iPad only? I am out.
Wire – Modern Communications Network
271–280 of 411 posts
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Right now, I have installed on my phone: * Standard text messaging app, for almost everyone. * Google Hangouts, which is a pain to remove and always logs in behind my back. I don't want to chat on my phone, it's just a nuisance. (I wish people would stop talking to me through Hangouts, honestly) * Viber, with a single contact. * LINE, with a single contact. I don't have WhatsApp or Snapchat or whatever, but…
I have on my phone: Standard text messaging ConnectBot (to an irssi session for IRC) The answer is just to say no when people ask you install $appoftheday to contact them. No hangouts, no skype, no whatsapp, no facebook polluting my phone with their intrusiveness and always-on-in-background tendencies. One person occasionally asks me to install Whatsapp, but each time I say no. Hangouts is a pain to remove if it came…
I'm mostly with you, but I actually quite like whatsapp.
Don't need to pay extra to send an image Messages don't get lost in transit and if it did, it'd let you know. It's fast, simple and usable.
I find most everything faddish, but occasionaly things win out because they suck less than what we already have. Of course, those specific problems above might be UK specific.
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, they can quote the most advanced encryption algorithm, but you still can't be sure if they have really used it unless they share their code. Bottomline: You either trust them or you don't. One reason for them not sharing the details could be that they want the potential hackers to keep guessing rather than making their life easier (No encrytion is foolproof)
Kerckhoff, 1883: "[T]he security of a system should depend on its key, not on its design remaining obscure."
Security by obscurity isn't sufficient by a long shot -- and you can't rely on it -- but that doesn't mean it's without value.
Obscurity may only buy you time while you fix your security problems (before someone stumbles across the mistake you've made), but if you can manage to correct flaws before they are exploited, well, that's a good thing.
That said, Wire would do better to share enough details to show that they are putting real work into security and encryption. Compare Wire's security detail with something like Crypho's: http://www.crypho.com/features.html
They're still omitting plenty of details in their implementation, but it's obvious they have a strong focus on security. Wire doesn't really say anything (yet).
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#274Could they not get any more Hipsters on that page?
I know right. I guess that's their target demo.
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually dislike introducing yet another standard, but Tox has some features that XMPP won't provide. VoIP support out of the box, without the need for an extension that may not be supported by the client. Also, afaik it's truly decentralized, without the need for a server for the actual communication.
> VoIP support out of the box True, but do you think it's easier to deploy an extension that already exists and just lacks implementations, or to create a whole new protocol from scratch ? If you look at other successful protocols, you'll also see that some features we rely on were bolted-on as extensions to protocols that were defined before, such as DNS, IMAP, HTTP... Not that it's an excuse to do the same, but it'…
Your points are well taken, but this is unfortunately a sacrifice that needs to be made in the name of security. While partial centralization would solve a few problems, it would also introduce weak points in its security model that three letter agencies would be quick to exploit.
Tox actually does NAT traversal quite well I've found, and it does support SOCKS5 connections out of the box, albeit through TCP relay nodes rather than direct P2P.
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
noöne? really? when did 'no one' become insufficiently clear?
Probably a typo. ‘Ö’ and ‘O’ a very close on a German keyboard.
Based on past comments I'd expect the author to have the en_US layout (or something entirely different) and probably - now taking a guess here - even without umlauts.
I'm German and use en_US here, so for ö I'd need to compose a character manually. Which is probably what was mocked (whether that is right or wrong I do not know - I certainly cannot judge the style of writing of someone in his native language, as a foreigner myself).
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#277I'm glad. Skype for iOS has so many bugs it is incredible.
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#278Is it just a coincidence that Skype changed their AUP last week, requesting a license to all content transmitted via Skype (point 5.7 of their legalese)? That ought to scare some people away. To Wire?
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#279So in the age of Edward Snowden this is all they say about encryption... "Are Messages And Calls Encrypted? Yes. Wire uses industry-standard encryption on all of your Wire messages and calls." "WHAT SECURITY MEASURES DO WE TAKE TO SAFEGUARD YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION? We are concerned about safeguarding the confidentiality of your information. We provide physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect infor…
Unfortunately, even if they DID specifically list out all the security measures that they used, someone would still complain because it isn't completely open source. The previous company I worked for not only had legitimate encryption for anything private we received from the user (e.g.: email passwords) so that nobody at the company could ever read them, but also had some (if I remember correctly) good documentation…
>> the previous HN post about the guy who shut down his business and was debating open sourcing his entire codebase, and all the problems he would have had to tackle to do so
link please?
Re: Wire – Modern Communications Network
#280Oh its everywhere! Except... Windows, Linux, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Web... iOS, OS X and Android is far from everywhere.
I don't get why they decided an OS X app was more important to release than a browser app... A browser app reaches a way bigger market share than an OS X one.