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Signal is having technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#581

Post by orestarod »

meibo wrote: post #575
not_really wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What good is e2e encryption that is essentially becomes mere in transit encryption, since WhatsApp will filter your messages BEFORE they are sent to see if it needs to take any action? (Which action is of course phoning home, outside the precious Signal Protocol)

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#582

Post by efwfwef »

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.

Unfortunately do you have anything to back your claim? Because there is a number of official sources pointing out that Whastapp uses the signal protocol to do both 1:1 and group chat

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#583

Post by bbabaraba »

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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210110152154/https://old.reddi... They appear to be using IBM Cloud services too, for certain things

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#584

Post by calcifer »

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…

> and encourages you to shill it to friends as such

Despite your deliberate conflation of them, shill and recommend are not synonyms

> Cheerleading your users endorsement of privacy on twitter during an outage is insulting.

How is a non-profit charity saying "we are having trouble right now but thanks for all the support" insulting? How did these folks insult you?

> Tesla, Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp

These are all corporations that ultimately only care about money. They have customers. Signal has supporters.

> because Moxies waiting for an IPO, or an offer from FAANG to buy him out

Just like all the other 501c3 IPOs and buyouts, right?

> this was a disaster for Signal and most of HN is about to break an arm patting the company on the back

A charity is having a temporary problem most HN readers would kill to have: They literally can't scale up fast enough to meet demand. Truly a disaster.

> I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion

I wonder why.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#585

Post by windthrown »

meibo wrote: post #125
tamiral wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an FOSS teaM working around the clock to support... let’s not be mean I’m sure they are doing all they can to get this resolved

It's only FOSS by appearance really - it's still a team of well-paid engineers that operate like any other startup, with the difference that you can read the code of their apps and the bug-tracker is public. They operate on their own schedules and priorities, and it's tricky to get your PR into any of the clients.

Well paid, but not lavishly paid by Silicon Valley standards. Salaries listed in their IRS form 990 have the CEO making ~$200k and other engineers in the ~$120k-$180k range.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824...

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#586

Post by mandeepj »

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

If $50 F million dollars can’t keep them alive, not sure how far 70p would take them

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#587

Post by merlinscholz »

mawise wrote: post #490
somehnguy wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as impactful as a realtime donation but I recently changed my Amazon Smile charity to the Signal Foundation after a few years with my previous selection. I was surprised to learn they were an available option. I also installed a browser extension to automatically bring me to smile.amazon when buying anything on Amazon - so far it has had no weird glitchiness when not buying something and works exactly as advertis…

I was jumping through similar hoops for a while to get Amazon smile donations, but then I looked at their numbers for how much gets donated and it was a pretty trivial amount. I don't remember what I found (anyone have any stats on Amazon smile donation percentages?) but I decided it wasn't worth my effort compared to adding an extra few dollars to my direct donations.

IIRC, they donate 0.5% of whatever you pay

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#588

Post by merlinscholz »

zionic wrote: post #551
topkeks wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they use any of it at all, Signal needs to get any/all remaining infrastructure off AWS as soon as possible.

Why?

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#589

Post by rnd0 »

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").

No one told me about anything. All I get is an error about checking my internet.

My internet's fine.

I can understand not having 100% uptime, but going on 10 hours now and this is really not leaving me with a good impression.

I can count on SMS; I can't count on this.

[EDIT]Now I'm not even getting that specific error; my messages are simply failing to send (ios, desktop/windows)

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#590

Post by reactor »

caturopath wrote: post #222
JUjFJE2I9Y wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...As of June 2020, Signal had more than 32.4 million total downloads, and the app had approximately 20 million monthly active users as of December 2020...." [0] "...The initial $50M in funding was a loan, not a donation, from Brian Acton to the new nonprofit Signal Technology Foundation. By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, which is due to be repaid on February 28, 2068. The loan is unsecured…

Why is this structured as a loan? It sounds like it's structured in such a way that he isn't interested in getting paid back. Is it so he can exercise control in a weird scenario like a buyout? Is it some weird tax thing?

Its just for books. Loan is still an asset, but donation is not. He will have this asset for abt 50 yrs in the book, that's useful if he want raise money for something else. Pretty sure he don't intend to get it back.
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