Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 237 posts

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#41

Post by troquerre »

rasengan wrote: post #15

Handshake [1] is a great keybase alternative that doesn’t even rely on centralization. All information is verifiable with the blockchain acting as the root of trust. [1] https://handshake.org

I think Keybase pivoted to add more features besides the web of trust functionality. That said I think there's definitely potential in using Handshake as an identity solution. ie If I own my username on Handshake I can point github.username to my github, twitter.username to twitter, etc. It's pretty easy to do with redirects

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#42

Post by richardwhiuk »

oefrha wrote: post #38
atonse wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errr what? Their development team is entirely based out of China. Please, spare me the rubbish about anti-China rhetoric. This has nothing to do with the Chinese people or culture. I clarified that this is for local _government_ clients. It absolutely matters, whether you get offended or not. I also mentioned that my company is a Zoom customer and this move generally has me happy. We had the same conversation about R…

This “development team entirely based out of China” bullshit is so easily debunked it’s not even funny. A simple glance at the list of open positions could tell you it’s false. https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Zoom

Unless they've made a major shift, it's definitely true: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#43

Post by sylvain_kerkour »

sunaurus wrote: post #40
sylvain_kerkour wrote: post #23

Hi, I'm developing Bloom[0] which is an entirely FOSS encrypted[1] and offline-first (but with multi-devices sync!) productivity app which features Files, contacts, calendar and notes. So no chat nor Git, but everything else :) If you are interested in joining the (coming soon) beta, feel free to contact me: https://bloom.sh/contact [0] https://gitlab.com/bloom42/bloom [1] https://gitlab.com/bloom42/bloom/-/wikis/sec…

As a heavy Keybase user, this looks promising. Is the lack of chat a permanent decision, or is it just something that's planned for later?

Thank you!

Currently it's not planned because it's a lack of focus and I believe that the existing alternatives (Signal & Matrix) are really good.

Adding encrypted email is envisaged but it will be considered once the other features have reached stability (Email is such a mess...)

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#44

Post by atonse »

vikramkr wrote: post #37
FooBarWidget wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom is not a Chinese company. The founder merely was born in China. He is US citizen. I am very put off by this anti-China rhetoric. Everything that even has a remote connection to China is now under suspicion. This is madness.

Yeah, Zoom is a US based company. Yes, they have a development team in China. It is valid to be concerned about the Chinese government exercising control of some sort over the local development team to put in a backdoor, just as our government seems to want to do to US developed products. No politicians really seem to like encryption very much. This is an overall geopolitical risk not unique to Zoom. But Zoom is not…

Yes, and I've clarified and fixed my originally badly described wording. I'll let Zoom describe this themselves.

From Zoom's S-1 [1]:

"In addition, we have a high concentration of research and development personnel in China, which could expose us to market scrutiny regarding the integrity of our solution or data security features. Any security compromise in our industry, whether actual or perceived, could harm our reputation, erode confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, negatively affect our ability to attract new customers and hosts, cause existing customers to elect not to renew their subscriptions or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, which could harm our business."

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1585521/000119312519...

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#45

Post by oefrha »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #42
oefrha wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This “development team entirely based out of China” bullshit is so easily debunked it’s not even funny. A simple glance at the list of open positions could tell you it’s false. https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Zoom

Unless they've made a major shift, it's definitely true: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

It’s pretty hard to argue with someone who can’t see the difference between largely and entirely.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#46

Post by ahnick »

capableweb wrote: post #30
SkyMarshal wrote: post #10

I think the only complete alternative is to successfully persuade the Keybase team to release their server code under an open source license. Their client is already open source. https://github.com/keybase The only other alternative is a mishmash of multiple apps that each do part of what Keybase does.

That would be really great, but feels like very unlikely as well. If they could open source it, why didn't they do it before?

Probably, because it provided them with more likely paths to monetization having everyone dependent on their server infrastructure. An argument could be made that if Zoom wants to build positive equity with the security community then open sourcing the Keybase server might be a good way to do that.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#48

Post by mvanbaak »

Chat: Pick one of the many available. telegram, signal, wickr etc etc

KBFS: personally I switched to gpg encrypting important files on a NAS with encrypted backups to amazon glacier and backblaze.

Git: gitlab, github, bitbucket (just to name a few)

Encrypted messages out-of-band: Just use plain pgp/gpg

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#50

Post by thecureforzits »

atonse wrote: post #8

I am also curious here. I have used and advocated strongly for Keybase with a couple of local government clients to send sensitive files back and forth (not sensitive in the sense of national security, but more to preserve privacy and store encrypted at rest). But I want to get ahead of the concern that Keybase is now owned by a Chinese company, which instantly compromises it. PGP is dead on arrival, since it's an ov…

Having development in the US just means they'd have to be concerned about illicit US government interference. How is that an improvement?

https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates-c...

Post reply on HN