Hacker News: vabmit

New comment by vabmit in "Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)"

vabmit — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:34:03 +0000

Someone will fork or clone Signal and distribute an app that continues to support SMS and MMS.

I would drop Signal for that app, even if I had to pay for it.

New comment by vabmit in "Dan Kaminsky has died"

vabmit — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 20:26:24 +0000

RIP, Dan. I work with a lot of very smart people. So, I've gotten a bit used to it and don't normally find myself in awe of many people's intelligence. Dan was a person that I was absolutely in awe of. The fist time I met him very long ago (almost 20 years), he showed me code he wrote to share movies through abused DNS slaves... building a p2p network like Napser/Gnutella from the technology. No one had ever thought of such a thing. I don't think anyone else in the world knew DNS well enough to be inspired to think of it. He was so kind and friendly to everyone. It was fun to talk with him about tech/security because he had such enthusiasm and excitement... like a little kid on Christmas or a puppy. :) I learned a lot from him. I have nothing but great memories of him. I remember once when someone hacked him. He even took that in good humor and didn't let it bother him.

New comment by vabmit in "ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar"

vabmit — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 17:40:58 +0000

Possibly. There is very little to no private funding for true privacy products. I think this is one of the reasons that Proton had to initially rely on crowdfunding. Perhaps, this is because so many tech companies are stuck in the AdRev mindset where sharing customer private data is how they make their real money? If you look at the ecosystem, you see many privacy products are actually government supported either directly or indirectly. For example, the Tor Project has directly taken massive amounts of funding from the US Military and you may recall the story of how Microsoft was forced to buy Skype in order to open it up to surveillance or lose massive amounts US DoD software license contracts. Those are just two examples. But, there are really limitless cases. Trust Google? But, Google receives massive DoD/EU contracts. Apple? Same thing. Role your own? But, nearly all standard encryption and hashing algorithms were either developed by or reviewed by government funded academic researchers in the US or EU.

The way I think of the privacy ecosystem is that it makes dragnet surveillance much harder and it provides some protection if the government has specifically targeted you for data collection. So, companies/products like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN are good things. But, creating something that is 100% safe for the individual is impossible (or at best so impractical to be untenable).

ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

vabmit — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 15:37:40 +0000

Article URL: https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/30/protonmail-takes-aim-at-google-with-an-encrypted-calendar/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21913989

Points: 355

# Comments: 145

New comment by vabmit in "ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar"

vabmit — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 14:31:32 +0000

Here is their write up of the security model: https://protonmail.com/blog/protoncalendar-security-model/

ProtonCalendar beta

vabmit — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 14:08:22 +0000

Article URL: https://protonmail.com/blog/protoncalendar-security-model/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21913392

Points: 157

# Comments: 1

New comment by vabmit in "Tesla sues former employees for allegedly stealing data, Autopilot source code"

vabmit — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 17:54:50 +0000

The stock isn't doing to well today or Friday. Maybe, just maybe, shitty people lie about financials and build shitty worthless companies.

New comment by vabmit in "Tesla sues former employees for allegedly stealing data, Autopilot source code"

vabmit — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 18:34:59 +0000

This tactic has been used against companies friends of mine have started. I've only seen it used by large 20+ year old 1970s/1980s publicly traded companies, never someone like Tesla. The way it works is basically that you track where your ex-employees go after they leave. If they go to a competitor/disruptor start-up with out deep pockets, sue that competitor over trade secrets. It's nearly impossible to disprove in court. The competitor start-up exhausts its VC/Angel money on legal fees and goes bankrupt. Potential new customers are wary of using their tech because of the lawsuit. It's a lethal combination that ensures that you don't have to out innovate them. Stealing source code is one thing. I certainly understand suing over that. But, suing over stealing ideas about warehousing from a car company? Really? I don't see any justification for that other than a lack of faith in the ability of your own company to compete and innovate.

Full disclosure: I am shorting TSLA stock. I have worked on autonomous vehicles and do not believe Tesla's claims about their technology. I expect Tesla to go bankrupt sometime in the next few years. I'm even more convinced of this now that I see them using company-killer lawsuits against other competing start-ups.

New comment by vabmit in "Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account"

vabmit — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 03:23:04 +0000

The "Gab.com banned from PayPal" post is still up. But, this post has been hidden.

Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

vabmit — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 02:16:25 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1056362626077220865

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318788

Points: 63

# Comments: 110

Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

vabmit — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:34:21 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/22/testing-new-ways-to-keep-you-safe-online/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277632

Points: 167

# Comments: 91

Proton and Mozilla Partner for Privacy

vabmit — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 18:57:26 +0000

Article URL: https://protonvpn.com/blog/mozilla-partnership/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277278

Points: 35

# Comments: 12

New comment by vabmit in "OpenPGPjs v3.0"

vabmit — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 21:44:27 +0000

What do you mean "ProtonMail still doesn't support PGP"? You mean sending PGP encrypted e-mails to non-protonmail addresses?

New comment by vabmit in "OpenPGPjs v3.0"

vabmit — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 20:46:17 +0000

In case anyone that doesn't follow the development of the library closely missed it, the main improvement in this version is the introduction of ECC support. ECC tends to be able to provide equivalent levels of security as traditional "big prime" cryptography (like RSA) with less computationally intensive operations. This is especially important in a library like OpenPGPjs that is primarily meant for in browser based web usage because it should make things, like sending and receiving mail, faster when ECC is used over older PGP public key encryption systems. For people that use ProtonMail's web based crypto on mobile or tablet devices, a switch to ECC would result not just in similar performance improvements but also in lower battery usage.

Currently, ProtonMail uses RSA keys, but this addition of ECC support to their web encryption library may mean that they are about to start switching users to ECC keys. Because using "larger" (when compared with equivalent theoretical strength RSA keys, for example) ECC keys is less resource intensive than using higher security keys in some other forms of cryptosystems (like RSA) it may also be an indication that ProtonMail is preparing to upgrade users to higher security/stronger keys.

Many cryptographers and organizations, including the US Government, have recommended for a long time that people migrate from older "big prime cryptography" based cryptosystems to ECC based cryptosystems for increased security.

OpenPGPjs v3.0

vabmit — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 17:53:19 +0000

Article URL: https://protonmail.com/blog/openpgpjs-3-release/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16553485

Points: 199

# Comments: 44

New comment by vabmit in "Bitcoin hits $10,000"

vabmit — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 13:30:34 +0000

I wouldn't say no one. There are a number of companies that trust Bitcoin enough to use it in trade for their goods and services. For example, ProtonMail (a secure private e-mail provider) trusts Bitcoin enough to accept it in trade for its services.

So, the same thing that gives the Euro and Gold value (that people will take it trade for goods and services) is one of the components accounting for Bitcoin's valuation. The majority of Bitcoin's value at this point is likely speculation. However some percentage of the value is not derived from currency arbitrage or speculation.

Even if Bitcoin trade participating merchants do not trust the market valuation of Bitcoin enough to be willing to hold Bitcoin for very long after they accept it as part of a transaction (and therefor immediately convert it to USDs) it is still valued by the participating merchant in line with the trade. The same could be said for the value of the electronic ledger recordings created by credit cards. They are generally viewed to have around equivalent value to USDs. But, they are not a currency either.

ProtonMail Security Advisory Regarding Yahoo Hack

vabmit — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 20:47:17 +0000

Article URL: https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-security-advisory-regarding-yahoo-hack/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404472

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by vabmit in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2017)"

vabmit — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 20:18:10 +0000

ProtonMail | Multiple Positions | Geneva, CH; San Francisco, CA; etc | https://protonmail.com

Senior Software Engineer (Front-end/Back-end/Mobile/Desktop)

Location: Geneva, Zurich, San Francisco, Prague, Macedonia, Lithuania, Ukraine

Description:

Javascript (ES6, AngularJS, React, etc), PHP, Python, Objective-C, Swift, Java, Go, .NET, and several other languages. Strong background in computer science (algorithms, data structure, software design, reliability, maintainability, etc).

Network Engineer/Systems Engineer/Site Reliability Engineer

Location: Geneva, Zurich

Description:

You will be responsible ensuring our infrastructure remains reliable and can scale quickly enough to match our growth.

Networking: BGP (IPv4/IPv6); MPLS; Cisco IOS; Netflow analysis; NOC experience; LIR experience; Network design

Sysadmin: Large Scale Linux Administration w/ Ansible; OpenStack, CEPH, MySQL, Python/Bash/C/SQL

Basic Tips for Preventing Email Hacking

vabmit — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 20:15:54 +0000

Article URL: https://protonmail.com/blog/prevent-email-hacking/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15387523

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by vabmit in "ProtonMail Now Supports Bitcoin Payments"

vabmit — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:36:46 +0000

We will hopefully support ZCash in the future. But, unfortunately, we don't right now. I am a member of the ZCash forum, though. I have been keeping a close watch on the project/coin and am very impressed with it. I don't know anything about Monero. I either hadn't heard of it before or just didn't give it any attention after seeing it because of the flood of coins lately. Thanks for the pointer and endorsement of it - I will take a look at it when I have a chance.