Most cited

Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 44 posts.

Networking & Internet
2021
5

Why Isn’t Telegram End-to-End Encrypted by Default (2017)

I've been getting this question more often this year. It's based on the wrong assumption that some other popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp are "end-to-end encrypted by default", while Telegram is not. This post is intended to disprove this myth that has been so carefully crafted by Facebook/WhatsApp marketing…

6

Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of…

20

The Actual OSI Model

I have said before that I believe that teaching modern students the OSI model as an approach to networking is a fundamental mistake that makes the concepts less clear rather than more. The major reason for this is simple: the OSI model was prescriptive of a specific network stack designed alongside it, and that…