Telegram Isn't for Sale
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Another red flag, is that they were never blocked in Russia.
They look suspicious.
Second would've been a red flag if the Russian gvmnt would've been routinely blocking other chat systems.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/16/telegram-fined-by-russia...
The prime source seems to be founder Durov's social-media posts, retelling his communications to/from regulators.
Re: a huge office & a server farm.
Here:
https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-...
Re: the office - from what I gather, they maintain a shell company in Russia that sits in the former Telegram office. The photo merely shows that they may have a large office space, which may have been inherited by this company from their VK split for all we know. I really can't tell from this post if they do any development in their Moscow office.
No they are NOT banned, I just tried Line & WeChat.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/08/technology/wechat-blocked-ru...
And given the fact, that vk.com were taken away from Durov by Mr. Sechin (RosNeft CEO), close friend of Mr. Putin, i highly doubt he is in bed with 3 letter service.
How is that possible? Are the servers behind an onion network?
This is a trap a lot of people fall into and I don't know why.
I don't know much about Telegram's system, but if it is run on centralized servers, then that is a serious weakness...adversaries who have the capability to find and disrupt can exploit that so even though the communication may be end-to-end secure, the entire system however is not resilant against such attacks.
It's only a bad thing if the obscurity is critical to the security of what you are protecting. For example if you make your API completely open, but obscure it inside an app and make the domain hard to discover e.g a random string that's obviously not good.
However if you use obscurity as an extra layer in a system that is secured by other means such that removing the obscurity would not have an adverse effect on the security of the system that's fine. Hence there's no reason not to obscure things to make it more difficult for an attacker as long as that's not all your security.
Outside of a mesh network or some peer to peer solution this doesn't seem like a problem that's solvable.
... and counter myself by reminding that all computer security is obscurity, just varying levels.
I think, in the end, we do need to measure things :)
This is irrelevant to E2E or even PFS. Basically, it's about message archive security - either it's leaked (and no amount of encryption and authentication would help) or not.
E2E systems can sync message history - by mutually verifying device keys and then propagating data across such trusted links. I mean, if someone can send you a large file there is no reason one of your devices can't send a message to another your device, with a large encrypted blob of what it knows about the past. And if all devices (including possible server-kept archive private key derivation passphrase) are lost, then message history is gone.
If a server can decrypt your messages, then it's not really E2E anymore, is it?
But I was thinking about a scheme, where the key is encrypted with a passphrase (that user's ought to remember) and kept on server. You fetch the blob, decrypt it (server can't), get the key and thus are able to decrypt the existing data (message archive).
This lowers security, but adds a significant convenience of being able to recover history if the only device is broken or lost. Which may be important for casual users.
The server-side code is not open.
The way Signal tackles the problems is smart gradual development and they are the closest to making the holy grail - e2e encryption without users even noticing it. There are no "secure" and "not secure" messages in signal - it is all encrypted and you can't turn it off. That's awesome.
Signal is more secure, yes. However its UI, UX, accessibility, feature sets and performance are absolutely in baby shoes.
You're better off with Matrix/Riot or XMPP. Neither requires a phone number, both offer the ability to communicate securely, even with a compromised server. Both also support multiple devices, group chats and federation.
Signal periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers for contact discovery. Names are never transmitted, and the information is not stored on the servers. The server responds with the contacts that are Signal users and then immediately discards this information. Your phone now knows which of your contacts is a Signal user and notifies you if your contact just started using Signal.
However; I don't know if their server is peer-reviewed on a regulary basis, nor do i know if the software (besides the used ciphers) is also peer-reviewed. Can't find anything on it.
I use Tox with my geek friends and Telegram with my less geek friends. I also plan to give a try to ring.cx
The gcm dependency was removed 10 months ago: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/commit/1669...
You can get the apk outside of gplay on their website: https://signal.org/android/apk/
ok, so he's basically suggesting to get of rid government. I respect different stands on the size/role of the government in society, but this is just a weak argument. What works out for him, won't work out for everybody.
