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Session is shutting down in 90 days
- walthamstow 6mo agoSad. I will need a new way to communicate with my guy.
- roryirvine 6mo agoHa, and it was also used as a kind of low-rent/unmoderated alternative to Onlyfans. Certainly, there were enough people making money through it that they should have been able to cover operating expenses. How did they go about appealing for donations - was there a notification inside the app, or did they rely on word of mouth?
- blitzar 6mo ago“Gas, grass or ass - nobody rides for free”
- Cider9986 6mo agohttps://simplex.chat https://simplex.chat is the best option.
- mhitza 6mo agoNever heard of them, and this page doesn't tell me what they do, but I've laughed at this line > In most markets Senior developers often command salaries exceeding $150,000 USD per year Not really, there's basically a single sub-market in the US market where that is the norm.
- asxndu 6mo ago[dead]
- w4yai 6mo ago"Session is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that protects your private data. A decentralized app designed, built, and operated by a global community of privacy experts."
- raverbashing 6mo agoA collection of strongly opinionated crypto experts running on hopes more than money is no way to run a government^W^W a messaging app
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- asxndu 6mo ago[dead]
- ExpertAdvisor01 6mo agoThey are based in Switzerland . 140k USD median dev salary
- mhitza 6mo agoInteresting claim, where do you gather that data? The quick results I got where from a 2024 report on TheNextWeb claiming its around 90k USD equivalent in Switzerland https://thenextweb.com/news/european-cities-highest-salaries-software-developers https://thenextweb.com/news/european-cities-highest-salaries...
- ExpertAdvisor01 6mo agohttps://swissdevjobs.ch/salaries https://swissdevjobs.ch/salaries
- mhitza 6mo agoThanks for the data, 117500 CHF converted today is around 148k USD, and that means being in the top 25%
- ExpertAdvisor01 6mo agoIt clearly says that the median is 110k CHF ~ 140k USD
- Tade0 6mo agoMarket rate for a senior engineer in much, much poorer Poland exceeds 80k at current exchange rates - ask me how I know. I also had a contract in Switzerland for a brief, beautiful moment and in 2020 it was not weird to have an hourly rate exceeding 90CHF/h in this role. Permanent employees were making anywhere in the range of 100-130k CHF, so the 140k USD figure is close adjusted for inflation.
- xmattx 6mo agoFor a Senior perhaps. The figures I find for Switzerland are more in the 90-120 range depending on the source. Also, I think what OP was referring to is the 'most markets' bit. Switzerland is the best paying country in Europe (discounting London).
- hibikir 6mo agoWithin the US, it's far more common than you think. That's typical senior dev money in a large company in cities like St Louis or KC. What is rare outside of the biggest markets is the whole "enough RSUs to double your salary" thing.
- kilroy123 6mo agoThat salary is not unheard of at all in London. Especially when you convert £ to $.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- esskay 6mo agoSure but Londons known for being high wages. Now change that location to Cornwall or the North of England and watch it get almost cut in half.
- roryirvine 6mo agoManchester is only about 10% below London, other cities along the M62 are about 15% below according to the salary benchmarking data I've seen. The bigger difference is more in the number and type of available roles. That salary would be above the median for most perm senior dev positions in London, but still well within the usual range for established tech companies and well-funded startups.
- esskay 6mo agoYou went from picking the highest salary city...to the second highest paying city. You get how that comes across right?
- roryirvine 6mo agoMost of the rest of the north is similar. Darlington's the main outlier, since it's dominated by the public sector. And yes, a senior dev will be on half that in the public sector outside London - but only if you exclude the pension. I don't have figures for anywhere in Cornwall. Is there actually much of a tech industry there?
- zipy124 6mo agonot unheard of, but not typical.
- efficax 6mo agothe rare market is 250k+. You can get 150k in cleveland or milwaukee
- AugieDB 6mo agoFor a senior developer, $150,000 is about right. I'm looking at the latest half dozen jobs I've seen on LinkedIn for open senior developer positions and they all start at that number, and range up to $185k to $200k. Digging a little deeper, I see some th atstart well above that number, but it's for the huge companies you're thinking of -- Google, Netflix, Github.
