Show HN: Sava OS – A desktop interface for your web browser

Came here to say this. I see these come up on HN every year or so. They're often beautiful and commendable for that reason, but I never understand what anyone would actually use them for. Typically I see them start out strong, marking that features are still in Beta, but then it just kind of ends there.

In the abstract, I can feel out there being some kind of use case I'm not thinking of. Maybe something along the lines of having a familiar mental model for organizing the data in the browser, (not the data in the web apps running in the browser). Things like bookmarks, tab groups maybe, browsing history.

But what is shown is more of an honest attempt to create a full OS in the browser which will always be inherently inferior to the operating system the browser is running in, even with advances to browser engines.

> which was torn to pieces by this crowd

Was it? I’m looking at the thread right now and the top level comments say things like: “This is genius”; “I must say Dropbox looks great!”; “This has great potential!”; “Cool stuff indeed”; “your app is something that I've been wishing someone would make for some time now”; “This is an interesting application”; “It looks great man”; “Nice Application”; “I like the app”; and on and on… It’s mostly praise and some well reasoned and polite criticisms.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

And even if you’re referring to the infamous BrandonM comment, not only is that one comment but the reply (which is almost always glossed over) shows it was a valuable and positive interaction. dang had a nice writeup on it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281

I have given your service a try, and while the UX was impressive, I was bothered by an apparent lack of encryption. The landing page, the privacy policy, and your mission statement all make many mentions of encryption and security, yet (besides TLS) there doesn't seem to be any encryption going on as far as my browser is concerned.

I created a new folder, created a text file in the folder, and added some text to the file. The name of the folder, the text file, and the content itself were sent to the server unencrypted (besides TLS).

I'm sure your server encrypts the data immediately, but this adds unnecessary trust when client-side encryption could be employed. It also enables an attacker or a potential future operator to sniff the data before it is encrypted. That's no good!

Emulated desktop Operating system written in a high level language, compiled to an intermediate assembly language, run on a virtual machine written in JavaScript, executed in a javascript engine, run inside of a sandbox inside of a browser, inside of an operating system just like the proprietary one one being run at the bottom of the stack.

All so you can "create text files" on a proprietary platform that won't work without the internet. What a time to be alive!

Can't argue with that.. best I could do for now :)