Ask HN: Anyone making a living from just 1 app? - <AUTHOR> If you have a desktop/mobile/web application that is sustainable and you can be able to live on its profit, list them here. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I don't know if www.bitkeeper.com qualifies or not (it's the inspiration for git / mercurial / bzr / etc), but it's happily supporting a bunch of people in the US and Canada. Turns out people are willing to pay for this sort of stuff if you do a good job.

Speaking of which, we're looking for a really good web / designer type. If you can stand getting paid for non-open source send me a message. Thanks.

Forgot to say, email in my profile.

<comment><USER3> ah, nice to finally find you :)

I was wondering how bitkeeper was doing, good to know it's doing alright :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://binaryage.com>

my first commercial app TotalFinder seems to be covering my living expenses soon (launched a week ago)

<comment><USER5> woah, you made visor too? I love that thing. totalfinder looks awesome too, will be check it out later today.

<comment><USER6> I think Visor was created by Blacktree (the guy behind QuickSilver), but woid is the new maintainer (if I'm not mistaken).

<comment><USER4> Yes, you are right. I picked up that project because I needed to fix applescript bug in Visor. And the rest is the history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.fantasymonsterapp.com/> I'm making a living based off of my iphone app Fantasy Monster, which I did as a Master's class project and released on the app store 4 months ago. It is currently earning more per month than my wife and I are at our full time jobs combined (I'm a s/w engineer she is in HR)

</comment><comment><USER8> Not quite able to live of its profit, but means my wife doesn't have to work part time any more :)

Android Mind Mapping app Thinking Space: <http://www.thinkingspace.net>

<comment><USER9> Take some dollars to get a good website. This one is the default Drupal(?) looks, you want something more unique. And make the screenshots full resolution available at least when clicking on them. I would highly suggest making a full resolution image the default, maybe crop it, because it just looks nicer.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, hearing this said out loud (so to speak) is good motivation to get the web site sorted with something proper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Although i don't 'live' of it's profit, I have been making more from it the last two months than my 'real' job... 'Stick Golf', - iPhone/iPad game. <http://noodlecake.com>

<comment><USER11> I just want to say great job man. I have been doing a lot of traveling lately (for iOS development) and I play this a lot on the plane. As a fellow iOS developer, good job.

<comment><USER10> Thanks man! It's great to hear that kind of stuff from other developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was living off of my app ShoveBox (wonderwarp.com/shovebox) for most of last year until I made another app.

</comment><comment><USER13> My fiancee is a jewelry designer, making a living selling her work on the website I built for her (<http://www.ghostlove.com>). Not exactly an _app_ as such, but what the heck :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I make more from my iPad app Portfolio (<http://ipadportfolioapp.com/>) than my other source of income. I could definitely live on just the app sales alone if it keeps up.

</comment><comment><USER15> A game I wrote for iPhone (Spit a.k.a Speed) has been covering my living expenses for about eighteen months now but it looks like its coming to an end :(

It seems like its also mostly due to a bug I'm unable to fix (mainly since I can't reproduce it). If anyone wants to give it a shot maybe we can work out a deal?

<comment><USER16> If you're making your living expenses off it, why not just buy an iPhone that exhibits the behavior?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like most of the apps are either OSX desktop app or iPhone/iPad.

There's one Android app and one web-app.

Is there any of you who makes a living in Windows desktop app? just curious.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.viemu.com>, and it now supports a second full-time developer too. It's never going to grow much more but that's ok.

There are many, many apps that generate more than enough to sustain one or one hundred people.

<comment><USER19> Fantastic app. Didn't think I'd make the outlay (it's pricey), but for any tedious tasks I can turn them into a challenge with Regexes and Macros. I really love it, thanks for putting it together and for charging so it is still around today.

<comment><USER18> Thanks! Indeed $99 is a bit pricey, but many think it's well worth it, and it's a niche. ViEmu had its 5th anniversary this year, and I'm hoping for the next five, still better years (both for ViEmu and Codekana, <http://www.codekana.com>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm nowhere near making a living, but my "Brainstormer" app (<http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer>) is making enough to pay for my apple gadgets, so it's kind of a self-sustaining hobby at this point.

I just released a free, iAd supported game called "Still Pond" (video review: <http://www.appspy.com/still-pond-review>) which is only making pocket change, but I haven't done any promotion on it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Our first app - SourceGuardian - protects PHP source code and we've been running it for 8 years. We used to make a living off just the one app, but broadened out into other areas. The freedom that the income from SourceGuardian provided allowed us to take risks and create other products - some that have worked out well and others that haven't. Its been thoroughly enjoyable though!

</comment><comment><USER22> During a talk [1] at Stanford, Loren Brichter mentioned that he was living off income from Tweetie (this was before Twitter's acquisition of Atebits and the rebranding of Tweetie to be Twitter for iPhone).

[1] [http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunes...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunesUCollection?id=384233222)

<comment><USER23> He was doing a lot more than just living off it, Tweetie was the #1 Paid App for a long time and was in the Top 10 for all Paid Apps for months. He was selling thousands of copies per day for $2.99.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think if your app is listed on top 10 of all paid apps, you can make a lot of income very quickly.

Just some math: $2.99 * 2500 copies/day * 30 days * 70% to LB = That is a whopping $156975 a month!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Clockspot.com

Jason, the founder, was profitable within 10 months of building the product (he spent money on adwords). Was running it all by himself for nearly 3 years and is now building out a bigger team to get to the next level. That's when he hired me :)

</comment><comment><USER25> www.codemonkeysatwork.com - We have a pay-for iPhone app called QuickShot that I make my money from. I also just launched <http://www.talentopoly.com> as another source of income.

</comment><comment><USER26> Dude, Total Finder owns ... except when Chrome downloads something and I click to open the finder window. Then it pops out in the middle of nowhere and no chrome around it. I have to click on the tab to get it back whereit belongs -- Fix that please! :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm still working my day job but my most recent iPad app, iJuror, has been doing almost as well for the last 3 months.

<http://www.front9technologies.com/ijuror.html>

</comment><comment><USER28> Ship Mate for the iPhone is making me enough to pay all my bills and then some. I still have my full time job though, I don't know what I'm waiting for to just dive in and take it to the next level.

</comment><comment><USER29> socialadmanager.com is a social ad server that i developed. It allows advertisers, ad agencies etc... to incorporate user generated content and other social elements in their display ads.

My main (and only) client right now is a ad agency that I used to work for but that covers all my bills + some.

see: /ads /campaigns /dashboard for demo of agency white label.

right now im working on making the entire social ad server turnkey so that people can productize their influence in the form of a social ad (endorse x to audience y) setup affiliate payout etc... much quicker.

see: /

</comment><comment><USER30> The iAd revenue from my flashlight app has continued to do quite well.

</comment><comment><USER31> PadPressed.com is ramen profitable off of V1. Ironically, it started as a side project and may be the full time project over the next month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious, how did you find your initial paid customers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm living on earnings from SimplyTweet, my iPhone app. Look into some other stuff at the moment though.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd love to, but I need idea(s), motivation and a lot more time to work on them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Mark Zuckerberg.

</comment><comment><USER6> I worked for a couple years in college to come up with way to intuitively encrypt application data without resorting to full-disk encryption, the result (<http://www.espionageapp.com>), has been keeping me alive and self- sufficient. My advice isn't anything remarkable: find something both you and other people really need that doesn't exist and focus on it.

<comment><USER35> I love Espionage. Thanks for making such a great application.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! Glad you like it! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> <http://letsfreckle.com> is totally livable for two people right now (about $150k/yr and growing), but since I want to be rich, we're rolling all that money back into expanding it.

<comment><USER37> Very cool. Didn't Freckle start as a Rails Rumble? IIRC it was actually a wedding planning or some other event planning app at first ...

<comment><USER38> Wow, this actually looks better than Harvest. I love threads like this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I too am supporting my Apple Gadget fix (<http://logicpretzel.com>). Working on some new apps and hoping they'll make a bit more money though. Small contracts for development help too.

Fingers crossed that it will afford me to go to WWDC, but being one the east coast and in Canada makes it a little iffy.</comment>


Ask YC: Any startups here have luck outsourcing sales? - <AUTHOR> As a small startup, I think the CEO should definately be doing sales. But to supplement the CEO, has any startup on HN had success outsourcing their sales? Or hiring salespeople on a commission basis. <comment><USER3> I spent ten years running various types of sales organizations and have never had a positive experience in outsourcing sales. I have hired outside consultants with experience selling in certain areas to make warm introductions to companies in their rolodex. But, in these cases, me or my team always handled the sales process. The consultant simply received a spiff if one of their warm leads turned into a sale. Sales is just too core of a function to be trusted to outsiders. Also, early on, the sales process is your best source of constructive feedback on the product, pricing, etc. You need to hear that directly- an outsider won't be able to communicate that effectively.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend against it. I co-founded a small enterprise SW company and we tried several "commission only" sales people and teams. This become a time sink. No success what-so-ever!

