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

Yahoo's new killer app

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 50 posts

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#41

Post by rorrr2 »

susi22 wrote: post #29
rorrr2 wrote: post #24

If anybody develops a truly secure messaging system, free from NSA's snooping, it won't be Yahoo. Simply because Yahoo is US based and can be secretly forced to change the code or push a hidden update that will decrypt everything. And by the way, such systems already exist 1) https://crypto.cat (after a few bad releases it looks like they got it right... probably) 2) https://github.com/ChatSecure for iOS There are a…

Serious question: Could they build their IT center on big boats like casinos? Sure, the traffic would still go through US, but that can be encrypted (with something better than SSL).

They could, but that doesn't change anything, Yahoo is still US based and can be forced to do whatever they want.

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#42

Post by junto »

themodelplumber wrote: post #39
JonFish85 wrote: post #28

This is silly. If I'm a shareholder in Y!, I don't want them wasting time/money on something like this right now. Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care, for now, but your average accountant / builder probably didn't spend 5 minutes caring. If Y! did do something like this, I doubt it would last--just not enough p…

Right now the publicity--the "Yahoo! is doing something new and interesting and helpful" is exactly what I'd want to see as a shareholder. And as an employee. And as someone with a Yahoo! login. Keep in mind that Yahoo's old enemy at this point is the idea that they are doing nothing new, nothing interesting. This feeling is what necessitates the acqui-hires and leads to new CEOs and low stock prices.

What would be truly awesome would be for the general population to login into their webmail account and the entire thing works just the same, they have the same "email address" but somehow as if by magic it isn't using email anymore, but the new protocol. Seriously easy and effective on-boarding.

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#43

Post by loceng »

JonFish85 wrote: post #28

This is silly. If I'm a shareholder in Y!, I don't want them wasting time/money on something like this right now. Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care, for now, but your average accountant / builder probably didn't spend 5 minutes caring. If Y! did do something like this, I doubt it would last--just not enough p…

Silly Google for creating and releasing Android too - helping competitors out!

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#44

Post by junto »

mweibel wrote: post #33
junto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops. Where is that, I can't find it?

Hm, I'm confused now - maybe my sentence wasn't clear enough. What I wanted to say is wether he realises that the blogpost was written in the future (2 years from now)..

I now get what you were saying! :)

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#45

Post by jrochkind1 »

update okay, so the whole article was fictional. That explains some of that. But does not leave me any happier about it. --------------

It sounds like an interesting protocol/app, which I hadn't heard of before -- and which this article told me just about NOTHING about.

"More importantly the NSA is screaming bloody murder" Really? Citation please?

And maybe a link to an actual software or project page?

And some summary -- or just a LINK to an explanation -- of what makes OMS more secure than email?

I know that Medium is a collection of posts from different authors--but sadly, this is what I have come to expect from medium. Their 'brand' is becoming, in my mind, 'content farm'.

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#46

Post by JonFish85 »

junto wrote: post #42
themodelplumber wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now the publicity--the "Yahoo! is doing something new and interesting and helpful" is exactly what I'd want to see as a shareholder. And as an employee. And as someone with a Yahoo! login. Keep in mind that Yahoo's old enemy at this point is the idea that they are doing nothing new, nothing interesting. This feeling is what necessitates the acqui-hires and leads to new CEOs and low stock prices.

What would be truly awesome would be for the general population to login into their webmail account and the entire thing works just the same, they have the same "email address" but somehow as if by magic it isn't using email anymore, but the new protocol. Seriously easy and effective on-boarding.

But then why the heck would anyone use it / switch to it? Aside from the very technical crowd, which is a tiny portion of Y! users. It'd have nothing tangible to offer to new users--just invisible promises.

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#47

Post by jkldotio »

JonFish85 wrote: post #28

This is silly. If I'm a shareholder in Y!, I don't want them wasting time/money on something like this right now. Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care, for now, but your average accountant / builder probably didn't spend 5 minutes caring. If Y! did do something like this, I doubt it would last--just not enough p…

    "Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care"
I keep hearing it's supposedly a minority, but everyone I speak to has concerns about the general issue. While my circles are biased I actually haven't met a "think of the children/terrorists" person in my life, only pundits in national papers and a seeming (biased sample again) minority of people on the Internet support the anti-privacy position.

With regard to more concrete evidence there is a much larger group in the opinion polls that see Snowden and his actions favourably than otherwise.[1] I also highly doubt the recent vote on limiting the NSA would have been only narrowly in favour of the status quo, 205 to 217, if it was a minority concern.[2] Congress members are well aware of public opinion, or alternatively the opinion of their backers.[3]

[1]http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-security-po... [2]http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/congress-nearly-s... [3]http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/money-nsa-vote/

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#48

Post by DanBC »

jkldotio wrote: post #47
JonFish85 wrote: post #28

This is silly. If I'm a shareholder in Y!, I don't want them wasting time/money on something like this right now. Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care, for now, but your average accountant / builder probably didn't spend 5 minutes caring. If Y! did do something like this, I doubt it would last--just not enough p…

"Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care" I keep hearing it's supposedly a minority, but everyone I speak to has concerns about the general issue. While my circles are biased I actually haven't met a "think of the children/terrorists" person in my life, only pundits in national papers and a seeming (biased sample a…

I genuinely don't care about US / UK government agencies slurping my data. I wish it actually did something to lower crime[1], and I wish it wasn't so expensive, and I wish the money went to other places, but I don't care about the privacy violation of my email being on more than one cache.

I am much more concerned about other privacy breaches that I'm subjected to.

People talk about the "decrypt your data or go to jail" parts of RIPA, and while that is worrying I'm a lot more worried about the other sections of RIPA which have been abused and caused actual harm to people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...)

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#49

Post by macinjosh »

trebor wrote: post #27
macinjosh wrote: post #10

Trusting coporations with our private communications has been disastrous so far. Perhaps we should find ways to take out the middle man and communicate more directly. P2P or federation perhaps?

That hasn't worked out so well for the Jabber protocol so far, and its federated. We probably need something simpler with OTR built into it.

Jabber is just a protocol. They only did half the job. Non-hackers need something more accessible that they can simply put on their devices without having to run their own server. I don't have the answers, but the only thing I see being truly viable in this environment is decentralized point to point communication. The only reason the NSA can easily collect all this data is that it is all bottlenecked through corporate datacenters.

Re: Yahoo's new killer app

#50

Post by matteodepalo »

I feel like this privacy issue only compels a small group of individuals to find alternatives to email. A project like this would be never adopted by the masses, simply because the cost of switching is too high and the immediate return is too low.
Post reply on HN