7 ms·

Telegram to award grants to bot developers

162 points by amima 10y ago

johnieeboy 10y ago
So you have to make the bot first and then be awarded the grant?
- dsp1234 10y ago
  I wonder if they are calling it a grant for tax planning purposes.
  - johnieeboy 10y ago
    I thought the wording was a little bit strange. You could be right. What would be the implications for me as a developer to receive a grant?
    - rubidium 10y ago
      It depends on if it's you or your company. For academics, when you get a fellowship or grant that must be recorded on the 1099-misc in the united states. And you pay full taxes as an independent contractor. I am not a lawyer nor am I an accountant. This is not legal or tax advice :)
- kome 10y ago
  it's a prize, not a grant. but grant just sounds better...
  - dsp1234 10y ago
    Good news, everyone! This year, Pavel Durov will be giving away one million dollars to bot developers in the form of grants starting at $25,000 each. Note that 'grants' is bolded in the article. A grant is not a prize, and a prize it not a grant. So it's one or the other, and since what they are doing would normally be called a prize (or reward), the fact that they specifically mention grants is likely because it has special significance. It's like if I say to my uncle, "I'm giving you a gift of $10,000 in the form of a loan. Enjoy your $10,000". A gift can't be a loan, and a loan can't be a gift (for tax purposes). But I might say that, because the tax treatment for loans and gifts are different. So that goes to my question of whether or not calling it a grant has tax significance.
chrisco255 10y ago
When is the deadline? I couldn't find that on the site.
- fweespee_ch 10y ago
  End of the year [Dec 31] is the last round of grants. > We‘ll be giving out the prizes in several batches throughout 2016, so the final deadline is December, 31.
deskamess 10y ago
The "We like it when bots also work in >inline mode<" link is missing the p in https.
kpcyrd 10y ago
I've noticed bots seem to be quite popular for telegram. Is there any way to provide the same to signal users?
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  Sure. Modify the standard client and add a way for users to request to talk to you.
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
If they have $1M to invest, why don't they focus on securing their protocol (i.e. switching to authenticated encryption) and turning encryption on by default? See http://cs.au.dk/~jakjak/master-thesis.pdf http://cs.au.dk/~jakjak/master-thesis.pdf for more on why Telegram isn't secure and you shouldn't trust it (as it is today) for anything requiring privacy.
- pdappollonio 10y ago
  I'm not up to date, but didn't Telegram had a bounty for someone who could read a conversation even by knowing the phone numbers involved? If so, why the writer here didn't got the bounty?
  - fabulist 10y ago
    I don't know specifically, but perhaps this commentary will be enlightening. https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/ https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/ https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html#contests https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html...
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypta... Because their contest is a dumb gimmick that doesn't encompass chosen-ciphertext attacks.
educar 10y ago
So telegram is a non-profit. And they splurge 1M USD? What am I missing? Edit: to clarify, what I meant is that I expected non-profits to make good use of their money and not give away large sums of money in prize competitions. Certainly, no NGO or non-profit I know of does this. Raises a red flag for me.
- hardwaresofton 10y ago
  non-profit does not necessarily mean the company does not make profit. AFAIK it just requires that the profit made be spent on the company and/or cause rather than used as dividends or given to what would normally have been shareholders. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-profitorganization.asp?o=40186&l=dir&qsrc=999&qo=investopediaSiteSearch http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-profitorganization.a...
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    If the "profit" is consumed by expenses, it is not profit.
    - hardwaresofton 10y ago
      Are you referring to where I wrote "profit made be spent on the company"? If so, I'd like to point out that expenses are not the only way you can spend on a company. Someone may also invest profit that they have made into expansion, for example. "profit" can never be consumed by expenses, by definition (as you have pointed out). Profit can, however, be re-invested in a company, as opposed to being taken by the owner or shareholders, or whatever.
      - jsprogrammer 10y ago
        An investment is an expenditure of money. What part of money set aside for expansion will not go to an expense? Where does it go?
        10y ago
LAMike 10y ago
Wow all these comments are so negative. Do the smart thing, spend some hours building a bot and put some money in the bank instead of complaining.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  right!?
- unicornporn 10y ago
  Yeah, don't question motives. Go be a good capitalist.
- dreamdu5t 10y ago
  What money? There's no platform for payments or advertising on Telegram. Advertising doesn't seem very practical with bots. Telegram has given no details or examples of what qualifies for the $25k rewards. It's not clear what level of production they're looking for... a bot that tells you the weather or a virtual girlfiend with full-blown NLP? Innovation prizes are cool but you can't play if you don't remotely know what qualifies as winning.
Animats 10y ago
Would Telegram let you develop a "bot" that supports connections to other messaging systems? Or are they into the walled garden with spikes on top of the wall thing?
collyw 10y ago
Can someone explain to me what bots are for. It looks like using something similar to a REST API over Telegram. Whats the point / use / advantage of that?
- smcquaid 10y ago
  Bots offer a gateway between human language and API actions. The future (which VC's are very excited about) is one where the human language commands evolve into something non-syntax specific.
  - anon987 10y ago
    So like a Google search?
  - vram22 10y ago
