I am glad we have https://keys.pub/ :-)
Zoom Acquires Keybase
431–440 of 751 posts
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#432I am glad we have https://keys.pub/ :-)
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#433It'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
But unfortunately these alternatives don't have the same encryption support, do they? (Some seem not to have any.)
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#434For years people have been begging Keybase to allow them to pay them for the service and Chris Coyne always refused. Now they've lost their independence and they're owned by a communication company that has [edit: the majority of] its dev team in China. I use Keybase to talk to my friend in China since it's one of the few services they don't block. This is a pretty disappointing outcome.
Very disappointed indeed. Keybase is one of the ones I actually used.
There was a competitor app that got posted here a couple weeks ago.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks - I edited it to soften the language a bit.
Is it called "soften the language" to fix a 100% factual error? Honestly I feel that if you're arguing in one direction or another and haven't checked the facts, maybe it's better not to argue about it?
The vast majority of the Zoom software development team is based out of companies in China.
They do have support people in the US and a handful of non-support engineering which is why I said thanks and immediately updated the comment to say "majority" instead of "entire" since it's more correct.
That technicality is less relevant to the main point of the argument.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#436For years people have been begging Keybase to allow them to pay them for the service and Chris Coyne always refused. Now they've lost their independence and they're owned by a communication company that has [edit: the majority of] its dev team in China. I use Keybase to talk to my friend in China since it's one of the few services they don't block. This is a pretty disappointing outcome.
It is funny that Zoom was one of the companies that I flagged in my head as the worst (or rather, most dangerous) up-and-coming tech company and I considered Keybase one of the most promising up-and-coming tech companies.
Keybase solves a (to me) nontrivial problem: How to bring private keys into social media. Just a silly example: You don't use the same private-public key exchange in Whatsapp as you would use for your emails, or to sign your packages. It's a bit of the now infamous Dropbox situation: Most people can sign things with private keys and properly keep track of it, but they don't get around to doing it. It's only critical cases where the use is common (like signing packages). It took a long time even for HTTPS to become standard practise, though I guess the situation with your browser is a bit different.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
After reading part of [1], I have no idea how you draw the conclusions you do. I was playing around with a bunch of different crypto currencies when Keybase did the airdrop with Stellar. At every point in the process, it was opt in. Then I received ~$60 and that was it. It seems your article was going for sensationalism and was highly disputed by all commenters on HN, not covered up by some capital driven conspiracy.
I'm pretty sure I ended up receiving a load of XLM without opting in at all.
You're wrong. There is an opt-in for wallet key generation. The opt-in does not say that when you opt-in to generate a wallet keypair, it will also do a second operation and use your existing keybase identity keys to sign an attestation that will then be permanently affixed to your profile.
The text alludes to that being possible, but it doesn't tell you it's going to actually do that, or that it will then be impossible to remove the ad from your profile after you do.
The specific opt-in consent text matters. It says a thing, you click ok, but then it does that thing but also a second thing.
Ultimately this doesn't matter though, because keybase is toast now.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keybase was dead as soon as they took VC money. Their original purpose — tying identities to keys — could have been a nice small non-profit. But there aren't fortunes to be made from managing GPG keys, so they had to pivot into shark jumping.
We have letsencrypt and permanent.org as non-profits. An idea of a identity and key non-profit sounds like another critical piece we would need for a free, open web
Is this functionality something that would make sense for LetsEncrypt to implement?
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#439Earlier 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?
Well, it's pretty clearly an aquihire. Zoom gets a team of highly skilled cryptographers and Internet protocol experts. Good for them. But that means the team that created Keybase as an innovate PKI store won't be working on that anymore. That's not Zoom's business, and probably won't be, as Keybase themselves never figured out how to turn it into a business.
My experiences with acquihires have not been good.
People went to work for this company based on the domain, the people, or the culture. With the acquihire they change the domain first, and the culture about a year in. Then the people start to leave, and it's just a job, and one you didn't even apply for.
On my worst days it felt like I was sold like cattle, and I would have seen more upside by hiring on someplace else.