- mhitza 6mo agoThe claim is that 150k is the baseline that is often exceeded. I don't know the region you're looking for on LinkedIn, but what I see for European jobs is that they barely crack 100k for developers. At least the senior, non highly specialist, jobs I'm seeing.
- esskay 6mo agoTime to broaden their hiring pool then, $150k is double the cost of a senior developer in many other parts of the world (yes including English speaking first world countries). When you've got 90 days till the doors close you cant be picky about your hiring pool.
- Arnt 6mo agoRead the posting. They dont have money for a team, they don't have money for a senior developer. Whether $150k/FTE or $75k doesn't matter, because they don't have either of those. Once the server and other costs have been paid, the have money for... maybe a part-time junior in Cambodia.
- dminvs 6mo agoI'd consider this a lowball in Austin
- superxpro12 6mo agoWhats the take-home after housing and expenses tho? It's the same in CA... massive salaries, but also massive taxes+housing expenses.
- chipotle_coyote 6mo agoAt least in my experience, having worked in both Florida and California, that's more of a wash than people imagine it's going to be -- and more so than the "cost of living calculators" tend to demonstrate, at least if you're a renter. I actually ran a few numbers based on current costs. If you're making $120K/yr in Florida and paying the average cost for a 1-bedroom rental in Tampa ($1,642/mo, as of April 2026 according to Apartments.com), your after-tax take home is $98 (24% federal tax bracket, no state tax) and you have $78.4K after rent. If you're making $180K/yr in California and paying the average cost for a 1-bedroom rental in San Jose ($2,705/mo), your after-tax take home is $130.5K (24% federal tax bracket, 9.3% CA state tax bracket) and you have $98K left after housing. You can keep fiddling with the numbers, but in most cases, the premium for getting a tech job in Silicon Valley is sufficiently high that you really are making more in absolute dollars despite the higher cost of living.
- dfadsadsf 6mo agoThat math breaks down if you have kids and need 4bdrm house commutable distance to work in good school district - prohibitively expensive in Bay Area and affordable on engineer salary in most tier 2 cities. If you do not have kids, Bay Area clearly wins, especially if you are ok with studio/1bdrm.
- KaiserPro 6mo agoYeah I'm not sure what they do, or why they need support
- tadhglewis 6mo agoInterestingly I applied for one of their senior frontend positions that required a "high level of experience" in Australia, they said 120k AUD with no room to go higher. Went with an offer of 170k instead.
- HWR_14 6mo agoWell, that aligns with both "total raise of 93k AUD" and "we need more money to afford to hire senior people"
- INTPenis 6mo ago>Never heard of them They're big on dark web drug markets.
- horsawlarway 6mo agoNah, like others have said - 150k is fairly normal for senior positions in any decently sized metro in the US at this point. Even a decade ago, seniors could easily be pulling 120-150k in markets like Houston/Atlanta/Miami/etc... The relatively cheap markets. I'm in Atlanta and I'd actually say 150k is a lowball offer for a senior in this market at this point. I'd expect 175k+. Now - the flip side of this is that current competition is fairly insane with all the recent tech layoffs. So it's possible we're seeing some market correction. But I don't really think it's going to come down much. Between inflation and rising costs... 150k just isn't what it used to be. If it comes down... it's going to be because we're entering a real depression. --- The amount of money the US government has printed in the last 7 years is... insane. And while it was starting to taper back down in 2023 and early 2024... then we got the GOP, and the GOP is objectively bad with money (not that the dems are that much better...). So m1 supply is rising at a relatively steady rate again. We going to feel the consequences for a LONG time (or very, very badly for a medium time... with unknown results).
