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Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

keys.pub

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Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#31

Post by vorpalhex »

StavrosK wrote: post #24
vorpalhex wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keybase client went from a small CLI to a persistently connected app that ties into a filesystem, cryptocurrency platform, chat ecosystem and more. Nothing is free. Adding features takes up resources, adds complexity and errors and increases attack surface. Sometimes that's an OK tradeoff - I like being able to see images in my email client. Sometimes the tradeoff is not worth it - my text centric IDE has no busi…

That's fair, my question was more about the cryptocurrency feature specifically. "General bloat" I can understand, if you only care about the keys. It seems to me, though, that the key part is just the first step in an entire featureset: Once you have a reliable way to get trusted encryption keys for any person, you can build a whole lot of useful functionality on top of that, which is what they've been doing. Person…

It would be possible to build an ignorable cryptocurrency feature, and if that had been the case, I probably wouldn't have noticed or cared. Instead Keybase tied into the launch of a questionable currency which involved giving the currency to people as a marketing tool and then resulted in a spree of attackers, disclosure attacks and other problems.

There's a difference between "Hey, we've built in a small wallet feature" and "Congratulations user, we've now given you 200 Lumens of tax liability and sent you marketing emails disguised as information, please prepare for a horde of hackers. Also we've fussed with your keys to make this new feature work. Thanks!"

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#32

Post by edraferi »

prophesi wrote: post #12
cortesoft wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess one man's cruft is another man's crucial feature.

Precisely the reasoning for writing tools that do one thing very well.

I wonder if Keybase could re-factor in a way that makes the core functions and various features available as small, focused tools, but still allows them to build the comprehensive binary for general users who want everything.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#33

Post by emanlin »

Legogris wrote: post #21

I, for one, am happy Keybase user, excited about their new features and can see it already becoming a much better (but not ideal) alternative to Signal for private IM (proper encryption, every device is first-class, usable CLI, no phone-number bullshit, good team chats, etc). But I do see that the same reason I am optimistic is the same reason many users are disappointed and they're right - Keybase seems to have pivo…

Keybase jumped the shark with their crypto coin offering.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#35

Post by Semaphor »

vorpalhex wrote: post #31
StavrosK wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, my question was more about the cryptocurrency feature specifically. "General bloat" I can understand, if you only care about the keys. It seems to me, though, that the key part is just the first step in an entire featureset: Once you have a reliable way to get trusted encryption keys for any person, you can build a whole lot of useful functionality on top of that, which is what they've been doing. Person…

It would be possible to build an ignorable cryptocurrency feature, and if that had been the case, I probably wouldn't have noticed or cared. Instead Keybase tied into the launch of a questionable currency which involved giving the currency to people as a marketing tool and then resulted in a spree of attackers, disclosure attacks and other problems. There's a difference between "Hey, we've built in a small wallet fea…

> tied into the launch of a questionable currency

A small correction, Stellar/XLM has been around since 2014 [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_(payment_network)

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#36

Post by uranium235 »

I think it might be a good idea to use something like IPFS to distribute keys. Now that cloudflare seems to want to support it officially, the only exception to why they might not are the same kind of lawsuits that brought down the pirate bay but cloudflare has opted to offer content blacklisting/cache refuse in their terms of service so I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but so far since 2018 nothing seems to have changed. I'm not really sure what their takeaway is though, it must provide them some benefit otherwise it's just a waste of their money to provide a gateway service. I'm not sure how well it's going to scale once people start building on it and actually use it more.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#37

Post by novok »

kreetx wrote: post #23

Lots of keybase early users here. I started really using it relatively recently, and mostly like it, regardless of "losing its way". What I use are is the chat, git and filesystem. Verifying other people's identities - not so much. The only problems are related to the GUI having hiccups, opening images posted to the chat, say. Git and filesystem are relatively slow, but can live with that.

I feel like if they did some decoupling and got rid of the persistent running connection / filesystem stuff for features that did not need it as a mandatory thing that early users wouldn't mind as much. For all I know it actually does work that way too.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#38

Post by uranium235 »

uranium235 wrote: post #36

I think it might be a good idea to use something like IPFS to distribute keys. Now that cloudflare seems to want to support it officially, the only exception to why they might not are the same kind of lawsuits that brought down the pirate bay but cloudflare has opted to offer content blacklisting/cache refuse in their terms of service so I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but so far since 2018 nothing seems t…

I want to add to that the ethereum name service, https://www.increaseo.com/eth-domains-ipfs/ could also potentially play a role in a means to efficiently and reliably distribute public keys in conjunction with IPFS? Seems worth considering at least.

Re: Keys.pub – Manage cryptographic keys and user identities

#40

Post by ibejoeb »

prophesi wrote: post #12
cortesoft wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess one man's cruft is another man's crucial feature.

Precisely the reasoning for writing tools that do one thing very well.

The problem with that is that it completely disregards one market, i.e., the one that wants an integrated system. You could probably install six programs that do these individual things, but then you'd have to install six programs. That's a non-starter for those looking for the integrated solution.
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