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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

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Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#231

Post by elwell »

floatboth wrote: post #122
techntoke wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DAO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...

That definitely cannot be acquired. No sane business would want to convert actual money into fun bucks and put those into a buggy script that would lock everyone out if someone pwns it.

> convert actual money into fun bucks

What is more 'fun'? USD in bank account, USD as cash, DAO, or gold? I would think those are monotonically decreasing in 'fun'-ness. "Actual" money is not a good word for printable items of arbitrary scarcity. Not arguing for or against GP, just saying.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#232

Post by toyg »

Legogris wrote: post #198
Arathorn wrote: post #104

It's kinda ironic that Keybase disappears into Zoom the day after Matrix/Riot enabled end-to-end encryption by default, with cross-signed device verification similar to Keybase's concept of connected keys - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... . In other words, a fully open source (and open standardised) alternative continues to exist in the form of Matrix. [disclaimer: project lead for…

I've been looking into Matrix as a "personal IM bridge" and I'm thinking this could be a way for Matrix to get traction. Let's say you're in a position that I think may here are: You would prefer to use IM in a secure way. Let me qualify "secure" for this purpose meaning: Encryption of communication in rest and transit; not relying on a single infra/network/service provider; being able to communicate with new peers e…

I'm not Arathorn (and not even a Matrix user yet, barely ever on Signal too), but the problem with bridges to 3rd-parties is that you're effectively allowing these non-Matrix users to keep doing what they're doing, instead of incentivising them to switch. The walled gardens know this very well - that's why they've discontinued their XMPP gateways.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#233

Post by logifail »

centimeter wrote: post #184
AgloeDreams wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for. I miss the days when businesses existed not just to serve investors but also their employees and the common good. It's like a 1%-er meta profit model where the actual business is in buying and selling the business and the core business is really just a temporary front that is designed to never make a profit, just create fancy looking charts and…

I think you have a rose-tinted view of what old-timey businesses looked like. We moved past mom-and-pop subsistence industry like 400 years ago. No one ever said “I’m going to create a sheet metal production company for the common good.”

> No one ever said “I’m going to create a sheet metal production company for the common good.”

Look up Joseph Rowntree[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rowntree_(philanthropis...

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#234

Post by gk1 »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #88
dcow wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t necessarily read it that way. Keybase is 100% functional and has worked well for a long time. Zoom needs people who know how to make modern client software and chat if they want to compete with the Slacks and Teams, etc. You can’t even screen share on wayland... it’s that bad. If keybase ultimately gets secure video, and zoom a security architecture overhaul, how is that a bad thing?

If Keybase acquired Zoom (haha), then, sure. This is a PR move for a public company. They'll probably gut Keybase, move their Chinese server generated AES128 keys to AES256 keys generated by you and uploaded to their Chinese server, then call it a day. I can't think of a single instance where acquisition of a smaller company like this resulted in an improved version of the original product. How many of us are running…

Anything positive can be called a PR move if you’re cynical enough.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#235

Post by gnu »

floren wrote: post #101

I've found kbfs a very convenient way to share files with collaborators. Anyone know of a self-hosted encrypted remote filesystem that might replace it?

There is tahoe-lafs. Give it a try.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#236

Post by tensor »

INTPenis wrote: post #52
roblabla wrote: post #34

Keybase' post about the acquisition: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom > What the Keybase team will be doing > Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty…

How can they be so obvlivious though? Their own blog post doesn't even mention the tarnished reputation Zoom has acquired lately. A lot of people will stop developing integrations for Keybase because of this. It's sad.

That's probably why Zoom is buying them, to double down on security and repair their reputation. They genuinely seem to be putting all their focus on improving security. Seems like a smart buy to me.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#237

Post by Hitton »

RMPR wrote: post #171
Arathorn wrote: post #104

It's kinda ironic that Keybase disappears into Zoom the day after Matrix/Riot enabled end-to-end encryption by default, with cross-signed device verification similar to Keybase's concept of connected keys - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... . In other words, a fully open source (and open standardised) alternative continues to exist in the form of Matrix. [disclaimer: project lead for…

I was about to complain about your desktop Electron app but it seems that spectral[0] is already usable without any hassle (build from source, ...) at least on Fedora, time to reactivate my Matrix account, keep up with the great work 0: https://gitlab.com/spectral-im/spectral

Alternatively Mirage[0] - Qt + Python. There is really a lot to choose from with Matrix. The beauty of open protocol.

[0]: https://github.com/mirukana/mirage

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#238

Post by kybernetikos »

coldpie wrote: post #144
RL_Quine wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product is simply not good in its current form. It's a strange mix of instant messaging, web of trust, and cryptocurrency scam. It doesn't strongly give any particular goal. The tools are shiny, pleasant enough to look at any use, but isn't going in any direction. A lot of push recently has been into making it a "team chat" platform, which is great except that all of the participants are public, and tied to their…

God, that cryptocurrency scam. If ever there was a clear message screaming "we have no idea how to turn this into something profitable/sustainable," that was it.

Not sure why people keep saying things like this.

The truth is that sharing money in the same way we share messages and images (i.e. chat) is a good idea, and in my opinion is absolutely inevitable.

Now we don't have to do that via cryptocurrency, but the reason we don't already have it in the west is because it's a coordination problem, and there are entrenched interests that won't care about giving the user a good experience until forced to by competition. Cryptocurrency lets you avoid that problem, and given that it is entirely around managing keys, it's a very natural fit for KeyBase.

I thought the integration into keybase chat was genius, and the user experience of transferring money in that way was much better than anything traditional banking has ever offered me.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#239

Post by ocdtrekkie »

tobylane wrote: post #219
rvz wrote: post #54

> Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands Well, that definitely translates to uncertainty and ultimately the death of Keybase.

@Keybase users: Check if you uploaded your private key. I hope it is rare but now is the time to make that non existent.

I essentially didn't have a private key prior to Keybase, and I think it's still the only place I use it, so I'll end up rolling a new one if Keybase becomes fundamentally untrustworthy.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#240

Post by coldpie »

zomglings wrote: post #185
coldpie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works at an open-source-focused business, I respectfully disagree. Unlike proprietary software, open source software doesn't depend on the broken window fallacy. As a result, it's really hard to make open source profitable. There's lots of different avenues to get there, and I don't like to fault someone for their efforts if the bulk of their work goes towards improving open source software, as I think…

I didn't follow your reasoning about proprietary software depending on the broken window fallacy. I don't see how Google's proprietary search engine or Facebook's proprietary interface to our social network rely on the broken window fallacy. Would you mind elaborating?

Sure! The idea is that each proprietary project is wasting effort implementing their own clones of everyone else's software. To use your example, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Yandex etc etc are all developing their own search engines. Instead they could all be contributing to one search engine to push the state of search engine software forward, instead of all spinning their wheels re-doing what everyone else is doing. How many devs are employed doing what someone else in some other company has already done? That's the broken window: someone else has already done the work, but it must be wastefully re-done because of the license. There's a lot of room for profit in all that extra waste.
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