Really doesn't feel like it.
The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair.
Just because he advocates for lower taxes doesn’t mean he want anarchy.
> The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair.
Please don't pluck figures like that out of thin air - I worked in Berlin as a developer and I easily took home ~60% of my monthly salary (placing tax at around 40%).
Those taxes already comprise of Social Security* (roughly 20%) and income tax (the remainder 20%).
* Health, Retirement, Unemployment etc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/113...
Notably: "The changes include German banks now having to withhold the tax on capital gains of account-holders who are church members."
This tax is levied by the churches. You may be against the fact that they get this right because you support a more strict separation of church and state (which is not in the spirit of the German constitution) but this is hardly something the state is to blame for.
I'm not necessarily for or against it, and it does seem pragmatic for the government to automatically collect it on the church's behalf. The part that does seem strange to me is that you have to renounce your religion to opt out of the automatic deduction, but I understand it's a cultural difference. I'm more used to the idea of contributions as voluntary.
(I'm not German or religious, just an Australian who is a fan of Berlin & Germany and often considers moving there.)
https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/stop-paying-german-church-t...
[0]: It is not a regular contract but even those can bind you if your parents entered into them in your name.
You're then taxed 2% of your gross income unless you pay a fee and visit multiple government departments. The money is distributed to private parties with little oversight on its spending. This is enforced by the same body and with the same penalties and rules as other forms of taxation.
I think at this point, we're arguing about the definitions of "opt out" and "enforced by the state". "Evil" is open to interpretation, but I stand by it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/41305s/church_tax_...
> but answer questions about your upbringing truthfully
Whether or not you answer questions truthfully has no impact on taxation. You might get around paying it if you lie but you are still liable for the tax.
> same penalties and rules as other forms of taxation
It is not, here is a decent publicly available primer: https://www.hrr-strafrecht.de/hrr/archiv/08-08/index.php?sz=... In short: The usual tax offences don't apply to church tax.
> Der Verwaltungsbeamte fragt stattdessen, in Unkenntnis der Sachlage, einfach: „Sind Sie katho-lisch?“, oder „Sind sie getauft?“ Die Betroffenen erkennen nicht die mit der Frage verbundene deutsch-katholische Problematik und antworten mit Ja, wenn sie jemals getauft wurden. Daraufhin wird vom Verwaltungsbeamten das entsprechende Konfessionsmerkmal in den Akten vermerkt. Diese Zuerkennung des Etiketts „kath.“ führt dazu, dass die Betroffenen von diesem Zeitpunkt an von der staatlichen Verwaltung als Mitglieder der „Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts Katholische Kirche Deutschland“ geführt werden – mit allen Konsequenzen.
They ask if you're baptized, which can be true if you're an atheist. This saddles you with a tax obligation that you must then opt out of even though you're a member of no religion. The tax is collected by the state.
Ich denke, dass Sie nur streiten wollen. Es ist genug für mich.
There is no difference between the "Körperschaft des Öffentlichen Rechts Katholische Kirche Deutschland" and the worldwide catholic church. That's a single entity.
(I say that as a non-religious person that never has been a member of a religious entity. If a community decides to tax its members they should be free to.)
(I'm not arguing that this naive computation makes sense, you pay different VAT rates or no VAT at all, depending on what you buy. I don't think you have to pay VAT on rent, which is a significant part of the income for many people and reduced VAT on most groceries)
The table on wikipedia[1] shows Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden at all over 50%. Germany at 44.5% while the UK is 34.4%, Australia at 34.3% and United States at 26%
[0] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REV#
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
In Munich my taxes on my pay check were around 45% as a software dev (including pension & insurance). So 70% total tax might not be far off the mark (assuming that you spend most of your income on VAT goods & services). Although you have to remember it's not 23% of your totoal income, but 23% of the remaining 55%.
There are also other hidden taxes though - import duty, corporation tax and council tax (cant remember if that was a thing in Germany), to name a few.