    > something non-syntax specific. What do you mean by "non-syntax specific"? - loose syntax, as in human language, which we can parse although it is loose (e.g. I went to the shop, I went to shop, I went to de shop - all are parseable by humans to get the same meaning [1]) OR - something else? [1] except that "I went to shop" could also mean "I went shopping" - but ignore that for now, it's just not a good an example.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- felixrieseberg 10y ago
  We at Microsoft think about bots as somewhat "intelligent", as in - they understand your intent. There's a little example chat with a pizza bot: It's a subtle difference, but being able to have a conversation vs navigating a flow chart is pretty powerful for a bunch of applications. Hey pizza bot! > Hey Jeremy! The usual tonight? Nah, I'd like to try something new > We have added three new items: > 1) Hawaiian > 2) BBQ > 3) The Works Option 3 please. > Shall I send this to your home?
  - espadrine 10y ago
mocko 10y ago
Telegram user here. I'm not anti-bot but puh-lease, spend this money on audited open-source crypto and secret-by-default chats rather than gimmicks like 'stickers' (yuk) and rewards for promising bots. I want a messaging app that's simple, secure, open and cross-device. Not one that's splurging on daft bloatware features while the key issues go unaddressed. [edit] to clarify the term 'cross-device' - I mean I want to see my conversations on my phone, tablet and laptop and easily swap from one device to another. Platform support is a separate, also-important issue that Telegram already has nailed.
- secfirstmd 10y ago
  So basically what you want is Signal then: iOS https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/signal-private-messenger/id8... Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri... [Blatant plug] If you want more info on managing digital/physical security threats, check out an open source free app we just launched called Umbrella: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
  - mocko 10y ago
    I figured someone would say that. I want actual cross-device, not Signal's weird "link your phone up to your MacBook" solution. So not Signal as it presently stands. Also (last time I checked; maybe it has improved) Signal's support for inline media within conversations was light years behind Telegram. Don't get me wrong, I applaud Signal's focus on security, but its usability simply isn't there yet.
    - robryk 10y ago
      > (...) not Signal's weird "link your phone up to your MacBook" solution What are the properties of this solution that you dislike?
      - 10y ago
johnieeboy 10y ago
Does anybody know what sort of bots they are looking for?
tuyguntn 10y ago
So many negative comments, would like to see what happens if exact same title would be with Facebook, considering their scale lets say 'Facebook: $10Mln to Bot Developers. For free.'. Do not forget, they may have some issues with security or user growth, but founder generally tries to promote his own product, everyone will behave like he does (promote in product in any legal way), when they have enough resources.
Shoot_The_Moon 10y ago
Does anybody know if games created using the Telegram Bot API are included for this grant? I created a GIF sharing game bot with a few friends and we are going to apply and it'd be great to get this! We'd love some feedback - http://mrwgame.com/ http://mrwgame.com/
yagop 10y ago
What about API library developers [1]? We haven't received anything yet but thanks to us others can build bots. I invented the Telegram bots back in 2014 [2] (there wasn't API) and haven't received any thanks from Telegram. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/3bsec7/unofficial_collection_of_api_wrappers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/3bsec7/unoffi... [2] https://github.com/yagop/telegram-bot https://github.com/yagop/telegram-bot
nagarjun 10y ago
Underneath the original "wow factor", I think bots have a glaring UX problem. Developers just haven't figured out the real use-case for bots. In some ways, I think this current bot-craze is very similar to what happened with smartwatches 2 years ago. Simply cramming a phone app into a watch doesn't make it magically awesome or useful. I think a lot of developers seem to be taking the same approach with bots. They are trying to create alternative UIs for their already existing mobile apps through bots. Mobile / web apps do a lot of the same stuff as bots in a much more user-friendly way. Take a look at https://storebot.me/ https://storebot.me/ and tell me if there's one bot that can do something better than a mobile app. I'm not anti-bot but I just think the bot-frenzy is premature,
- Shoot_The_Moon 10y ago
  I developed a game solely as a Telegram bot: https://storebot.me/bot/mrw_bot https://storebot.me/bot/mrw_bot I think that this is a better platform than mobile as it supports multiple devices, user accounts are already setup, it's easy to test and it has built in notifications. One thing I did have an issue with, is showcasing what it's features were. One option is to create a lot of videos and screenshots which would take a lot of time. As further improvements were made, I would have to reshoot the videos. Instead, I created a React component to simulate interactions with a bot. The React component is here: http://sevenleaps.github.io/chat-template/ http://sevenleaps.github.io/chat-template/ The website for the bot is: http://www.mrwgame.com/ http://www.mrwgame.com/
  - nagarjun 10y ago
    Nice! Yeah I think it has potential for specific kinds of applications. Text-based games are a definite yes. I couldn't agree more with your point about user education. I know a lot of friends who don't even know all the amazing things Google Now can do just because there is not interface to explain all the features. Siri has a "what can you do?" feature but even then, it's very limited. It will be interesting to see what developers and UX professionals do to improve the state of bots.
ommunist 10y ago
@watchbot is a useful bot for monitoring uptime, but I am afraid that it also probably gives FSB my uptime information, and I do not have control over that.
dreamdu5t 10y ago
Why not allow charging for bots and stickers? It stifles bot innovation as there are many great bots that have real costs that must be sustained somehow. Same with stickers. Great artists have zero incentive to make sticker packs since they can't charge for them and anyone can give them away to other users. Developers and artists should be treated like stakeholders rather than cannon-fodder and free labor.
- ommunist 10y ago
  Yup, charging can be a game changer.

