Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Et Tu, Signal?

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 459 posts

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#91

Post by robjan »

tom_mellior wrote: post #21

> of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply. [citation needed] > This token then floats on a shady offshore cryptocurrency exchange hiding in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas, where users can buy and exchange the token. The token is wash traded back and forth by insiders [citation needed] > insiders are free to silently use information asymmetry to cash out on the influx of pumped hype-driven buys…

The details are all available in the whitepaper here (pdf): https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/Qmbeiekum8XBeLrVBioKo8gqC1T...

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#93

Post by gruez »

twobitshifter wrote: post #69
mikece wrote: post #61

I'm a little surprised that nobody is mentioning that any kind of blockchain payment system creates a permanent, public ledger. One US Attorney called Bitcoin's blockchain "prosecution futures" as it's only a matter of time before the sender/receiver addresses for transactions are correlated with unique individuals. This permanent, public record of a transaction between a Signal account and another user or a service…

That’s true for a lot of crypto but not for something like monero which has an anonymous blockchain.

It's anonymous with some caveats. The transaction graph is still there, it's just that there are decoy inputs/outputs which provides plausible deniability. However, over repeated transactions the plausible deniability weakens. ie. having an output to a darknet market in one of your transaction is easily explainable by bad luck, but it's present in several transactions it becomes suspicious enough that the police can start investigating you.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#94

Post by dividedbyzero »

tw04 wrote: post #82
vodkapump wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> easy backup when you get a new phone I just recently got a new phone, and used the new feature to do this (uses wi-fi direct) and I have to say it seemed like it would be easy enough for non-techy users to use.

Try transferring from an iOS phone to Android. Try transferring messages to a new desktop (you can't). It's 2021, I don't want to be platform locked and none of the other popular messaging apps have that issue.

Last I checked (about a year ago I think) Whatsapp backups were platform-locked as well.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#95

Post by helen___keller »

vitno wrote: post #53
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.

> 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.

Even worse, in my opinion. If a nonprofit running a useful encrypted app was trying to fund itself by shilling some altcoin, I wouldn't be happy but I would be understanding.

If the lead of the project is inserting the altcoin for personal enrichment at the cost of the nonprofit and the useful project, that's pure and simple corruption. As far as I can tell, no good is coming of this (I mean, unless you're interested in actually using Mobilecoin, of course. Personally I have no interest in doing so, and if my Signal contacts wanted to send me money I'd say to use Venmo instead).

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#96

Post by jerry1979 »

edit I should have prefaced my comment with the fact that I find it odd that people got caught by surprise when the inventor of a cryptographically focused mobile messaging app integrated his cryptographically focused payment system which he unambiguously called mobile coin.

Mobilecoin has the same design principles as Signal insofar as it uses sgx enclaves to do its crypto work. While I would not want to rely on enclaves to do crypto work, it seems to fit in Signal's wheelhouse.

Also, on a speculative basis and assuming no colossal foul-ups, it appears to me that signal+mob want to distribute the mobile coins to artists and community groups. So, the marketing for mob will probably include their honest mission of having a green crypto that does good for the community.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#97

Post by waheoo »

twobitshifter wrote: post #63
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…

I think Element is unable to do this since they have nobly chosen a federated protocol.

You can layer over easy onboarding on top of a federated protocol..

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#98

Post by lottin »

dexen wrote: post #58

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…

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

You must have other reasons because cryptocurrencies fail flat out on every one of these aspects.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#99

Post by jen20 »

salawat wrote: post #50
marcinzm wrote: post #8

The piece doesn't note the additional fun fact that the website to buy the tokens is blocked in the US presumably to avoid an SEC investigation. edit: Blocked at the cloudflare level without even an explanation of why if you go there.

They have to. If they allow even the possibility of a monetary transaction to a United States citizen, they fall under SEC, FINRA, and FINCen, which among other things, requires compliance with AML/a KYC process. This kills the Signal value proposition. You can move money electronically legally, or you can be anonymous in the U.S. It us incredibly difficult if not nigh impossible to do both. It's part of the U.S. sof…

> If they allow even the possibility of a monetary transaction to a United States citizen, they fall under SEC, FINRA, and FINCen, which among other things, requires compliance with AML/a KYC process.

Bad news for them then: there are lots of American citizens in the UK.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#100

Post by IgorPartola »

twobitshifter wrote: post #63
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…

I think Element is unable to do this since they have nobly chosen a federated protocol.

Which part? The part of also integrating SMS functionality? The part where I can message my other contacts who aren't using Matrix via SMS and finding them by phone number? Having a good marketing strategy?
Post reply on HN