Signal is having technical difficulties • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#571

Post by efwfwef » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #4

At least they tell you about it - there's a banner on the top of the app. Last time WhatsApp was having issues, it didn't give any indication - messages just weren't being delivered (but as a user, there's no way to distinguish between "no messages" and "messages not being delivered").

heavy user of whatsapp and I can't recall having any issues with whatsapp ever. I'm a heavy user of signal as well and... it's a bit crap honestly. I actually needed to transfer a file to a client today and was strongly relying on signal for that...

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#572

Post by erezsh » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

KirillPanov wrote: post #568

hcurtiss wrote: post #40

This is not good. I've moved so many people over in the last week. For purposes of getting them invested, this is a truly inopportune moment for an extended outage.

> This is not good. I've moved so many people over in the last week. Please stop moving people to centralized services.

If only decentralized services worked as well as centralized ones..

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#573

Post by chopin24 » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #561

chopin24 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tapped this link on my iPhone. There’s nothing that says create account. It says I have to download an app called Element. But you said it was called Matrix. This is the level of technical ability that you need to be targeting.

If you install the Element app, its first-launch is quite simple and newbie-friendly. There are a couple more "options" than e.g. WhatsApp, but they're presented very clearly: "Join millions free on the largest public server" or "Premium hosting for organizations" or "Custom & advanced settings" -> tap the first + free one -> Sign up / Sign in with a totally-normal experience after that. Re "you said it was called Ma…

The first launch on iPhone asks me if I want to share my contacts, and then outlines a massive paragraph explaining something about identity servers that I’m expected to choose.

This is a friction-filled experience for someone coming from WhatsApp

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#574

Post by not_really » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

efwfwef wrote: post #569

nimbius wrote: post #564

I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this opinion but it needs to be said. Signal has been down for nine hours. the vast majority of people who turned to this platform today as an alternative to Whatsapp or Facebook probably quit looking into it after the first two minutes of that outage. for a platform that bills itself after installation as a suitable drop in replacement for your SMS service (and encourag…

Just saying, but WhatsApp encrypt communications the same way Signal does, it's good enough for me.

It absolutely does not.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#575

Post by meibo » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

not_really wrote: post #574

efwfwef wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just saying, but WhatsApp encrypt communications the same way Signal does, it's good enough for me.

It absolutely does not.

WhatsApp's encryption scheme was designed by Open Whisper Systems, which is now Signal, and even uses the Signal protocol library: http://www.cdn.whatsapp.net/security/WhatsApp-Security-White...

Of course you got all the metadata going to FB, but it's still a good messenger feature-wise for now, so I'll keep it as a backup in case my favorite privacy-conscious messenger is down again for 10 hours.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#576

Post by apeace » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #564

I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this opinion but it needs to be said. Signal has been down for nine hours. the vast majority of people who turned to this platform today as an alternative to Whatsapp or Facebook probably quit looking into it after the first two minutes of that outage. for a platform that bills itself after installation as a suitable drop in replacement for your SMS service (and encourag…

> centralized services DO NOT scale

What do you mean by centralized and what makes you think they can’t scale?

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#577

Post by TheOperator » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #564

I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this opinion but it needs to be said. Signal has been down for nine hours. the vast majority of people who turned to this platform today as an alternative to Whatsapp or Facebook probably quit looking into it after the first two minutes of that outage. for a platform that bills itself after installation as a suitable drop in replacement for your SMS service (and encourag…

Yup they're already under 99.9% reliability for the year. Never mind WhatsApp this makes them a questionable replacement for SMS. Not only "was" it a disaster for signal the disaster isn't over.

Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#578

Post by superkuh » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #321

corndoge wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I'll send this guide to my mom!

send your mom to https://element.io . nobody is asking her to run her own server(!)

When the lockdowns started I sent my relatively old parents to riot.io. They were able to get it working on their phones and tablets pretty well. The only thing we had trouble with was the riot.io-mediated jitsi multi-person video conference setup. But they handled the basic riot.io setup and 1-to-1 stuff fine.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#579

Post by drexlspivey » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #411

sgt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they charge for SMS pretty much anywhere outside the US.

My plan comes with unlimited SMS (Three in the UK).

Only if the recipient is in the UK too

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#580

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

topkeks wrote: post #475

Daniel_sk wrote: post #365

"We have been adding new servers and extra capacity at a record pace every single day this week nonstop, but today exceeded even our most optimistic projections. Millions upon millions of new users are sending a message that privacy matters. We appreciate your patience." https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350165610936766464

Does anyone outside Signal Foundation know how's their architecture? There are a lot of references to AWS, GCP, and Azure in the source code hosted in GitHub so they probably use them all in one way or another. It would be super interesting know more details about the infrastructure.

[deleted]