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Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

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Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#141

Post by Krasnol »

0x457 wrote: post #98
Krasnol wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is slow? I don't understand what there is to accelerate.

In Telegram, I can open a chat, find a sticker, send a sticker, post a circle story, and shitpost in another group chat. All while WhatsApp loads my chat history. That is on any platform and any network condition, except for fully offline. Their desktop apps are just Qt and not WebView inside a Qt. Mobile apps are native and not React.

Ok I don't know what finding a sticker has to do with speed.

Whatsapp and Signal have stickers too. Kids use them sometimes. They are like in a list. You open the list. Chose one and then it appears. Don't know what there is to accelerate.

...and yeah, whatever language they are. I don't really care because, as said: there is no problem...

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#142

Post by Krasnol »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #111
Krasnol wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds more like your personal problem. I live in Germany and use both. None do that and as I'm "the IT guy" for many people at work an din private, I'd have heard about it. Hell, the whole continent would have heard about it as whatsapp is widely used. My Signal also doesn't do that.

I'm confused about how it is that because it hasn't happened to you or anyone you know, it's my personal problem that closed-source software that I have no capability to modify is working slowly or failing to work at all?

As I wrote: If "WhatsApp program doesn't even work have the time -- it just gets stuck in the loading process." this would be true for half of the European Continent, since it's very popular there, there would be uprisings, memes, news. You could read people trying to fix it, find out why, etc.

There is nothing. It's not just me who doesn't know ANYBODY with those issues.

So the logical conclusion is: you're either lying or you have a problem on your own device other people don't have.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#143

Post by forgotmypw17 »

Krasnol wrote: post #140
econ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the gold standard for bad support: pretend the user has a problem. There once was this thread on a blog for a windows XP pirated edition. Someone commented that something small didn't work. They replied in less than a minute, that's terrible! 10 minutes later the version was incremented and a new reply said: Try the new version! After 30 minutes the bug fix was confirmed. They weren't trying to be funny but it s…

I worked for a long time in IT Support and this generalisation, like all of them, is false. If someone tells me that a program crashes in 50% of the time on launch but it's only him reporting it, it is almost certainly his problem and not a problem of the program. Especially if you're supporting millions of people. This is not some prejudice story people make up. It is happening. Every day to thousands of poor IT War…

But it's not "his" problem or "my" problem, it's "our" mutual problem for "us" to figure out together, collaboratively, down to its root causes, which are yet unknown. (And in the future, to mitigate and prevent, using whatever means are available to us.)

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#144

Post by stavros »

jacobgold wrote: post #137
stavros wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, the open source cli of an E2E encrypted messenger seems untrustworthy, but the official API of a completely unencrypted messenger seems trustworthy? I guess "we can definitely spy on your messages" is a lot more honest than "we are very unlikely to spy on your messages", if it turns out spying takes place.

You're getting the issues confused. Signal does not have an official Signal CLI (or method of creating integrations) so users are compromising their use of Signal by using heavily patched and out-of-date code written by unknown third parties. Telegram has support for integrations and clients but isn't a service anyone should trust.

Isn't that exactly what I said?

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#145

Post by Krasnol »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #143
Krasnol wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a long time in IT Support and this generalisation, like all of them, is false. If someone tells me that a program crashes in 50% of the time on launch but it's only him reporting it, it is almost certainly his problem and not a problem of the program. Especially if you're supporting millions of people. This is not some prejudice story people make up. It is happening. Every day to thousands of poor IT War…

But it's not "his" problem or "my" problem, it's "our" mutual problem for "us" to figure out together, collaboratively, down to its root causes, which are yet unknown. (And in the future, to mitigate and prevent, using whatever means are available to us.)

Maybe. If someone choses to do so in their capacity.

But they don't have to.

On the other side, suggesting that it is a general issue with those programs is wrong. Which is what I have been actually pointing out. This gives you the chance to check your devices and seek help if necessary.