When we focused on doing it ourselves things picked up. One "trick" we used that worked was to 'SPIFF' sales people who had complementary products to give us leads. This lead to our eventual acquisition ...

<comment><USER5> What is SPIFF?

<comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiff>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have met companies that did outsource sales, and the results were disastrous. Rather than looking at sales, you should be looking at Customer Development: <http://venturehacks.com/articles/customer-development>

<comment><USER8> I like the customer development stuff, but that's really totally different. It's not an alternative to sales/marketing (but it is something you should do first, and in an ongoing way). If you do it right, lead gen and sales gets a LOT easier. But it doesn't get so easy that you don't need to do it. Salesforce.com spends 60-70% of their topline on sales/marketing. PG had a salesguy with Viaweb. Sales works, and for any B2B company, you have to do it (unless you're 37signals).

At the end of the day, you need to get buyers and only a tiny percentage of buyers is overtly hunting for what you have-- meaning that the vast majority of your buyers are receptive but not seeking you out. Enter, sales.

If you have a product that you're selling to businesses this means that someone actually hits the pavement to go fill a sales pipeline (lead gen), works to convert that pipeline to customers (sales), and works to upsell current customers to bigger and better things. This can be one person or several, more specialized people.

<comment><USER7> I did't mean you shouldn't do sales, just that customer development precedes sales. I understand the value & importance of sales, did that for Akamai for 3+ years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It depends on what you're selling and how you're selling it.

A lot of the startups on HN are web-based companies, and if your pitch is tight and concise, you can outsoruce some of the early (tele)sales pretty effectively. There are lots of companies that specialize in outbound/telesales. If you can bring them good qualified leads (like through a web signup form, or other self-selected method) then sales outsourcing in that scenario can be very effective.

If your sales cycle is long, complex, or otherwise requires more face-to-face time, then outsourced sales are unlikely to be very cost effective for you.

Early sales people can be found on a commission basis, but you need to really know your target price and market pretty well. Base vs. commissions, recoverable draws, over-plan accelerators and such all need to be thought through somewhat carefully to make sure you don't end up in a regrettable situation.

Without more info on your company, product, market, etc. it's hard to give more finite advice.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have had enormous success with lead generation with the help of TimeSvr (<http://www.timesvr.com/>). $60 a month and they can spend hours a day coming websites for email addresses, sending personalized emails, and tracking their actions and progress in CSV files.

<comment><USER11> This looks pretty amazing. On their pricing page, they claim that the $60/month plan is specifically for individuals, not business use, though - <USER2> do you get around that? Just sign up for a personal plan, and so far they let you use it in the way you describe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hiring salespeople purely on commission is tricky. It shifts all the initial risk to the side of the salesperson. Therefore people willing to work that way often want a big slice of the revenue and aggressive payment terms. While the lack of up-front risk for your company is nice, the commission terms can come back to haunt you if your product / service becomes successful.</comment>


Man vs. Food - <AUTHOR> http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/nutrition/Man-vs--Food.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebookpost <comment><USER2> Not certain diet anecdotes of a hard core, super light cyclist are relevant to most people (who maybe walk a couple times a month). Maybe to other people who exercise hours a day? I don't think the article is written very well since it really tries to claim otherwise, but then his problem with a lot of the diets is just that they don't give him enough energy for sports.</comment>


Campus flirting 'social network' - <AUTHOR> http://www.likealittle.com/

<comment><USER2> Hmm - I thought I'd seen this before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1961088> <\- no comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023177> <\- _lots_ of comments.</comment>


Ask HN: Didn't get in YC S11? Are you going to charge forwards anyway? - <AUTHOR>

I know I AM !! :) Who's with me? You'll face many rejections throughout the lifetime of the company, if you stop at the first rejection, you've already lost.<p>Please describe in 1-3 sentences what you're building. <comment><USER2> I think that if getting a rejection from YC is enough to stop someone, then that was probably one of the reasons they were rejected.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like to think I got my personal daily rejection quota filled today :) <http://cdixon.org/2010/09/12/getting-rejected/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you got rejected, Mixpanel is giving out free startup plans to all those that are rejected to help bootstrap. Please forward your rejection email as proof. Email email@example.com. Keep chugging along.

<comment><USER4> clever promo. nice

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you really think anyone who isn't going to charge forward is going to post "no, i'm quitting now." in this thread?

<comment><USER6> If it makes you feel better, you can assume the title to be this instead:

      Didn't get in YC S11? How are you going to charge forwards?

I think the point of this post was for it to be a morale booster. While everyone might agree to go on charging forwards, people will most likely have different approaches in doing so. _That's_ what this is all about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am working on an expense tracking system, pretty far along.

Available here if anyone wants to try it out. <http://nets.neosavvy.com:8080/nets/expense/>

Anyone who wants to be a beta tester or get some help using it drop me an email email@example.com

<http://blog.neosavvy.com/wordpress/?p=254>

</comment><comment><USER8> To stop now would admit defeat. And I never admit defeat. We are changing the game on how developers get jobs. It's time recruiters are put out of business, companies get the right employees and developers wake up every day loving their jobs. If you run a startup or looking for software work in Sf or Boston and want an exclusive invite to demo, email firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER9> My opinion is that applying for funding should merely be something to bring 'excitement' to an otherwise tough' monotonous' life of an entrepreneur.

Whether you get funded does not only depend on the ingenuity of your idea but a match between you and the funder.

You should continue working because you believe in your idea (to some extent but over-believing is unhealthy) and simply because what else would you do with your spare time =)

<comment><USER10> The process definitely did this for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nope, Already doing it. A user driven embed-able music polling platform / app. Its partially developed right now and will be rocking the music industry very soon. We also hold huge ground with existing social networks and launching already developed apps very soon. Looking forward to being the one that got away... and never looking back!

What are you building?

<comment><USER12> "A user driven embed-able music polling platform / app". <\-- ?!?!?

<comment><USER11> More to come, very soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes. A social startup with a plan and revenue strategy, though I'm squeamish about talking super publicly about it. I'm looking for cofounders, if anyone's interested in joining me. I'm more interested in passionate, driven, generally super smart people than any particular skillset. Let me know if you're interested and let's talk offline. (:

</comment><comment><USER4> We're working on a flash-sales site with a focus for launching new products (rather than selling overstock of old products). We want to give small merchants and designers a captive audience to get those first early adopters. We currently have a landing page at <http://www.Trisse.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> yeah, no point in me stopping when the product is 80% built already (of course the last 20% is the toughest). i applied with a social photo search app... it's like greplin for photos and videos. if you want an invite to the beta, sign up at <http://www.pilvy.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> We applied with <http://getrunrate.com> and are charging forward!

It's simple bookkeeping software with an elegant interface that surpasses Mint.com and a focus on mobile access and digitizing receipts.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if YC's size is working against it. It can't invest in 2 startups that do the same or similar things? And in this case you're only giving them free insights. This is why I am critical of YC: no official list of their investees to see if they'll be a conflict of interest. Why not? What other VC websites don't list their portfolio companies? I shouldn't say it's a scam.

lal.com got rejected: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2422799>

Can't comment on the thread.. bit too much like messageparty?

Think being a participant of this forum will help? If the team happens to remember you , but it won't hinder you if you're not. HN is YC's API, plugin, hope for everything, prepare for nothing.

I think I'll go on American Idol now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Many rejections later, but still amped and loving it. They may have already picked a social commerce startup last intake, but they'll wish they took this one instead ;) There's simply nothing else to do but go forwards.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think that a good route to go if you get rejected is use this time between now and winter 12 yc batch to charge forwards - it demonstrates fabulous determination and tenacity in the face of rejection.

</comment><comment><USER19> Still powering away on <http://spothero.com> an online marketplace that let's you rent out your parking spot when you're not using it

</comment><comment><USER20> faceless.com/qa/, it's a website based on real-time infotainment over local communities; im a comm/web design major and i really love the idea of local; why not make it positive and incentize users to provide local information that pertains to them; most social networks are based on who you know, this is based on community-verified users you don't already know. i really wanted a chance to share with yc =/ i thought it was a great idea and i have a great team!

