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> Telegram is better in every way... except security. Which is why anyone bothers with these type apps in the first place, I'd like to say I'm dissapointed wit

> Telegram is better in every way... except security. Which is why anyone bothers with these type apps in the first place, I'd like to say I'm dissapointed with the sentiment towards Signal, especially given how many here work in tech and understand how leaky these apps are designed to be and how hard development can be with a bare bones team (I experienced this first hand), but it never fails to bank on the notion that convenience will always win against security. regardless of expectation(s). Shrug... I like Signal more: and I think Telegram has many useless features that are not of any interest to me and only create needless bloat at the expense of security/privacy which is untenable, so while I hope some bugs get sorted in Signal as I run both I know why I side with Signal. I also understand that Signal runs on a thin donation based hacker budget and Moxie Marlinspike's podcast on Joe Rogan is a really cool watch that made it clear to me it's just a hacker project that scaled really well and is in need of funding and staff. I think Joe revealed himself to be a part of the money-centric Corpo class to Moxie's dismay when he refused to have that rock, paper, scissor match and you could see the disappointment in his eyes when Joe reacted almost offended at the idea that Moxie had anything worth his stake and could so quickly ascribe a dollar value to it. It reminded me that it's okay to care about the messenger (guest) that his podcast attracts rather than Joe or the brand he's created around himself, even though I agree with may of his points I struggle to think its nothing more than hook or gimmick most times. I don't really enjoy any of his standup and find a lot of his quips to be childish and immature reactions to what seem like feckless attention grabbing that can derail a guest's conversation or train of thought, much like uninvited fart jokes would amongst otherwise fascinating discussion and in depth arguments: then again he is a comedian first and foremost. With all that said, donate to help get those fixes on Signal sorted here [0]! 0: https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/

IlliOnato 6y ago
The problem is, even if I can be OK with bugs and problems with Signal UI, I cannot make my friends (or my 80-year-old Mom) be OK too. I personally know literally nobody who uses Signal (and a number of my friends are geeks:-)). Network effect, you know... :-(
- godelski 6y ago
  I'm curious what bugs you've experienced? The only ones I've seen are on my friends' phones and they are because those phones have extremely aggressive battery optimizations that essentially block Signal from running in the background. Once it is turned off then things work smoothly. I imagine this is a network effect related issue and that apps like WhatsApp are getting special presets because their popularity.
  - machello13 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, are these friends running Android or iOS devices?
    - godelski 6y ago
      Android. Usually cheaper phones too.
- 7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
  Moved my grandma and some family over to it. Zero complaints after ~2 years of using it, and that's the best part about it. You don't need to be a "geek" to use it. Knowing everyone's data (at least in transit) is secure is pretty great.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  My whole immediate family and parents are on Signal because of me. They prefer the call quality and access to desktop messaging. For my part, I find it fully amusing when a add another parent to my contacts, and they come up in Signal. <3
godelski 6y ago
> he refused to have that rock, paper, scissor match What I thought was the funniest part (strangest) is that Moxie walked back to "I'll give you a suggestion of people and you don't even have to have any of them on" and Joe still treated it like Moxie could dictate who was going to be on the podcast. But what's the difference between that and any other guest being like "hey, you should check out ________!" which happens all the time. It was literally a nothing bet. I do think Moxie forcing the week's lineup is a bit much. A single person? Not that bad, but I could see it being used against Joe (though unlikely). But "hey you should check these people out" is nothing. Guests suggest guests all the time and so does his fanbase. As far as Signal goes, they've almost completed every major feature I've wanted. Usernames look like they're rolling out in a few months or less and group calling works (just needs to scale). Only issues I have are that sometimes there's some latency (this seems to be more related to 1. specific peoples' phones' battery optimization settings and 2. when there are large upticks in user enrollment. So neither of these are that big of an issue for me) and I can't use markdown (essentially a non-issue). Only things I want are fairly fluffy and features I would use fairly irregularly anyways. I don't understand the distaste of UI and it hasn't been properly explained to me yet. UI looks almost identical to WhatsApp except WA is far more busy in the background (which I actually dislike) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > I do think Moxie forcing the week's lineup is a bit much. Maybe, but I saw it more as a way to try to have a little fun in what had been a stalled conversation due to Joe's lack of understanding on why cryptology has become vital and the implications of its need in modern Society. I wish Joe had done some basic research and mentioned the first crypto wars himself and the fallout with Zimmerman had with PGP and Moxie would have probably opened more about how that pertains to erosion of privacy and security on the internet and the implications of the Surveillance Economy that has grown like a deadly tumor on Society since the Patriot Act and why Signal was created in the first place. He's had Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Andreas Antonopolous on several times now, there is no excuse for not being some what informed given his general curiosity on the topic by now and making the most of those podcasts and having Moxie speak on such a large platform. Honestly, I wish he had let him request Laura Poitras to come on as she can bring the topic to the massess in a relatable manner better than anyone I've seen so far--hell I remember first seeing CCC and Defcon videos being totally overwhelmed by the speakers so much I couldn't follow any of it. This may be because she comes from a non-technical background as a film maker that has been around Cypherpunks for decades now but has also been at the center of so much of the polemics (Assange, Snowden, Wikileaks, Intercept etc...) of it all and likely saw how valuable it is in life and death situations very quickly. My issue is with the dropped calls and poor call quality, but given how few people use the voice based calls they because Signal knows how vital to optimize for low bandwidth things like messages given its prime demographic in places with real reasons to use this app for its intended purpose. Again, totally understandable to me and something that they will eventually get to.
iso8859-1 6y ago
Even better, work for them, Android, Rust, iOS, Swift, Java, AWS positions available: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25636503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25636503
jethro_tell 6y ago
My only problem with signal is they way it announces when a contact gets it. It should be opt in. Many people might not want every contact they've put into their phone over the last decade to know that they got or have signal. It's a nice idea to think that everyone has only contacts they would want to share signal with bit that's not the reality on the ground. Aside from that, it's really gotten pretty good. I've been running it since the red phone days or what ever that app was called before signal.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
That was an awkward moment, and Joe’s reply sounded bad, but what he meant was that he wouldn’t give up creative control of his show for anything. Spotify reportedly just paid him $100M, and one of his conditions for that deal was that they get no say whatsoever, and he said he wouldn’t agree to any deal where he has to answer to someone else. So when he said that Moxie had nothing to offer, it was intended to mean that there is nothing that anyone could offer (which he has emphasized before), not so much that Moxie personally had nothing of value.