162 points by amima 10y ago

johnieeboy 10y ago

So you have to make the bot first and then be awarded the grant?

dsp1234 10y ago
I wonder if they are calling it a grant for tax planning purposes.
- johnieeboy 10y ago
  I thought the wording was a little bit strange. You could be right. What would be the implications for me as a developer to receive a grant?
  - rubidium 10y ago
    It depends on if it's you or your company. For academics, when you get a fellowship or grant that must be recorded on the 1099-misc in the united states. And you pay full taxes as an independent contractor. I am not a lawyer nor am I an accountant. This is not legal or tax advice :)
kome 10y ago
it's a prize, not a grant. but grant just sounds better...
- dsp1234 10y ago
  Good news, everyone! This year, Pavel Durov will be giving away one million dollars to bot developers in the form of grants starting at $25,000 each. Note that 'grants' is bolded in the article. A grant is not a prize, and a prize it not a grant. So it's one or the other, and since what they are doing would normally be called a prize (or reward), the fact that they specifically mention grants is likely because it has special significance. It's like if I say to my uncle, "I'm giving you a gift of $10,000 in the form of a loan. Enjoy your $10,000". A gift can't be a loan, and a loan can't be a gift (for tax purposes). But I might say that, because the tax treatment for loans and gifts are different. So that goes to my question of whether or not calling it a grant has tax significance.

chrisco255 10y ago

When is the deadline? I couldn't find that on the site.

fweespee_ch 10y ago
End of the year [Dec 31] is the last round of grants. > We‘ll be giving out the prizes in several batches throughout 2016, so the final deadline is December, 31.

deskamess 10y ago

The "We like it when bots also work in >inline mode<" link is missing the p in https.

kpcyrd 10y ago

I've noticed bots seem to be quite popular for telegram. Is there any way to provide the same to signal users?

Natanael_L 10y ago
Sure. Modify the standard client and add a way for users to request to talk to you.