Once you account for the 17% being part of your remaining money, you get an effective incoming VAT tax rate of 8.5% (assuming you keep around 50%, if you keep more, this goes up)
I believe the highest amount of income tax you pay is around 60%, plus 8.5% you get close to 70%. However, most people will pay closer to 45 and 50% tax or less so a more realistic figure is 50% to 60% income tax.
It should probably also be included when you get benefits from things paid for in part by this, ie your insurances and pensions and such.
The blue curve in that graph is the nominal tax rate (Grenzsteuersatz) and the green curve the effective rate: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkommensteuer_(Deutschland)#...
For example, say your gross wage is 5k/month, the net wage 2.8k and the employer pays 6k. So you take home about 47% of what the employer pays.
However, looking at the OECD figures for Germany of yearly tax revenue (all types of taxation) per capita (15 kUSD) and yearly average wages (45 kUSD), you'd think 30% was the average tax pressure. It then makes sense that you'd pay slightly more taxes, given that you probably earn more.
What the other person may have referred to is some combination involving the tax wedge (the ratio between labour taxes and labour cost not counting taxes), which is 50% in Germany currently, and was near 55% a few years ago. But that number is not relevant to this discussion...
It's roughly 40.5% for most middle class people. If your salary is 4,000€ per month, you get wired 2,380€ to your bank account. Income tax, social security contributions, retirement contributions etc. already deducted.
You could add 19% VAT for all purchases on your tax burden, but that's not 70%.
Even under a charitable interpretation this is simply wrong.
I suppose you have no first-hand experience, but have read that on social media?
And no, she does not earn 5 figures, 4-6k gross per month with 1 part-time employee for the bureaucracy stuff (bills, phone service, faxing, scanning etc.). With a 60 hour week.
You must be counting all kinds of other expenses. Professional insurance or bar membership, for example.
Also worth noting that that tax includes full health insurance.
You can easily calculate your take home pay for Germany here: http://www.parmentier.de/steuer/steuer.htm?wagetax.htm
My total tax burden in Germany (Munich) was around 65%-ish, depending on exactly how aggressively you want to factor corporate taxes into consumer prices.
A better measure would be the tax quota (gross national product divided by all taxes and contributions) which is about 35%. This is the effective rate the state gets for everything it does.
[0]: Such as the RWI study which really can't be accused of downplaying the numbers http://shop.freiheit.org/download/P2@675/96532/A4_Steuern%20...
And when you're done doing so, and decide that it's not a good deal for the money, then you're told to do it again, and again, until you get the "right" answer the person patronizingly telling you to do so expects.
It's reasonable to have a discussion about the most reasonable, efficient, and appropriate way to fund certain things, as well as whether they should be funded at all, and whether funding them should be mandatory. Such discussions should not be derailed by people simply saying "think about what you get" as though the people participating in them haven't already thought about that just because they come to different conclusions.
I think it's unreasonable to express a simple (one-sided) argument within this subject and not expect a one-sided answer from someone.
It is truly a complex subject.
Now, I expect someone to disagree with that statement. :)
I'll amend my statement to "privatization of a functional public system, ostensibly to provide better/cheaper service".
Examples from my own backyard include the Danish State Railways, Ørsted (previously DONG), TDC (previously TeleDanmark, which was previously KTAS, JTAS and Fynsk Telefon) and others.
Were they perfect? No, there was a lot of waste and mismanagement of resources. But as investors came in and demanded rationalization and austerity measures in the name of Holy Profit, customer service and general quality plummeted.
The current state of ISPs/telcos in the US is another good example of privatization gone bad.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: since we warned you before and you didn't stop, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
The contributions are not extortionately expensive. It may seem that way if you are healthy, high-earner, and young. But looking at the actual cost of providing healthcare it's pretty competitively priced. Over the lifetime of a person private health insurance is not that much cheaper. You can view the difference as a tax supporting the poor and chronically ill if you like.