<comment><USER20> oh yep, we're def going to go ahead and charge with it! =] put a lot of time into it! goodluck everyone else too =] not the end of the world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> We're building a next-generation, distributed social network which gives users control over their data, and helps their social lives in the real world instead of online. Oh yeah, and we already have over 70k active users who downloaded our app in the last 2 months. So I am curious why YC didn't even want to interview us, but then again, their rejection letter doesn't leave many clues :)

<http://qbix.com>

<comment><USER5> Your spiel here is very motivating, motivating enough to make me click your link.

However, your website doesn't represent this at all. Your front page leaves me wondering "What do they do." None of the "apps" you have give me any indication of being the "Next generation social network."

I'm left confused as to what you do, or why I would sign up.

<comment><USER21> That's okay. We didn't optimize the site for that yet. Right now, most of our users simply interact through the apps and we are going viral through that.

In about a month, it will all start to make sense. Check back then :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nope, we are doing a weekend coding session to get some of our backend developed.

</comment><comment><USER23> When the next round?

<comment><USER24> "There are two each year, one from January through March and one from June through August." -- <http://ycombinator.com/about.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm going to charge backwards, just for the hell of it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have not yet begun to charge forwards!

</comment><comment><USER27> I apply with an excellent idea about qr code based social platform, we are going forward! We already have customers, don't know why YC put money in social pokemon games at facebook and not in our platform. I don't understand this at all.</comment>


How we stole some Chrome OS awesomeness long before Android did - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/highfive-engineering-blog/our-favorite-open-source-update-engine-773ee8bc94cd <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, I work for Highfive.

My coworkers and I are here and ready to answer any questions!</comment>


Humans.txt, like robots.txt, but for humans. - <AUTHOR> http://humanstxt.org/

<comment><USER2> Why does <http://humanstxt.org/H-team.php> exist, surely they should just link straight to <http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt>!

Anyway, pointless initiative. Can't help but think that this feels like a project you create in the hope of getting attention from people saying writing blogs about them trying to start something new, not in the hope of it _actually_ taking off. I mean, robots.txt makes sense because robots know to look for it. It _obviously_ makes 100x more sense to have a hyperlink to an "about us" or "who's behind this site?" page with a URL of their choice, if it's designed for people to read. Oh, and many, many sites already do that.

<comment><USER3> I think this is an attempt to create a soopersekrit easter egg standard so that the guys who write a site can pat each other on the back without the customer needing to know about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _What is it?_ _An initiative to know the creators of the website. A TXT file that contains the information about the different people who have contributed to the web building._

Robots.txt specifies a set of URLs that automated crawlers are not supposed to access. I'm not sure how this is "like robots.txt, but for humans".

<comment><USER5> My guess is that the theory behind this is - Robots.txt : File that robots look for, to get certain kinds of information about a site :: Humans.txt : File that people look for, certain kinds of to get information about a site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm kind of surprised at all the grumpy comments -- this idea made me smile.

I like the idea of a team leaving their collective signature in a hidden-away corner of a website. The semi-secrecy (after all, how many people are ever going to read a websites humans.txt?) and feeling of ownership that this gives is really neat.

My projects are getting a humans.txt!

</comment><comment><USER7> _The idea of hard coding a URI, like is done for robots.txt is a bad idea. Let's not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again._ \-- <http://bitworking.org/news/No_Fishing>

Fair comment here[1] about the specific case of robots.txt, but lets not do this kind of thing gratuitously.

Maybe what we need instead is the X-BOFH header[2]:

      X-BOFH: http://www.xxxxx.de/bofh/xxxxxx.html
      The actual URL it points to has been obscured to
      protect the guilty, and a local mirror[3] provided in its stead.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639337>

[2] [http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2005/08/07/fun-with- http-h...](http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2005/08/07/fun-with-http-headers)

[3] <http://www.nextthing.org/blog/cache/bofh_edited.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> How many people does it take to put up a website promoting a txt-file addition to webroot? 5, apparently. Next up they'll take millions in VC, integrate with Facebook and write blog posts on it all. </sarcasm>

Somehow a balance should be kept between technology involved and ego show-off:

Static webpage: barely qualifies for even any credit.

Contains sign-up form: a minimal "About" page.

Asks for personal info: names and credible external links.

Charges you money: add photos of yourselves and references.

Etcetera.

<comment><USER9> That was my first thought, but apparently it's seven!

<http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt>

No wonder they're looking for a standard way to structure author information - they're generating so much of it that it'll soon become unweildy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought these guys had ripped off my revolutionary idea "humans.txt": <http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/07/15/humans-txt/>

But it turns out they were trying to do something useful, not devise a system for preventing pesky humans from wasting precious robot bandwidth.

I think I like my idea better though.

</comment><comment><USER11> "like robots.txt, but for humans" This is indeed nothing but a marketing/PR gimmick. The only connotation that I could think of was that like Robots.txt has to do something with robots, this has something to do with Humans.

Utility: I won't go on to say it is completely useless. While many sites have an about or colophon section, they end up naming people who are most active or at the top of the ladder. What about facebook with so many employees? That is where I see this essentially being used. As I tweeted, it is more like the Credits section for the web.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like this, but I think that any site that implements it will have the same result Netscape did: <http://www.jwz.org/doc/about.html>

<comment><USER6> It sounds like the "bickering" at Netscape over their about:authors page was simply the result of having a culture where people would bicker about things like the details of an about:authors page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As many have pointed out, this is not really analogous to robots.txt.

The first thing I imagined was a text file that said stuff like, "Don't read anything in the Features section. Also, don't try to use the admin login panel!"

But really, what this idea should be called is developers.txt.

I thought it was a silly idea, until someone else here talked about it providing a way of verifying work. Anyone can post a website with screen captures of other sites, and claim they worked on them. Even if the site does list a developer firm in the footer, as long as I worked there, I can claim to have worked on that site.

A developers.txt file like their example would make for a verifiable list of the people who actually worked on the site, in a way that does not add clutter to the actual content.

I know clients we work with probably don't want us putting all our names on their About page, but would have no problems with a developers.txt file that normal users are never going to see.

</comment><comment><USER14> I see this being useful for future developers – the number of sites I've taken over with no idea who made it or how to get server access etc. Having an easy way to find out how to contact would make things much better than having to wget everything each time.

</comment><comment><USER15> One major flaw of this approach is that people who currently have control of the site will edit out the people who worked on the site before. The only way to do it fool-proof is to use a service like <http://creatorfinder.com> they store a history of creators and also allow all your verified portfolio for a creator to be displayed.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd rather not speculate as to the usefulness of this, but I do know one thing: the English here is off and needs to be cleaned up (I realise the authors are Spanish).

</comment><comment><USER17> robots.txt is meant to be read by robots, hence the markup and location.

for humans just use normal web pages. like an 'about' page, for example

<comment><USER18> Perhaps humans.txt would suggest which kinds of humans should and should not visit this site. Under-18s, for example.

<comment><USER19> It's about the _developers_ , not the users.

<comment><USER18> I know what it _is_ about. I'm suggesting a humans.txt which actually makes a decent analogy with robots.txt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For some reason I believe if this will take off it will be used by robots not humans..

<comment><USER21> Agreed. After some time there would be a database and a ranking with web site authors, skills, languages, etc. Interested people would look into it to find people that match their type of site design...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Didn´t something like this used to be achieved with meta tags anyway? I remember when it was common to have meta tags with author names, editors (I have often seem the generator often used on many WYSIWYG editors assigned to the author´s text editor), and contact information.

</comment><comment><USER23> (Slightly tangential but) I like this: <http://www.thinkvisibility.com/robots.txt>

</comment><comment><USER24> What if I dream electric sheep? Do I add androids.txt?

<comment><USER25> +10 Phillip K Dick points to you, sir

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is something _like_ this for advertising the contact information for a site. It's called info.txt.

<http://www.aota.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-18373.html>

It looks like this (erroneously named robots.txt by this site owner): <http://www.melodilerim.com/robots.txt>

</comment><comment><USER27> I like the idea of giving the developers/designers/copywrites/whatever some credit, however, I doubt this is the way it should be done. Most web designers/developers/agencies already place a link in the website's footer so it's not that hard to know who was involved.

</comment><comment><USER28> i love the irony in reading "We Are People, Not Machines." just as the font- face css loaded and converted the entire page from a human-readable variable- width font to a machine-like fixed-width font.

</comment><comment><USER29> _From their humans.txt file, Chef:Juanjo Bernabeu_

I don't understand the key value format used if this is for human. It would have been more appropriate to use a format like "The Chef is" if this is for a human-being. Or is the file to be read by robots to treat better human?

In other words, I don't know if this initiative will really help us to preserve the three laws of robotics - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics> .

