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Signal Is Back
- mickotron 6y agow00t
- Vinnl 6y agoThis was a painful episode, but on the bright side, the team is sure to have learned a lot. Hopefully they won't have bled too many users. Looking forward to a more stable Signal in the future!
- Craighead 6y agoThey. Need. Funding. Signal is as important as the linux kernel. We need to support it.
- x32n23nr 6y agoCongrats to the team. I am sure it must have been a stressful one. Some remaining issues: The desktop app on first message in any conversation says: "Partially sent, click for details". When retried, the message goes through, but is not synced with the mobile client (never appears there). PS: Happy Signal exists. It's easy to let inconvenience make you forget it sometimes.
- pyaamb 6y agonot sure if its the same issue but https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350631020756828160 https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350631020756828160
- ketamine__ 6y agoAs Signal is a non-profit what are the possible solutions to reduce costs going forward while maintaining availability?
- toomuchtodo 6y agoMove from the cloud to k8s hosted on their own metal. The Signal server is simplistic (a compliment), it’s the bandwidth that you’re going to get raked over the coals for at cloud providers. Burst to the cloud for outlier events.
- imposterr 6y agoIf I'm not mistaken, signal is specifically hosted on AWS to so that governments can't just blacklist their IPs without blacklisting all of AWS. So moving to bare metal isn't really an option.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xfer 6y agoGovernments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet.
- ardy42 6y ago> Governments can easily block AWS as well and they have. Even simpler, they just go for the kill-switch and kill internet. They can, but the collateral damage of doing that is high, which is a deterrent. The only regimes where that's realistically an option are ones where they've consciously developed an independent tech ecosystem (e.g. China) or where their power is so secure they couldn't care less about the damage.
- xfer 6y agoUnless you are talking about very stable countries(where this is not even an issue to begin with), we have already seen a few(russia, india etc) doing this without a second thought, not just china. The damage can be attributed to someone else when you own the communication channels.
- curiousmindz 6y agoWe rarely get to see an app have to grow suddenly like that. And with Signal being open source, it must be very educational to follow. Has anyone found a publication around what they had to do on the technical side (code)? Edit: Their server's repo hasn't been updated since April 2020. Why? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
- iKlsR 6y agoEarlier today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25803010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25803010
- zie 6y agoThe problem is 2 fold. 1) a bahillion new signups, so they just needed to deploy a bajillion more instances of the server. 2) The clients basically DDoS'ing their servers. If you look at the android client source, you can see all the commits they put in are about handling errors properly when the server(s) get overloaded.
- divbzero 6y agoAnyone know if these commits are already in App Store and Google Play? I looked for a Signal update on iOS just now and did not see one.
- decrypt 6y agoFrom what I understand, this affects only Android devices, thus the Android 5.2.1 rollout. None for iOS.
- minot 6y agoNot that I speak for the project but this isn’t privileged information anyways: If you have TestFlight, you will see there have been several updates pushed to TestFlight over the last few days.
- 6y ago
- skept 6y agoIf you're still having delivery issues in any of your private conversations try "reset secure session" from the chat menu. It worked for me with a couple of my contacts.
- brewdad 6y agoDoes performing a reset impact messages already in the conversation? I don't want to lose chat history but I do have one convo that has missing messages between my phone and my desktop app.
- pitaj 6y agoFor groups, I think you have to go to each member individually and reset it in the chat menu there.
- Waterluvian 6y agoIs it technically possible to have end to end encryption with Signal if it evolved to first attempt to use direct connections via RTC or some other method? If they're incurring serious costs to run, that tells me Signal's days are numbered until it has to start commercializing.
- aaomidi 6y agoMore users and more attention also means more donations. I sent them something yesterday as a show of support and have set monthly donations as well.
- faitswulff 6y agoThis came up on the forum and someone raised a good point - would direct connections require the sender and receiver to be online at the same time? I feel like the architecture has to be more clever than just a WebRTC connection between clients.