- oofbey 6mo agoI like the idea. But I’m pretty happy with Signal. Signal does require a phone number I think, but otherwise seems very similar. Grounding identity in a phone number is very reasonable for almost all normal usage. It makes recovery simple. It does block the ultra paranoid use cases though. Oh well.
- Nyr 6mo agoSession is not similar to Signal. Session aims to provide anonymity, Signal aims to provide privacy.
- bsaul 6mo agosignal is really crappy. It fails at the most basic feature which is : deliver the message on time.
- bjord 6mo agodoes it? have you been trying to use signal while disconnected from the internet?
- oofbey 6mo agoI had a friend who complained about this too. I never understood it. She had a really cheap old android phone. Maybe that’s the issue?
- bjord 6mo agoI primarily use a nearly-bottom end android phone that's a few years old and just recently switched to an even older, even lower end android phone that is six years old. Neither has that issue. Obviously, I'm not really claiming that it's not possible people are experiencing this issue, but it can't possibly be widespread. I feel like most likely people are using android skins that aggressively kill apps in the background.
- 6mo ago
- Archelaos 6mo ago> In most markets Senior developers often command salaries exceeding $150,000 USD per year Why not outsource this to a cheaper country? For example, here in Germany salaries are about half of that, and the talent pool is excellent.
- ramon156 6mo agoId do it for 1/3rd!
- rvz 6mo agoClaude (or any other chatbot) can do it for 1/100th of the cost and faster than anyone. So $150k+ is overpriced.
- mrhottakes 6mo agothis is true, Claude and other LLMs are highly skilled at producing secure code
- aaronbrethorst 6mo agoName checks out.
- SV_BubbleTime 6mo agoLess Claudtistic apps, not more.
- cl3misch 6mo agoAfaik Germany is one of the most expensive countries for employing white collar jobs? The gross income to the employee might be 75k in Germany, but the cost to the employer is roughly twice that amount in turn. In my (very naive) mental model, US salaries are higher, have less "overhead" for the employer, but leave more responsibility (healthcare, retirement) to the employee.
- 6mo ago
- coldpie 6mo agoI feel like a crazy person for having to write this, but: if you are starting a business (yes, non-profits are businesses), then you need to have a business plan. If you launch a business and you have not done the work to have a business plan, then in 99.999% of situations, your business will fail. A business plan includes market & competitive research, a revenue plan based on that research that includes realistic pricing models and costs, a marketing plan, and several options for when things don't turn out like you planned. This isn't even Business 101, this is like Remedial Intro to Business. If you don't have this worked out before you launch, you have already failed. The corollary for this is as a user, you should determine whether or not the business you are planning to depend on has a business model before you choose to depend on them. If there is no apparent income stream, then the business will close at some point and you may as well skip all the heartburn and choose not to use that business for anything you care about. BlueSky, I'm looking at you right now.
- jason_zig 6mo agoI think this was their business plan. See if it works and, if it doesn't, shut it down
- retrac98 6mo agoThey don’t say how they plan to avoid a repeat scenario a few months down the line. Donations are fine, but something needs to change or people are just propping up a non-viable business.
- BoredPositron 6mo ago[flagged]
- cropcirclbureau 6mo agoSurprised to hear this since my understanding was that Session was run on a crypto coin based, user hosted onion routing servers. Do they mean the dev company behind Session is shutting down? An anecdote I have: a friend once had narcotics shipped intl. through Session a few years ago.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Degenroll 6mo ago[dead]
- 833 6mo agoNot sure why it's always a binary: either give us $1M or we shut down. Vast majority of products and services can continue on or near zero, with slow or zero velocity. Really, you can't fire half the team if you have to and keep operating? 1.75M MAU requires very small infrastructure.
- johnisgood 6mo agoYeah, there is no way they need $1M for the servers, come on...
- miroljub 6mo agoGod forbid someone get paid for their work.
- vntok 6mo agoPaid is desirable. Overpaid, not so much.
- Jimmc414 6mo ago$150k is overpaid for a senior engineer?
- vntok 6mo agoDepends on what "senior" means. Every company has its own definition.
