261–270 of 330 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping a long history is almost always a bad idea because something you have written a year ago and have forgotten can be used against you. Keeping messages for just about a week is much better idea.
For you. Some people like having records.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping a long history is almost always a bad idea because something you have written a year ago and have forgotten can be used against you. Keeping messages for just about a week is much better idea.
Reading old IRC or ICQ logs from 2001 can be quite fun though, brings back some memories.
i downloaded all the history, put it into a markov chain library and now we have a bot that can generate random phrases (some, absurdly hilarious) based on our own conversations.
It's a fantastic service from an engineering perspective. Fast, lightweight, reliable, simple, with low battery drain and data usage, and open source clients. A real joy to use.
is it as safe as end-to-end? no. but the convenience is just too great.
Most/all of my non-tech-savvy friends and relatives wouldn't even have heard of Telegram or Signal or any other messaging apps. My tech-savvy friends tend to be busy with their lives (most of my friends are 30+ and have family and kids to take care of), and when FB is down for 24 hours they tend to just not use FB or Whatsapp and "wait it out"; it's not like they have to message anyone while at work.
I guess the 3M signups are mostly teeangers and young adults? I'm really not sure how anyone 30+ with a family really care enough about messaging friends on an app to switch apps (by installing a new one even!) when their usual one is down for a day. Most probably fall back to SMS even if some are on paid per message plans.
Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.
Let's see, Signal is based in the US. Wechat is a Chinese system with a great UX that is based in China. Telegram used to be based in Russia. Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. I think it is pretty self-explanatory that in all these countries, governments haven't been exactly subtle when it comes to their efforts to intercept communications. In my mind, Telegram is the only software that resisted such interference in an…
no, it's not. it was created by a russian (pavel durov) but it's developed by a company registered in london with servers all over the world[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Servers
A good alternative is Riot. The recent Riot update actually makes it a pretty decent messenger!
Why aren't discord and slack eating up this space? They seem to be much more feature filled than Telegram.
Telegram is a fantastic app and platform in the IM/chat space. The feature set, speed and pace of development are far ahead of any others I've seen. The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP o…
> The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. > Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP or S/MIME). The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email. Having better UX and safer defaults than em…
Anyone who finds themselves using email disagrees in practice. Plain text on the servers are no practical deal breaker to the vast majority of people, not even the majority of HNers.
> The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email.
This is the problem:
Stop recommending WhatsApp and we are a little closer.
Many of us can agree that Signal is probably more secure, even after the horrible bug they had in their desktop client not that long ago.
But WhatsApp is nothing but a metadata collection engine for Facebook.
I'm not too happy with the saying about not paying meaning you are the product, but in this case it fits perfectly:
1. Facebook buys WhatsApp, makes it free, promisese they can't combine it.
2. Turns out Facebook is too greedy to even pretend it wants to keep its promises, and goes on to update Terms Of Service, adding a default opt-in.
Can we stop recommending WhatsApp now?
Signal exists critical stuff.
For everything else, use something that works: Telegram, email, whatever, -even WhatsApp.