| ▲ | Telegram Serverless(core.telegram.org) |
| 90 points by soheilpro 5 hours ago | 51 comments |
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| ▲ | codedokode 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| It looks like they are making their own cloud, with such a little team? Also we should be using Matrix but it doesn't have half of the features (no channels, no mini apps etc). Also I wonder whether compiling JS to native code is worth the hassle or not. In browser, it would slow down page load, but here you need to compile only on deploy. |
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| ▲ | imhoguy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Clever idea! Although after reading it briefly I see a need for secrets storage. I've made one Telegram bot hosted on VPS with Docker and cloud LLM. It also interacts with a few other outside services and all credentials are injected via env vars now. Should I push them as `.env` file for Telegram serverless? |
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| ▲ | eamag 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What are the quotas like execution time, storage etc? |
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| ▲ | zb3 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I thought this was about P2P messaging (without servers, hence server "less"), but no, obviously "serverless" on HN has to mean "run code on someone else's servers".. |
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| ▲ | domh 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's. |
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| ▲ | AgharaShyam 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I wish WhatsApp did... hopefully it goes the way of BBM and a more developer friendly platform becomes the norm among normies. | | |
| ▲ | domh an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | WhatsApp does appear to have some "business" account/API type stuff which I assume is scriptable. But I don't believe it's got a free tier for personal use (although I haven't personally looked). It is always preferable to use WhatsApp to contact a business than calling up. | |
| ▲ | pajamasam 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Hmmm no, Meta is making money from businesses using their API. |
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| ▲ | timtody an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not having a bot API is one of the many things that makes Signal amazing |
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| ▲ | raybb 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Providing a SQLite db out of the box is a nice touch. I wonder if they're capping it's size in any way. |
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| ▲ | AnonC 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Emphasis mine: > Each invocation runs in a lightweight V8 isolate, close to Telegram's own systems, so calls to the Bot API and your database are quick and reliable. Telegram’s servers are distributed worldwide. I understand that the calls to the Bot API may be quick because the serverless code would be propagated to the edge, but how does it handle an SQLite DB? Is that also replicated to guarantee quick access from anywhere? |
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| ▲ | laosb 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Telegram's servers are far from "distributed worldwide": In fact, it currently has only 5 logical "data center"s, and while DC3 is still on, clues [0] seem to suggest DC3 doesn't actually carry user data at all now, and both DC2 and 4 are in Amsterdam, so essentially they just need to serve 3 locations. Also, Telegram's protocol design only allows for connecting to user's home DC for any write interactions (except media, which in most cases still is home DC, or a "media DC" alongside the home DC). Bots are based on the same DC of the user, so almost all meaningful interactions will happen only on one DC for any specific bot. [0]: https://dev.moe/en/3025 | |
| ▲ | netsharc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My first guess would be replicaton isn't that critical, because a user would mostly interact with an instance that's nearby, and this instance has their data. But the page mentions: > Games and Tools — including leaderboards, quizzes and more. A leaderboard that's globally consistent, huh, that's not trivial. Maybe they just propagate the SQL commands to all their servers... | |
| ▲ | weli 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I guess the v8 isolate is heavily restricted and sandboxed and can't be used to access the local filesystem |
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| ▲ | bdcravens 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| With the popularity of Hermes, OpenClaw, etc, BotFather is quite a linchpin in the AI ecosystem. |
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| ▲ | victorbjorklund 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't see anything about pricing. |
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| ▲ | simonw an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The lack of a clear business model does make me hesitate in building anything substantial on it. Supposedly Telegram has been profitable since 2024 but there's crypto stuff mixed in there so it's hard to know how stable that is. | |
| ▲ | catapart 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm also curious about this. | |
| ▲ | sam_lowry_ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | free so far. | |
| ▲ | dist-epoch 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | sounds free to me |
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| ▲ | honeycrispy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We're never getting away from Javascript, are we |
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| ▲ | nunobrito 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A few questions and if someone knows please help: 1) storage limits?
