Telegram to award grants to bot developers
telegram.org
telegram.org
I want a messaging app that's simple, secure, open and cross-device. Not one that's splurging on daft bloatware features while the key issues go unaddressed.
[edit] to clarify the term 'cross-device' - I mean I want to see my conversations on my phone, tablet and laptop and easily swap from one device to another. Platform support is a separate, also-important issue that Telegram already has nailed.
iOS https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/signal-private-messenger/id8...
Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...
[Blatant plug] If you want more info on managing digital/physical security threats, check out an open source free app we just launched called Umbrella: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
Also (last time I checked; maybe it has improved) Signal's support for inline media within conversations was light years behind Telegram.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud Signal's focus on security, but its usability simply isn't there yet.
I was actually looking for a chat solution earlier today and neither telegram nor signal fit the bill for these very reasons.
I want telegrams nice-looking apps, with signals security. Could I use WhatsApp? Maybe, but Facebook owning it makes me uncomfortable.
Exactly, bots are an interesting and cool idea, and they're obviously putting a lot of effort behind it. But it just pales in comparison to the huge leap WhatsApp took, by implementing Signal's encryption.
TBH, I hadn't expected that move from WhatsApp at all--and I'm still a tiny bit skeptical, because it almost sounds a bit too good to be true :)
I have been using Signal for a bit, too, but hadn't gotten around to read up on how Signal's encryption protocol works, but I intend to. This too seems almost too easy, to get zero configuration and hard security. Surely there must be some pitfalls or trade-offs I'm paying for that? Ok there's the verification codes, and I can see if the protocol properly tight and secure, that might get you there. But I expect that to still leave some minor pitfall(s), and I just kind of want to know what exactly those are.
On the other hand, Telegram's Linux desktop client is just glorious. Sync is perfect and instant. The whole GUI runs super-snappy even on my 4-year old low-powered netbook. Which is something I can't say for WhatsWeb. Because it's so smooth and instant-sync I use as one of my primary means of sending text or data between my netbook and my phone.
The other reason is that, my data is being slurped left and right by big foreign corporations operating under very nosy governments. Currently that is mainly the US government, given the software platforms I use. Even if I can't help those powers tapping my (meta)data, it still makes a lot of sense to divide up my data-trail between powers that are very unlikely to share this data with eachother.
And then, about half of my friends are on Telegram. Many of them for the two reasons above, others because the rest is there :-P I personally don't mind using more than one IM-app/network either. I have all the "messaging" stuff (including GMail, btw) grouped in one of those "folder" like icons on my homescreen (Android/Cyanogenmod), giving very quick access to any I need.
So yes, Telegram. Make with the hard encryption. I personally prefer it over bot-functionality, even though I think it is very shiny. But what I would really hate to see is an IM network with mediocre encryption "win" (popularity) over a network with much better encryption, just because it has a shiny bot platform.
What are the properties of this solution that you dislike?
Or I'm wrong, what's the aversion that is more important than having your messages stored in clear text by a third party?
In my opinion Open Whisper Systems sacrificed the power users to be a safe messenger for the masses when they could've pleased the power users, who are key to driving mass adoption, too.
citation needed, might happen sometimes but definitely not a rule...
Why I went telegram is the ability to use it between my linux laptops and phone without missing a beat.
If I had any gripes about Telegram it's their lack of audio and video calling but I'm not going to complain about an excellent free product.
It echoes VK in a lot of ways (pirated media abounds!), but channels are some weird cross between Twitter and 4chan as opposed to being a blatant Facebook clone. Direct messaging is still there but it doesn't seem like the network is focused on that at all anymore.
I think a lot of developers seem to be taking the same approach with bots. They are trying to create alternative UIs for their already existing mobile apps through bots. Mobile / web apps do a lot of the same stuff as bots in a much more user-friendly way. Take a look at https://storebot.me/ and tell me if there's one bot that can do something better than a mobile app.
I'm not anti-bot but I just think the bot-frenzy is premature,
I think that this is a better platform than mobile as it supports multiple devices, user accounts are already setup, it's easy to test and it has built in notifications.
One thing I did have an issue with, is showcasing what it's features were. One option is to create a lot of videos and screenshots which would take a lot of time. As further improvements were made, I would have to reshoot the videos.
