5 ms·

The desktop app is very useful but it's mainly because there's no alternative. It's bloated, slow, under-featured. Telegram also has an electron desktop app but

by simias 6y ago

The desktop app is very useful but it's mainly because there's no alternative. It's bloated, slow, under-featured. Telegram also has an electron desktop app but at least it lets me do ultra-advanced things like changing the spellchecker's language on the fly. As somebody who's used to 100KB snappy and fully featured IRC clients I'm always baffled when I use these modern clients that use 3 orders of magnitude more resource to look and behave like a cheap clone of a smartphone SMS app, but worse.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
> Telegram also has an electron desktop app Telegram Desktop is a Qt app. Not that it offers E2E so not really comparable to Signal imo.
- simias 6y ago
  Oh indeed it is! It looks very electrony so I just assumed that it was. That might be why it actually works decently.
- Ar-Curunir 6y ago
  So that’s why Slack consumes tons of RAM but Telegram desktop doesn’t ...
faitswulff 6y ago
IIRC there are a few unofficial Signal CLI clients.
harry8 6y ago
I'll take your word for the telegram app. I prefer signal to telegram. Any benefit of the telegram desktop app seems like a marginal one when the signal one works and signal do encryption well, properly and honestly. (Maybe telegram are catching up to this now, not sure, Moxie has always been solid and has forced the entire feature set of messaging to end-to-end encryption for which he's going straight to heaven). My own irc client I wrote when learning C and then re-wrote learning GTK+ is better than any of them in terms of doing what I want non-bloated as a client. But it doesn't quite match the whole signal thing somehow. :) Signal is excellent software. Game changing stuff. Telegram (indirectly), Whatsapp (directly) owe signal a great debt. The reverse doesn't seem to be true. End to end ecryption for the masses is a huge, huge win that Moxie can take a vast amount of credit for making happen, then improving and increasing. So there's a little hero-worship for Moxie, a man with whom politically I probably have very, very little in common. It's a good feeling when you can do that.
- simias 6y ago
  Signal desktop was missing basic features like answering calls not long ago. It also had at least one significant vulnerability (some code injection IIRC) so I don't know if I'd say that it does "encryption well". Having applications with such a needlessly huge attack surface is not good crypto in my book. I do like Signal, otherwise I wouldn't put up with that software. But you can both enjoy the protocol and Android client and think that the desktop app is a pile a donkey dung.
  - harry8 6y ago
    >desktop app is a pile a donkey dung. And you can put the stated criticisms of it in proper context. Then assess the costs and risks to yourself. Compare its use along with the rest of signal to the alternatives. And examine the response of Moxies team to issues. At least that's what I did and came up with a "Hard Disagree" on that statement. Signal desktop is pretty good. (And no I don't like electron apps as a rule - it's the only one I use). Deviation from perfection is not donkey dung. >Signal desktop was missing basic features like answering [voice] calls... vs Messaging on phone and internet everywhere was missing end to end encryption before Signal. (Yes I used OTR with like 3 people, now I encryption with almost everyone, thanks signal). Advantage signal. By a huge margin, for mine. Picked the essential feature. Got it right. Expanded from there. I find it pretty hard to fault what they're doing. People who want to do it differently because they think it's "better" (eg federation), don't seem to actually get much done in comparison to signal's massive win they chalked up for all of us. I find it kinda odd that here, where people understand tech, there is more sticking up for facebrick, goo, appletax etc when they screw their users yet again than there is for Signal doing the opposite. The contrast between how they view people who use their stuff is very, very stark. Signal are pretty great. We need more love for anyone who can achieve at a similar level to make computing better for us. To push competition toward being better at privacy, security and so on and away from the direction of turnkey totalitarianism surveillance that the Stasi could only have wet dreams about. Alarmist right? Could bad things really happen here? Are the interests of Cook, Zuck, Seregey, Larry, Jeff et al not precisely yours or a wider population's? They all do seem really quite friendly to despotic regimes. But I guess those reigimes are foreign?

by simias 6y ago

AsyncAwait 6y ago

> Telegram also has an electron desktop app Telegram Desktop is a Qt app. Not that it offers E2E so not really comparable to Signal imo.

simias 6y ago
Oh indeed it is! It looks very electrony so I just assumed that it was. That might be why it actually works decently.
Ar-Curunir 6y ago
So that’s why Slack consumes tons of RAM but Telegram desktop doesn’t ...

faitswulff 6y ago

IIRC there are a few unofficial Signal CLI clients.

harry8 6y ago

I'll take your word for the telegram app. I prefer signal to telegram. Any benefit of the telegram desktop app seems like a marginal one when the signal one works and signal do encryption well, properly and honestly. (Maybe telegram are catching up to this now, not sure, Moxie has always been solid and has forced the entire feature set of messaging to end-to-end encryption for which he's going straight to heaven). My own irc client I wrote when learning C and then re-wrote learning GTK+ is better than any of them in terms of doing what I want non-bloated as a client. But it doesn't quite match the whole signal thing somehow. :) Signal is excellent software. Game changing stuff. Telegram (indirectly), Whatsapp (directly) owe signal a great debt. The reverse doesn't seem to be true. End to end ecryption for the masses is a huge, huge win that Moxie can take a vast amount of credit for making happen, then improving and increasing. So there's a little hero-worship for Moxie, a man with whom politically I probably have very, very little in common. It's a good feeling when you can do that.

simias 6y ago
Signal desktop was missing basic features like answering calls not long ago. It also had at least one significant vulnerability (some code injection IIRC) so I don't know if I'd say that it does "encryption well". Having applications with such a needlessly huge attack surface is not good crypto in my book. I do like Signal, otherwise I wouldn't put up with that software. But you can both enjoy the protocol and Android client and think that the desktop app is a pile a donkey dung.
- harry8 6y ago
  >desktop app is a pile a donkey dung. And you can put the stated criticisms of it in proper context. Then assess the costs and risks to yourself. Compare its use along with the rest of signal to the alternatives. And examine the response of Moxies team to issues. At least that's what I did and came up with a "Hard Disagree" on that statement. Signal desktop is pretty good. (And no I don't like electron apps as a rule - it's the only one I use). Deviation from perfection is not donkey dung. >Signal desktop was missing basic features like answering [voice] calls... vs Messaging on phone and internet everywhere was missing end to end encryption before Signal. (Yes I used OTR with like 3 people, now I encryption with almost everyone, thanks signal). Advantage signal. By a huge margin, for mine. Picked the essential feature. Got it right. Expanded from there. I find it pretty hard to fault what they're doing. People who want to do it differently because they think it's "better" (eg federation), don't seem to actually get much done in comparison to signal's massive win they chalked up for all of us. I find it kinda odd that here, where people understand tech, there is more sticking up for facebrick, goo, appletax etc when they screw their users yet again than there is for Signal doing the opposite. The contrast between how they view people who use their stuff is very, very stark. Signal are pretty great. We need more love for anyone who can achieve at a similar level to make computing better for us. To push competition toward being better at privacy, security and so on and away from the direction of turnkey totalitarianism surveillance that the Stasi could only have wet dreams about. Alarmist right? Could bad things really happen here? Are the interests of Cook, Zuck, Seregey, Larry, Jeff et al not precisely yours or a wider population's? They all do seem really quite friendly to despotic regimes. But I guess those reigimes are foreign?