Interesting tidbit that many people tend to forget about: Health care payments are capped. The maximum monthly income that gets counted is 4425 EUR/month of which about 14% get paid in total. So if you earn 10k a month you effectively pay a lower rate. The effective health care rate drops for high-earners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
If I remember correctly, the split for a typical Soviet citizen was 60/40, and this is where the West will be this decade if government expenses will continue rising at the speed they do.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/...
Also, 10,000 households in the 1950s is roughly equivalent to the top 1% of the top 1%, and exactly who i’d expect to be taxed at a rate of 90%+.
It’s not that people didn’t have money — they didn’t have anything to buy that they actually wanted. The same applied to the government-owned businesses. The economy was flush with rubles that everyone desperately wanted to spend on something. The tax rate was just optics.
In USSR, 60 percent of economic value of labour was taken by the state. The West went from <20% to over 50% since WW2 and is about exceed that 60% soon.
Besides, it’s not about just me: the whole point of taxes is that it gives options to everyone, not just those lucky enough to be born to wealthy parents.
I have a hard time believing that a messaging app founder would spend his money on charities more usefully than the government would spend it on basic services. (Assuming he would donate an amount anywhere close to the tax rate, which he certainly wouldn’t.)
Then how does this thinking fit with the reality of taxes increasing everywhere, year after year? Does that mean that services are getting better? Because you know, it's actually the opposite. It's getting worse: more and more illiteracy in schools, inflation of degrees that don't get you any job, more unemployment (or stagnant at best), healthcare with less and less services... etc.
One part of it is that there's more of it: more elderly people that require and receive care.
Of course, it's yet to be seen how well b) will play out in practice.
I care about X. X would like to recieve money backed by my payments. Does that mean I owe them those payments?
How well do Ponzi schemes play out in practice?
Note that "we voted to confiscate your assets" is NOT a valid vote. "No taxation without representation" fails where we have no hope to recover what we've wasted here.
Or, as you seem to be suggesting, we're just waiting for a big crash while making sure it will be real big, while crunching in process.
But yes, it appears we're waiting for a big crash, which is likely the result of those who __are__ likely to profit from it represent a substantive portion of the electorate, resulting in our leaders being reluctant in finding other/better systems.
But yes, the bootstrapping is still an interesting problem.
Can you show data to back this up? To my knowledge, income taxes in all Western countries are lower today than they were in the '50s or '70s.
Let me do the calculation for Belgium for you:
$1 -> First, because yearly the employer has to pay you for 13.92 months, not 12 (end of year bonus thing), we take that out. That's 14% (but you get 20 days 1.5 times paid holidays, and an end of year bonus, which is taxed at a higher rate, but you do get that)
$0.86 -> "patronale bijdragen" (30%) -> $0.6 (even this ignores a few taxes that stem from having employees at all, and assumes there is no union at your workplace. Unions are extra).
$0.6 -> brutto <> netto (depends on total pay because this is a progressive tax, but let's assume you have a normal pay (which gets you into the higest tax bracket and taxed at roughly 40%, let's say 50k euros/year before tax, which is not a particularly large amount) -> $0.36 [1]
$0.36 -> VAT 21% is charged on this -> $0.285
So total tax in .be, for normal workers, is 71.5% (a bit less if you make very little, more if you make more).
This is a strict underestimate, as it assumes you're renting, not owning any real estate, producing zero garbage, not using public transport, harbours or airports, or a car or any kind of motorized vehicle, don't use fuel for anything, not using electricity, gas or water, not ...