- yakshaving_jgt 6mo agoIn most of the world, yes.
- Garlef 6mo agoMaybe it's a binary choice for the people who have to maintain it? You can scale down money. But you can't scale down commitment arbitrarily.
- 0xy 6mo agoI'd love to know where the $600k that Vitalik Buterin donated to them 3 short months ago went. I don't think they've adequately addressed this question.
- bjord 6mo agoseems like it was $300k (the total was split between simpleX and session), but still—fair question
- rvz 6mo ago> In most markets Senior developers often command salaries exceeding $150,000 USD per year, and on top of this there are legal and operational overheads for running the STF. Translation: Our product makes no money, has no use case and we need $1M to survive. Two ways a PE "cost saver" would fix this: 1. Claude + 1x senior engineer (in India). 2. CTO + Claude and no senior engineers / employees. Given we have (allegedly) achieved "AGI" (heavily disputed) they don't need as many employees. Especially those that are after $150k+ which when you can vibe code with Claude for less than $10k anyway. /s Job done.
- mcherm 6mo agoSo you are suggesting that a private communications and messaging system that proports to offer reliable anonymity is a reasonable use case for more-or-less unsupervised development by Claude? Because that is just the sort of use case where I would NOT trust an unsupervised AI.
- lowdude 6mo agoThat is probably the reason they added the /s at the end
- bjord 6mo agoI don't personally use it, but regardless, it'd be a shame to see it go
- RandomGerm4n 6mo agoThat’s not really a big deal since the session encryption was insecure anyway. It feels almost like a honeypot after they've removed forward secrecy. If you’re looking for a decentralized alternative SimpleX Chat is a more secure option.
- Jigsy 6mo agoMy issue with SimpleX is that the company is in the UK, and it's developed in the UK under UK law. https://simplex.chat/transparency/ https://simplex.chat/transparency/ Considering how fiercely anti-encryption the UK is/has become (because "only child molesters care about encryption!"), this is sadly reason enough for me not to trust it. Do I believe they have a backdoor in their software? No. But if the UK passes a law demanding they introduce one...
- graemep 6mo agoIts FOSS so such a change would be visible. What government are you certain will never introduce a backdoor requirement?
- seanw444 6mo agoOr the mature and robust XMPP + OMEMO.
- RandomGerm4n 6mo agoThe problem with XMPP is that most clients use an outdated and insecure implementation of OMEMO. This includes popular clients such as Conversations and Gajim. Currently only Profanity and Kaidan use the latest version and you must always assume that the encryption has been secretly downgraded because the other person is using an insecure client. I highly recommend Soatek's blog post on this topic. https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/ https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/
- zaik 6mo agoI do not understand the security implications of this "Invisible Salamanders" post, but I would prefer XMPP even without any end-to-end encryption over a walled garden like Signal or Session.
- racuna 6mo agoA few months ago, a Session update logged me out. I tried to log back in, but my passphrase caused Session to crash. I tried the Play Store version, the F-Droid version, and the desktop version. Support told me that login method had been around for a while, and I didn’t know it. So suddenly, I was locked out and couldn’t access MY ACCOUNT. I used to promote Session, but since their support response was basically a big “fuck you,” I say “fuck you too,” and I hope people switch to SimpleX.
- Ms-J 6mo agoSession was Australian based which means they would have to do all sorts of horrible things when asked by the government, such as even letting police impersonate users... I just checked and they claim to have moved their infra to Switzerland. There are many other issues, some I've forgotten about since I would never trust it in the first place. They also require a phone number even! Seeing them go, I feel neutral. It's always good to have more anonymity software, just not this for me.
