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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#631

Post by niutech »

DrFalkyn wrote: post #508
bayindirh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Microsoft killed it the moment when they made everything move through central servers before everyone had good network connection, everywhere. It was P2P before. It was slow, laggy and unstable for most of the time. Also, they didn't invest in the transportation codecs much. After it's marred, they didn't try to mend it much, and when it started to work well due to better bandwidth, they didn't push it back a…

Sadly this is the culture now at tech companies. All the data has to go through company servers, whether it makes technical sense or not Pretty sure I flunked a system design question this reason. I was asked to design an online chat system. I asked of they wanted support for groups, they said no. So I gave them simple two way socket solution. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, They wanted a full DB storing everyone…

There are also Jami and Tox as decentralized Slack alternatives.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#632

Post by niutech »

zero_shift wrote: post #332
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Joel on Software blog post is now 25 years old, https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... , but when it first came out it was widely viewed as gospel. I'm generally a big fan of Joel Spolsky, but in retrospect, I think this advice is just wrong, and I think Skype is a perfect counterpoint. That is, sometimes a rewrite is a horrible idea, but at the same time sometimes not doing a rewrite is…

Sometimes the technology "background" changes so much that the codebase you have just becomes irrelevant. We live in a world with WebRTC, embedded agents and digital telephony. The platforms, OSes, infrastructure are so different from how they were in 2009. Does having your own, 500 kloc C++ real time video chat stack make sense any more? What I don't get is how MS couldn't use the Teams stack to power Skype as a con…

> Does having your own, 500 kloc C++ real time video chat stack make sense any more?

Yes, if it is less bloated than Electron-based. See Jami, which is a native app and it's distributed and open source.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#633

Post by niutech »

jrcplus wrote: post #609
legitster wrote: post #270

Skype is the epitome of technical debt. Millions of lines of code for a service that isn't technically difficult to provide anymore. When I was at Microsoft, I was told working on Skype was about as popular as being sent to a gulag. The value of the brand is so strong, I am surprised they never launched a "2.0" version built from scratch and without all the vestigial tails.

I worked at Skype from eBay to Microsoft. The clients were rewritten, sometimes from scratch, sometimes redesigned to chase after the latest UI trend. But rewriting clients didn't address the fact that the OG widely successful Skype was fundamentally peer-to-peer. There were no servers, only supernodes. After smartphones took off, management was reluctant to ditch P2P and move to a client-server model, for both busin…

Why not open source Skype then?

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#634

Post by wickedsickeune »

Saris wrote: post #618
qalmakka wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that NAT is a major reason why P2P and self hosting failed to take off in any significant way. I think that the internet would have been a wildly different place were IPv6 widespread in the early '00s.

I wonder why NAT hole punching techniques never took off much with P2P, it seems like with enough work getting around NAT most of the time would be possible.

You can't hole punch on mobile. Most mobile networks use symmetric NATs unfortunately.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#635

Post by qalmakka »

Saris wrote: post #618
qalmakka wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that NAT is a major reason why P2P and self hosting failed to take off in any significant way. I think that the internet would have been a wildly different place were IPv6 widespread in the early '00s.

I wonder why NAT hole punching techniques never took off much with P2P, it seems like with enough work getting around NAT most of the time would be possible.

Good, reliable ways to do hole punching were not available until relatively late (STUN, ICE) and were somewhat finicky for a long time, especially on crappy routers.

Also, multiple levels of nat are unfortunately common and make STUN unreliable

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#636

Post by LexGray »

rwky wrote: post #451
quitit wrote: post #444

Microsoft has sent out this email: Dear Skype user, In order to streamline our consumer communications offerings, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025. As part of this change, we want to keep you informed about important updates to your Skype paid services and how these changes may affect you. Please read on for detailed information about the updates and what they mean for your services. Subscriptions & Automatic To…

Thanks for this I've not received the email yet. This bit is irritating >To port your Skype Number, please contact your new provider directly. Learn more Anyone got any recommendations on who to port to?

I would say Google Voice is fine. I ported my POTS number to a burner cell and from there to Google Voice (some technical reason for that runaround) and other than having to dump in $10 once to kick it back into function when it hiccuped it has been a free and useful app for years.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#637

Post by renata »

RandallBrown wrote: post #349
linwangg wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair, but almost every messaging app does this (WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, etc.). The question is: do you trust Telegram more or less than the alternatives? Personally, I see it as the lesser evil compared to some big tech options.

WhatsApp doesn't require contact permissions to work. Neither do other apps I use for messaging like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or Snapchat. iMessage sort of does, but that's only because it's more a part of the OS, which already has your contacts anyway.

Signal also doesn't (on IOS at least), I just set it up for my parents and it asks for specific contacts.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#638

Post by johndavid9991 »

Over a week ago, I was trying to top-up my Skype Credits but I can't find that option anymore. Then I saw this news. It's their product, it's their decision, but I just want to say, it used to be a really good product. Skype brings a lot of good memories of the early days of online work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsUyjzRIU9w - play it, thank me later.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#639

Post by soundnote »

pentagrama wrote: post #490
legitster wrote: post #270

Skype is the epitome of technical debt. Millions of lines of code for a service that isn't technically difficult to provide anymore. When I was at Microsoft, I was told working on Skype was about as popular as being sent to a gulag. The value of the brand is so strong, I am surprised they never launched a "2.0" version built from scratch and without all the vestigial tails.

The 2.0 version of Skype is Microsoft Teams, and they built it from scratch. Along with the Skype code, the Skype brand was also thrown in the trash. You could question that decision—perhaps keeping both brands for different target demographics would have been a better move. Teams could be for work and business, while Skype (powered by Teams' code) could remain for regular consumers. But I’m not sure. Maybe it’s bett…

Yeah, the consumer side Teams app is already different in UX than the corporate one. Wouldn't have been terribly difficult to brand that as Skype and market it as such.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#640

Post by nneonneo »

Marsymars wrote: post #541
nneonneo wrote: post #31

I put $10 on an account over ten years ago to make sporadic calls (e.g. customer service in other countries). That account still has $5 left, and I’ve made a ton of calls to many different countries. What’s a good alternative here? I just want to make outgoing international calls cheaply.

Nearly same situation here. I recently used it to for travel logistics for a trip to Japan for some local things that didn't have online booking. From a bit of Googling, Viber may be a reasonable alternative. They're owned by a reasonably non-shady/non-fly-by-night operation (Rakuten), have a desktop app, and let you buy credit without a subscription: https://account.viber.com/en/rates-index Happy to hear about exper…

Seems reasonable. Rates are more expensive than Skype (almost 2x for some of the destinations I probably want to use), but not catastrophically so. I’ll chuck a tenner in and see how it goes :). Fingers crossed that can last me another decade.
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