exo762
Joined 14 years ago
Joined 14 years ago
Failure of the GPL? How can you even put those words next to each other? GPL is an amazing success. It took software out of hands of SV / VC / corpo crowd and put it where it should be - users.
Constructions like this exist for many years. E.g. semaphore RLN (rate limiting nullifier). This particular construction was found unfeasible 7 years ago, but since then zksnark tech made huge progress and it is way cheaper now.
You forget to mention - less powerful than his old FW 13 with new mainboard/CPU.
By this metric Facebook and Google are encrypted, because TLS. Sorry, Telegram's messaging is an attempt to mislead users, plain and simple.
> The library IS used for all encryption.
They could chose to use TLS for for almost all chats, and instead they've "invented" MTProto. Why go with MTProto?
> As far as I can tell from casual use the other end does not need to be online per se.
You are wrong. Phone on other side has to accept "secret chat request" (no user interaction is needed). Until its accepted, initiator's app interface is blocked with a spinning circle. And to add insult to injury, one can't initiate secret chat from desktop client.
> Telegram client(s) are also open source.
Yes, it is very refreshing to be able to verify that they can read all of my messages. /s
> The comment was about the server and interoperability with other clients.
Signal leadership explicitly stated that they care about secure comms and don't care about ecosystem around the chat. You can create your own client, you can't market it as Signal because that might "endanger lives".
> - The phone bits in your and the other commenters response sound a little bit handwavy to me.
I issue you a formal apology on behalf of HN hive mind. /s
On serious note - palata's point is right, but a bit outdated. Functionality is still there, but it became opt-in. New users have phone number automatically hidden and phone number is collected only as an anti-spam feature.
I'll repeat my point again. Telegram is a honey pot of messengers and nobody should use it.
Correct way of speaking about Telegram is - nothing* is encrypted. (encrypted chats are not more than 0.5% of all chats). That would be a "no spin" take.
> one guy dared write a crypto library rather than using their own
Red herring. This library is NOT used for more than 99.95% of chats on Telegram. It is applied only to "secret chat", which is a torture device with horrible UX. I guess that horrible UX is the result of choice of using custom crypto library instead of going with something capable of working when addressee is not online.
> Another darling is Signal who refused to stop collecting phone numbers until recently even though they never needed it, does not allow open source or other clients to use their servers (and won't release the actual server code) and frankly does not work half as well as Telegram in terms of UX.
Phone numbers are still used as anti-spam measure. You are free to get a burner, register an account and throw away the SIM card.
> does not allow open source
Signal client is open source.
> frankly does not work half as well as Telegram in terms of UX.
It works well where it does matter. Vide Telegram's "secret chats".
> All of this is really confusing for me.
You are clearly misinformed. That explains the confusion.
How can I make confer.to work on my Linux machine? Modern CPU.
What we need is a legislative solution to street surveillance proliferation. Germans figured that one out, rest of the world is capable of doing it too.