- Scoundreller 6y ago> would direct connections require the sender and receiver to be online at the same time? Could always use 'indirect' connections to store-and-forward, and only relying on the central server when absolutely necessary. You do risk some lost messages when you underestimate failures, but the same thing applies to any central store-and-forward facility. Early Kazaa depended on some nodes becoming supernodes. Supposedly initial Skype was decentralized like this (particular to get around NATs), until it became exclusively client-server.
- swirepe 6y agoThere was a really good YouTube lecture about how signal works, and it addresses phones being offline. Unfortunately there's been a ton of low-quality videos on Signal released in the past few days, and it's taking me a while to find it.
- loughnane 6y agoMight be the one from computerphile
- pentagrama 6y agoGlad that is back and happy to see Signal growing, but I really don't like the tongue in cheek tone of Signal on social media, I hope they don't take this route like Telegram (who is becoming a social media platform itself with feature bloat). Hope Signal adapt a serious tone and keep the product thight adding features for privacy and security. Just a personal preference, maybe the hip tone helps to grow.
- followthesmell 6y agoSignal's tone on Twitter reflects that Signal is a tool that can be used non-techies. https://signal.org/blog/ https://signal.org/blog/ has a more serious tone.
- pentagrama 6y agoWell I also prefer a brand that has consistency on his tone and narrative across all his communication channels.
- zerof1l 6y agoCan somebody explain their financial model? How are they paying for the servers and stuff. The claim "No ads. No trackers." and that they are "free for everyone".
- tobib 6y agohttps://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/
- decrypt 6y agoThey are powered by donations [1] Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, who left Facebook post WhatsApp acquisition, infused 50M USD too. [2] I hear he lent another 50M with 0% interest, repayable by 2068. [3] [1] https://signal.org/donate https://signal.org/donate [2] https://www.wired.com/story/signal-foundation-whatsapp-brian-acton/ https://www.wired.com/story/signal-foundation-whatsapp-brian... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
- xster 6y agoTake this with a grain of salt since it's not too clear how much money they got exactly from OTF, but they seem to have been partially seeded initially with the CIA spin-off Radio Free Asia money (https://pando.com/2015/03/01/internet-privacy-funded-by-spooks-a-brief-history-of-the-bbg/ https://pando.com/2015/03/01/internet-privacy-funded-by-spoo...). Since the OTF's own spin-off from RFA, it seems to have continued being non-trivially involved in regime change while funding communication initiatives like TOR and Open Whisper Systems etc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund).
- yorwba 6y agoGood. Let them put their "regime change" money into generally useful infrastructure like Signal instead of propaganda for their favorite rebel group or some other narrow political goal.
- 3rdkerry 6y agoStrangely enough, this outage is what made me curious enough to switch to Signal. I want to see what the next outage will be like.
- alisaus 6y agoI was a really bad girl. Punish me with your dick in my mouth. - https://adultlove.life https://adultlove.life
- DarkByte8 6y agoIt would be nice to have a self hosted server that you can use with some friends. example: Me and 2 other friends use our own server while with my parents use signal server.
- johnchristopher 6y agoGreen account promoting federation without naming it? It's getting a little bit obvious guys. I love both but come on...
- DarkByte8 6y agoI had to search what you meant. What is wrong with having the possibility to use your own server to communicate with friends? I have the server, they pay me for electricity and hosting.
- johnchristopher 6y ago> What is wrong with having the possibility to use your own server to communicate with friends? I have the server, they pay me for electricity and hosting. Why would you believe I think it's wrong ?
