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

161–170 of 237 posts

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#161

Post by seppin »

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…

> 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.

Chinese companies legally cannot refuse a government request for data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law

Comparing that with US/EU private sector protections is absurd.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#162

Post by seppin »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #131
msla wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it took me quite some annoyance to get that straightened out and everybody on the "Chinese people pretty cool, Xi really not so much" page. This shouldn't be hard to get across, except the CCP is very interested in ensuring people don't distinguish between the government of the People's Republic of China and Chinese people as a whole. Which leads to criticism of the CCP/PRC being seen as racist, which adds lots of…

Oh man, you really overestimate the CCP's media competence. Take a look at the state media and propaganda in China. It's all very traditional, very straightforward, mostly fact based (even if cherry-picked). Even the infamous 50 cents army is pretty stupid, and not what you think it is: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-50-cent-army-really-exist-and... CCP influencing online discussions in the west? Hahahaha! As someone…

> As someone who's neutral (not even supportive) about the CCP, I can only hope that they become that competent within a decade.

You don't sound very neutral.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#163

Post by trog »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #62
client4 wrote: post #5

I'd suspect this is jumping the gun a lot bit. Keybase was running a free service for years and has matured a lot in the last year (post crypto debacle). There's nothing stopping them from 1. Letting Keybase go into maintenance mode. 2. Donating the server to a foundation. 3. Open sourcing there server. In all these scenarios Zoom gets better security which is a win for the world :)

> In all these scenarios Zoom gets better security I'm more worried about the scenarios in which keybase gets worse security. Zoom's attitude to security is terrible.

I am even more worried about the scenarios in which the rest of keybase ceases to exist if Zoom decide its not worth keeping online!

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#164

Post by simonebrunozzi »

oefrha wrote: post #92
lucideer wrote: post #16

> I myself mostly use the following features from Keybase: Chat, KBFS, Git repositories and encrypting messages sent out-of-band via PGP in Keybase (and the various cryptographic tools [signing, validation etc]) While all these features are individually nice, I kinda started to worry about Keybase as a product when they started bolting on stuff like this. I think the key (pun intended) to stable & ongoing success in…

The key differentiator of Keybase (at least back when I joined during early alpha) is that it links identities across different web properties, so that one can easily find someone’s personal site(s) or profiles on other platforms with cryptographic certainty. AFIACT this crucial aspect is missing from keys.pub.

I wasn't familiar with this acronym, so I looked it up. AFAICT = As Far As I Can Tell. You switched two letters.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#165

Post by zdragnar »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #164
oefrha wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key differentiator of Keybase (at least back when I joined during early alpha) is that it links identities across different web properties, so that one can easily find someone’s personal site(s) or profiles on other platforms with cryptographic certainty. AFIACT this crucial aspect is missing from keys.pub.

I wasn't familiar with this acronym, so I looked it up. AFAICT = As Far As I Can Tell. You switched two letters.

I missed that on the first read, and you reminded me on the concept called typoglycemia, which I did noy know until just now was actually an urban legend meme that apparently is true enough: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#166

Post by msla »

rimjongun wrote: post #145
msla wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am very put off by this anti-China rhetoric. It isn't anti-China, it's anti-PRC. The difference is obvious.

PRC = China for conversations regarding government policy and potential privacy violations and undue pressure on development. The same concerns could be had for software developed in the U.S. US Gov = U.S. for all intents and purposes with regard to this topic. Now you're just splitting hairs.

> Now you're just splitting hairs.

No, I am not. I am hitting on something which makes some people angry. There's a difference.

As long as the Republic of China is independent, this isn't hair-splitting.

> The same concerns could be had for software developed in the U.S.

Of course not. The US isn't an authoritarian regime.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#167

Post by msla »

thecureforzits wrote: post #50
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...

It's an improvement because it isn't nearly as pervasive as PRC interference.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#168

Post by kellytrinh »

lucideer wrote: post #16

> I myself mostly use the following features from Keybase: Chat, KBFS, Git repositories and encrypting messages sent out-of-band via PGP in Keybase (and the various cryptographic tools [signing, validation etc]) While all these features are individually nice, I kinda started to worry about Keybase as a product when they started bolting on stuff like this. I think the key (pun intended) to stable & ongoing success in…

On Tresorit side, I've been with them for many years (when they were just starting out they were decently generous on free allowances and gatherfathered across).

Client is so-so (more stable than KBFS to be honest) but the service is very costly and I would rather a BYOB (bring your own backend) approach using some other product...

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#169

Post by efreak »

nanomonkey wrote: post #83

Scuttlebutt is an open source p2p gossip network (no central servers) that includes clients that implement chat, blogging, git and github replacements, Shamir's Secret sharing (splitting up a secret by encrypting it so that a number of your friends are needed to decrypt, via Dark Crystal [ https://darkcrystal.pw/] ), games and probably more that I am forgetting. You could easily place your public keys in your user pr…

I tried looking up Dark Crystal, but the link doesn't work and neither does search results. Do you have any more into?
Post reply on HN