[HN Gopher] New Beeper Android app - Open beta test
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New Beeper Android app - Open beta test
Author : mderazon
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-03-14 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.beeper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.beeper.com)
| wnevets wrote:
| > On-device iMessage bridge (like Beeper Mini) is not enabled at
| this time.
|
| Wasn't this _the_ reason to use beeper on android?
| hbn wrote:
| It was one of the features, but it's existed for a while
| outside of the iMessage support. It just got a lot of eyes on
| it when they got the iMessage hack working (which Apple broke
| last I heard, not sure the current state of it)
| ollien wrote:
| AFAICR it still "works" if you do a ton of manual setup. They
| basically said they're not going to support it because it's
| bad PR
| BadHumans wrote:
| It's bad PR because Apple is going to keep breaking it and
| then people go on social media and talk about how it
| doesn't work.
| yoavm wrote:
| I use Beeper on Android to have one app through which I send
| messages on WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, LinkedIn, Facebook,
| Instagram etc. I never cared for iMessage support.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Meta had better rollout their WhatsApp bridge thing soon
| barrenko wrote:
| This works?
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Does for me, although I do self-host their stack. It's been
| surprisingly stable, given what's actually happening behind
| the scenes.
| yoavm wrote:
| It works great for me. No support for complex things:
| calls, message requests, and probably a few more. But most
| days I don't need to open any other app, and when someone
| asks me which network they can contact I honestly just
| don't care anymore. They all look exactly the same on my
| phone.
| barrenko wrote:
| Cool, anyone got a referral?
| yoavm wrote:
| sure: refer.beeper.com/descsi
| septic-liqueur wrote:
| How much would you think this degrades Signal security? I
| don't know exactly how the Signal bridge works, but
| Signal's putting so much effort into security and the
| people use it through an app like this one not vetted by
| Signal, it can't be too good I assume...
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| I switched from Android to iOS for the first time ever last
| month (was on Android since the very early 2010s), and I still
| use Beeper for everything but iMessages.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Curious how you're finding it so far? I mowed my Note20 Ultra
| in June of last year and replaced it with a 14 Pro Max then
| just last month went and swapped back to an S24 Ultra. I
| found Apple to be too restrictive. The OS level stuff was one
| thing but the app store lacking things like emulators or vape
| apps because "Apple said so" rubbed me the wrong way, whether
| I need them or not. Plus I like writing python on my phone.
| DANmode wrote:
| web-app.pax.com may be relevant to somebody's interests,
| here!
| MBCook wrote:
| It's the reason they made the news.
|
| Their ability to bridge other networks may be useful to you.
| It's what they did before the iMessage thing.
|
| I agree though a ton of their possible demand is gone now due
| to that. Add in RCS later this year, and even if iMessage came
| back I'm not sure it would be worth it to many.
|
| But hey. I didn't know they existed before that. I do now.
| That's something. I also distrust their judgement based on
| their actions. But I'm sure that not true for everyone who now
| knows they exist.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| For me, the killer feature is being able to keep up with my
| various non-SMS/MMS/RCS conversations (with prompt
| notifications) without having to install the Facebook app et al
| meowtimemania wrote:
| How does beeper work? Do I have to give beeper full access to all
| the different accounts I use for messaging?
| stavros wrote:
| Yes.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I've been on the wait-list for at least a year I think? "Open
| beta test" plus a wait-list is quite weird.
| starik36 wrote:
| If you get an invite from someone, it jumps you to the front of
| the line.
| mike_d wrote:
| So viral marketing.
| SalariedSlave wrote:
| now if only I had a small android phone I could install this app
| on...
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Hoping Eric pops in here like he does on other Beeper threads
| and sees this. I'm still checking every day for a small android
| phone.
|
| I found my Xperia z3 Compact in a drawer the other day. It was
| immediately such a pleasure to hold, I love the concept of
| having something as powerful as a smartphone in such a small
| package.
| jxdxbx wrote:
| There are 3" Android "media player" devices for under $100 on
| Amazon. No cellular but cool to play with.
| geon wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/Soyes-XS16-Smartphone-Bluetooth-
| Cellp...
|
| With cellular
| kh_hk wrote:
| Have you looked into the Jelly Phone? I used mine for over a
| year until I destroyed the battery. Was definitely small and
| got used to it pretty quick
| SalariedSlave wrote:
| Yes, Jelly phone seems decent, though I'm not a fan of the
| "rugged" design. I liked the Palm Phone, great concept. But
| they don't make them anymore.
| erohead wrote:
| That's the dream...
| odiroot wrote:
| Zenfone 10 is your last chance.
| SalariedSlave wrote:
| I'm on a Zenfone 9 and longing for something smaller.
| mcsniff wrote:
| I want to use Beeper, but funneling all my communications through
| hosted bridges (especially so Signal) is gonna be a nope, until
| they release more very deep technical and verifiable information
| about how on-device bridges work.
|
| I'm big on unified messaging from the libpurple days, but now 99%
| of my chats are in Signal so perhaps I am just not the target
| demographic for this.
| Ambroisie wrote:
| When looking at their bridge documentation for my own
| homeserver, I noticed that they do provide a way to self-host
| the bridges to be used with Beeper's homeserver as well.