IlliOnato 6y ago

The problem is, even if I can be OK with bugs and problems with Signal UI, I cannot make my friends (or my 80-year-old Mom) be OK too. I personally know literally nobody who uses Signal (and a number of my friends are geeks:-)). Network effect, you know... :-(

godelski 6y ago
I'm curious what bugs you've experienced? The only ones I've seen are on my friends' phones and they are because those phones have extremely aggressive battery optimizations that essentially block Signal from running in the background. Once it is turned off then things work smoothly. I imagine this is a network effect related issue and that apps like WhatsApp are getting special presets because their popularity.
- machello13 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, are these friends running Android or iOS devices?
  - godelski 6y ago
    Android. Usually cheaper phones too.
7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
Moved my grandma and some family over to it. Zero complaints after ~2 years of using it, and that's the best part about it. You don't need to be a "geek" to use it. Knowing everyone's data (at least in transit) is secure is pretty great.
spacemanmatt 6y ago
My whole immediate family and parents are on Signal because of me. They prefer the call quality and access to desktop messaging. For my part, I find it fully amusing when a add another parent to my contacts, and they come up in Signal. <3

godelski 6y ago

> he refused to have that rock, paper, scissor match What I thought was the funniest part (strangest) is that Moxie walked back to "I'll give you a suggestion of people and you don't even have to have any of them on" and Joe still treated it like Moxie could dictate who was going to be on the podcast. But what's the difference between that and any other guest being like "hey, you should check out ________!" which happens all the time. It was literally a nothing bet. I do think Moxie forcing the week's lineup is a bit much. A single person? Not that bad, but I could see it being used against Joe (though unlikely). But "hey you should check these people out" is nothing. Guests suggest guests all the time and so does his fanbase. As far as Signal goes, they've almost completed every major feature I've wanted. Usernames look like they're rolling out in a few months or less and group calling works (just needs to scale). Only issues I have are that sometimes there's some latency (this seems to be more related to 1. specific peoples' phones' battery optimization settings and 2. when there are large upticks in user enrollment. So neither of these are that big of an issue for me) and I can't use markdown (essentially a non-issue). Only things I want are fairly fluffy and features I would use fairly irregularly anyways. I don't understand the distaste of UI and it hasn't been properly explained to me yet. UI looks almost identical to WhatsApp except WA is far more busy in the background (which I actually dislike) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> I do think Moxie forcing the week's lineup is a bit much. Maybe, but I saw it more as a way to try to have a little fun in what had been a stalled conversation due to Joe's lack of understanding on why cryptology has become vital and the implications of its need in modern Society. I wish Joe had done some basic research and mentioned the first crypto wars himself and the fallout with Zimmerman had with PGP and Moxie would have probably opened more about how that pertains to erosion of privacy and security on the internet and the implications of the Surveillance Economy that has grown like a deadly tumor on Society since the Patriot Act and why Signal was created in the first place. He's had Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Andreas Antonopolous on several times now, there is no excuse for not being some what informed given his general curiosity on the topic by now and making the most of those podcasts and having Moxie speak on such a large platform. Honestly, I wish he had let him request Laura Poitras to come on as she can bring the topic to the massess in a relatable manner better than anyone I've seen so far--hell I remember first seeing CCC and Defcon videos being totally overwhelmed by the speakers so much I couldn't follow any of it. This may be because she comes from a non-technical background as a film maker that has been around Cypherpunks for decades now but has also been at the center of so much of the polemics (Assange, Snowden, Wikileaks, Intercept etc...) of it all and likely saw how valuable it is in life and death situations very quickly. My issue is with the dropped calls and poor call quality, but given how few people use the voice based calls they because Signal knows how vital to optimize for low bandwidth things like messages given its prime demographic in places with real reasons to use this app for its intended purpose. Again, totally understandable to me and something that they will eventually get to.

iso8859-1 6y ago

Even better, work for them, Android, Rust, iOS, Swift, Java, AWS positions available: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25636503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25636503

jethro_tell 6y ago

My only problem with signal is they way it announces when a contact gets it. It should be opt in. Many people might not want every contact they've put into their phone over the last decade to know that they got or have signal. It's a nice idea to think that everyone has only contacts they would want to share signal with bit that's not the reality on the ground. Aside from that, it's really gotten pretty good. I've been running it since the red phone days or what ever that app was called before signal.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

That was an awkward moment, and Joe’s reply sounded bad, but what he meant was that he wouldn’t give up creative control of his show for anything. Spotify reportedly just paid him $100M, and one of his conditions for that deal was that they get no say whatsoever, and he said he wouldn’t agree to any deal where he has to answer to someone else. So when he said that Moxie had nothing to offer, it was intended to mean that there is nothing that anyone could offer (which he has emphasized before), not so much that Moxie personally had nothing of value.