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Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

airbornos.com

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Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#73
post #8
post #5

As for the crypto, am I correct in seeing that it uses PBKDF2 to derive an AES key from their password. And then it uses SJCL's encrypt/decrypt methods?

Yes, that's correct. Unless Web Crypto is available, in which case it uses that.

How does password / key recovery work?

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#74
post #70
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, because of https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=15596604 . Why would you like to self-host? (Not implying that there are no valid reasons, just curious which reasons are important to you.)

Nothing in particular, I just already have a server set up with a good amount of storage because I didn't want to pay year-to-year for something like dropbox to save photos and videos to. I'd also be interested in getting the documents to appear in my Nextcloud and vice-versa. At the end of the day, it's mostly about having everything in a central location with a good set of backups in place.

I see. What are you missing in Collabora? There's also OnlyOffice for Nextcloud, which is quite a feature-complete editor, I think: https://api.onlyoffice.com/editors/owncloud

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#75
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. While possible, Airborn OS isn't really meant to deploy yourself. If you want that, you might be better off with nextCloud or similar. Airborn OS was built to have a service that you don't have to self-host, while still being just as secure as self-hosting: https://www.airbornos.com/docs/security

> Airborn OS was built to have a service that you don't have to self-host, while still being just as secure as self-hosting This is a better tag line than what I got when I loaded the website.

Yeah, although I worry that the average user might not know what self-hosting is, or why it is secure.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#76
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you were running an operation at Google scale, the challenge of fighting fraud is something that people who have not worked at that scale can only imagine. These guys will also encounter fraud at some point. And when they do so, I guarantee they will be no better at it than Google this.

If they can't access the data, then they shouldn't be able to moderate it. There are plenty of things on the web where you can upload data and they don't use machine learning algorithms to decide if your content is "valid" or "invalid". It all depends on various tradeoffs.

Right, google drive has a big problem with public file hosting and piracy. If the content is encrypted the safe harbor becomes trivial to preserve.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#77

I feel like "Even if we get hacked" as a marketing message might send the wrong signals.

I agree: start with benefit and from the user's perspective. Something along the lines of:

>"Only the people you share with can read your document -- even we can't read it."

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#78
post #73
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's correct. Unless Web Crypto is available, in which case it uses that.

How does password / key recovery work?

When you create an account, it downloads a file which contains

- Your username

- Your password, encrypted with a random key.

That random key (but not your encrypted password) is sent to the server. When you request a password recovery, we send you a file by email which contains that key and with which you can decrypt your password.

That way,

- We don't have your encrypted password

- A random person / application can't grab your password from your computer

- We verify that it's you who wants a password recovery (by sending you an email).

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#79

Why does it have OS in the name? Is it an operating system? (This is a question I cannot find a direct answer to on their site) Their site makes it incredibly difficult to actually find out what this really is. The only text visible on my screen when the page loads are the lines "Airborn OS", "Even if we get hacked, they can't read your documents" and "Collaborate in real time" which tells me essentially nothing abou…

People assume that the thing you deal with at the front end is the operating system. Frustrating, I know.

I have a vaguely similar project to Airborn OS. I called my project Notanos because everyone kept on calling it an OS.

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