Do I still need to give them my phone number though?
Signal Introduces Stories
231–240 of 480 posts
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#232Anyone know of a fork of signal that disables this keeps the SMS feature?
Not likely to happen. While it's OSS, there's still a central Signal backend, and they don't like clients other than their own to connect to it. Any fork would eventually need to have their own backend, and now you're basically no longer using Signal since you won't be able to communicate with anybody else not using yours.
There is a fork called "Molly" that has been around for a long time.
I haven't used but it is supposed to be a hardened version of signal.
Not that it supports SMS, but it _is_ a fork that uses Signal's servers.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#233I was so annoyed when I saw this. Luckily you can deactivate it. I've done so, moving on with my life. Can't believe how much I hate modern design pet-peeves and features... mozilla VPN app recently switched to having a menu bar at the bottom for 'home' (default view), 'messages' (update notifications and crap) and 'settings'... because this is how to do it now... of course it has fancy rounded corners... sigh...
For all the people still complaining about the SMS thing: I get it, at the same time, I don't. When I first installed Signal I was surprised and annoyed it wanted to be my default SMS app. What does SMS have to do with encrypted messaging? I immediately saw people would use Signal, send SMS, and assume they were securely messaging. Now Google is pushing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services which Signal can't implement.
The official announcement back then did not provide enough context, this here does https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms...
Are they supposed to 'keep' people esp non-techies from using RCS 'by default' and make them use SMS? The app that cares so deeply about encrypted communication?
My thinking: integrating SMS into Signal was a dubious move to aid adoption. I could make the reasonable argument it should've never been done. With the arrival of RCS and SMS falling by the wayside more and more, it just can't be justified any further.
Sucks for adoption? Maybe. But honestly, Signal can't want people to use SMS, right?
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#234I was worried about sharing broadly and leaking info from 1 contact to another, but it seems like the Signal team did all the right things here. When you create a story you can make it a group story or not. If you do not make it a group story, reactions and replies to stories get sent to you over your 1:1 chats and not shared across other recipients of the story. If you make it a group story, and share it with multip…
I'm still of the opinion that encrypted private group chats are an impossible UX problem (1:1 chat is fine). But if I were to trust anyone to find a way to do it properly, it would be Signal.
What makes it impossible? Naively I would think that if you have a secure 1:1 communication protocol, then you can send N*(1:1) secure messages to a group of N people. To solve the "fake group message" problem where an adversarial member of the group sends different messages to different members of the group, or delays the message to some members, the protocol could simply allow for a 2nd level "vouch" message to be sent, such that Alice sends the message to Bob, Alice sends the message to Charlie, Charlie messages Bob a receipt with the receive time and a hash of the chat log, and Bob messages Charlie a receipt with the receive time and a hash of the chat log. If the hashes don't match, or the receive time is unacceptably different, then you highlight the message as suspect.
Sure, it takes N^2+N messages, but that's not exactly a massive overhead for text. Multimedia takes N times as much bandwidth as the 1-server, server-many model for the sender, but otherwise isn't terrible.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but why do you need Signal to handle those messages?
Lots of people like having just one messaging app, for messaging that's basically SMS-like. Apple and Google have both chased that dream for their SMS apps, for a good reason (Apple with more success than Google—does Google still have another messaging service attached to their SMS app, or did they give up on that when the first attempt was a disaster about a decade ago?)
> does Google still have another messaging service attached to their SMS app
Google Messages (the default SMS app on newer phones) uses RCS if available and overlays E2E encryption on top using the Signal protocol.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
About once a week I get a notification that random person X I haven't talked to in a decade is now on signal. About two months ago the super at my old apartment building got on signal and I got a notification. My late coworker's phone number finally got recycled and the new person using it is on signal too. They appear to be reaching critical mass. Still really mad about them dropping SMS support. I'll be deleting it…
I really don't understand the qualms with SMS support. SMS was never secure, and it certainly doesn't become more secure when you push it through a pass-through on one app or another. There is nothing you can do to SMS to make it more secure except to send encrypted strings: but then you have the same problem of sharing secrets, etc. that requires a separate app to manage anyway.
Because I already have an encrypted messaging app. It's called Whatsapp. This bumps up to E2E encrypted if both people using "SMS" have signal installed. Now this is just an alternative to WhatsApp. I will just keep using WhatsApp.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
From my experiences, Signal has the cleanest, most functional UX and design out of nearly all my apps. I have a mid-range Pixel 4a running CalyxOS and it works without hiccups. Not sure why yours is so slow.
I am using an absolutely ancient phone (2016 iphone SE) that's perpetually in low power mode, so it's possible that this isn't a big problem for other iOS users. It's also rather slow on my mac, but I have noticed that my partner's 4a runs it smoothly.
I love HN threads where the complainer is knowingly using an old device on power mode, while complaining about performance… all while the responder is using a custom de-googled niche ROM and claiming somehow it works flawlessly.
I always wonder how non-HNers use such software, if even the dedicated people are struggling.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#238I actually like the idea of Stories (vs say a giant group text), but I don't think 24 hours is workable for the people I Signal with because we're not in Signal routinely enough and everything will just delete before anyone sees it. If it were configurable I'd probably set it to a week or a month. Actually, I don't know why they would fix the time at 24hrs. We've always been able to set the time period for disappeari…
> I don't know why they would fix the time at 24hrs. To use fear of missing out to cause people to check the app at least a couple times a day. It's an engagement hack, and the main reason I dislike this feature wherever it appears.
I suppose it does function as an engagement hack, but I like ephemeral messaging like this because it is low-stakes and I often don't care strongly whether any individual sees my post or not. If I did care, I'd simply send them a message directly! So at least in this sense, the short timeframe is a feature that defines the medium for me.
Of course, you could allow customization of the time interval, but that adds another layer of complexity, and other platforms that use stories have already pretty much standardized on a timeframe of 24h, so it's easier for platform newcomers to understand.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#239I'm glad to see the app is actively being worked on, even if the changes aren't ones I care about personally. Here's my wishlist for Signal:
- Edit previously sent messages like Telegram, Discord and Slack lets you do. I'm so damn tired of a big ugly "This message was deleted" if I try to fix a typo/DYAC
- A better way to sync up clients, so when I log in on a computer and verify with my phone, it lets me sync over some or all of my message history.
- A way to set the expiry time for your sessions. I appreciate that they want you to not stay logged in forever if you lose or forget a computer, but I'm so damn tired of having to re-log in on my desktop pretty much every time I try to use Signal there.
- Faster message import when starting desktop clients. Or smarter import - e.g. prioritize the top of the chats list and throw the rest on a background queue instead of hanging the UI until it's done.
None of these are huge, but they combine to make it just feel more annoying to use Signal than their competitors. I really like Signal in principle, but I wish I didn't need to give up UX and QoL-nicenesses that I've gotten used to from other apps in order to use it.
Re: Signal Introduces Stories
#240I was so annoyed when I saw this. Luckily you can deactivate it. I've done so, moving on with my life. Can't believe how much I hate modern design pet-peeves and features... mozilla VPN app recently switched to having a menu bar at the bottom for 'home' (default view), 'messages' (update notifications and crap) and 'settings'... because this is how to do it now... of course it has fancy rounded corners... sigh... For…
I think menus are moving to the bottom because phones are so big now - that's where your thumbs are. Probably the only reason phones ever had menus at the top is because they were just copying desktop app UI.