</comment><comment><USER30> Horrible idea. You move the "about" page to some monospace non-marked up page.

This just creates an excuse not to make a dcent "about"page.

<comment><USER31> When doing contract work, you don't normally get credit for a site on the about page. Sometimes you may get permission to add a footer link. I think this is great for those situations where you don't get either. My hope would be that most companies would not mind a simple text file in the root which isn't linked anywhere but is well-known.

My portfolio of sites becomes verifiable. Yes, I built these sites, and here are the humans.txt files to prove it.

I've been at plenty of companies and built many sites and can't really prove I had hand in putting building any of them.

<comment><USER32> You could encode a fingerprint of a signing key in a comment tag and offer to sign doubtful peoples' nonces with that key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Oh, are we trying to make it easier for spambots to harvest our email addresses now?

<comment><USER34> Spambots already have your email address. Get a filter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> All the comments and suggestions here are good. One more: why not just use the meta tags for this same purpose? Then you don't even need to create another file.

There's already an 'author' meta name attribute for instance, and you can define your own on-the-fly too.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen on HN. I'm going to flag it and pretend that this was just a very bad dream.

</comment><comment><USER36> why you copy what @smashingmagazine tweet??? twitter stealer!!

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh god.</comment>


CNN trojan top story - <AUTHOR>

Just visited CNN and received a Trojan alert from ESET antivirus when clicking on the top story. Trojan ID: js/trojandownloader.agent.nsa. Infected URL: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/06/world/isis-jordan/index.html <comment><USER2> Somethings off on that page to, the headlines don't match up with the rest of the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> is not only that page..</comment>


Larry Page reportedly interested in building a better airport and a model city - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/At-Google-CEO-Page-s-Dreams-Keep-Getting-Bigger

<comment><USER2> Seems like hell living in a city where every building, every public transportation and every other infrastructure is owned by google. On the other hand living in a big city with good public transportation, where it's safe to commute by bicycle and the cars doesn't occupy much of the space on the ground, sounds like heaven. The closest you get is Copenhagen, where 36% of all citizens commute by bike every day, and the rest seems to take the s-train. Urban sprawl is a huge source of waste, but it takes more than money to solve the problem.

Sources: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-train](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-train) [http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/09/03/wowza-scale-maps-of- ba...](http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/09/03/wowza-scale-maps-of-barcelona- and-atlanta-show-the-waste-of-sprawl/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to full article?

<comment><USER2> You need to subscribe to read the full article from the source, but there are plenty of articles that cites the article.</comment></comment>


Tell HN, read this: The Design of Design - Essays from a Computer Scientist - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Design-Essays-Computer-Scientist/dp/0201362988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277490341&sr=8-1

<comment><AUTHOR> By Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month. I'm reading the book right now, it's great.

Here's a link to MMM in case someone hasn't read it:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software- Engineerin...](http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering- Anniversary/dp/0201835959/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b)</comment>


Git is already federated and decentralized (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distributed.html?rev=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Discussed extensively a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097439)

Possibly worth a revisiting.</comment>


The U.S. Navy Almost Fought the Soviets Over Bangladesh - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/in-1971-the-u-s-navy-almost-fought-the-soviets-over-bangladesh-c65489bc72c0#.prw727v0q <comment><USER2> _" Archer Blood, the State Department's consul general in Bengal, sent a cable to Washington on March 27. "Here in Decca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak[istani] military," Blood wrote. "Evidence continues to mount that the MLA authorities have list of AWAMI League supporters whom they are systematically eliminating by seeking them out in their homes and shooting them down.

"Among those marked for extinction in addition to the A.L. hierarchy are student leaders and university faculty. …

"Moreover, with the support of the Pak[istani] military, non-Bengali Muslims are systematically attacking poor people's quarters and murdering Bengalis and Hindus."

He and 20 diplomats later sent a famous protest telegram in which he called what was occurring "genocide." Kissinger responded to Blood's complaints by dismissing him from his post. "The use of power against seeming odds pays off," Kissinger observed regarding the crackdown.

The death toll is commonly estimated between at 200,000 and 3 million. Kissinger's tacit support for the massacres in Bangladesh is one of many incidents contributing to his poor record on human rights."

"In July 1971, Kissinger had already secretly flown from Pakistan to Beijing for the first diplomatic meeting between the United States and Communist China. "Yahya hasn't had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!" Kissinger remarked."_

Wow. It's hard to believe that this is the same Kissinger that's still held in high regard today.

<comment><USER3> I doubt many people really hold Kissinger in "high regard."

<comment><USER4> Hillary Clinton and many in similar high circles they absolutely do. The ones actually crafting American foreign policy.

<comment><USER5> There is also a personal connection. The Clintons and the Kissingers also usually spend Christmas together at Oscar del la Renta's villa in the Dominican Repulic [as has been widely reported by Gawker and other "tabloids"].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An excellent two sentence summary of the Kashmir conflicts:

"Pakistan and India almost immediately went to war over Kashmir, a Muslim- majority state whose Hindu ruler elected to join India in exchange for assistance putting down a local revolt. The incident escalated to a full-scale confrontation which simmers to this day."

A very nice article, one thing that can be added is that Indira Gandhi was in favor of entering the war far earlier but was dissuaded by army staff who waited for the monsoons. The monsoons would make China's entry into the war impossible. So it was not just chance that China did not enter. From Wikipedia:

"Towards the end of April 1971, Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister of India at that time, asked Manekshaw if he was ready to go to war with Pakistan. Manekshaw refused, saying that his single armoured division and two infantry divisions were deployed elsewhere, that only 13 of his 189 tanks were fit to fight, and that they would be competing for rail carriage with the grain harvest at that point of time. He also pointed out that the Himalayan passes would soon open up, with the forthcoming monsoon in East Pakistan, which would result in heavy flooding. When Indira Gandhi asked the cabinet to leave the room and the chief to stay, he offered to resign. She declined to accept it, but sought his advice. He then said he could guarantee victory if she would allow him to prepare for the conflict on his terms, and set a date for it. These were acceded to by the Prime Minister."

<comment><USER7> > An excellent two sentence summary of the Kashmir conflicts

I really don't think that's a great summary of the conflict. It's the common narrative that's put forth, particularly in the US, because it makes sense through the lens of US foreign policy, but it doesn't really explain the full background and proper historical or political context.

I'm not going to provide an alternative, though, because I don't think the background of the conflict _can_ be summarized in two sentences, any more than World War I can. Sure, you can say "the war happened because Franz Ferdinand got shot. This set off a chain of events which escalated into a global war" and you wouldn't be _wrong_. But that's the sort of explanation that really only makes sense of you already know the answer, which is the most dangerous kind.

<comment><USER6> Yes that two sentence summary does not even mention that Pakistan was invading, instead it says "local revolt" and it does not mention that India went to the UN instead of settling matters with their military strength which would have avoided embedding Pakistan into the matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interested here are few videos of premiers of both country discussing 1971 situation:

Indian PM Indra Gandhi [https://youtu.be/_MATAqeiL-4](https://youtu.be/_MATAqeiL-4)

Pakistani General and President Y Khan [https://youtu.be/v903MselZ3o](https://youtu.be/v903MselZ3o)

I always felt odd that US supported a military government over a democratic one.

<comment><USER7> > I always felt odd that US supported a military government over a democratic > one

The US supports authoritarianism over democracy all the time. Democracy, in the eyes of US foreign policy rhetoric, is only legitimate if the democratically elected government is friendly towards the US and aligned with US interests.

The US has no problems with toppling a democratically elected government in order to install a dictator or puppet leader. It's happened many times, and I imagine it will happen again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was curious about why the photo of the carrier shows servicemen standing to spell out E=mc2 in the photo above the article. It was to commemorate that the USS Enterprise was the first nuclear powered carrier.

Here is a photo[1] of the same ship in 2011, marking 50 years of nuclear naval power (from this page[2])

[1] [http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/0265az.jpg](http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/0265az.jpg) [2] [http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/65b.htm](http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/65b.htm)

<comment><USER10> It's a famous photo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)#/media...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_\(CVN-65\)#/media/File:TaskForce_One.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am still amazed that the Cold War didn't go full global thermonuclear over the many regional conflicts, accidents, or mistakes.

<comment><USER12> It was never going to. It was only a tool to motivate docility, impose repression, and achieve political gain.

