Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#851

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

_ugfj wrote: post #828

rengle wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surgery is not done on minors. Sadly, this is not true. See for example this paper on 'gender-affirming' mastectomies, where the cohort included girls as young as 12 years old: https://journals.lww.com/annalsplasticsurgery/Abstract/2022/... Also this article from Reuters on rates of 'gender-affirming treatment' in children, from health insurance data, which shows that girls as young as 13 are receiving 'top surgery…

Trans women are not males who call themselves women, though. If you insist they are , that's denial of trans existence and that's the road to genocide. Trans women are not males who call themselves women, though. If you insist they are , that's denial of trans existence and that's the road to genocide. Apparently I was wrong on top surgeries. I will be more careful with phrasing then. However, sterilization (aka geni…

[deleted]

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#852

Post by kalleboo » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

JLCarveth wrote: post #476

lxgr wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RCS is Google's idea of a solution – a company not exactly widely known for their excellence in all things instant messaging.

Do you have a source that it was started by Google? From looking around, they support its development but it was an industry initiative, and Samsung was one of the first OEMs to support it.

It was embraced and extended by Google.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#853

Post by Zandikar » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #693

wpietri wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't take them personally No. They are meant to manipulate me personally, as well as other persons I care about. I will take them personally. More broadly, I don't have to excuse bad behavior just because somebody's making money off it or because it makes some too-narrow metric go up. Yes, it's a complex and imperfect world. But to me that's a reason to work harder to make things better, not a reason for people to…

With respect you are misinterpreting personally here. They don't know you; they don't know me. I'm a nobody, just like you.

I fail to see how being strangers excuses the behavior. You don't have to know each other to cause offense.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#854

Post by up2isomorphism » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

I would say at least 30% savings if they move out of Bay Area.

Also the salary seems to be high for a nonprofit , I get paid much higher than their VP but would happily take that job than my current one.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#855

Post by taway1237 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #836

jwestbury wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I agree are a problem Are they? These salaries are much lower than most tech competitors. I know we like to call out "high" salaries when a useful service is struggling - but they'll struggle even more if they can't retain good talent because their pay is too low. There's a reason tech skill in government is generally lower than that in industry, for instance.

Nonsense. Asking for donations as a millionaire (which is what these people are) is a bit awkward. This only makes sense if you ignore the world outside the Bay area and assume it's a talentless wasteland. Bay area salaries are vastly inflated in terms of value for money. There is lots of talent elsewhere of course. I live in Europe. Lots of smart people here. I think I personally know quite a few people that could d…

>I think I personally know quite a few people that could do at least as good a job as Signal has at building a messenger app + platform. No offense, but this isn't exactly rocket science.

They are building a secure communicator that a normal person can reasonably use - and succeeding. Something nobody else before them managed to pull off. If this isn't rocket science I don't know what is. Not to mention that they pioneer cryptographic protocols in this area, which other messengers later use.

>This only makes sense if you ignore the world outside the Bay area and assume it's a talentless wasteland.

I'm also from Europe (and love it, despite its flaws) but this comes off like whining. If it's really so easy, maybe the smart people here should create their own Signal and reap that overinflated salaries, what do you think?

Or maybe smart people are not enough and you also need VCs, reasonable taxes, laws... Oh btw, did you hear about those plans of EU to get rid of E2E encryption?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#856

Post by fsflover » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

contact9879 wrote: post #440

tamimio wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so instead of 20 entities tracking you for example now you 18.. the false sense of privacy is far more dangerous than knowing your messages are not private (Like when Tucker Carlson used Signal thinking it was private to find later all his messages were not, regardless if it was a bugged app or an OS, the false sense of privacy is worse, he probably won’t texted those on iMessage for example). Same argument yo…

I'm honestly interested in what your solution for private communication is that will also get mass adoption among hundreds of millions of users. (And it's definitely not running your own XMPP server and getting everyone to switch to Linux phones).

It's Matrix.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#857

Post by taway1237 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

pelasaco wrote: post #846

_ugfj wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this hypocritical. C executives of tech orgs with world class products often have eight figures compensation -- if not from salary then from stock options. I do not see any excess here. You need to pay to compete.

> I do not see any excess here. You need to pay to compete. What you mean with pay to compete ? The goal of Signal to exist is to offer a privacy oriented chat app. Non-profit companies serve a propose, and people not aligned with that, shouldn't be working there in the first place. If you join a non-profit to make money, you are doing it wrong.

So all the programmers who work there should live on thin air? I agree that ideally the management should not be there for profit, but come on, the salaries are not even that crazy. I suspect FAANG key employees in that area easily earn multiples of that.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#858

Post by Canada » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #818

Canada wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am encouraging people to donate to Signal because I prefer it. Why would I be soliciting donations for something I don't favor? If you want to contribute to something else go right ahead, but this is a thread about Signal's financial needs so it shouldn't surprise you that Signal supporters encourage other supporters to donate. I also use Matrix. Element has been pretty good for a few years now, but it's still…

> Why would I be soliciting donations for something I don't favor? Because you are (consciously or not) creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for one champion over the others. Worse still, you are asking everyone else to devote resources to your preferred champion when we have no reason to believe that this is long-term sustainable. > The Matrix protocol is also inferior to Signal in that all metadata is stored in clea…

I don't care about your preferences. I'm consciously using and giving money to Signal, and I'm encouraging others to do so. Go ahead and work on or use or donate to whatever you like.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#859

Post by xtracto » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:38 PM UTC

waffleiron wrote: post #802

jwestbury wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I agree are a problem Are they? These salaries are much lower than most tech competitors. I know we like to call out "high" salaries when a useful service is struggling - but they'll struggle even more if they can't retain good talent because their pay is too low. There's a reason tech skill in government is generally lower than that in industry, for instance.

> Are they? These salaries are much lower than most tech competitors. That really depends on the location these people are working from. In most of the world, those are insanely high salaries. A company like this doesn't need to be based in SV.

I tended to agree with your sentiment. But the reality is that for some unknown reason to me, it's companies from SV the ones that get famous and used globally.

Why didn't this start from say Mexico? Or Singapore or Vietnam? Or at least Germany which has a good record of freedom conscious tech scene .

My bet is in something related to the "maslow pyramid": people in SV have so much money that have everything solved in their lives, so they have the luxury of spending their time in this sort of problems.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#860

Post by JLCarveth » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 2:45 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #852

JLCarveth wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source that it was started by Google? From looking around, they support its development but it was an industry initiative, and Samsung was one of the first OEMs to support it.

It was embraced and extended by Google.

I was asking for a source so I could look further into this, do you have any?