- its-summertime 6mo agohttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/session-encrypted-messaging-app-developer-moves-out-of-australia-police-visit-switzerland https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/sessi... they moved more than their infra > They also require a phone number even! "You don’t need a mobile number or an email to make an account with Session." - https://getsession.org/faq#identity-protection https://getsession.org/faq#identity-protection
- Ms-J 6mo agoFrom your link, it explains that they have to Switzerland: "The developer of Session, an encrypted messaging app, has moved operations to Switzerland as ‘being in Australia just threatened our credibility as a privacy tool’." What else in particular are you talking about? With the phone number, I may have not remembered correctly for this particular software. If I could edit my comment, I would add a note. But when going to the FAQ link I remembered how bad this piece of software was especially promoting cryptocurrency. I would never want a messenger to promote crypto, such a "Signal" Edit: used different quote from the article
- Youden 6mo agoNo legal mechanism with such breadth exists in Australia. There was a great deal of overblown media reporting but the law [0] makes it explicitly clear that any request that requires a "systemic weakness", "systemic vulnerability" or anything of the like is null and void. Those terms are defined [1]. Note that it doesn't say the government can't request such a thing, it says that such a request "has no effect". It's simply dead on arrival. My understanding is that the government could compel Facebook to publish a version of WhatsApp with a special mode that sends all messages to the police if the user ID is 1234567. This introduces a vulnerability but it is limited to one specific person. If your user ID is not 1234567, you're completely unaffected. However my understanding is that the government cannot compel Facebook to compel a version of WhatsApp that, when it receives a special message, silently starts sending plaintext copies of every other message it receives to the police. Such a mechanism would be a systematic weakness that affects people other than those for which a warrant has been issued, so the notice would "have no effect". The government could also not compel a source-available app with verifiable builds to stop distributing them so that it can add a secret user ID branch like the one I mentioned above for WhatsApp. [0]: https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s317zg.html https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta199... [1]: https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s317b.html#systemic_weakness https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta199...
- neuroelectron 6mo agoI could never get it to work and I've tried several times. I kind of get the feeling I'm being blocked at the ISP level. We entered an era of the Internet where you're just not allowed to create secure communications.
- OutOfHere 6mo agoThey should keep a single competent and curious senior developer who can do it all. In this age of AI, you can make do without having a whole team of developers.
- gamegod 6mo agoIf you need decentralized messaging and not some cryptocoin front, Delta Chat (https://delta.chat/ https://delta.chat/) is what you're looking for.
- maerF0x0 6mo agoI had never heard of this, why session over signal? Edit: here is a snippet from google AI: Signal is a secure, user-friendly WhatsApp alternative requiring a phone number, while Session prioritizes maximum anonymity with no phone number, onion routing, and a decentralized network
- INTPenis 6mo agoThis is extortion. They're hoping one of the rich dark web drug lords that use the app will sponsor them with crypto.
- jasonkester 6mo agoMy advice: If you want people to give you money so that you don’t have to shut down, and you’re writing a ten paragraph plea for donations, consider using one of those paragraphs to tell people what your thing is. If we knew what it was, we might want to help.
- egypturnash 6mo agoTheir logo actually links to their front page for once so it's not too hard to find out that Session is "The decentralized private messaging app", even if you're on a touchscreen. No need to fuss around and figure out how to get from "session.blogplace.org" to "getsession.com" by editing raw URLs like I feel happens with half the posts like this. It could still use a paragraph or two of "why we believe it's important for this particular decentralized private messaging app to exist when there are about six hundred other decentralized private messaging apps out there that nobody but people who care passionately about decentralization are using", though. (This is not a question that I feel their FAQ addresses, either: https://getsession.org/faq https://getsession.org/faq)
- rahimnathwani 6mo agoIt's in the footer but yeah
- MallocVoidstar 6mo agoIt's Signal but blockchain
- PinkSheep 6mo ago> 65000 USD in donations > enough for infrastructure for the next 90 days 20k per month in infrastructure. Excuse me, what?
- worldsavior 6mo agoThey're taking about paying for full time developers.
- PinkSheep 6mo agoWhere am I reading this wrongly? > approximately $65,000 in donations. This is enough to maintain critical Session infrastructure for the next 90 days. We are extremely grateful for the support Session has received from the community, but unfortunately this is not sufficient to retain full-time developers. As a result, all paid staff and developers will have their final working day on April 9, 2026. After this date, some team members will continue on a primarily volunteer basis to help maintain Session until July 8, 2026.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- worldsavior 6mo agoHere: "but unfortunately this is not sufficient to retain full-time developers".
- Trustable8 6mo agoIf it were actually decentralised, it wouldn't really have huge costs to worry about...
- palata 6mo agoYou mean... developers?
- loloquwowndueo 6mo agoNever heard of Session until today.
- alexdw_mgzi 6mo agoI'm amazed by how many companies I first discover via their shutdown announcement on Hacker News.
- TacticalCoder 6mo agoIt's sad but I'll forever remember them for having the best tagline ever on their frontpage: "Send messages, not metadata" We all know who this is directed at: the project(s) pretending to offer privacy but that need to collect your cellphone and that'll happily be able to know who you exchanges messages with. Project(s) whom, moreover, have often weird shills that, if you squint your eyes just a little bit, suddenly look like xxxINT moles. So if only for that tagline, thanks a huge lot: metadata are more important than the content of the messages themselves and you have no privacy if your phone number and contacts are known.
- littlestymaar 6mo ago> To date, the STF has received approximately $65,000 in donations. This is enough to maintain critical Session infrastructure for the next 90 days. Excuse me, what?! Spending $22k a month in infra as a pre-money startup is insane.
- PinkSheep 6mo agoI've had the same question above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706122 Haha. The wording's equal too!
- kitsune1 6mo ago[dead]
- ergocoder 6mo agoI've built many apps throughout the years. One thing that I've learned is that privacy is a secondary concern. It's never a primary one. If your app's main differentiation is privacy, it won't sell. Users just don't care about it that much.
- doctorpangloss 6mo agoInauthentic activity benefits from privacy though. Inauthentic activity is a primary use case of ChatGPT, which is way more successful than anything you've ever made. Do you think kids using ChatGPT to cheat on homework would care if their chats were "private" but educators could check if submitted essays matched generated content? Uh, yes. So privacy isn't as simple of an idea as you think it is, and is certainly extremely valuable.
- ergocoder 6mo agoIt's a telling that you picked an example where one user could access another user's private info in an unauthorized way. No famous app does that. When I say privacy, I mean supporting the company promises a stronger privacy mechanism e.g. run locally, e2e encryption where the company itself cannot access your private info. This is the case for Session. It turns out most users are okay with you promising not to use/access their private info for other means. That's already sufficient. Then, other factors e.g. usefulness are more important.
- doctorpangloss 6mo ago"When I say privacy, I mean everything that makes me right, and everything that makes you wrong." "No no, that's not what I mean. I mean, privacy is this only, specifically this set of technologies applied to this very specific set of products, and nothing else. Whatever definition will allow me to make this conversation as uninteresting as possible." Look, I guess my point is, privacy is complicated. In my example, I suppose OpenAI could authorize access to something. They already do, for training. Right? And in some sense, something valuable leaks from one users' data to another. It is still privacy when access to your data is limited in some important way from other people, even when you (or a lot of people, or other people) could benefit from such access. The biggest apps in the world have very, very complicated privacy stories.
- craichead 6mo agoUnfortunately, i could see this coming
- zachlatta 6mo agoRunning a nonprofit is really, really hard and I commend them for doing it. I hope they get through this crisis. Hack Club almost went insolvent in 2017. We would have, if it wasn’t for 2 friends who stepped in near the end and saved us. Today there are tens of thousands of teens involved and doing amazing things. I’m disappointed by all the negativity in the comments. I’m not familiar with Session, but raising donor funds is a very different skillset than software engineering and anyone who is trying to do both has my respect.
- bdcravens 6mo agoWell, I guess they didn't sell out https://getsession.org/a-messaging-app-that-cant-sell-out https://getsession.org/a-messaging-app-that-cant-sell-out
- chmorgan_ 6mo ago[dead]