7 ms·

Telegram: Video Calls and Seven Years

60 points by bpierre 6y ago

WilTimSon 6y ago
Finally, been waiting on this for a while. Will be much easier to convince family and friends to make the switch from WhatsApp. Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well. I really doubt it's Apple being petty after Telegram's CEO attacked them but, considering yesterday's Epic vs Apple debacle, I wouldn't be surprised if this escalates.
- sschueller 6y ago
  Apple has blocked telegram updates before when they tried to push updates to comply with GDPR. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/31/17412396/telegram-apple-app-store-app-updates-russia https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/31/17412396/tel...
- solarkraft 6y ago
  > Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well The actual scandal to me is that Apple used to be given unfair advantages by developers delaying updates on Android because the iOS version hadn't been approved yet.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well Where? I didn't see it. (Is it possible that the blog post was edited after the fact?)
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    They didn't wait for Apple's approval of the iOS app before releasing the Android app this time.
fsflover 6y ago
>Our apps for Android and iOS have reproducible builds, so anyone can verify encryption and confirm that their app uses the exact same open source code that we publish with each update. This is impressive. I wish also chats on desktop would be end to end encrypted...
- Jommi 6y ago
  And lose message history of messages sent on phone? That would be terrible
  - ta17711771 6y ago
    Weird, how does Matrix do it?
    - johnisgood 6y ago
      Or Wire... https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper.pdf https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper...
  - fastball 6y ago
    No you just share the private key between your mobile and desktop.
    - devxpy 6y ago
      Or encrypt the private key by a pin
      - fastball 6y ago
        That seems very easy to bruteforce.
        devxpy 6y ago
        What alternative is there? Its also very easy to loose keys, if your target audience is not hackernews...
solarkraft 6y ago
It has been my messenger of choice for about 6 of these 7 years and watching its evolution has been pretty cool. It's grown to be a much wider social platform now than it used to be, but it hasn't distracted from personal chats much. That's pretty amazing! It hasn't even been destroyed by commercial interests yet and my feeling says that Durov will approach commercialization carefully, which gives me hope.
- jakebasile 6y ago
  It's definitely one of the nicest IM services around. Well built apps with useful features that look good and are available everywhere. I was never able to get enough of my friend group on it to really make use of it, though.
johnisgood 6y ago
> It is also possible to independently verify that Telegram apps available on Google Play and App Store are built using the same code that we publish on GitHub. How does that work exactly? Could anyone give me the steps perhaps? I am honestly curious as to how I can be certain of this.
- jakebasile 6y ago
  The steps are listed at https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-builds https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-builds.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Why does apple require encryption for free apps. At least make it optional.
anon9001 6y ago
Is telegram considered trustworthy now?
- afiori 6y ago
  As far as I gather it is considered socially trustworthy (they will not add spyware to the app like some doubt of Facebook's WhatsApp) but not as technically trustworthy (early on people reported that they received messages of groups they never joined and there is a lot of homebrewd crypto). personally I care more about the fact that it is an actual possible competitor to big tech in terms if userbase and functionality than it being less secure than signal
- encom 6y ago
  I feel like IM is a pick-your-poison kind of deal. Signal is technically superior, but it's UX is laughably bad. Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple are cartoonishly evil corporations. Telegram is a bit rough in places, but has to me been the least offensive of the bunch.
  - bishala 6y ago
    Its hands down the smoothest, fastest and most reliable messenger out there. And I don't have to ever worry about losing messages between devices or taking backups.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Signal still exposed your phone number no? When you join groups that is.
dexwell 6y ago
Telegram truly has the best UX of all messengers out there; it’s a shame I can’t switch to it because they don’t do E2EE by default. If I’m going to be switching to a new app it will have to be a Matrix (https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/) client. Anyone want to work on a Telegram fork that runs on Matrix?
- chacha2 6y ago
  What I don't understand is why the free software movement so often reinvents the wheel, Telegram releases all the code to their UI but any new security focused chat app always starts from the ground up.
  - dexwell 6y ago
    I think developers prefer writing code they understand over trying to understand someone else's code. I've taken a look at Telegram's codebase, and replacing the Telegram API with the Matrix API is way harder than it sounds. Telegram wasn't developed with this flexibility in mind, and the Matrix SDK has its own way of doing things.
    - devxpy 6y ago
      This. I often end up writing my own libraries because of this reason. Kinda hard to get into other people's minds...
- noisebeuter 6y ago
  If you want to get involved, you might want to take a look at FluffyChat (https://gitlab.com/ChristianPauly/fluffychat https://gitlab.com/ChristianPauly/fluffychat) and Ditto (https://dittochat.org/ https://dittochat.org/) before starting your own fork. Both projects provide a more simple, Telegram-like user interface on top of Matrix.
boomer_joe 6y ago
Now if only they had a bot API which wasn't so restrictive...
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Running a user bot isn't that difficult
EmilioMartinez 6y ago
You can tell they had long meetings about the eggplant and peach animations.
john4534243 6y ago
When it comes to privacy telegram is not great. The privacy is handled by splitting the cryptographic key in to multiple segments and storing it in servers located at different countries making it harder for any single government to force to provide without involving legal process that has to go-through multiple countries. This sounds not that bad in theory but in practice any developer knows you need the entire key on a single machine to process the data which means every server that processes the data has the entire key and any government can intervene and spy on the message.

