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Et Tu, Signal?

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#51

Post by throwaway823882 »

"Many technologists viscerally felt yesterday’s announcement as a punch to the gut [...] our fellow technologists that we truly believed were advancing a cause many of us also believed in."

It can be painful when a belief system runs into reality.

"Just do one thing and do it well, be the trusted de facto platform for private messaging that empowers dissidents, journalists and grandma all to communicate freely with the same guarantees of privacy. Don’t become a dodgy money transmitter business."

Lol. Because that usually goes over well. Hey, just do what we tell you! We don't care what's involved, just get it done! Says the user of the free service.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#52

Post by spir »

EDIT: I fixed my ad hominem by adding detail

As usual, Stephen's correct about the 42% and so mad about it that he's missing the 58%.

Stephen's understanding of blockchain is only skin-deep. If we keep lionizing his articles by upvoting them to #1, then HN's understanding of blockchain is only going to be skin-deep, too.

Here are some of the problems with Stephen's objections to Signal's use of cryptocurrency:

- in prior essays, Stephen's majority objection to blockchain has been proof of work and the environmental impact, but the blockchain chosen by Signal is not proof of work

- Signal would love to use US dollar payments instead of a new and volatile token. But, Signal was sprinting towards private payments. On Signal's timeline, there was no technology option for the payments to be USD-denominated because the blockchain they chose is optimized for semi-centralized private payments, not decentralization or programmability, and it takes extra work to peg a token's value to USD

I find it concerning that HN looks for blockchain wisdom from, eg., Stephen and Schneier (I love Bruce), because they honestly don't know what they are talking about, and I know that because I've been full-time on ethereum for three years.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#53

Post by vitno »

petard wrote: post #33

I'm baffled how tech-savvy people like the author are surprised when a seemingly free product suddenly introduce ways to monetize its service. There is no free lunch or to put it in another way, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

I'm baffled how people assume this is monetization.

Signal has been a nonprofit for years and has no money issues: https://signalfoundation.org. The organization has no formal ties to the alt-coin, although Moxie does. It doesn't monetize the Signal foundation.

I'm very unhappy with this, but it's not a monetization scheme.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#54

Post by Ardon »

CA0DA wrote: post #32
IgorPartola wrote: post #4

I was recently pulled onto Signal by a non-techie who values his privacy. I talked to him about Matrix/Element and he had no idea what that was, but was very happy with Siganl. I must admit, the app is very nice. All I had to do was give it access to my contacts and bam, I am now able to chat with all my contacts. By comparison, Element is much more like a chat program than a phone messenger. It's good for "I want to…

> Matrix/Element is the platform less likely to pull something like this Agree, I've been using Matrix/Element, and it's a bit slower/buggy but seems like it'll be around for longer.

The best part about Matrix/Element, is that it could be Matrix/Anything. If Element is buggy, switch to another client.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#56

Post by jerry1979 »

robotbikes wrote: post #29
dt3ft wrote: post #16

Oh well. No such thing as free lunch after all. Yet again, a user-funded nonprofit would be the way to go, but users want free stuff. Minority would donate, but good luck having a steady cash flow and being able to pay for the infrastructure and your wages.

Moxie seems to think that they need to do this to keep up with the Joneses, as they try to build some kind of decentralized alternative to WeChat. I guess we should have seen this coming when he got involved with MobileCoin. I'm not a psychic and it might turn out okay but it still seems like a bad idea to me.

Do you have any examples of Moxie talking about needing to keep up with the Joneses?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#57

Post by alephu5 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #4

I was recently pulled onto Signal by a non-techie who values his privacy. I talked to him about Matrix/Element and he had no idea what that was, but was very happy with Siganl. I must admit, the app is very nice. All I had to do was give it access to my contacts and bam, I am now able to chat with all my contacts. By comparison, Element is much more like a chat program than a phone messenger. It's good for "I want to…

Would you say this is a weakness of element or matrix itself? In principle you could made a clone of signal, WhatsApp, telegram etc. using mobile APIs right?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#58

Post by dexen »

While I'm generally happy with cryptocurrency for reasons of practicality, privacy, and broader governance,

connecting both your private communications and your private purchases to your phone number (and to each other) is exceedingly unwise. Especially as most western countries insist on connecting your phone number with government-issued ID. Anybody with technical knowledge and a modicum of appreciation for privacy should be either bitterly amused or straight up appalled.

The correct solution: decouple messaging from your offline identity (phone number etc.). Decouple transactions from offline identity and from communications - proper use of cryptocurrency is good for that.

"Every program attempts to expand until it can connect online identity with offline identity. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." [1]

--

[1] with apologies to jwz - his original is: “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#59

Post by ruph123 »

CA0DA wrote: post #32
IgorPartola wrote: post #4

I was recently pulled onto Signal by a non-techie who values his privacy. I talked to him about Matrix/Element and he had no idea what that was, but was very happy with Siganl. I must admit, the app is very nice. All I had to do was give it access to my contacts and bam, I am now able to chat with all my contacts. By comparison, Element is much more like a chat program than a phone messenger. It's good for "I want to…

> Matrix/Element is the platform less likely to pull something like this Agree, I've been using Matrix/Element, and it's a bit slower/buggy but seems like it'll be around for longer.

It has improved a lot. I once wanted to switch with another tech-savvy friend 2 or 3 years ago and the experience was abhorrent. Nowadays I use it mostly like a IRC client and it improves constantly.

However the comparison between this and signal falls flat due to the metadata that needs to be stored on matrix servers due to its federated setup.

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