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

If they have $1M to invest, why don't they focus on securing their protocol (i.e. switching to authenticated encryption) and turning encryption on by default? See http://cs.au.dk/~jakjak/master-thesis.pdf http://cs.au.dk/~jakjak/master-thesis.pdf for more on why Telegram isn't secure and you shouldn't trust it (as it is today) for anything requiring privacy.

pdappollonio 10y ago
I'm not up to date, but didn't Telegram had a bounty for someone who could read a conversation even by knowing the phone numbers involved? If so, why the writer here didn't got the bounty?
- fabulist 10y ago
  I don't know specifically, but perhaps this commentary will be enlightening. https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/ https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/ https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html#contests https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html...
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypta... Because their contest is a dumb gimmick that doesn't encompass chosen-ciphertext attacks.

educar 10y ago

So telegram is a non-profit. And they splurge 1M USD? What am I missing? Edit: to clarify, what I meant is that I expected non-profits to make good use of their money and not give away large sums of money in prize competitions. Certainly, no NGO or non-profit I know of does this. Raises a red flag for me.

hardwaresofton 10y ago
non-profit does not necessarily mean the company does not make profit. AFAIK it just requires that the profit made be spent on the company and/or cause rather than used as dividends or given to what would normally have been shareholders. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-profitorganization.asp?o=40186&l=dir&qsrc=999&qo=investopediaSiteSearch http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-profitorganization.a...
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  If the "profit" is consumed by expenses, it is not profit.
  - hardwaresofton 10y ago
    Are you referring to where I wrote "profit made be spent on the company"? If so, I'd like to point out that expenses are not the only way you can spend on a company. Someone may also invest profit that they have made into expansion, for example. "profit" can never be consumed by expenses, by definition (as you have pointed out). Profit can, however, be re-invested in a company, as opposed to being taken by the owner or shareholders, or whatever.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      An investment is an expenditure of money. What part of money set aside for expansion will not go to an expense? Where does it go?
      - 10y ago

LAMike 10y ago

Wow all these comments are so negative. Do the smart thing, spend some hours building a bot and put some money in the bank instead of complaining.

cloudjacker 10y ago
right!?
unicornporn 10y ago
Yeah, don't question motives. Go be a good capitalist.
dreamdu5t 10y ago
What money? There's no platform for payments or advertising on Telegram. Advertising doesn't seem very practical with bots. Telegram has given no details or examples of what qualifies for the $25k rewards. It's not clear what level of production they're looking for... a bot that tells you the weather or a virtual girlfiend with full-blown NLP? Innovation prizes are cool but you can't play if you don't remotely know what qualifies as winning.

Animats 10y ago

Would Telegram let you develop a "bot" that supports connections to other messaging systems? Or are they into the walled garden with spikes on top of the wall thing?

collyw 10y ago

Can someone explain to me what bots are for. It looks like using something similar to a REST API over Telegram. Whats the point / use / advantage of that?

smcquaid 10y ago
Bots offer a gateway between human language and API actions. The future (which VC's are very excited about) is one where the human language commands evolve into something non-syntax specific.
- anon987 10y ago
  So like a Google search?
- vram22 10y ago
  > something non-syntax specific. What do you mean by "non-syntax specific"? - loose syntax, as in human language, which we can parse although it is loose (e.g. I went to the shop, I went to shop, I went to de shop - all are parseable by humans to get the same meaning [1]) OR - something else? [1] except that "I went to shop" could also mean "I went shopping" - but ignore that for now, it's just not a good an example.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
felixrieseberg 10y ago
We at Microsoft think about bots as somewhat "intelligent", as in - they understand your intent. There's a little example chat with a pizza bot: It's a subtle difference, but being able to have a conversation vs navigating a flow chart is pretty powerful for a bunch of applications. Hey pizza bot! > Hey Jeremy! The usual tonight? Nah, I'd like to try something new > We have added three new items: > 1) Hawaiian > 2) BBQ > 3) The Works Option 3 please. > Shall I send this to your home?
- espadrine 10y ago

mocko 10y ago

Telegram user here. I'm not anti-bot but puh-lease, spend this money on audited open-source crypto and secret-by-default chats rather than gimmicks like 'stickers' (yuk) and rewards for promising bots. I want a messaging app that's simple, secure, open and cross-device. Not one that's splurging on daft bloatware features while the key issues go unaddressed. [edit] to clarify the term 'cross-device' - I mean I want to see my conversations on my phone, tablet and laptop and easily swap from one device to another. Platform support is a separate, also-important issue that Telegram already has nailed.

