" but the reality is that later this week you're going to see even more outrage and despair from people who didn't like being centralized and so, of course, they're screwed because the price of their "freedom" is the eternal vigilance they couldn't be bothered with. draft-moriarty-tls-oldversions-diedi…

It's not without drawbacks, but TLS gives almost everyone good security/privacy by default. And for those who really need it, anyone who does even a basic amount of research can gain very good levels of confidence in the privacy of their TLS setup.

Also, there are degrees of federation. It doesn't have to be a wild wild west of the sort we see with projects like Mastodon. A closed federation can have strict rules on who can participate, can enforce constraints on auditing and rapid updates, and so on, and still be a federation. In fact, we see some of this in TLS - not everyone can participate, but there are dozens of independent organizations working within an internal governance models. Another example is EFnet, which is a federated chat network which has regulations on who can participate:

http://www.efnet.org/?module=docs&doc=16

Moxie conveniently ignores all of this because it serves his interests to be ignorant of it. It has been repeatedly brought to his attention. Moreover, he has put out legal threats to any project which tries to fork Signal to research these features.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#193

Post by spicybright »

MrDresden wrote: post #61
donkeyd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations. What do you expect? I don't think we have the right to hold them to high standards because you get what you pay for. Signal has always been a bad choice for messaging in practice. In theory it's really secure and all, in practice, they have security issues that don't get fixed and no real reason to provide a quality service.

> "It's a free service with no actual income stream, driven by donations." Completely agree with this point. Unless you are paying for the service (by being the product or via donations) you have no particular right to get upset with the creators of said service. > "What do you expect?" Professionalism and an understanding of the impact this will have on Signal's users. Some will be cut off from necessary communicati…

I definitely agree with you on a user level. But on a practical level, I wouldn't want to be on 24/7 pager duty if I was part of signal, not getting paid much, if anything for it.

I don't think matrix is there yet as a good replacement, at least for my use case. It's just not mature enough.

I know, chicken and egg problem, but I don't want to be debugging my primary form of communication. It's too important.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#194

Post by atatatat »

croes wrote: post #68
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pushed some people to change to Signal. We are all back now and I feel pretty dumb for having done that.

Why do you feel dumb?

Being a person who influences others' technology can be a massive social responsibility depending on you locale.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#195

Post by eptcyka »

dnautics wrote: post #190
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #179

Fwiw I've been using Signal as my primary communications channel along with email for the past few years. There's an outage once a year or so, but I can live with that. It just works--for voice calls, video calls, chat, groups, etc. The real question here isn't about which system is technologically superior (though HN gravitates to that question), it's which one is technologically superior taking into account network…

I had to quit using signal after I found it had dropped a TON of SMS messages headed my way.

Signal is a horrible SMS client.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#196

Post by atatatat »

maqp wrote: post #127
annadane wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. That automatically disqualifies it.

Metadata-wise, yes. For protecting content, it's still pretty good. Also, WA seems to add features pretty close to Signal, which could indicate WA supports Signal in testing some of the features Signal provides consultation wrt secure implementation. WA probably doesn't want to fully take the wheel and fuck around with the Signal protocol. They've of course made some changes such as the group management system, and t…

They're already trying to do hashmatching to better build ad profiles out of encrypted messages

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#197

Post by UncleMeat »

ddevault wrote: post #128
growse wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a thoughtful rebuttal, but I'm not sure it hits the point. As usual, there's nuance here. The top selling points of Signal are security and privacy. If you want these things, then there's a lot of things that maintaining complete control of the protocol gives you. From the original "Ecosystem is moving" essay: "By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a singl…

TLS/SSL is a better comparison, and it's a protocol which has enjoyed widespread and unprecedented success in securing the privacy of users worldwide, despite being decentralized. The tradeoffs Moxie was thinking of when rejecting federation had more to do with centralizing his power over Signal rather than any kind of technical limitations.

And an absolutely tremendous number of devices are still using versions of TLS with serious weaknesses and there is very little pressure actually moving them to more current versions.

Thus, tradeoffs.

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#198

Post by atatatat »

tfehring wrote: post #24
dr1337 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I haven't found it an issue to get friends or family to sign up for Element. In fact it's even better because you don't need to use your mobile number for that.

Haven't used Element but that sure doesn't sound better. Signal works as a drop-in replacement for the default SMS app on Android, I'm not gonna tell my mom to stop using my phone number and message `tfehring` from Element instead (if it's even that simple), especially since she'd still need an SMS app for everyone else.

I've found this specific issue doesn't matter for 30% of mobile users, because they're using the phone purely in a reactive state (usually to popups, or the notification area!).

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#199

Post by kitkat_new »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #179

Fwiw I've been using Signal as my primary communications channel along with email for the past few years. There's an outage once a year or so, but I can live with that. It just works--for voice calls, video calls, chat, groups, etc. The real question here isn't about which system is technologically superior (though HN gravitates to that question), it's which one is technologically superior taking into account network…

I think Matrix is a very hot candidate here

- federation (while P2P might be interesting for some, it definitely isn't something for everyone - yet, see below)

- scalable from private messaging up to thousands of users ((soon) with Spaces and threading)

- unlimited multi device with synchronization

- prospectively P2P with offline usage (Pinecones)

- open standard enabling competition

Re: Signal is experiencing technical difficulties

#200

Post by david_allison »

noja wrote: post #183
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #179

Fwiw I've been using Signal as my primary communications channel along with email for the past few years. There's an outage once a year or so, but I can live with that. It just works--for voice calls, video calls, chat, groups, etc. The real question here isn't about which system is technologically superior (though HN gravitates to that question), it's which one is technologically superior taking into account network…

I'm seeing usage fall off among my network, because it doesn't replace WhatsApp: * it can't save photos to the camera roll * notifications are hit and miss

> notifications are hit and miss

If you're on Android, check out https://dontkillmyapp.com/

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