- smichel17 6y agoI think we there is a much simpler explanation in this case: Signal just had an outage affecting millions of people, many of whom don't have HN accounts. Some of them have found this thread.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Daniel_sk 6y agoI have been following the changes on GitHub in the last 2 days, I wish they would actually add comments to the commits to explain the reasons of change or further info. I think they have issues with message retrying and spamming the server. - They added handling of HTTP 508 and do not retry jobs in this case - There is a list of HTTP errors that are handled manually, including the new HTTP 508, but for example 503 is not handled and Jobs (e.g. messages) will be retried indefinitely and I have seen logs with many 503 entries and retries. - They have increased the maximum backoff time from 30s to 60s (+ added jitter) and it can now also be changed remotely via server flag. - Any HTTP error not handled explicitly is considered an IOException (strange?) and retried. List of handled HTTP exceptions (413, 401, 403, 409, 410, 411, 423, 499 and 508) is here: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/2c1c6fab3560ef12996030cf7c84cc0d895e329e/libsignal/service/src/main/java/org/whispersystems/signalservice/internal/push/PushServiceSocket.java#L1439 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/2c1c6fab356... I personally would not repeat requests automatically by default on any HTTP error - unless handled manually (so reverse logic), only on connection error. - They have just switched off OkHTTP automatic "silent" connection retries: https://square.github.io/okhttp/3.x/okhttp/okhttp3/OkHttpClient.Builder.html#retryOnConnectionFailure-boolean- https://square.github.io/okhttp/3.x/okhttp/okhttp3/OkHttpCli... I don't think they have tested this enough, it's more of a blind try and I think it can decrease request delivery reliability. The OkHttp implementation retries requests silently (with backoff and retry limit) in case of: Unreachable IP addresses, Stale pooled connections, Unreachable proxy servers. This is transparent to the application. In the past I have complained to the OkHttp team that POST requests should not be retried at all and they fixed it (your requests need to be idempotent anyway, regardless of this). - I believe they may be also having issues with requests that are non idempotent and have been retried by OkHttp silently or in cases where application has sent something to the server and server received it, but the response has never made it back to the client. In this case client will retry request and this can cause trouble if requests are not deduplicated on server side and idempotent. But this is just my guess.
- adamddev1 6y agoI would say one of the most important things they need to compete with WhatsApp is a better desktop client. WhatsApp's client is great because it works in the browser and is a joy to use. It would be nice if people didn't have to be burdened with downloading a big Electron app and then sit through the slow process where it syncs contacts etc. (kind of makes the user feel like it's broken)
- arianvanp 6y agoTelegram's desktop client is the best I ever used. It's so extremely responsive. It is written in Qt instead of memory-hogging electron and the difference in how it feels is night and day. If signal were to develop a new client I wish they'd do native toolkit as well.
- dindresto 6y agoTechnically the Telegram desktop client and libsignal are both open source, so maybe someone could hook them up? :)
- bluesign 6y agoTelegram desktop client source code is huge. For sure it is possible, once I was tempted to but understanding telegram UI part is the hardest part. (I was attempting to make it matrix client)
- miki123211 6y agoTry Unigram, which is even better. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/unigram-telegram-for-windows-10/9n97zckpd60q?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/unigram-telegram-for-windo...
- emn13 6y agoWhat? Whatsapp's client is terrible - it not only requires a phone during signup, it requires an active connection to your phone, so if your battery is every running low - good luck with that. Additionally, it allows just 1 desktop client to be active at a time, which is just a hassle. Finally, in practice the connection to a well-charged phone is still subject to the vagaries of a phone app - it's very common for the desktop client to lose its connection temporarily, and require the user to "nudge" the phone app to wake it up. Much as electron is ridiculously heavy, I'd pick that every single day over the joke that is the whatsapp web UI. I guess our experiences differ!
- ghgr 6y agoAn important point that I didn't see mentioned: Signal implements the "Sealed Sender" feature in order to encrypt metadata (as much as possible). https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/signal-secure-messaging-metadata.html https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/signal-secure-messaging-me... That's in my opinion the USP against other (actually or allegedly) E2E platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram.
- laurencei 6y agoIs there any way to send messages via Signal using an API to a previously approved number? i.e. someone accepts my chat, then I can send messages via an API? I cant find much (good) documentation on it..? I have a system that needs to send alerts from an enterprise system, and we need a more secure way than Telegram...
- bbernhard90 6y agoNot sure if this fits your needs, but I am maintaining this project here: https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api
- laurencei 6y agoHi - yes, this looks very close like what I was after. I've starred the repo, and will def check it out. Thanks!!