[tptacek]

You're right; this isn't directly related to the topic. It's a recapitulation of every thread we have ever had about Signal, on a story that has very little to do with Signal and that unveils new cryptography research.

Unfortunately, this is a big dynamic on HN, not just on cryptography threads, but especially on threads rooted in stories with intense technical details. It's time consuming to bring yourself up to speed with what the paper says, but it's easy to have something to say about, say, Signal phone numbers. Which means comments here will be heavily biased towards superficial and tangential stuff.

[dewey]

I get your point but this is not a thread about Signal. Threema is a lot less common of a topic on HN than Signal and the only reason I’m using it and am familiar with it is this feature so I don’t think it’s such an off topic question to ask.

[pvg]

Repetitive discussions are off-topic so hanging one off a different, more specific topic is a lot more than somewhat off-topic, it end up being thread vandalism, however well-intentioned or outright unintentional.

[godelski]

It makes sense to talk about Signal in these types of threads, despite not being about Signal, because Signal is still the de facto private messenger. The userbase is much larger than that of Threema so it is worthwhile to compare how these platforms are doing things differently. Especially in the context of if users should switch. Just like how in threads about Signal it is similarly appropriate to discuss WhatsApp and Telegram (and vise versa). Though I'll admit that these conversations can degrade into flame wars and get off topic quickly.

[tptacek]

Compare with respect to the research? Sure. Compare in all other respects? No.

[_8j50]

To be fair, they also mentioned telegram and the subject of the comment was a really good feature of threema.

[tptacek]

The thread is about new cryptographic research. Or it was, and should be.

[_8j50]

I don't disagree but I don't think asking what the point of good cryptography is, if it is practically unusable, entirely offtopic but a discussion about the specifics of the research is what I think should take place as well.