|
| See https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager
| raybb wrote:
| You may be interested in a feature in the new app:
|
| > On-Device Signal Bridge
|
| Haven't tried it yet.
| anyekwest wrote:
| I use texts.com instead, honestly has worked better for me than
| beeper
| lrvick wrote:
| Beeper at least has source code for the bridges, which you
| can have some hope is the same code that they run and that
| they don't get court orders to look at the messages.
|
| If they ever chose to implement remote attestation for
| bridges, and you chose to use an open source matrix client to
| control your local keys, there is at least a potential path
| for you to prove they can't look at messages so you don't
| have to trust them.
|
| You also have the option to self host bridges and take your
| ball and go home at any time, given that Matrix is an open
| protocol. Minimal lock-in.
|
| Texts.com by contrast is completely proprietary as far as I
| can tell, with no path to self host, so it is strictly worse
| than Beeper in every way in terms of transparency.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Our code isn't open source but when you are using Texts,
| you are self-hosting it. It runs completely on your device!
| xniclb wrote:
| Great. So I have to run questionable software I can't
| even verify is legit. Where do I sign up?
| erohead wrote:
| On-device bridging works like this
| https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works. We'll put
| together a full technical deep dive for the real launch, this
| is just an open beta. Our signal bridge code is open source:
| https://github.com/mautrix/signal
|
| You don't have to use our hosted bridges, we've made it
| ridiculously easy to self host:
| https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager
| mcsniff wrote:
| I really hope it will be possible to configure the Beeper app
| to use self-hosted bridges vs using a separate Matrix client.
|
| Having the features and polish of the first party app, but
| with a user-controlled backend (like how Bitwarden does it)
| would be great.
|
| BTW, I have a Pebble on my wrist right now :)
| erohead wrote:
| That's exactly what our bridge-manager repo allows you to
| do. Self-host the bridges yourself, use the Beeper client
| app.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| What I'd really like to do (and the poster you responded
| to) is to connect your app to my own self-hosted matrix-
| server.
| traspler wrote:
| I really hope that in the future such bridges can run in secure
| enclaves to protect the re-encrypt step.
| septic-liqueur wrote:
| Lol how'd you get 99 percent of your chats on Signal I envy you
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Interesting! Anyone here remember Pidgin? It was such a fantastic
| app for chatting with friends on AIM, MSN, ICQ, gchat (XMPP), and
| IRC all from one interface. It even had an "off the record" (OTR)
| plugin that was an early example of end-to-end encryption.
|
| It was a good illustration of how an open source app could
| surpass all the proprietary alternatives because it wasn't
| subject to the same incentives as a commercial company. Although
| obviously all those companies wised up and killed XMPP...
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
| ForHackernews wrote:
| ?
|
| I was talking about https://pidgin.im/
| szszrk wrote:
| Pidgin was (is) great, but that was possible with jabber
| transports on any client. I had multiple major closed networks,
| blogging platform, RSS, IRC and more in one jabber/xmpp client.
| Cli, phone, second computer... No problem, including self
| hosted.
|
| Miss those days when companies didn't invest into building
| walled gardens.
| l72 wrote:
| I still use pidgin daily for Slack. I've even written a
| libpurple custom protocol for our own homegrown app.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Remember? Pidgin is still a core piece of infrastructure in our
| company's managed services platform, and not for lack of
| interest "upgrading" but because it's just exactly the right
| tool for the job for certain kinds of internal company
| messaging, with self-hosted XMPP.
|
| Completely defining your own secure perimeter by self hosting
| everything possible makes for extremely perfunctory audits by
| regulatory bodies for the industries (finance, mainly) we
| support.
| arcastroe wrote:
| I want to try it, but I don't want to become dependent on it if
| it will transition to a paid product in the future (It's cool,
| but I probably wouldn't pay for it).
|
| How long will it remain free to use?
| ajross wrote:
| That's a reasonable concern, but in practice the likelihood of
| the product being killed by malicious counterinteroperability
| games by Apple (and the other proprietary backents too) is far
| higher than the chance you'll be screwed by the manufacturer.
|
| Beeper isn't in a business that's every going to make them
| significant money. Their core value proposition is, ironically,
| that reverse engineering iMessage is "just hard enough". If it
| becomes too hard, they fail.
|
| But if it becomes too easy, they fail too because everyone will
| launch Apple-compatible chat apps! In fact the worst case is
| that the protocols end up standardized, in which case they'll
| have to compete with genuine open source implementations.
|
| Basically, I'm absolutely in their corner in this fight, but
| I'd never bet on Beeper as a product.
| septic-liqueur wrote:
| I would gladly pay a few bucks a month for such product. It
| solves a real problem
| maelito wrote:
| The app tells me I need Google messages to handle SMS.
|
| But I don't want to depend on Google on my phone.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I'm wondering if this app will eventually work with other (e.g.
| self-hosted) Matrix accounts or if it'll remain locked to
| Beeper's.
| yoavm wrote:
| You can communicate with other self-hosted Matrix accounts
| already. I think that was always the case.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| I think what OP meant is if you could use the beeper app with
| your own matrix account, not with username@beeper.com.
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