2) can access the internet? If so: bandwidth limits? Thanks! |
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| ▲ | mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Good lord. This reeks of LLM... why should I use your product when you can't be bothered to have a human write it? Why should I trust it to work correctly or have been decently tested, neither of which is a given when having an AI vibe-code it? And why is it one huge single page of word salad instead of self-contained units? Anyway, good to see someone post a fully self contained example demonstrating core concepts. At least one thing done right. |
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| ▲ | adlpz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sounds like it's free, so, why the hate? May as well have zero docs. I don't think they're trying to convince you of anything. | | |
| ▲ | mschuster91 an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Sounds like it's free, so, why the hate? I see undisclosed usage of AI as a theft of my time. |
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| ▲ | stavros 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is off-topic, but I was kind of surprised to see this page written by Claude. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised, but I somehow didn't expect it. |
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| ▲ | jore 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Out of curiosity - how did you figure this out? I cannot find any hints about that. Was it the language used? | | |
| ▲ | ameliaquining 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Confirmed AI: https://www.pangram.com/history/2c717a3e-a9c6-4595-96a0-1aa8... | |
| ▲ | zackkrida 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | language, structure. look how much negation there is. the construction "no A, no B, no, C" is used several times. or another example, the following sentence: "handlers/ is flat — no subdirectories" who writes like this? you'd just write "handlers/ is a flat folder" or similar. | |
| ▲ | usui 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I often see replies to AI-generated posts being pointed out here asking what makes it obvious. Is it that difficult to notice the indicators? Is it mostly undetected by English-as-a-second-language speakers, people inexperienced with generative AI, or is it something else? | | |
| ▲ | vidarh 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I rather think the surprise is a result of technical users wildly overestimating how obvious these markers are to people. |
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| ▲ | haunter 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing | |
| ▲ | petercooper 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "it doesn't silently go unnoticed", "would be silently inert", "instead of silently overwriting", "you can never silently overwrite" The biggest tell for me is overuse of the term "silently". "quietly" is another one you often see from Claude in particular. Models love adverbs for whatever reason, whereas a human writer would use them in moderation for emphasis or prefer terms like "by accident". | | |
| ▲ | ameliaquining a minute ago | parent | next [-] | | In my experience, "silently overwrite" appeared regularly in technical writing long before LLMs were a thing, because it's a useful concept to be able to point at. "Silently go unnoticed" is kind of redundant, though. | |
| ▲ | IanCal an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Accidental things and silent things are very different. Accidental means you didn't mean to do it, silent means you don't know you've done it (or might not if you want to get picky, you could notice). |
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| ▲ | dools an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Have you ever “wired” anything to anything else when developing software? No, because software doesn’t involve wires, but LLMs are quite convinced that it does. | | | |
| ▲ | fakeBeerDrinker 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Possibly the excessive use of em dashes. Just a guess. | | |
| ▲ | mohammedmsgm 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is so obvious The most AI generated MD in existence. It's also th excessive use of bold, only AI can make bold hard to read. | | |
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| ▲ | stavros 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I can't quite tell you, it wasn't something specific, Claude's writing is just a specific sort of punchy. The "directly on X - no Y, no Z, no A" and the "this is the part you no longer have to do" just smell a lot like Claude. Also "removes that layer entirely", "they map cleanly onto each other", it's all just Claude. It's how you see a painting and you know it's by Picasso, let's say, or you read an author and you know it's Hemingway. Everyone has their own unique style, and so does Claude. It's just that Claude is the most prolific writer in human history now. |
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| ▲ | dist-epoch 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I finds it surprising you find it surprising. Is this the best use of a human, to write a long, detailed manual for a feature? Which most likely will be read by another LLM? |
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| ▲ | dzonga 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| telegram is full of bots and spam. before it was a better WhatsApp alternative. now either WhatsApp or Signal. |
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| ▲ | kelvinjps10 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | those bots are different to these ones, for these you have to start the interaction. bots is the most useful feature of telegram | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > telegram is full of bots It's been a core feature of Telegram since almost the beginning, and one of the main reasons I end up using Telegram, not sure why you'd think this is a drawback. The spam sucks though, not sure how they haven't got a handle on it yet. | | |
| ▲ | vachina 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you don’t join spammy groups you won’t get spam | | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fair, I am a part of a bunch of groups I no longer care about that the spam might originate from. Thanks :) |
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| ▲ | sgt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They should start charging for it. Like not a lot, maybe just a coffee a month. That should keep the bots away. | |
| ▲ | TacticalCoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I use Telegram only for groups with people I know. I've got zero issues with boths. Are you using public channels? (are those even a thing with Telegram?) | | |
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