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Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

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Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#101

Post by yourusername »

donkeyd wrote: post #90
yourusername wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe you're degrading all the way to basic SMS because as far as i know MMS never worked properly. So basic text only, no emoji's or media attachments.

If not being able to send emoji or media attachments for a couple of hours is a 'big issue' for you, then I really feel for you, honestly. I have no idea what that would be like, but for me it's pretty trivial, Like I think it would be for most.

It's also used by businesses and governments. For example to report thrash that has been placed by the side of the road, you would send a whatsapp with a image of the issue. Insurance companies also use whatsapp for initiating a claim. There are backups for these systems of course but it is inconvenient and will cause some disruption.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#103

Post by david_allison »

SSLy wrote: post #66
adamcharnock wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is slightly impractical for non-critical communication for me because many of my friends are foreigners like me. Example issues: - many people I talk to have phone numbers from different countries. Making such communication expensive. - also, I suspect many people around me have not updated their WhatsApp number for a while (or have multiple SIMs) - no one here optimises for SMS or call minutes. Some people will…

How do people call 112 on such plans?

> Emergency calls shall be supported by the UE [User Equipment] without a SIM/USIM/ISIM being present. No other type than emergency calls shall be accepted without a SIM/USIM/ISIM.

> It will be left to the national authorities to decide whether the network accepts emergency calls without the SIM/USIM/ISIM.

[PDF] https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/122100_122199/122101/09...

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#104

Post by donkeyd »

yourusername wrote: post #101
donkeyd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not being able to send emoji or media attachments for a couple of hours is a 'big issue' for you, then I really feel for you, honestly. I have no idea what that would be like, but for me it's pretty trivial, Like I think it would be for most.

It's also used by businesses and governments. For example to report thrash that has been placed by the side of the road, you would send a whatsapp with a image of the issue. Insurance companies also use whatsapp for initiating a claim. There are backups for these systems of course but it is inconvenient and will cause some disruption.

Inconvenient is exactly the right issue for this, which was, pretty much, my point.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#105

Post by palata »

THENATHE wrote: post #79
palata wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much better in that it is open source (so you can audit the e2ee), and it does a lot about metadata. It is actually better at protecting metadata than many decentralized alternatives. Nobody said it was perfect. It's just better.

WhatsApp actually uses signal protocol for e2ee

They say they do, but you have to trust them. You don't have to trust Signal, you can audit the sources (or trust some third party to do it for you).

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#106

Post by sneak »

donkeyd wrote: post #14
jansan wrote: post #10

This is a big issue in Europe. Everyone I know does text communication exclusively through WhatApp.

They can still text regularly though, so it isn't that much of an issue if there's a real need to communicate. Edit: I feel like every response I'm getting is: 'but texting is expensive, especially with foreign contacts'. Sure, but do you really need to send 100 texts in the odd hour that Whatsapp is offline sometimes, or can they wait? Parent wrote 'This is a big issue in Europe', which is what I'm responding to. I…

Many people using WhatsApp are only using IP networks and can't send/receive SMS. There's a war on, right now, for example.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#107

Post by thehta »

thih9 wrote: post #99
RNAlfons wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's a lot better since it doesn't do unknown things with your address book. It actually doesn't do any unknown things and the fact that they're US based is irrelevant since they have nothing to give away thanks to E2EE.

What kind of unknown things with an address book is WhatsApp doing?

The idea is that Meta uses WhatsApp contact lists to build and maintain their social graphs, which is in turn used for advertising.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#108

Post by netsharc »

masklinn wrote: post #91
netsharc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people don't see the timeline. As much as I hate Zuck, his current 3D playground is probably comparable to a 70's video game, and his vision is that the Metaverse future is Skyrim or GTA5, I guess that'd be a Matrix-like virtual world. Imagine a headset with a 360 degree camera, so you can broadcast your surroundings, and someone else can wear their VR headset and be seeing what your camera is seeing. Or…

> I feel like people don't see the timeline. And I feel like people are high on fumes and refuse to see that there’s nothing there, none of the actual problems are solved, and there are no real use case being addressed. Someone just went “this is the next hype” and… is it? Most next hypes flounder and die a lonely but well deserved death. > his vision is that the Metaverse future is Skyrim or GTA5, I guess that'd be…

Dear vitriolic commenter,

Sure there's nothing there now, and I'm not cheerleading or hyping him on, but if I were in charge of this project I'd look if the tech which is portable and affordable could be developed (in a 10-15 year timeline) to prevent running into stuff. I look at your response and think "Why so much of the small-mindedness?".

I've seen people walk around tourist spots while video-calling their friends/family, the other side would be in their tatty t-shirts in their bedroom, but hey, they can enjoy a part of the caller's travels and adventures. Of course it's also currently possible to take a shit and video call your supervisor, geez, I wish you a better job than one where you have to answer supervisors' calls even while crapping...

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#109

Post by em500 »

thih9 wrote: post #99
RNAlfons wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's a lot better since it doesn't do unknown things with your address book. It actually doesn't do any unknown things and the fact that they're US based is irrelevant since they have nothing to give away thanks to E2EE.

What kind of unknown things with an address book is WhatsApp doing?

WhatsApp uploads the address book from the user's phone to Meta's servers and after that it's unclear to outsiders what they do with it. Hence "unknown".

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#110

Post by gnyman »

danpalmer wrote: post #55

In my experience WhatsApp has around 1 hour of (noticeable?) downtime a year, although not evenly spread out. That's about 99.99% available, which I'd consider pretty damn good for a consumer application. There's almost no person or business who will have a real problem caused by that. Let's not blow things out of proportion.

I was just rewatching Jonathan Blow's talk, where he discusses the Five 9s

> ... We don't use this anymore, in part because the number would be going down and we can't make it go up anymore ...

https://youtu.be/ZSRHeXYDLko?t=1704

I don't have a strong opinion of an hour of downtime is bad or not, and I think the concern about five nines for everything was silly. But it's an interesting talk I think it's worth watching. Is software getting worse and could we reverse the trend if we tried?

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