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Et Tu, Signal?

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#291

Post by xg15 »

simias wrote: post #20

I definitely agree with the article that it felt a bit like a betrayal. I've pushed some friends and family to use it over Telegram despite significant usability issue, and now I see that instead of implementing some IMO basic features like proper message sync and easy backup when you get a new phone, they prefer to implement a... micropayment system? Based on some niche altcoin which doesn't even exist on mainstream…

> I'm willing to give the Signal devs the benefit of the doubt

How many "benefit of the doubt" cards do they have left by now?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#292

Post by jackbravo »

eximius wrote: post #181
skrowl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is just so much more usable than Signal. The perceived advantage of Signal over Telegram is LITERALLY not having an option for a cloud-synced chat and ONLY having end to end encrypted chats. That's all. You give up of usability to get that advantage. Explain to your mom why she has to give up Telegram to get basically the same functionality as Telegram secret chats. Signals crypto is used by Facebook and was…

There are no known attacks against Telegram. The problem is entirely that its cryptography was sketchy and just plain weird to begin with. It wasn't wrong , per se, but raised some eyebrows. And then some of the questionable choices were silently fixed removing the ability to MITM, etc, but with no real notice. It's not FUD.

and telegram does not used encrypted e2e messages by default. Only on the special secret messages that no ones uses.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#293

Post by josh2600 »

dleslie wrote: post #284
josh2600 wrote: post #275

Good Morning, I am the CEO of MobileCoin. A few points: 1) I started MobileCoin to fund Signal. That’s it. I believe that a world with a well-funded signal is a better place. In order for signal to compete in the 21st century with messaging apps around the world they need a payment story. MobileCoin is the only thing ever built that is both privacy protecting and fast that meets the standards of data retention signal…

Why another altcoin and not simply ETH or BTC? You state privacy and performance: could you be more specific?

A few things:

1) tx settlement time is ~3 seconds on mobilecoin, p99 latency right now with single block finality. Eth and Btc are great but they aren’t that fast (for payments speed really matters).

2) with respect to privacy, the key innovation of MobileCoin is that when all of the systems are operational, there is no transaction graph stored in the ledger. The links between transactions are known only to the counter parties to those transactions. In the event of a failure of the Secure Enclave, links between transactions degrade to probabilistic links between transactions (and forward secrecy can be restored upon recovery of the enclave).

The effect is a payment system that is both fast and privacy-protecting with no central authority, a quality not present in any other payments system I am aware of today.

Does that answer your question?

Oh, last and perhaps most important, because of our consensus design, we don’t use a ton of energy like btc and eth.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#294

Post by yunohn »

piffey wrote: post #282
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really about payments. The scam is to create a new altcoin, give most of the altcoin supply to the founders, then try to force as many people as possible to use the altcoin by deploying it as part of something popular like Signal. Now if anyone wants to use Signal’s money transfer feature, they have to buy MOB. The CEO of MobileCoin was in the threads yesterday pushing the website where they were selling MOB…

Can't you just shape that as any founder creating something though? Like oh, they own 50% of the company with their co-founder, then just grow it over 10 years to 100M ARR, then sell it to private equity to make a profit! Can you believe it? If their implementation of a secure, fast, mobile cryptocurrency works and is accepted mainstream as a way to send money anonymously and securely then why shouldn't they make a d…

Cryptocoins (like MobCoin) are a non-fungible token for facilitating payments. Usually the other companies you mention offer a useful/unique value that is not just being a forced middle-man.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#296

Post by jan_Inkepa »

My theory is that the reason Signal was so reluctant to add slightly-less-secure-but-usable backups is that it is going to have some unified infrastructure for crypto and messaging storage/backup. The backup usability weirdness makes way more sense in that context.

I don't understand security/crypto stuff so much, but the new version of the server seems to use the same secret token for crypto transactions as it does for backup https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/search?q=userAuth... , which offers some evidence that this be the case.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#297

Post by Klonoar »

simias wrote: post #246
skrowl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is just so much more usable than Signal. The perceived advantage of Signal over Telegram is LITERALLY not having an option for a cloud-synced chat and ONLY having end to end encrypted chats. That's all. You give up of usability to get that advantage. Explain to your mom why she has to give up Telegram to get basically the same functionality as Telegram secret chats. Signals crypto is used by Facebook and was…

Last I checked, end-to-end was only available on the phone app (not the desktop client) and only for one-on-one conversations. That's a pretty huge difference, but one that most people won't even understand or care about. But the simple fact is that for most people the security profile of Telegram is good enough and its UI is miles ahead of Signal. I've already complained about that in the past but the fact that the…

FWIW, if you’re on macOS at least, private chats are supported under the Cocoa client.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#298

Post by Igelau »

bdcs wrote: post #290
simias wrote: post #20

I definitely agree with the article that it felt a bit like a betrayal. I've pushed some friends and family to use it over Telegram despite significant usability issue, and now I see that instead of implementing some IMO basic features like proper message sync and easy backup when you get a new phone, they prefer to implement a... micropayment system? Based on some niche altcoin which doesn't even exist on mainstream…

Mobilecoin (Foundation) is a technological, ethical, and legal tour de force. I recommend you read their FAQ, but, to me anyway, it is obvious why Signal/Moxie needed to create a new coin (tl;dr: It needed to be a private venmo-like experience). To prevent conflicts of interest, a new org was created. Hence Mobilecoin, not SignalCoin. A few highlights: Technological: * First Oblivious RAM implementation, "fog", so th…

> Moxie and Josh Goldbard hold no MOB, along with the employees

Right, the foundation sells the premined crypto-currency at a pumped up price. The foundation pays Goldbard and Moxie for their work. Employees are paid from the VC. No one connected has to hold any of it, nor will they want to after the dump.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#299

Post by lottin »

derefr wrote: post #212
lottin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchains and privacy are antithetical. The whole purpose of a blockchain is to keep track of transactions so that everyone knows how many coins everyone else has in order to prevent double-spending. You can try to achieve anonymity through obscurity but this will never work in principle or in practice.

The process of reaching consensus on the current state doesn’t have to involve reaching consensus on the past state for all participants . A blockchain can be built such that all historical previous state + the txs required to get to those historical states are discarded after a quorum of nodes reach consensus on it, leaving only the current state. (This is basically what already happens if you do a “network version…

Honestly I don't see how this would help. If every bit of transaction history is public at some point in time, then the transaction history is public, since it is impossible to make someone forcefully forget something.
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