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Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

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Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#191

Post by doomrobo »

seppin wrote: post #161
vikramkr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't find your claim in the linked Wikipedia page. What section?

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#192

Post by seppin »

doomrobo wrote: post #191
seppin wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I can't find your claim in the linked Wikipedia page. What section?

First section:

> It requires network operators to store select data within China and allows Chinese authorities to conduct spot-checks on a company's network operations.

More has been reported about the implications of the law:

> China’s National Intelligence Law from 2017 requires organizations and citizens to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#193

Post by sylvain_kerkour »

hexandcube wrote: post #146
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…

Nice, my only problem with it is that it's centralized.

Decentralization is my goal, but I need to do things in the right order and not fight 10 battles at 1 time. here is my plan to add decentralization:

* secure revenues with the hosted offering to assure the sustainability of the project

* Grow a community

* Work on decentralization

So it's "centralized" (it's not really a social app, so it's not really a problem) right now, but the goal is (the identity part) to be federated/p2p in 1 year

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#194

Post by seppin »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #186
seppin wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am not surprised that you think that. A lot of western discourse has gone so far off to the anti China direction that anything neutral people say can come over as pro CCP. I am not. I have plenty of critique against them. But the sentiment in HN is already so anti China that there is no need for me to voice that critique. I am not even saying "CCP good". I am saying "CCP not as bad as you think" and "there are alte…

You just keep saying "everyone is anti-China" over and over without clarifying what you actually mean.

Your insistence on not making a distinction between the CCP and the Chinese people makes it hard to engage in any discussion, as criticism of one is taken as criticism of the other. I have a strong feeling the CCP is depending on this mentality from it's people, playing up ethnonationalism and xenophobia to distract from any criticism towards them.

You said clearly you wish the CCP had better propaganda and communication, why? That would make them stronger, yet you claim to not be in favor of them. Do you care to clarify?

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#195

Post by perillamint »

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…

It is not important Zoom is a Chinese company or not. The problem is, Zoom can't be trusted at all because of their behavior.

They showed us they don't think security seriously at all through their actions. For example, they opened up lots of holes(local HTTP server to bypass app open dialogue, local privilege escalation via their webcam/mic hack) on the user's system to provide "better" UX. They just cannot be trusted.

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#196

Post by SujiYan »

CalmStorm wrote: post #68

I have been working on this decentralized key-value database: https://github.com/kevacoin-project/kevacoin Together with W3C's draft Decentralized Identifiers (DID: https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/ ), it could provide a decentralized alternative. Not sure what is the best way to verify Twitter/Github account though. This has to be managed by users themselves. E.g. one user posts a proof in the Twitter account, the oth…

Take a look of GunDB for DB?

Also for binding social account -- maybe take a look of https://Maskbook.com & https://github.com/DimensionDev/Maskbook - able to send encrypted post/comment on fb/twitter etc

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#197

Post by SujiYan »

We're working on a solution for user to link their Fb/twitter identity to a decentralized ID and post encrypted post/comment (even sending any crypto over) on Fb/twitter only viewable by friends *(not able to decrypted by Fb or NSA) -

https://maskbook.com

Source code:

https://github.com/DimensionDev/Maskbook

For now we're trying to integrate decentralized FS solution as well so eventually Fb/twitter can be merely an infrastructure layer

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#199

Post by xref »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #187
nske wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more I study, the more I realize that the western view of CCP is... not exactly wrong, but very very problematic What's problematic to me is that a government censors information that could change people's minds. How can we call "legitimate" a government that is not allowing those who are supposed to be the source of its legitimacy, to access opinions and ideas that could influence their choice of which party t…

There is an alternative perspective wrt what generates legitimacy. It is improving people's livelihood. Food, health, security, education, economic prosperity. Given the huge number of low income people in China, China is still very much a developing country. And China HAS made lots of progress in those fronts, much more than any other country. As for disallowing criticism: nowadays it's not as bad as you think. Chec…

> As for disallowing criticism: nowadays it's not as bad as you think.

I don’t have to try a dozen VPNs to read western news outlets anymore?

Re: Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?

#200

Post by nske »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #187
nske wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more I study, the more I realize that the western view of CCP is... not exactly wrong, but very very problematic What's problematic to me is that a government censors information that could change people's minds. How can we call "legitimate" a government that is not allowing those who are supposed to be the source of its legitimacy, to access opinions and ideas that could influence their choice of which party t…

There is an alternative perspective wrt what generates legitimacy. It is improving people's livelihood. Food, health, security, education, economic prosperity. Given the huge number of low income people in China, China is still very much a developing country. And China HAS made lots of progress in those fronts, much more than any other country. As for disallowing criticism: nowadays it's not as bad as you think. Chec…

Why should this progress in economic development be enough to make it legitimate? I mean, even if we assumed that the end justifies the means and that all that matters is economic prosperity, they didn't even have to do a lot of things right -just less badly than before (which admittedly wasn't that hard when someone looks at how bad they were).

And if this progress happened to coincide with loosening up the restrictions of personal freedoms and the censorship that you mention, perhaps the case is that a government that allowed more freedoms might had facilitated even more progress.

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