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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

331–340 of 751 posts

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#332

It's kinda ironic that Keybase disappears into Zoom the day after Matrix/Riot enabled end-to-end encryption by default, with cross-signed device verification similar to Keybase's concept of connected keys - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... . In other words, a fully open source (and open standardised) alternative continues to exist in the form of Matrix. [disclaimer: project lead for…

Hi! I use Matrix a lot, but a privacy-sensitive group of my friends recently switched to Keybase largely due to the per-room/per-message retention policies. This might be a good opportunity to convince them to jump ship, and I know something similar has been in the works for Matrix, but do you know where it is on the list of priorities? (Congrats on the cross-signing release though, it's been a long time coming and i…

Hijacking this: Does anyone know if there’s a Matrix client (out or in dev) that has the UI/UX of old 1on1 messengers (ICQ, MSN) and not chatrooms (IRC, Slack)? Specifically not the weird list of bubbles on the side, but instead a list of accounts/rooms and a window per chat.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your idea is not an inevitability but actually from the late 20th century, and became very popular starting in the 80s. Here is a link that showed up in google for me when I tried to find support of this claim: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-...

Sure, and here is a counterexample from the 1600-1800s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company Literally they bought an army and took over India for money.

Need to keep in mind we now remember this endeavor as ethically challenged, but was it literally 100% for money or did want of these goods play a role:

> cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium.

Surely access to those provides some benefit other than making money, which it also did for them.

Also worth noting that not every company is ... that one.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#334
post #70
post #19

Oof. Keybase was struggling to define what exactly it was, so I guess they is the best exit option for them anyway...

Thank you! I've been using it on and off for years.. I'm still not sure what exactly it is or under what circumstances I should be using it.

I use it for shared network storage, frictionless private git repoisitories, basic static web hosting, personal and work chat, and I make heavy use of the teams feature. Not a day goes by I don't use it for something.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#335

The negativity here is astounding. This really comes down a company putting their money where their mouth is. Think about the reasons you'd decide to acquire Keybase. It certainly isn't for PR as most people have no idea what Keybase is. What we are seeing is that Zoom is truly concerned about how their security posture is hurting their business. Remember they aren't the only game in town and there are plenty of comp…

I couldn't agree more, and am disappointed that your comment is (right now) apparently quite downvoted. Zoom deserves credit for what they're doing. It's fine to reserve final judgment until we see how it all plays out over the next couple of years, but these are extremely good signs that Zoom is implementing a massive turnaround in security.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is wayland support even a femto blip on Zoom's radar ?

They do keep saying "multiplatform", but I guess that's Windows/macOS/iOS/Android, not Linux. They're not the only ones though, this is what most companies call "on any device".

Well, my personal experience running the zoom client on Ubuntu was very satisfying. It worked out of the box, just a deb to install. I am on kubuntu 18.04LTS X11 though, not wayland (which I am glad because on 16.04 I was often victim of that stupid copy/pasting bug freezing firefox or the whole gnome env.)

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#337
post #325
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keybase was dead as soon as they took VC money. Their original purpose — tying identities to keys — could have been a nice small non-profit. But there aren't fortunes to be made from managing GPG keys, so they had to pivot into shark jumping.

https://pgp.mit.edu/

keyservers don't work as a root of trust. look at all the 'satoshi nakamoto' keys supposedly from 2004

https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=Satoshi+Nakamoto&op=in...

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#338
post #325
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keybase was dead as soon as they took VC money. Their original purpose — tying identities to keys — could have been a nice small non-profit. But there aren't fortunes to be made from managing GPG keys, so they had to pivot into shark jumping.

https://pgp.mit.edu/

That doesn't tie identity to keys.

Not to mention it's notoriously slow and has been shown to be an insecure method of distributing keys (due to the fact that anybody can upload any key).

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#339

Given the security concerns around Zoom, and the apparent lack of QC that might have prevented those concerns, this news is appalling. I love Keybase, it's used by many people, but I suspect it will now die a quick death. More accurately I suspect it will slide into a coma - not quite dead, but not in wide use anymore either.

Even as an information security practitioner that cares a great deal about privacy I am just not willing to jump on this "Zoom is bad" band wagon. "Zoom is bad" is a tech media narrative largely driven by the large players that have something to gain by seeing Zoom stumble. There may be QC concerns, but in general the product has been great for our team and our consensus was to give them some time. Their response has been positive and they seem to have handled it transparently. Reality says this: Zoom works well enough. When we started using it several years ago it was far ahead of the competitors. Maybe they are catching up? Anyhow, I will give Zoom a chance to do the right thing over the next 6-12 months regarding Keybase, and their product in general.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine keybase delivering a similar statement back in the day, good luck.

I think a key difference here is fully open and collaborative specs, with Apache-licensed reference implementations for server and client that they dogfood themselves. It's also getting federated. So protocol, tech and network can live on regardless of who's running the servers people are using or driving the development of implementations.

Until one day the foundation decides federation is not in the best interest of the community, the standards and reference implementation start to reflect closely the interests of the leading player[s] with other implementations having to play catchup. It would have been a very cynical take if it wasn't business as usual in our industry.
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