Also: you might think this is fair. Everybody pays this, right ? Well, there's one tiny little detail that allows anyone sufficiently rich to evade almost all taxes : capital gains is not taxed in Belgium. Needless to say, this is a hole in the tax code big enough to drive the "bagger 288" through, but only open to the rich (more extreme examples have their own company own things like their house, and they "charge" their own company rent to pay almost entirely with pre-tax money, and you charge their own company rent which is not taxed according to the above calculation). [2]
Aside from cementing the position of the rich, and attracting French comedians, I'm not sure what this accomplishes. [3]
And in case you're wondering about the people who decide all these taxes. Surely they pay those taxes themselves, right ? No [4]. They feel they don't owe the state 71.5%, they feel they owe 12% + VAT, or about 30%, less than half of what their subjects pay)
So no, it's just the normal workers that pay this amount. If you are rich and can get your money paid out to you however you want, then you are taxed at less than 30%, or nothing if you "invest" it all (for instance in that house you live in and rent to yourself). If a politician likes you enough, or needs you, you can get a job that doesn't owe these taxes in government.
Still think it was higher in the 50s ? VAT was 0%, pre-pre-tax taxes (patronale bijdragen) were 0%, and income tax was nominally higher, with the highest bracket at 60% starting pretty high (but again no taxes on income that was packaged in companies). So let's say a well paid consultant in the 50s would have been taxed at something like 45%-50% total.
The argument socialist make to further increase the taxes is, of course, not to tax the rich more. That cannot be discussed in public (and of course has nothing to do with the fact that nearly all leftist politicians are rich landlords that have never once in their life paid tax like this).
The worst of it is, this is correct, but if you tell this to a friend ... they don't believe you ... hell some I have gone through this with them in detail, and they still don't believe me.
They don't believe it to the point that they truly don't understand why construction companies pull crap like having their employees "resident" in Poland. Yes those labourers get less money, but the vast majority of the savings is from not having them subject to the Belgian tax system.
What this pays for ? Social security and pensions. Oh, and total amount the government managed to save for future pension payouts with these taxes ? Zero. 0 comma 0. The amount of elderly is rapidly going up, and taxes will need to rise, at minimum, 100% (from their current level, ie. taxes on wages will need to rise to 140% of pay) if the current level of benefits for the elderly is to be maintained.
[1] https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2011/12/belgium-in...
[2] http://www.taxbites.be/taxation/content/view/64/42/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/dec/22/gerard-depardie...
[4] http://www.brusselstimes.com/magazine2/5828/myths-and-truths...
>but again no taxes on income that was packaged in companies
Glad that you noted that. I feel that packaging your own income in shell companies is very common across the Western world
> $1 -> First, because yearly the employer has to pay you for 13.92 months, not 12 (end of year bonus thing), we take that out. That's 14% (but you get 20 days 1.5 times paid holidays, and an end of year bonus, which is taxed at a higher rate, but you do get that)
Why are you subtracting 14% from the employee here? That 1.92 month bonus is money that ends up in the employee's pocket. From the employee's point of view, you should be adding 16% here -- for every $1, the employee actually gets $1.16 when the full year is considered.
If you count bonuses as losses to the employee, that would make for some very unhappy Wall Street bankers (where bonuses can easily exceed yearly pay).
2) what you're saying might be true, but it shouldn't. And it certainly isn't true for non-multinational businesses. They (should) pay 21% on their (revenue - COGS). Of course Apple fakes this (like FB, GOOG, XOM, ...) by including "intellectual property from Apple Bahamas" as a resource all their products are "made from", and it "somehow" eats up all of the profit they would normally have to pay VAT on. But this is tax avoidance/abuse, and not the normal case. Frankly, this should be illegal, but that's impossible due to international treaties.
So perhaps you could say that since Apple is a big multinational it is a bad example as that makes it much more complex. But it doesn't change how taxes work for everyday purchases.
Make it "a locally made can of beer" and none of this applies at all.
To be exact at the beginning of the calculation I'm calculating euros that your employer spends on you. At the end of the calculation is money you have given to someone else for a good or service that they can actually use for something.
If you want to look at it from an employee's perspective, you're right taxes would look different. In fact, on your "bruto" pay you'll pay income tax, which will come out at around 45%-50% if you're on something around 50k euros/year bruto. And yes, add 14% because of the 13.92 (well, keep in mind that it'll be taxed at the 50% tax rate, and there are additional taxes levied on top of that 50% on that amount, so frankly it'd be safer to assume you get 5-6% on top of your bruto pay actually deposited in your bank account).