M.A.D. was known on all sides for decades before I was taught about it in the 80s. Nobody who could influence the Big Red Button was at all interested in relinquishing the power that they would lose in the event of an ICBM war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a fascinating & scary bit of history:

> _Indeed, a Soviet naval task force from Vladivostok consisting of a cruiser, > a destroyer and two attack submarines under the command of Adm. Vladimir > Kruglyakov intercepted Task Force 74 in the makings of a deadly Cold War > standoff. Kruglyakov gave a rousing account in a T.V. interview of > "encircling" the task force, surfacing his submarines in front of the > Enterprise, opening the missile tubes and "blocking" the American ships._

Also, the eyewitness account (from the OPs link): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQchmaC5-q8&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQchmaC5-q8&feature=youtu.be&t=112)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the subject of an excellent book on Archer Blood:

[https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Telegram-Gary-J- Bass/dp/0307744...](https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Telegram-Gary-J- Bass/dp/0307744620)

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems picayune to have removed the " _In 1971,_ " qualifier from the title.

<comment><USER16> +1 for using that lovely word. Though overall I'm happy that the title is not "You won't believe who the U.S. Navy almost bombed!"

</comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin the fact that US for decades openly and covertly supported such an plain evil regime as Pakistani one (on top of other similar all over the world) tells me all I need to know about lack of any morality of US foreign efforts.

I'm not buying some fairy tale of lesser of two evils while supporting the bigger one. they could do better if they wanted, which would incredibly affect millions and millions of human beings, but they've chosen not to.

<comment><USER17> There is no morality in international relations. The international stage is ultimately an anarchy, and it's a dog-eat-dog world. Countries which make decisions based on morality rather than self-interest lose out to countries that focus on results.

<comment><USER18> This view seems utterly at odds with what I've read of history. The individuals making the decisions about the actions of states take action for moral reasons _all the time_. Look at, I don't know, all the wars the UK got into in the 19th century through trying to stop the slave trade, half the decision making of the powers getting into World War I, the US's conspicuous failure to annex the territory it captured in WWII or countless other things. I certainly wouldn't say that any country is entirely selfless, that doesn't happen either. And there's a wide range of how different factors affect a country's balance between the two. But even Nazi Germany and Japan did things for racist, anti-communist, and (in Japan's case) anti-colonialist things at times that weren't in the interest of furthering the power of their states.

<comment><USER17> The US's good treatment of conquered territories following WWII set it up for the global hegemony it enjoys to this day. The Nazis and Japanese lost the war in a devastating fashion in part because they behaved so stupidly due to their ideology. I'm not too familiar with the UK's fight against slavery, but I'd wager that their enemies were the ones who suffered the most from shutting down the slave trade.

<comment><USER19> > I'd wager that their enemies were the ones who suffered the most from > shutting down the slave trade.

This is .. not a position supported by historical evidence, and in fact it was the UK which suffered (stopped benefiting from) the slave trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hell has a special place for Kissinger.

</comment><comment><USER21> Every time these sorts of things come up, we see contemporary Americans excusing the actions of their state as 'admissible under the circumstances' .. however, one has to wonder just what form of circumstances would be appropriate for this to be _happening to the United States_ , i.e. - if a foreign state had done this to the US, would it be acceptable?

No, of course not - not ever.

So, the point of these stories seems to be to point out the hypocrisy of the current generation of Americans - who justify American supremacy at the cost of a great deal of moral altitude. Surely this bubble is going to burst, one day, and we won't have a generation of Americans who justify the crimes of their state against others', but rather accept responsibility and actually put the actors in jail? One can only hope.

<comment><USER22> I hope it's a very long time before acting to further the interests of the United States becomes a crime in the United States.

 _Edited to add:_ And I'm really surprised to see several people, I doubt any of whom would find positive connotations in the phrase "American exceptionalism", nonetheless arguing by trivial implication that the United States should unilaterally engage in military operations, within the territory of a sovereign state then being courted toward alliance, in order to change the outcome of a secessionist insurrection then taking place within that state.

<comment><USER23> You hopefully know that a lot of things that are sold as in the interest of the US are not really in the interest of it but only in the interest of some politicians or other players.

<comment><USER22> Only a fool would think otherwise. But I don't see how that's significant here; opening diplomatic relations with China in the midst of the Cold War was very much in the interests of the United States.

<comment><USER12> Participating in the Cold War at all, however, was not.

"Interests" are not self-justifying.

<comment><USER22> I eagerly await your argument for how unconstrained Soviet imperial expansion into Western Europe would've advanced US interests.

<comment><USER21> It would have further allowed the continued justification of western imperialism as a 'reaction' ..

<comment><USER22> ...which, if true, would have resulted either in Soviet domination of Europe, or, when Soviet and American ambitions bluntly collided, a hot war instead of a cold one. It may be possible to regard either of these outcomes as preferable to the one which actually occurred, but I have to confess myself unable to imagine how.

<comment><USER21> Actually, this is what happened. Western imperialism ran rampant, we have human rights violations and heinous, heinous conditions for significant parts of the world, all because the West wants its way. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. The only reason you're arguing is because its your team that is doing all the damage.

<comment><USER22> Don't mistake me for being particularly starry-eyed about American imperial ambitions, or America in general; I'm a nationalist by default, because I'd rather live in a strong country than a weak one, not because I'm especially in love with its frankly rather adolescent national mythos.

That said, based on all the historical evidence I've seen, if I had to choose between living in an American satrapy or a Soviet one, I'd take the former without a qualm. US history isn't without its stains, but in all things there are degrees, and to claim there's nothing to choose between the two powers is arrantly ahistorical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Archer Blood, the State Department's consul general in Bengal, sent a cable > to Washington on March 27. "Here in Decca we are mute and horrified > witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak[istani] military," Blood wrote. > "Evidence continues to mount that the MLA authorities have list of AWAMI > League supporters whom they are systematically eliminating by seeking them > out in their homes and shooting them down.

> He and 20 diplomats later sent a famous protest telegram in which he called > what was occurring "genocide." Kissinger responded to Blood's complaints by > dismissing him from his post. "The use of power against seeming odds pays > off," Kissinger observed regarding the crackdown.

It is important to keep in mind that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

<comment><USER25> Probably because he started diplomatic relations with China, pulled us out of Vietnam and didn't start or escalate a military conflict.

You want to throw all that out because of a strongly worded letter related to a territorial dispute that is still going on 40 years later?

<comment><USER26> He was awarded the Nobel for the failed cease-fire negotiation with Vietnam in 1973, that war dragged on for two more bloody years before USA would admit that it had lost. Meanwhile he was illegally carpet bombing Cambodia, as well as kidnapping and murdering his way through latin america.

<comment><USER27> > USA would admit that it had lost

When Nixon announced this to the nation, his newspeak term for it was "peace with honor in Vietnam."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXTiz8F6S5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXTiz8F6S5E)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Employee Career roadmap for small scale IT consulting company - it-consultant We are a small scale IT consulting company which helps other companies build SAAS products. Right now there are 12 people in team. Most of them are full stack developers along with a some DevOps skills.
Usually developers start as a fresher and learn with other experienced developers and eventually get better year by year.
I would like to know how we should  build a career roadmap for developers so that they could achieve growth in their career? <comment><AUTHOR> It depends on your goals as an organization paired with each team members career goals. Are you attempting to give them a map that is suitable in consulting, enterprise, startups or just a generalized roadmap? You are here (x) role today and would like to be there (z) in a specific amount of time. I think many people get frustrated with consulting work so they have a tendency to go client side (whether start up or enterprise). I think you should be transparent and accept that as reality and map several paths both internally and externally. I think that would benefit your organization culturally and reduce churn. Incorporate existing technical/business skills and map each of those tracks out, showing how they are beneficial to the consultant/developer over the course of their career. Just a few thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER2> You could think about skills development in a T-shape form where your employees can acquire more depth in their skillset or go broad.

More depth would mean developing their technical ability, going from junior developer to architect of smaller size applications to massive applications or developing mastery in certain technologies.

More breadth would mean providing them with a path that lets them develop their managerial skills, technical or non-technical, eventually equipping them with skills to run their own technical teams, driving sales, become partners in the business, etc.

A consideration would also be to have an honest conversation with your team and where do they want to grow their careers. Though they might churn to startups or enterprise companies, treating them well could result in referral business.</comment>


The Innovation Lull - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexmuir.com/2012/08/the-innovation-lull/

<comment><USER2> Often things do get developed in silence. What looks like a "lull" could be a lot of stealth mode activity.

TV is a fascinating market that has a few challenges.

I have a TV that is hooked up to a computer and a game console. I used to have a Blu-Ray player attached to the TV, but I hooked up a portable Blu-Ray writer to the computer, installed some software, and removed a bulky thing that had to be positioned awkwardly so it could see the remote control.