Instead, I created a React component to simulate interactions with a bot. The React component is here: http://sevenleaps.github.io/chat-template/
The website for the bot is: http://www.mrwgame.com/
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/3bsec7/unoffi... [2] https://github.com/yagop/telegram-bot
See http://cs.au.dk/~jakjak/master-thesis.pdf for more on why Telegram isn't secure and you shouldn't trust it (as it is today) for anything requiring privacy.
https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/
https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html...
Because their contest is a dumb gimmick that doesn't encompass chosen-ciphertext attacks.
Edit: to clarify, what I meant is that I expected non-profits to make good use of their money and not give away large sums of money in prize competitions. Certainly, no NGO or non-profit I know of does this. Raises a red flag for me.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-profitorganization.a...
If so, I'd like to point out that expenses are not the only way you can spend on a company. Someone may also invest profit that they have made into expansion, for example.
"profit" can never be consumed by expenses, by definition (as you have pointed out). Profit can, however, be re-invested in a company, as opposed to being taken by the owner or shareholders, or whatever.
1. Business operates for X days (1 quarter, 1 year, whatever)
2. Business calculates it's profit (revenue - expenses)
3. Business now has a choice on what to do with it's profit.
At t = 3, the profit is not an expense, though it will ultimately be used to benefit the company/cause (if it's a nonprofit).
nonprofit organizations must decide what to do with profit, if they have generated more revenue than they have expenses. The difference between a nonprofit organization (from another org) is that the profit must go either back into the company, or into the cause. Arguably, the money that goes back into the company goes into the cause anyway, as it is in service of the cause.
Maybe it's just a matter of semantics, I could see it being incorrect to call something "profit" that is never allowed to be spent on anything other than the company/cause. However, the strict definition of profit is pretty bare-bones, simply revenue - expenses, so I think it qualifies.
I pasted investopedia already so here is wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization
Note "surplus revenues", and if you click that, wiki says they're basically the same as "profit" (because... surplus revenue is profit...)
Do not forget, they may have some issues with security or user growth, but founder generally tries to promote his own product, everyone will behave like he does (promote in product in any legal way), when they have enough resources.
For academics, when you get a fellowship or grant that must be recorded on the 1099-misc in the united states. And you pay full taxes as an independent contractor.
I am not a lawyer nor am I an accountant. This is not legal or tax advice :)
Note that 'grants' is bolded in the article. A grant is not a prize, and a prize it not a grant. So it's one or the other, and since what they are doing would normally be called a prize (or reward), the fact that they specifically mention grants is likely because it has special significance.
It's like if I say to my uncle, "I'm giving you a gift of $10,000 in the form of a loan. Enjoy your $10,000". A gift can't be a loan, and a loan can't be a gift (for tax purposes). But I might say that, because the tax treatment for loans and gifts are different.
So that goes to my question of whether or not calling it a grant has tax significance.
Developers and artists should be treated like stakeholders rather than cannon-fodder and free labor.
Hey pizza bot!
> Hey Jeremy! The usual tonight?
Nah, I'd like to try something new
> We have added three new items:
> 1) Hawaiian
> 2) BBQ
> 3) The Works
Option 3 please.
> Shall I send this to your home?
What do you mean by "non-syntax specific"?
- loose syntax, as in human language, which we can parse although it is loose (e.g. I went to the shop, I went to shop, I went to de shop - all are parseable by humans to get the same meaning [1])
OR
- something else?
[1] except that "I went to shop" could also mean "I went shopping" - but ignore that for now, it's just not a good an example.
also feel free to use the code when participating in the challenge
Anything the bot-builder wants really. I think the aim of this grant is to explore the limits of what bots could be used for.
Bots don't have to use AI or ML to be useful: right now I use the @gif bot to search for and reply with reaction gifs inline (without having to launch browser->search->download->attach into chat). You can create a Jenkins/CI bot that chimes in when a build fails, or create a weather bot that tells you it's going to rain
> We‘ll be giving out the prizes in several batches throughout 2016, so the final deadline is December, 31.
I created a GIF sharing game bot with a few friends and we are going to apply and it'd be great to get this!
We'd love some feedback - http://mrwgame.com/