I feel like this is a way the government masks how high taxes are, but of course you can look at it however you want. I guarantee, however, that employers budget for your pay in terms of euros they need to pay to anyone to have you on the payroll, and I guarantee that when someone decides on the price to sell you something, they'll consider VAT to not be part of the money they get.
Government are ultimate monopolies: always getting worse and more expensive.
Maybe you are thinking about a handful of functioning, high quality governments (US, Germany, Nordic States) but I am thinking about the great majority of the governments on the globe (Africa, Asia, E Europe) which provide really crappy, expensive services.
I also don't want to shop around for roads, police, fire service, garbage collection, or any number of other things provided by my taxes. I definitely don't want people less well off to go without those things because they couldn't pay. The point of taxes, and particularly progressive taxes, is to ensure everyone has access to services while placing the burden for that on those most able to afford it. That isn't particularly well implemented in many cases, but I strongly believe it should be the goal.
Does it necessarily? Corporations are looking for profit growth, and the customer will pay for that.
Imagine a service where a public provider is replaced with three private corporations. Superficially there's competition and freedom of choice... But what if the three companies all operate at 80% margin, are constantly squeezing on quality to drive the margin even higher, and they are owned by multinationals that spend enormous amounts on lobbying to prevent new entrants in the market? It's easy to see how both price and quality can be worse in this case than it was with the single public provider.
That’s the nice thing about a system of taxation, in that no one is penalized additionally while doing good.
Nice Strawman. So complaining about high taxes means you are either for or against having a government?
There’s also fees that the administration can levy as payment for specific acts, they’re bound to that act.
Social security payments are not taxes.
I agree with you. In my experience most people in Canada, and perhaps the US too, consider any government mandated deductions from your gross salary to be "taxes," regardless of the final destination of the money.
This is why you have people arguing that health care contributions and social security payments are "taxes"
Source: lived in North America and Europe
In the same way, donations are not tax (but because they are just contributions to the welfare, they are tax-deductible).
Compulsory Social Security payments to the Government are as much tax as VAT.
There are lots of mandatory payments that are not taxes: To register a car, you need proof of insurance. Mandatory, government controlled, not a tax. Want to build in flood plains? Some regions enforce a flood insurance. Mandatory, not a tax. Want to register a business in germany? Need to be member of the IHK and pay membership fees. Mandatory, government enforced, not a tax.
Money paid to the Rentenversicherung, to health insurance etc does not go to the government. It goes to semi-private entities (mostly Körperschaften öffentlichen Rechts) and the government has very little control over it other than negotiating the rate and negotiating the mandatory payouts. The money does not go to the government, it cannot be spent on anything other than the purpose it way paid for: Arbeitslosenversicherung pays for the year of Arbeitslosengeld, pension funds for your pension and health insurance when you're ill. All of this may be additionally supported by taxes, but that money comes from the regular tax pool. The individual health insurance providers are actually competing and you, as a member can vote for the governing council of your health insurance.
Considering he grew up under the USSR, Yeltsin and then Putin I don't really find that surprising. Perhaps he'd have a different point of view if he came from a society where he wasn't forced to sell his social network.
Charity and monetization don't go hand in hand.
The problem is on the word monetize. It seems like the idea might be to sell ads which will eventually require some form of personalization even though it is not explicitly sold. Just like what happened with whatsapp. It is free but we saw what was tried with FB integration.
When you work for a charity, do you ask for a raise? Do you get a bonus if you collect more money? How much to you get to keep?
Not even mentioning that sometimes the money goes through a chain of charities, all making a living out of it, but leaving almost nothing for the final beneficiary.
I got one of those this week, and I'm very excited. I haven't yet chosen how to respond. Please discuss it at my Ask HN: