News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by peterburkimsher on Monday October 25, 2021 @07:53AM (#28986775)
I wish that WhatsApp could make a public API. I'm very thankful that Facebook is integrating WhatsApp into their services, because that gives me hope that a true web interface will be developed.

For me, it takes between 10 hours (worst case) to 5 minutes (best case) to open WhatsApp.

My iPhone 4S is too old, so opening WhatsApp gives a message "This version of WhatsApp ha..., Update WhatsApp, Your update will be free of cha...". Clicking Update WhatsApp opens the App Store, and clicking Update results in another error message: "This application requires iOS 10.0 or later."

So I only use WhatsApp through BlueStacks Android emulator on my personal laptop. That's what leads to the 10 hour worst-case response time: a full working day, including commute. The 5 minute best-case is because BlueStacks takes a very long time to open, and runs my laptop fans really loud.

This is not only a pain point with WhatsApp, it's also a problem with WeChat, KakaoTalk, LINE, even 9gag (for posting videos).

Meanwhile, email continues to work just fine on my decade-old phone, mbasic.facebook.com is particularly speedy, iMessage still works, and Hacker News is great :)

Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by agustif on Monday October 25, 2021 @08:38AM (#28987078)
Hey, if you do prefer that, I too have a broken phone, but the new multi-device beta let's you to have whatsapp in your computer with a powered-off phone. That works for me.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/web/download-and-installation/how-t...

Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by egberts1 on Monday October 25, 2021 @08:27AM (#28986995)
Those are all the apps with the worst privacy policy set at the Google and Apple stores.