Golden Borodutch

🤑 borodutch bought 125 lessin's seats (~$41149.37)

💀 It is time to talk to you about how Telegram screwed all of its users by not enabling e2e encryption by default in all chats.

Durov is in custody and it's not a stretch to say that Telegram servers will be seized by French government. The issue with the lack of e2ee isn't that the company (aka Pavel Durov) can read your messages. It's that *everyone* with access to the servers and the company can do so.

In case if French government seizes Telegram servers, all of your messages except for a very small portion of secret chats that no one uses will be accessed freely by the French government.

On the other hand, even Meta products have e2ee by default so they can't see your messages and governments can't access them even if Meta gives up all servers to the government.

And Meta is a very low bar to clear in terms of privacy.

🤔 I wonder if the Telegram team will continue to consistently release things five years after I first introduced them.

In addition to the 3 bots that were sherlocked 5 years after I launched them on Telegram, they just launched another bot almost exactly 5 years after I did.

- in 2019, I launched @tlgcoin_bot; in 2024 (5 years later), Telegram launches @tapswap_bot.

I got precisely $0 and 0 recognition from Telegram after all my work for the ecosystem.

💡 Look at the tools you use daily: is your performance negatively affected by them? Do you have too many notifications that grab you from the flow state and plummet productivity? Steve Jobs famously never let his kids use iPads, and Zuck doesn't use Facebook (or any Meta product) the way we use it. Why should you be led rather than doing what the leaders do?

This paradigm extends further towards the tool stack that you use. Are you a slave of an ecosystem, paying increasingly more money to trillion-dollar corporations for no benefit whatsoever? Are you sure you need all of these bells and whistles (that also track you) and that you can't get them anywhere else? Well, have you tried? I'm sure I have.

I've switched from iPhones to Androids around 2014. Since then, I've been buying flagship iPhones annually to test them out again (see if they've improved) — yet 2-4 weeks later, I always return them for various reasons. Mostly, I experience subpar performance and micro-freezes when using iOS. Things I can do quickly on Android don't work fast enough on iOS. For example, try opening an Android app with 2x the speed of animations and then the same app on iOS that doesn't have an animation speed-up setting. Jerry perfectly summed up my experience in this video.

Recently, I switched from MacOS to Linux. Since Apple introduced M processors, I thought it was stupid to buy any other laptop. Boy, I was wrong. It turned out that even if MacBooks on M3 are mighty (and Intel with AMD are quickly catching up), I didn't need that type of performance at all. Hence, paying a premium for something I didn't need is like driving a 911 with three kids — parents can attest to how stupid this is. Even though I can afford a full-blown 911, I opt for a Honda Odyssey. And now, having driven both, I can safely say that getting anything but minivans is not intelligent, even if you don't have kids.

MacOS was the last thing that held me back in the Apple ecosystem, and I'm so glad this period is over. I could keep spending $5500 every few years on a new MacBook, but the most recent Linux on laptop experience has freed me from this slavery. It's nice to keep making a 3-trillion company richer, but from now on, you'll have to do this without me.

🤔 "Sherlocking" is when a large company releases a feature available to users using a third-party application or service. Generally, when a company sherlocks a feature, the original inventors aren't attributed or recognized — hence the negative sentiment toward the company that sherlocks features.

The team "sherlocking" comes from a case when Apple released Spotlight, completely replacing the then-popular app "Watson," which did the same thing. Hence the joke — Sherlock replacing his beloved friend Watson. The issue here comes from the fact that the company has access to the data on what features and third-party apps are popular, making it an easy "kill" to replace them with built-in features.

Ethically, companies with access to large budgets buy out or at least recognize the original inventors. Microsoft, Spotify, and even Apple do it from time to time! But how is this relevant to Telegram or my blog?

I run a collection of fully open-source, primarily free, public goods software projects. Yesterday, 84,349,300 users used the apps I built (see the real-time statistics and the list of projects on my website). Some of these projects are Telegram-native bots.

Back in 2016, Telegram announced the bot-prize to give away $1,000,000 to the developers of popular bots with no strings attached. That was when I started building bots for Telegram, too. The same year, Telegram distributed $200,000 and completely forgot about this promise. The Telegram team hasn't granted any prizes publicly since then.

Even though I submitted all my bots for the prize, I have never intended to win anything. There are way more developers in need than I am, so I let it slide. However, the recent developments in the Telegram ecosystem are alarming. Primarily, the sherlocking happening here and publications about it are actively being silenced.

I sincerely believe in coincidences — hence, I haven't spoken up about this topic recently. Things can happen once or twice, but when they happen for the third time following the same pattern, my internal skeptic wakes up and starts to investigate. See, I will give you a pattern here and ask you a simple question.

- In 2017, I launched @voicybot; in 2022 (5 years later), Telegram integrates voice message recognition into Telegram Premium.
- In 2018, I launched @randymbot; in 2023 (5 years later), Telegram integrates raffles into the messenger.
- In 2019, I launched @temply_bot; in 2024 (5 years later), Telegram integrates quick replies into the Telegram Business.

A sherlocking a year keeps the doctor away, am I right? The worst part here is that no one ever attributed or recognized even a portion of what I've done for the Telegram ecosystem (entirely for free). I wouldn't have spoken up about it — things happen like this; the same ideas come to different people roughly simultaneously.

However, in this case, my bots had tens of millions of users, and the pattern is entirely apparent. Telegram tracks what bots are popular to later sherlock their features without any attribution or recognition, fails to deliver on promises for the bot prize, and does it constantly. This is precisely why I quit building for Telegram (see my blog post) and advise anyone who listens to also never touch the ecosystem.

Since I left building for Telegram, I've earned multiple fortunes in the ecosystems that care about developers. And it happened within months, not years of trying. I write a lot of code for a living and build a lot of open-source public goods tools. The experience is alarming: I've earned precisely $0 and zero recognition in my eight years on Telegram, even though tens of millions of users use the tools I've built.

I must warn you if you're considering starting anything on Telegram. If you put the same amount of energy into ecosystems that care about contributors, you will get exponentially more rewards for the effort.

💡 "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." — Haruki Murakami. I dedicate a chapter of my book to how you will undoubtedly struggle against something on your path to success, noting that the way you feel when you're down is totally up to you. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, suffering grants one nothing.

If you think suffering alone can benefit you, you're wrong. For instance, when you take cold showers or an unimaginable amount of overtime work or work out so much, the whole body hurts. These actions taken without a plan will end up causing you suffering — and that's it; statistically, there are no benefits. On the other hand, if you have a plan and execute it, you will have a higher chance of achieving the goal without suffering.

Some people take pride in how much they suffer. They cut off carbs from their diet and feel miserable. They sleep 5-6 hours a day and feel miserable. They dismiss the family because they have "one more thing to take care of at work" and, yes, feel miserable. You must avoid misery at all costs, and the same goes for suffering. Work smarter, not harder. No one will ever pet you on your head because you are so miserable. The most you can get is pity.

Suffering without a purpose (and let's be honest, most of your suffering does not have a purpose) actively hurts your goal of becoming successful. Opportunity costs are everywhere, and when you spend time on unnecessary suffering, you are actively choosing not to spend time on something that advances you on the journey.

In my book, I compare the lives of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Who would you want to become when you grow up? It is tempting to make an uneducated choice toward the life of Elon. Alas, one of them sleeps in the factory — and another has retired with billions and lives the dream life doing whatever he wants.

Choose the dream life over sleeping on the floor. Choose virtue over unnecessary suffering. Choose progress over screaming at the skies for all the troubles the gods send your way.