secfirstmd 10y ago
So basically what you want is Signal then: iOS https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/signal-private-messenger/id8... Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri... [Blatant plug] If you want more info on managing digital/physical security threats, check out an open source free app we just launched called Umbrella: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
- mocko 10y ago
  I figured someone would say that. I want actual cross-device, not Signal's weird "link your phone up to your MacBook" solution. So not Signal as it presently stands. Also (last time I checked; maybe it has improved) Signal's support for inline media within conversations was light years behind Telegram. Don't get me wrong, I applaud Signal's focus on security, but its usability simply isn't there yet.
  - robryk 10y ago
    > (...) not Signal's weird "link your phone up to your MacBook" solution What are the properties of this solution that you dislike?
    - 10y ago

johnieeboy 10y ago

Does anybody know what sort of bots they are looking for?

tuyguntn 10y ago

So many negative comments, would like to see what happens if exact same title would be with Facebook, considering their scale lets say 'Facebook: $10Mln to Bot Developers. For free.'. Do not forget, they may have some issues with security or user growth, but founder generally tries to promote his own product, everyone will behave like he does (promote in product in any legal way), when they have enough resources.

Shoot_The_Moon 10y ago

Does anybody know if games created using the Telegram Bot API are included for this grant? I created a GIF sharing game bot with a few friends and we are going to apply and it'd be great to get this! We'd love some feedback - http://mrwgame.com/ http://mrwgame.com/

yagop 10y ago

What about API library developers [1]? We haven't received anything yet but thanks to us others can build bots. I invented the Telegram bots back in 2014 [2] (there wasn't API) and haven't received any thanks from Telegram. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/3bsec7/unofficial_collection_of_api_wrappers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/3bsec7/unoffi... [2] https://github.com/yagop/telegram-bot https://github.com/yagop/telegram-bot

nagarjun 10y ago

Underneath the original "wow factor", I think bots have a glaring UX problem. Developers just haven't figured out the real use-case for bots. In some ways, I think this current bot-craze is very similar to what happened with smartwatches 2 years ago. Simply cramming a phone app into a watch doesn't make it magically awesome or useful. I think a lot of developers seem to be taking the same approach with bots. They are trying to create alternative UIs for their already existing mobile apps through bots. Mobile / web apps do a lot of the same stuff as bots in a much more user-friendly way. Take a look at https://storebot.me/ https://storebot.me/ and tell me if there's one bot that can do something better than a mobile app. I'm not anti-bot but I just think the bot-frenzy is premature,

Shoot_The_Moon 10y ago
I developed a game solely as a Telegram bot: https://storebot.me/bot/mrw_bot https://storebot.me/bot/mrw_bot I think that this is a better platform than mobile as it supports multiple devices, user accounts are already setup, it's easy to test and it has built in notifications. One thing I did have an issue with, is showcasing what it's features were. One option is to create a lot of videos and screenshots which would take a lot of time. As further improvements were made, I would have to reshoot the videos. Instead, I created a React component to simulate interactions with a bot. The React component is here: http://sevenleaps.github.io/chat-template/ http://sevenleaps.github.io/chat-template/ The website for the bot is: http://www.mrwgame.com/ http://www.mrwgame.com/
- nagarjun 10y ago
  Nice! Yeah I think it has potential for specific kinds of applications. Text-based games are a definite yes. I couldn't agree more with your point about user education. I know a lot of friends who don't even know all the amazing things Google Now can do just because there is not interface to explain all the features. Siri has a "what can you do?" feature but even then, it's very limited. It will be interesting to see what developers and UX professionals do to improve the state of bots.

ommunist 10y ago

@watchbot is a useful bot for monitoring uptime, but I am afraid that it also probably gives FSB my uptime information, and I do not have control over that.

dreamdu5t 10y ago

Why not allow charging for bots and stickers? It stifles bot innovation as there are many great bots that have real costs that must be sustained somehow. Same with stickers. Great artists have zero incentive to make sticker packs since they can't charge for them and anyone can give them away to other users. Developers and artists should be treated like stakeholders rather than cannon-fodder and free labor.

ommunist 10y ago
Yup, charging can be a game changer.