Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Telegram Isn't for Sale

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 182 posts

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#111

Post by slazaro »

samat wrote: post #98
rkachowski wrote: post #87

I haven't used telegram for a while, but the last time I used it e2e encryption was only an optional feature (secret conversation) instead of the default option. How does this compare to Signal or Whatsapp which both have e2e enabled by default?

They have opted for user convinience on this matter. Fully searchable history of all communication synced on all your devices. A nightmare for a dissident attacked by state, but convinience 90% of the population should not be stripped of.

Is it technically impossible to have end to end encryption with full history, even synced? As long as you have the decryption key, you could have synced encrypted history, the best of both worlds, right?

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#112

Post by K0nserv »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #90
K0nserv wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common misconception with "Security by Obscurity" is that it's always a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if the obscurity is critical to the security of what you are protecting. For example if you make your API completely open, but obscure it inside an app and make the domain hard to discover e.g a random string that's obviously not good. However if you use obscurity as an extra layer in a system that is secured by…

But sounds like the entire telegram network could be taken down if the locations of the servers were comprimised. Then the message app wouldn't function anymore, so it wouldn't provide any security.

I guess the issue when your potential adversaries are nation states is that if they know where the servers are and that area is within their jurisdiction they can have your servers shutdown/seized. This obviously kills at least parts of the network, however I don't think it's implied that the network can be compromised as a consequence of this, that would truly be security by obscurity.

Outside of a mesh network or some peer to peer solution this doesn't seem like a problem that's solvable.

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#113

Post by Xylakant »

germanier wrote: post #75
rorykoehler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare isn’t free in Germany. It’s extortionately expensive.

It is (close to) free if you already pay the contributions we are discussing about here. Note how the post said you get free healthcare if you paid your contributions . The contributions are not extortionately expensive. It may seem that way if you are healthy, high-earner, and young. But looking at the actual cost of providing healthcare it's pretty competitively priced. Over the lifetime of a person private health…

> It may seem that way if you are healthy, high-earner, and young.

Interesting tidbit that many people tend to forget about: Health care payments are capped. The maximum monthly income that gets counted is 4425 EUR/month of which about 14% get paid in total. So if you earn 10k a month you effectively pay a lower rate. The effective health care rate drops for high-earners.

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#114

Post by germanier »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #104
germanier wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 8-9% of your income tax – so in reality maybe 2% of your income or less. This tax is levied by the churches. You may be against the fact that they get this right because you support a more strict separation of church and state (which is not in the spirit of the German constitution) but this is hardly something the state is to blame for.

It's opt out, which is pretty evil. You can absolutely blame the state for that. https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/stop-paying-german-church-t...

It is not opt-out. Everybody who pays has opted into the system (or in most cases their parents did[0]). Catholic foreigners might be surprised that the Catholic church is considered a single world-wide religious community. If they move to Germany they will be taxed even if they are not religious (because they haven't left – which is in some countries hard or impossible). This is a thing the Catholic church does to their members, not the German state.

[0]: It is not a regular contract but even those can bind you if your parents entered into them in your name.

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#115

Post by Grue3 »

eps wrote: post #35
baybal2 wrote: post #9

FIY: While they claim being hounded back in Russia, and that they will be instantaneously jumped upon by 3 letter services if they were to run there, they were proven to have a huge office there as well as their main server infrastructure. Another red flag, is that they were never blocked in Russia. They look suspicious.

Got a source for the first claim? Second would've been a red flag if the Russian gvmnt would've been routinely blocking other chat systems.

Russian government is routinely blocking other chat systems. LINE, CacaoTalk and WeChat are currently banned.

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#116

Post by kelnos »

esrauch wrote: post #65
TrickyRick wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you didn't get healthcare, free education for 20+ years, subsidised student loans, retirement money, police, fire department etc. from the state? You really should stop and think what you get from the state before you criticise what the state takes from you.

One interesting property of the US tax structure is that most of the tangible benefits are mostly funded locally (education for 13 years, police, fire, most roads) which is generally a lower tax rate than the federal taxes (which don't as clearly connect to the services that we all need): especially if you don't consider the >50% of federal money spent on the military to be a good use the federal/state/local divide m…

That's a little misleading, as a ton of federal dollars come back to the state governments. It seems inefficient (and it is), but it's a way of applying political pressure, and of redistributing money from states with stronger economies to those with weaker economies.

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#117

Post by baybal2 »

candiodari wrote: post #105
pavlov wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...the reality of taxes increasing everywhere, year after year Can you show data to back this up? To my knowledge, income taxes in all Western countries are lower today than they were in the '50s or '70s.

Do you check the full cycle ? Ie. if your employer gives you $1, and you use that to give it to Apple (for an app, whatever), how much actually ends up with Apple ? Let me do the calculation for Belgium for you: $1 -> First, because yearly the employer has to pay you for 13.92 months, not 12 (end of year bonus thing), we take that out. That's 14% (but you get 20 days 1.5 times paid holidays, and an end of year bonus,…

A very insightful comment you made!

>but again no taxes on income that was packaged in companies

Glad that you noted that. I feel that packaging your own income in shell companies is very common across the Western world

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#118

Post by [deleted] »

candiodari wrote: post #105
pavlov wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...the reality of taxes increasing everywhere, year after year Can you show data to back this up? To my knowledge, income taxes in all Western countries are lower today than they were in the '50s or '70s.

Do you check the full cycle ? Ie. if your employer gives you $1, and you use that to give it to Apple (for an app, whatever), how much actually ends up with Apple ? Let me do the calculation for Belgium for you: $1 -> First, because yearly the employer has to pay you for 13.92 months, not 12 (end of year bonus thing), we take that out. That's 14% (but you get 20 days 1.5 times paid holidays, and an end of year bonus,…

[deleted]

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#119

Post by KozmoNau7 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #54
TrickyRick wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you didn't get healthcare, free education for 20+ years, subsidised student loans, retirement money, police, fire department etc. from the state? You really should stop and think what you get from the state before you criticise what the state takes from you.

> You really should stop and think what you get from the state before you criticise what the state takes from you. And when you're done doing so, and decide that it's not a good deal for the money, then you're told to do it again, and again, until you get the "right" answer the person patronizingly telling you to do so expects. It's reasonable to have a discussion about the most reasonable, efficient, and appropriate…

History shows us that privatization always ends up being more expensive for the average person, while still providing lower-quality service than the old public system.

Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale

#120

Post by reitzensteinm »

germanier wrote: post #114
reitzensteinm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's opt out, which is pretty evil. You can absolutely blame the state for that. https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/stop-paying-german-church-t...

It is not opt-out. Everybody who pays has opted into the system (or in most cases their parents did[0]). Catholic foreigners might be surprised that the Catholic church is considered a single world-wide religious community. If they move to Germany they will be taxed even if they are not religious (because they haven't left – which is in some countries hard or impossible). This is a thing the Catholic church does to t…

You immigrate to Germany as an atheist with no affiliation to any church, but answer questions about your upbringing truthfully.

You're then taxed 2% of your gross income unless you pay a fee and visit multiple government departments. The money is distributed to private parties with little oversight on its spending. This is enforced by the same body and with the same penalties and rules as other forms of taxation.

I think at this point, we're arguing about the definitions of "opt out" and "enforced by the state". "Evil" is open to interpretation, but I stand by it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/41305s/church_tax_...

Post reply on HN