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Bit of a tangent (though it is directly mentioned in TFA), does anyone knows why Signal spends 1.3M/yr on data storage? I understand that it's probably the res

Bit of a tangent (though it is directly mentioned in TFA), does anyone knows why Signal spends 1.3M/yr on data storage? I understand that it's probably the result of a massive amount of requests/transactions done with a cloud provider, and the actual storage needs are probably pretty low given the ephemeral nature of their system. But at what point does it become financially irresponsible to not run baremetal?

lmm 3y ago
> But at what point does it become financially irresponsible to not run baremetal? At the point where hosting is part of your value proposition, to the point that you can do significantly better than commodity managed hosting (either because there is something about your use case that allows vertically integrated hosting to outperform, or you're becoming a hosting company). 1.3M of off-the-shelf hosting sounds a fair way short of that to me.
neilv 3y ago
Good question. https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ says: > When you send a message, the Signal service temporarily queues that message for delivery. As soon as your message is delivered, that small bundle of encrypted data (i.e. your message) can be dropped from the queue. The storage of end-to-end encrypted files is temporary too, and any undelivered end-to-end encrypted data is automatically purged after a period of inactivity. Even though everything is only temporary, this storage still costs Signal around $1.3 million dollars per year. I assume they're probably speaking honestly, and have no reason to investigate (since I don't use it). But if you were doing a critical analysis, I guess you could consider that, for $1.3M/year, one could also store a lot of "metadata" for later traffic analysis, social network mapping, propagation tracking, etc. It'd be tickling to think that fact could be hiding in plain sight the whole time, in invoices and accounting disclosures.

lmm 3y ago

> But at what point does it become financially irresponsible to not run baremetal? At the point where hosting is part of your value proposition, to the point that you can do significantly better than commodity managed hosting (either because there is something about your use case that allows vertically integrated hosting to outperform, or you're becoming a hosting company). 1.3M of off-the-shelf hosting sounds a fair way short of that to me.

neilv 3y ago

Good question. https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ says: > When you send a message, the Signal service temporarily queues that message for delivery. As soon as your message is delivered, that small bundle of encrypted data (i.e. your message) can be dropped from the queue. The storage of end-to-end encrypted files is temporary too, and any undelivered end-to-end encrypted data is automatically purged after a period of inactivity. Even though everything is only temporary, this storage still costs Signal around $1.3 million dollars per year. I assume they're probably speaking honestly, and have no reason to investigate (since I don't use it). But if you were doing a critical analysis, I guess you could consider that, for $1.3M/year, one could also store a lot of "metadata" for later traffic analysis, social network mapping, propagation tracking, etc. It'd be tickling to think that fact could be hiding in plain sight the whole time, in invoices and accounting disclosures.