hashlink VS TextSecure

What's missing is a way to pin web apps so that you always get the previous version (and can opt in to subsequent versions after checking their hash from a trusted source).

There is a clever way of doing this, using a bookmarklet, a dataURI, and SRI, but the UX isn't great.[0] If something like Hashlinks[1] were supported by browsers, though, this could work quite nicely.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776456

[1] https://w3c-ccg.github.io/hashlink/

> What about websites though?

It is possible for a web page to specify the expected hash of a script file, which the browser will enforce. This is called SRI (Subresource Integrity).[0]

Of course that still leaves the bootstrapping problem of how the page itself can be guaranteed to have a specific hash, but fortunately there is a clever hack that can be done with bookmarklets[1], or the page can just be saved and loaded/served locally.

While that works technically, the UX isn't great because the address bar won't show the domain of the remote server (although browsers seem to be hiding the address bar from the user more and more). A better solution would be for browsers to support Hashlinks[2], which would allow a bookmark to point to a remote page with fixed contents.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Subres...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776456

[2] https://github.com/w3c-ccg/hashlink

Moxie's reasons for disallowing Signal distribution via F-droid always rang a little flat to me ( https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127 ). Lots of chatter about the supposedly superior security model of Google Play Store, and as a result fewer eyes independently building and testing the Signal code base. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but independent and reproducible builds seem like a net positive for everyone. Always struggled to understand releasing code as open source without taking advantage of the community's willingness to build and test. Looking at it in a new light after the XZ backdoor, and Jia Tan's interactions with other FOSS folk.

Signal has documentation on how to reproduce their Play Store builds and compare them with what you've installed locally:

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...

There's nothing on Signal blog as of yet, but Signal's git repository was tagged with v7.0.0 yesterday and we can see from the commit history since the previously tagged version (v6.74.4) that there will be a setting to hide one's phone number [1], as well as disabling the previous default behavior of advertising that one is on Signal to all their contacts already using it [2].

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/8797236b5... (PNP stands for "Phone Number Privacy")

[2] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/6097e6c30...

Signal works the same but without the user tracking from Meta/Facebook. Many people use it as well but I'm surprised that a majority sticks to WhatsApp.

Telegram and Signal solve this.

Sadly yes: Looks like an open issue 13290 for Signal, sounds like they were/are indeed still interacting through google's push notification service, wat, and per a link at that issue it was a chore for Tutanota to break away once they realised it was a problem some years ago (though at least they thought about it years ago? wtf Signal...)

Here is one: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/main/reprod...

Rule 1: Posts to r/signal must relate to Signal.