
Telegram: Video Calls and Seven Years - bpierre
https://telegram.org/blog/video-calls
======
dexwell
Telegram truly has the best UX of all messengers out there; it’s a shame I
can’t switch to it because they don’t do E2EE by default. If I’m going to be
switching to a new app it will have to be a Matrix
([https://matrix.org/](https://matrix.org/)) client. Anyone want to work on a
Telegram fork that runs on Matrix?

~~~
chacha2
What I don't understand is why the free software movement so often reinvents
the wheel, Telegram releases all the code to their UI but any new security
focused chat app always starts from the ground up.

~~~
dexwell
I think developers prefer writing code they understand over trying to
understand someone else's code. I've taken a look at Telegram's codebase, and
replacing the Telegram API with the Matrix API is way harder than it sounds.
Telegram wasn't developed with this flexibility in mind, and the Matrix SDK
has its own way of doing things.

~~~
devxpy
This. I often end up writing my own libraries because of this reason. Kinda
hard to get into other people's minds...

------
solarkraft
It has been my messenger of choice for about 6 of these 7 years and watching
its evolution has been pretty cool.

It's grown to be a much wider social platform now than it used to be, but it
hasn't distracted from personal chats much. That's pretty amazing! It hasn't
even been destroyed by commercial interests yet and my feeling says that Durov
will approach commercialization carefully, which gives me hope.

~~~
jakebasile
It's definitely one of the nicest IM services around. Well built apps with
useful features that look good and are available everywhere. I was never able
to get enough of my friend group on it to really make use of it, though.

------
fsflover
>Our apps for Android and iOS have reproducible builds, so anyone can verify
encryption and confirm that their app uses the exact same open source code
that we publish with each update.

This is impressive. I wish also chats _on desktop_ would be end to end
encrypted...

~~~
Jommi
And lose message history of messages sent on phone? That would be terrible

~~~
fastball
No you just share the private key between your mobile and desktop.

~~~
devxpy
Or encrypt the private key by a pin

~~~
fastball
That seems very easy to bruteforce.

~~~
devxpy
What alternative is there? Its also very easy to loose keys, if your target
audience is not hackernews...

------
john4534243
When it comes to privacy telegram is not great. The privacy is handled by
splitting the cryptographic key in to multiple segments and storing it in
servers located at different countries making it harder for any single
government to force to provide without involving legal process that has to go-
through multiple countries. This sounds not that bad in theory but in practice
any developer knows you need the entire key on a single machine to process the
data which means every server that processes the data has the entire key and
any government can intervene and spy on the message.

------
WilTimSon
Finally, been waiting on this for a while. Will be much easier to convince
family and friends to make the switch from WhatsApp. Interesting that the
recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as well. I really doubt
it's Apple being petty after Telegram's CEO attacked them but, considering
yesterday's Epic vs Apple debacle, I wouldn't be surprised if this escalates.

~~~
duskwuff
> Interesting that the recent Apple drama is making its way into the update as
> well

Where? I didn't see it. (Is it possible that the blog post was edited after
the fact?)

~~~
solarkraft
They didn't wait for Apple's approval of the iOS app before releasing the
Android app this time.

------
johnisgood
> It is also possible to independently verify that Telegram apps available on
> Google Play and App Store are built using the same code that we publish on
> GitHub.

How does that work exactly? Could anyone give me the steps perhaps? I am
honestly curious as to how I can be certain of this.

~~~
jakebasile
The steps are listed at [https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-
builds](https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-builds).

~~~
aaomidi
Why does apple require encryption for free apps.

At least make it optional.

------
boomer_joe
Now if only they had a bot API which wasn't so restrictive...

~~~
aaomidi
Running a user bot isn't that difficult

------
anon9001
Is telegram considered trustworthy now?

~~~
encom
I feel like IM is a pick-your-poison kind of deal. Signal is technically
superior, but it's UX is laughably bad. Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple
are cartoonishly evil corporations. Telegram is a bit rough in places, but has
to me been the least offensive of the bunch.

~~~
bishala
Its hands down the smoothest, fastest and most reliable messenger out there.
And I don't have to ever worry about losing messages between devices or taking
backups.

------
EmilioMartinez
You can tell they had long meetings about the eggplant and peach animations.