60 points by bpierre 6y ago

Finally, been waiting on this for a while. Will be much easier to convince family and friends to make the switch from WhatsApp. Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well. I really doubt it's Apple being petty after Telegram's CEO attacked them but, considering yesterday's Epic vs Apple debacle, I wouldn't be surprised if this escalates.

sschueller 6y ago
Apple has blocked telegram updates before when they tried to push updates to comply with GDPR. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/31/17412396/telegram-apple-app-store-app-updates-russia https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/31/17412396/tel...
solarkraft 6y ago
> Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well The actual scandal to me is that Apple used to be given unfair advantages by developers delaying updates on Android because the iOS version hadn't been approved yet.
duskwuff 6y ago
> Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well Where? I didn't see it. (Is it possible that the blog post was edited after the fact?)
- solarkraft 6y ago
  They didn't wait for Apple's approval of the iOS app before releasing the Android app this time.

fsflover 6y ago

>Our apps for Android and iOS have reproducible builds, so anyone can verify encryption and confirm that their app uses the exact same open source code that we publish with each update. This is impressive. I wish also chats on desktop would be end to end encrypted...

Jommi 6y ago
And lose message history of messages sent on phone? That would be terrible
- ta17711771 6y ago
  Weird, how does Matrix do it?
  - johnisgood 6y ago
    Or Wire... https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper.pdf https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper...
- fastball 6y ago
  No you just share the private key between your mobile and desktop.
  - devxpy 6y ago
    Or encrypt the private key by a pin
    - fastball 6y ago
      That seems very easy to bruteforce.
      - devxpy 6y ago
        What alternative is there? Its also very easy to loose keys, if your target audience is not hackernews...

solarkraft 6y ago

It has been my messenger of choice for about 6 of these 7 years and watching its evolution has been pretty cool. It's grown to be a much wider social platform now than it used to be, but it hasn't distracted from personal chats much. That's pretty amazing! It hasn't even been destroyed by commercial interests yet and my feeling says that Durov will approach commercialization carefully, which gives me hope.

jakebasile 6y ago
It's definitely one of the nicest IM services around. Well built apps with useful features that look good and are available everywhere. I was never able to get enough of my friend group on it to really make use of it, though.

johnisgood 6y ago

> It is also possible to independently verify that Telegram apps available on Google Play and App Store are built using the same code that we publish on GitHub. How does that work exactly? Could anyone give me the steps perhaps? I am honestly curious as to how I can be certain of this.

jakebasile 6y ago
The steps are listed at https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-builds https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-builds.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Why does apple require encryption for free apps. At least make it optional.

anon9001 6y ago

Is telegram considered trustworthy now?

afiori 6y ago
As far as I gather it is considered socially trustworthy (they will not add spyware to the app like some doubt of Facebook's WhatsApp) but not as technically trustworthy (early on people reported that they received messages of groups they never joined and there is a lot of homebrewd crypto). personally I care more about the fact that it is an actual possible competitor to big tech in terms if userbase and functionality than it being less secure than signal
encom 6y ago
I feel like IM is a pick-your-poison kind of deal. Signal is technically superior, but it's UX is laughably bad. Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple are cartoonishly evil corporations. Telegram is a bit rough in places, but has to me been the least offensive of the bunch.
- bishala 6y ago
  Its hands down the smoothest, fastest and most reliable messenger out there. And I don't have to ever worry about losing messages between devices or taking backups.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Signal still exposed your phone number no? When you join groups that is.

dexwell 6y ago

Telegram truly has the best UX of all messengers out there; it’s a shame I can’t switch to it because they don’t do E2EE by default. If I’m going to be switching to a new app it will have to be a Matrix (https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/) client. Anyone want to work on a Telegram fork that runs on Matrix?

chacha2 6y ago
What I don't understand is why the free software movement so often reinvents the wheel, Telegram releases all the code to their UI but any new security focused chat app always starts from the ground up.
- dexwell 6y ago
  I think developers prefer writing code they understand over trying to understand someone else's code. I've taken a look at Telegram's codebase, and replacing the Telegram API with the Matrix API is way harder than it sounds. Telegram wasn't developed with this flexibility in mind, and the Matrix SDK has its own way of doing things.
  - devxpy 6y ago
    This. I often end up writing my own libraries because of this reason. Kinda hard to get into other people's minds...
noisebeuter 6y ago
If you want to get involved, you might want to take a look at FluffyChat (https://gitlab.com/ChristianPauly/fluffychat https://gitlab.com/ChristianPauly/fluffychat) and Ditto (https://dittochat.org/ https://dittochat.org/) before starting your own fork. Both projects provide a more simple, Telegram-like user interface on top of Matrix.

boomer_joe 6y ago

Now if only they had a bot API which wasn't so restrictive...

aaomidi 6y ago
Running a user bot isn't that difficult

EmilioMartinez 6y ago

You can tell they had long meetings about the eggplant and peach animations.

john4534243 6y ago

When it comes to privacy telegram is not great. The privacy is handled by splitting the cryptographic key in to multiple segments and storing it in servers located at different countries making it harder for any single government to force to provide without involving legal process that has to go-through multiple countries. This sounds not that bad in theory but in practice any developer knows you need the entire key on a single machine to process the data which means every server that processes the data has the entire key and any government can intervene and spy on the message.