This doesn't make my comment "bad support". I am not the tech support guy for HN.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#146

Post by maqp »

tryauuum wrote: post #79
psychoslave wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You people are just racist towards Russians and need help. That doesn’t exclude the statements about Telegram to be correct though. That is, if some hater against whatever group say 1+1=2 or water is wet, what’s the conclusion? >You can do similar attacks on signal and whatsapp. Well yes. Don’t trust devices, they are not humans, they don’t qualify. They can at most have some degree of reliance for some purpose. But…

> You people are just racist towards Russians and need help. >> That doesn’t exclude the statements about Telegram to be correct though. just attack the telegram from the technical standpoint, then no complains about "racist towards russians" will be given. Like, mentioning the lack of user-friendly E2EE is great already. Saying things like "Durov who supposedly lives in exile has visited Russia over 50 times" is meh…

>Durov who supposedly lives in exile has visited Russia over 50 times

Durov's exile marketing makes him look like he's Alexei Navalny. Navalny was a true dissident and critic and he was first poisoned, and then later arrested when he returned. He was was then imprisoned and he died in prison.

Durov has been visiting Russia more than I've been visiting my friends over the same period. Him returning to Russia that many times shows he isn't really living in exile. He's not on the run, and he's not getting arrested when he visits Russia. The disparity between the stories forces one to ask, is he working with the Russian government instead. He can prove he isn't by deploying ubiquitous end-to-end encryption, until then there's very little reason to suspect he isn't, again given the mismatch between what's claimed (the exile) and what's happening behind the scenes (the visits the public doesn't know about).

>and regarding the cracking contests — one of the telegram bugs was actually uncovered this way, see https://habr.com/ru/articles/206900/

That article doesn't even mention the cracking contest. The XOR-nonce bug was also found by Valsorda in 2021 https://words.filippo.io/telegram-ecdh/ so looks like that 2013 post you linked to never even led to a fix during the EIGHT years. No idea if it still exists.

Also, you can't be racist towards Russian government that's OBVIOUSLY evil. From Navalny, to Bucha, to bombing hospitals, to kidnapping children, to the illegal war in the first place.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#147

Post by tuetuopay »

LastTrain wrote: post #82
cropcirclbureau wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of sketchy things about telegram but I'm confused, what exactly in this article seems sketchy to you?

A fee based service without site redundancy for one?

It’s quite easy to anycast an IP to multiple physical datacenters. Their DC nomenclature is probably a relic from when they really had a single datacenter for each region.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t shock me if they had no site redundancy. It’s a free service, it’s not like there’s SLA agreements you paid for on signup.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#148

Post by wronex »

konart wrote: post #95
wronex wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don’t see the appeal compared to Signal. Although, Signal is also sketchy with an operating cost in the tens of millions of dollars per year. Where does the money come from?

Does Signal also have channels, groups etc?

Absolutely, but more focused on smaller groups. Family and friends. I think it has to do with the encryption scheme. Large groups are probably tricky. Therefore the app isn’t built for them. But small groups are perfectly fine.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#149

Post by maqp »

inigyou wrote: post #132
mdasen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add: - Telegram had usernames in 2014 before Signal added them a decade later, allowing people to chat without sharing their phone number - Telegram has unencrypted chats which allow for giant chat rooms of 200,000+ and channels with millions of subscribers. Signal warns about performance issues when you have more than 150 people in a group. Telegram isn't just a messenger - it's often used as a social publishin…

Ah the classic tension between encryption and large groups. You can have e2ee or you can have large groups. Not both. Large groups usually don't need e2ee anyway as the adversary can just join the group - anyone can - that's how they get large.

Yup but the issue is Telegram already has two separate groups, normal groups (3-200 users), and supergroups (200-200,000 users). For end-to-end encrypted groups, Threema supports 256 members, Signal 1000, Wire 2000, and Matrix has no upper limit. Surely Telegram could deploy E2EE for normal groups. Nobody assumes groups with more than 200 members are private anyway.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#150

Post by maqp »

tiagod wrote: post #124
SXX wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Durov was smart enough to let community build open source clients and use them. And to make internally built clients open source.

That's not it. I believe all the clients were built by employees. What he did was give each client to a very small, experienced team.

Too bad he gave the job of company cryptography team to his brother, Nikolai who's an expert in geometry, not cryptography.
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