Blu-Ray disks aren't really "movies", they're really Java applications that have access to a really great multimedia API. It turns out a computer is much faster as disc loading and interactive features because cost constraints cause standalone players to be underpowered, even expensive players.

For 5.1 sound we have an HTIB. Add it all up and people who visit our house have a hard time figuring out what remotes to grab and what buttons to press to do simple things.

I'd like to see a TV that has a remote control similar to the Wiimote in that I could use it as a light wand, pointing at things on the screen.

The "multiple remote control" problem could be solved by using the back channel that's available in HDMI. Although the PHY is standardized, the messages aren't, so this only works if all the stuff connected to your TV comes from the same vendor. (Samsung or Sony could make a whole suite of products, but Apple is awfully dogmatic -- if they had any sense you could get a Blu-Ray drive in a mac mini and then have a pretty little package that flattens the alternatives.)

Another trouble is economic. A TV could have a ten year or more lifespan, but the electronic package in it will be becoming obsolete in five or so, particularly if they economize it.

The cable box is another barrier. The cable companies are going to resist anything that makes TVoIP easy. Yet, cable delivers a huge amount of entertainment, and a super TV will only be super if it delivers a super experience watching cable.

As disappointing as it is, Apple could be making a very reasonable choice to get into cable boxes, since that is the place that would be the hardest to integrate into other systems.</comment>


Age: A simple, modern and secure file encryption tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FiloSottile/age <comment><USER2> This is great, it fills a gap that I've long defended as PGP's remaining legitimate use case. Of course, now we just need to work on the adoption problem. Despite the fact that PGP adoption is a well-known joke in itself, all the tools designed to replace it (with the exception of the IM space) have somehow managed to achieve even lower use rates.

It's been almost five years since Magic Wormhole first released, and about half a year since that popular Latacora post recommended it for transferring files, and said "Someone stick a Windows installer on a Go or Rust implementation of Magic Wormhole right away". Guess what you're still not going to find a reliable Windows build (let alone a GUI) for? Yep that's right. Despite the fact that most of these projects come from a felt need for better alternatives to PGP for the average user, very few of them have actually come up with a product that's more accessible to the average person.

<comment><USER3> There is now a solid Go implementation of `wormhole` (it's my daily wormhole driver). It works on Windows. It just needs a UI.

Since PGP has almost no serious real-world adoption (search your feelings; you know it to be true), it's wide open for replacement. People should use `wormhole` for file transfer in preference to `age`-encrypted files, if the only reason they're encrypting is to get the file safely across the wires.

<comment><USER2> > it's wide open for replacement.

Totally agree there, but I'll remain skeptical until I actually see that adoption start to happen. Certainly it's not going to until there's a nice GUI. (It's kind of sad, actually. Wormhole has such a nice TUI that would be utterly trivial to wrap in a simple QT interface or something.)

<comment><USER3> Right? RIGHT? I keep saying: everyone I've ever taught `wormhole` to does the same thing I did when 'lvh showed it to me: immediately and gleefully wormholing everything. It's such a great tool; the good people of the world deserve it.

It kills me that so many UI-type people build new encrypted email systems and nobody works on putting solid UI on cool-kid crypto like `wormhole`. It's such a high-impact project and it's missing exactly the skillset these people are strongest with. I mean that sincerely: as I think is obvious to everyone, crypto people can't do UI to save their lives.

<comment><USER4> Do programs exist that generate the most basic portable GUI (in Qt for example) from command line application?

Basically what you need is list of parameters, their types, allowed ranges, preferred way to modify and input parameter values (file selection, input box, slider, ...). Then button to run the program.

EDIT apparently there is [https://github.com/chriskiehl/Gooey](https://github.com/chriskiehl/Gooey) for Python.

EDIT2 Hmm. maybe fbs is good enough [https://build- system.fman.io/](https://build-system.fman.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NSA recommended people stop using ECC <384 bits ([https://apps.nsa.gov/iaarchive/programs/iad- initiatives/cnsa...](https://apps.nsa.gov/iaarchive/programs/iad- initiatives/cnsa-suite.cfm)).

There are applications where the extra time and space of something like ed448 present uncomfortable trade-offs.

File encryption is not generally one of those applications.

So I find this a little disappointing.

But I suppose that NIST PQ will finalize in the not far future and this will get replaced by something that hybridizes with a PQ scheme. (I say replace because the expectation that a pubkey is something you can easily copy and paste doesn't really work with the PQ schemes you'd likely use with file encryption.)

What happens if auth fails part way through the file? Do you get a truncated decryption on stdout? -- or is this buffering the whole input in memory?

<comment><USER3> It's linked right from the spec: it's a streaming AEAD construction, and getting that is literally one of the motivations behind the tool. It does not buffer the whole message in memory, or fail to detect truncation.

<comment><USER6> I think that you misunderstood nullc's question. They are asking what happens if at some point one of the poly1305 MACs in the file is incorrect. Not if someone truncates the file.

<comment><USER5> We're talking about the same thing.

I saw that it used a streaming AEAD, but that's actually what inspired my question.

Since (from the github page) it reads stdin, it can't two-pass the file.

So it _appears_ that if you hand it a file with midstream corruption it's going to feed a truncated input down your pipeline.

That has consequences. They may well be less serious consequences than buffering a potentially unlimited amount of data in memory :), but it's useful to make the behavior very clear because it wouldn't require too advanced an idiot to make something that was exploitable on this basis.

<comment><USER3> It's Rogaway's STREAM scheme from [https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/189.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/189.pdf). Are you pointing out a problem in the paper, or in some specific idiosyncrasy you see of how it's implemented here? If so: what is it?

The AGL post the spec links to directly talks more generally about the high- level strategy: you're buffering chunks of files. You're only ever releasing authenticated plaintext. If you're piping to something processing plaintext on-line, that thing might need to wait for the end-of-file signal before processing or else potentially operate on a truncated file (by some integral number of chunks). `age` is still just a Unix program.

<comment><USER5> My question was asking to confirm that it indeed will put out a truncated output when given a mid-stream corrupted input (and that it doesn't do something like buffer just to validate).

That behavior should be clearly documented, so that users can be advised that their pipelines need to safely handle that case.

> that thing might need to wait for the end-of-file signal before processing > or else potentially operate on a truncated file

Exactly. The docs should say this clearly, or someone will manage to create an interesting vulnerability with it eventually. :)

Could go with a message the points out that encryption doesn't authenticate the source-- which is a not uncommon misuse that shows up with PGP, where people assume that the source is authentic if the input was encrypted, even where no signature is used. (the fact that corrupted input gives an "authentication failed" message might be particularly misleading)

<comment><USER3> It's _streaming on-line encryption_. That's literally the point of streaming encryption: not buffering whole messages. The rest of your point directly follows from "not buffering whole messages".

<comment><USER5> Indeed. And the readme and the usage output makes no mention of streaming, buffering, on-line, authentication, or anything related.

This is a potential security relevant behavior that most users-- who haven't written or analyzed tools like this-- would find surprising.

For those following along, I went and tested it-- since the behavior wasn't documented or clear from the code. If it encounters midstream corruption it truncates the output, exits with a non-zero return and prints some error text std stderr: "Error: chacha20poly1305: message authentication failed\n[ Did age not do what you expected? Could an error be more useful? Tell us: [https://filippo.io/age/report](https://filippo.io/age/report) ]"

If the input is truncated, it either does that-- or if the truncation is on a block boundary it prints "Error: unexpected EOF\n[ Did age not do what you expected? Could an error be more useful? Tell us: [https://filippo.io/age/report](https://filippo.io/age/report) ]" instead.

It's not a problem, but it should be documented.

<comment><USER7> This is a security footgun and a vulnerability waiting to happen, but bash is at fault, not age. age does the best it can do (while maintaining O(1) memory requirement) by exiting non-zero, but the shell swallows that if it's in the middle of a pipeline.

<comment><USER8> IMHO it's not that bad. It's actually quite usable, and reasonably easy to handle safely.

Use

      bash: set -eu -o pipefail
      # unfortunately pipefail is not POSIX

and some care when writing scripts. Possibly decrypt to a file first.

A proper and likely footgun would be decrypting and passing tainted plaintext and only then exiting nonzero. E.g.

      decrypt < file | sh  # owned

Definitely should be documented either way.

<comment><USER7> I agree with all of what you said.

The footgun you described can still happen if there's a verification error somewhere in the middle. You could still conceivably craft exploits using only truncation of the plaintext, depending on the situation.

No one _should_ "decrypt < file | sh" (or anything | sh without verifying), but they will. Doesn't matter if we have POSIX or non-POSIX shell flags that can fix it, the defaults are bad.

There's nothing tools like age can do about that, though.

Edit: I was thinking more along the lines of

        if decrypt < file | postprocess > tempfile
        then
            sh tempfile
        fi

where postprocess exits zero. This is where the default shell behavior fails. The "decrypt < file | sh" antipattern is something not even the shell can do anything about.

<comment><USER8> > No one should "decrypt < file | sh" (or anything | sh without verifying)

I was thinking of self-prepared scripts, tooling or owner controller distribution. Decrypt+good signature is precisely what I want.

Anyway, as nmadden pointed out, age does not provide source authentication _duh_. AFAIU that means, all the streaming semantics and blockwise AEAD are practically useless, unless you are using the password encryption, which is helpfully blocked from automation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some questions about the spec:

1\. How does age disambiguate between filenames and other key formats for the -r argument? (Those formats are also valid filenames)

2\. Does the header use normal Base64 (i.e. +/) or url-safe Base64 (i.e. -_). The specification sounds like normal Base64, but some lines of the example contain -_ others contain +.

3\. What characters are allowed in the header? ASCII only? (the current key- formats are ASCII only, but an implementation is supposed to skip unknown formats)

4\. Are any characters forbidden in recipient types, arguments and additional lines?

5\. Which strings at the beginning of a header line have special meaning and thus are illegal for additional lines? Only `-> ` and `--- `? I assume the space is mandatory in those strings despite the spec not mentioning that for `->`?

6\. CRLF normalization of the header is only mentioned in the section about ascii-armored files. I assume it also applies to non ASCII armored files?

7\. Is keeping the public key secret to achieve symmetric authenticated encryption an officially supported/recommended use-case?

(If the public key is public, the MACs block decryption oracles. However they don't provide any authentication, because the message isn't bound to any sender and thus an attacker can just encrypt their own message to your public key. If the receiver's public key is secret, this isn't possible and thus the current implementation provides symmetric sender authentication)

8\. How does the command line tool signal failure/truncation/corruption?

<comment><USER10> Answering what I can. Where something is an implementation detail, I'm referring to rage (which I'm obviously more familiar with).

1\. rage tests arguments for validity as filepaths, and uses the file preferentially over treating the argument itself as a recipient format.

2\. The header uses normal Base64. This was changed recently, and the examples likely need updating.

3\. rage currently rejects unknown formats; I haven't implemented this part of the spec yet.

4\. Based on the current contents of the age specification, it looks like limiting to standard Base64 characters is consistent.

5\. Additional lines all need to be standard Base64 characters (i.e. consistent with the format of current recipient lines) if implementations are going to be able to skip unknown formats.

(Recipient lines are currently under-specified in the spec. I opened [https://github.com/FiloSottile/age/issues/9](https://github.com/FiloSottile/age/issues/9) a while back for addressing this.)

6\. The normalization notes are an artifact of an earlier ASCII armoring format. Now that the armor is (a strict subset of) PEM, there is no need for CRLF normalization, as the age format solely uses LF, and PEM (which can tolerate either) is only a wrapper around the age format and thus does not affect the header.

8\. rage signals this via an I/O error in the library that will bubble up through std::io::copy; this amounts to truncation on a chunk boundary and a non-zero exit value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a detailed description of the security goals and crypto rationale anywhere?

For example, it seems that if you use scrypt then you get fully authenticated encryption: the message must have come from somebody who knows the password (either a trusted user or you chose a weak password). But if you use X25519 then the scheme used is ECIES, so no sender authentication, only IND-CCA security.

The format document says that if you want "signing" then use minisign/signify, but I suspect most people want _origin authentication_. We know that it is actually quite hard to obtain public key authenticated encryption [1] from generic composition of signatures and encryption, with many subtle details. It would be better if age supported this directly for X25519 as it does for scrypt. Unfortunately, you can't simply use a static key pair to achieve this (as in nacl's box) as age uses a zero nonce to encrypt the file key with chacha20-poly1305 so reusing a static key will result in nonce reuse. (This seems a bit fragile).

[1]: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2001/079](https://eprint.iacr.org/2001/079)

<comment><USER11> An example of why I think this is important. Adam Langley's post that is linked from the spec [1] talks about cases where people want to do things like:

        decrypt file | tar xz

Elsewhere in these comments somebody also mentioned the case of

        decrypt file | sh

Presumably the whole point of implementing the STREAM online AEAD mode is to support these kinds of cases; only releasing chunks of plaintext after verification.

But these use-cases are only secure in age when using the scrypt decryption option or if you have first verified a signature over the entire age-encrypted archive (killing the streaming use-case). The reason is that the X25519 age variant provides no sender authentication at all, and so an attacker doesn't need to tamper with the archive: they can just generate their own ephemeral key pair and replace the entire thing with data of their choosing. Age has no way of detecting such an attack.

You absolutely need origin/sender authentication built directly into the tool to handle these cases securely.

[1]: [https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/06/27/streamingencryptio...](https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/06/27/streamingencryption.html)

<comment><USER11> I wrote up some more detailed notes here: [https://neilmadden.blog/2019/12/30/a-few-comments-on- age/](https://neilmadden.blog/2019/12/30/a-few-comments-on-age/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "it looks like we'll be ok" remains their status on the problem of whether it's fine to just take SSH keys and use them for something quite different.

That's just not good enough. It was fine in early drafts because there was hope they'd remember that "Solve all of the world's problems" was not their goal, and so SSH keys might be irrelevant in later revisions anyway. It's not fine in something intended to actually ship.

Either get somebody to put lots of work in to verify that yes, it's definitely safe to do this as SSH stands today, and contact SecSH WG or Sec Dispatch or whoever to make sure they know you're doing this now - or, as seems much more likely, rip out all the SSH key code and highlight that line about how you don't want to do key distribution in age because it's hard.

PGP is full of things its creators thought might be safe that you now have to tell people not to do because it turns out they're unsafe. This tool should not recapitulate their mistake.

<comment><USER13> I am fairly confident the SSH key reuse is fine, or I wouldn't have shipped it. But yes, it would be a misrepresentation to say there are formal proofs of it. There's no one I can think of that we can pay in short order to make robust ones. FWIW, we don't really have proofs for ECDSA either, and it's been almost 30 years. (Anyway, the core age flow with native keys is unaffected.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rust implementation: [https://github.com/str4d/rage](https://github.com/str4d/rage)

<comment><USER15> Ooh, the included "rage-mount" utility allows mounting an age-encrypted zip or tar file as a directory. (It can be installed with `cargo install --features mount age`.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This looks really good, I've used ccrypt (#1) for years as a simple Unix-y encryption tool to avoid the complexity of GPG (though this is symmetric encryption only so you need to have a secure way to exchange keys).

I just added a pull-request to allow the recipients flag to also be specified as a [https://](https://) or file:// URL - this is mostly useful to use the GitHub <user>.keys endpoint to grab user keys eg.

      ./age -a -r https://github.com/<user>.keys < secret

will encrypt using <user>'s GitHub SSH public keys.

#1 [http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net](http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net)

#2 [https://github.com/FiloSottile/age/pull/43](https://github.com/FiloSottile/age/pull/43)

</comment><comment><USER17> Not that it matters, but age hasn't hit 1.0 yet. (Close, though!)

With that in mind, it's still really exciting. I can't wait until I never have to use GPG ever, ever again.

<comment><USER18> Can I ask a question that I've never been able to answer by Googling? Kleopatra is the tool of choice for GUI based GPG / PGP stuff on Windows right? So why is it that literally any software I download, it cannot locate the keys on any online database including MIT and whatever else are the top keystores online.

If those keystores are not being regularly updated by trusted data vendors, how am I supposed to trust Gpg signed stuff? It isn't like SHA where I just need to compare 2 hashes.

I'd shift to command line tools if I knew that the protocol was being widely used effectively.

<comment><USER15> Not everyone uploads their PGP keys to keyservers. Also, keyservers don't verify the ownership of the keys uploaded to them. You're supposed to import the signer's public key first.

<comment><USER18> Yes that's the other choice right? But then if I'm going to a compromised website with no idea that a MITM attack is taking place, I'd download the wrong public key wouldn't I? In that scenario, why is it trusted more than something much simpler like SHA? Is it just because it doesn't need a hash calculation?

So the larger question is, how do I verify ownership of a medium level distributed file? Like not tens of millions of users who host mirrors etc so that everything is cross checkable. But not like a 10 downloads a month software either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What problem is this solving that isn't already done by other tools?

<comment><USER3> This is like the engine underneath PGP, but modernized and with the misfeatures stripped out. You'd use it, instead of PGP (which is bad) for encrypting files, and as a building block for the operational tools that really are just straightforwardly encrypting files (ie: not messaging, which has its own distinct needs and has purpose-built cryptosystems for).

More on this: [https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp- problem.html](https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html)

<comment><USER20> From the linked blog:

> A Swiss Army knife does a bunch of things, all of them poorly.

Counterexample: the Phillips head screwdriver in my Swiss Army knife is actually the best Phillips head I've ever found. It can easily turn without slipping a wider range of screw head diameters and depths than any other screwdriver I've used.

(Does anyone else have way more screwdrivers around than they can explain? I cannot think of any reason I would own more than two or three full sized screw drivers, and one set of small of jewelers screwdrivers...but I've got more than a dozen full sized ones and a couple sets of jewelers screwdrivers. I cannot remember buying, inheriting, finding, stealing, borrowing and not returning, or being gifted _any_ of them--but there they are. Glitch in the matrix?)

<comment><USER21> One thing about the Phillips screw driver - perhaps it's Pozidriv[0] type, that's compatible with Phillips but different/better.

"Phillips" was originally designed to slip to prevent over-tighten. One more PH. screwdrivers come in various sizes (read the listed article for more). Using the correct one works significantly better for: flat/ph/pz, etc. For stuff like torx is not even possible to use incorrect screwdriver. Last screwdriver quality greatly varies, with some brands being exceptionally expensive or even pride material to own.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Pozidriv](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Pozidriv)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Age looks somewhat promising, but I am still looking for a reasonable alternative to TrueCrypt. Encryption should be as easy as possible. The process of gathering your files (plural!), put them into a folder, zip or tar that folder and then encrypt it, to delete the remaining files afterwards, is anything but not easy. Adding new files is even more horrible. TrueCrypt was so easy, just select the encrypted file, enter your password and voila, you got a volume mounted where you can easily add or remove many files. I know that Veracrypt exists, but it does not feel like a solution for the next decade(s).

Its super weird. There is this use case to de/encrypt a single file, but mass storage of files in a secure way and without a proprietary protocol seems impossible.

<comment><USER23> There are nice solutions on Linux: luks (encrypting partitions) and cryfs (encrypting directories)

<comment><USER24> There is also gocryptfs. It is written by some of the same people who did encfs and attempts to fix all the security issues discovered during its years of use.

[https://github.com/rfjakob/gocryptfs](https://github.com/rfjakob/gocryptfs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale This is neat. A quick browse through the code, looks like it uses DJB's chacha and polyxxx underneath.

I've been waiting for a worthy replacement for "crypt" for a very long time, and gpg, while it can be coaxed into doing that with much effort has simply become a bloated abomination at this point.

Hope this gets vetted by the crypto community and gains popularity.

<comment><USER3> Not that I disagree but just a quick note that Filippo is very much a part of the cryptographic community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So the modern alternative would be this for file encryption, and signify for signing. What's the consensus on an alternative for GPG authenticating?

And what are the expert opinions on themis: [https://github.com/cossacklabs/themis](https://github.com/cossacklabs/themis) ?

<comment><USER3> Themis looks like a more complicated take on libsodium, which is already the de facto standard modern crypto library. I'd use that instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I once made something similar after reading a blog post here on HN [1] just to see how easy it is to make something like this. Mine [2] uses passphrases to generate keys with the Argon2 algorithm and then uses NaCl's secretbox for encryption. I also made a version for use on streams. It's not up to snuff for industrial use, but it's really easy to use if you just want to encrypt some files with a password and also very simple if you want to modify it for your own purposes.

[1] [https://blog.gtank.cc/modern-alternatives-to- pgp/](https://blog.gtank.cc/modern-alternatives-to-pgp/)

[2] [https://stutonk.github.io/crypt.html](https://stutonk.github.io/crypt.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> We need a protocol/scheme that other things can adopt much more than a tool. There will always be a reason why someone can't use a tool,but with an encoding/scheme/protocol you can push for different things to use it.

To give an example, I was in a work situation more than once where an external party wanted to transfer files to or from our company and I was suppose to help find a standard tool/method. The only (and I mean only) way right now is pgp due to it's ubiquity with s/mime on email being second. We do need great tools like this but we need them to where if I can't use it due to license,policy,etc... Issues i can use a separate compatible tool.

So, My only suggestion to the author is to please make a fixed and versioned standard out of the scheme.

<comment><USER3> A protocol for what? To send messages securely? We have that. To do deduplicated mass backup? That exists, too. To securely transfer files? We have that as well. Each of these problems makes their own demands on cryptography and deserves their own purpose-built cryptosystem, which is why Signal looks like Signal, and not a naive message bus over which we push PGP- encrypted records.

The point of `age` is that when you subtract out all these use cases from PGP and leave just the file encryption problem, PGP still sucks, and sucks way out of proportion to how complicated file encryption is.

So instead of bringing all of PGP's bloat, 1990s cryptography, and misfeatures to bear on that simple problem, we just get a simple, modern tool optimized for that one problem.

<comment><USER28> > The point of `age` is that when you subtract out all these use cases from > PGP and leave just the file encryption problem, PGP still sucks, and sucks > way out of proportion to how complicated file encryption is.

For clarity: Is this an endorsement of `age`?

<comment><USER3> `age` is awesome. We wrote something almost identical to `age` internally at Latacora that has some features `age` doesn't have (encrypting optionally to KMS keys, and managing encrypted DMGs), and I'm going to kill that tool off and add those features to a local fork of `age` instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A tool/protocol is as secure as the people using it.

I found that when working with non-techies that 7Zip is an acceptable encryption tool. It used proper encryption, it's open source, available on all platforms, available with GUI and CLI.

<comment><USER30> That's no good if you need public key encryption

<comment><USER29> Asymmetric encryption is hard for non-techies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Out of scope:

> The web of trust, or key distribution really

Is there anything in the tptacek suite of replacement tools for this? Like Keybase but fully open source and/or decentralized?

</comment><comment><USER32> For encrypting text files, I just use vim's `:X` command and enter a pass phrase. Simple, easy, portable, works everywhere. I have configured my .vimrc to `set cryptmethod=blowfish2` and disable backup/swap files for encrypted files. Are there any issues with this? Is there any other option that will work on virtually all UNIX devices without installing anything additional?

<comment><USER3> It's so weird hearing what people are doing instead of PGP, and how bad it is. I had no idea vim even had this feature, but from what I've discovered in about 3 minutes of Googling, vim's "blowfish2" is the 64-bit-block Blowfish cipher in unauthenticated CFB mode. Just awful: Blowfish is weak, and attackers can manipulate the ciphertext of your files. This is why you want `age`.

<comment><USER33> Trying to unfuck vim's encryption spawned a very interesting Github thread, if anyone is interested: [https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638](https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638)

<comment><USER2> Welp, I'm switching to neovim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I normally use scrypt (with passphrase) for file encryption for personal backups.. age isn't competing with this use case i take it?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not a big fan of tools that take encrypted data, and decrypt it by creating a decrypted file on disk. They give you a false sense of security. Files, even if they get deleted, remain on hard disks. On SSDs they are even harder to remove, as there is a complicated layer of indirection. Even if you shred the file before deletion, it's possible that it will keep being stored by the SSD, maybe even permanently if a block containing the decrypted content is being decomissioned.

The classical gpg based tools have this very same problem. The classical response is to suggest ramdisk usage, ideally for the entire OS (like a live system basically) to avoid getting artifacts onto the disk like clipboard history, cached thumbnails, or log files. pass for example uses such ramdisks. I disagree that this is a good solution though. Of course it is more thorough, but it requires additional intervention/setup, and not everyone has the needed expertise. Instead, I think the encryption tool itself should take care to only store the decrypted content in non-paged RAM, and give users read/write access through a GUI or a TUI. It should be a ready downloadable solution, similar to the TOR browser bundle. The TOR browser is also trying to not put anything onto the hard disk.

<comment><USER35> What's the point of decrypting a binary (non-text) file and not putting it on disk? What if I have to open it with photoshop?

<comment><USER14> The functionality should either be built into the OS, or into Photoshop. Photoshop should support decryption of the file on the fly. It should best be paired with a "private" mode where it stores nothing about your activities (most programs store some artifacts of your behaviour e.g. vlc stores last opened files or kate stores which line you last edited or something like that).

<comment><USER35> > be built into the OS, or into Photoshop

You're already setting yourself up for failure here, there's no way every single tool you're using will integrate encryption in them.

I agree that the OS should do better, but unfortunately that is not the world we live in at the moment so user tools are what is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So.. this is using chunked AEAD, without source authentication/signing?

What's the actual use case, and why is it any better than plain stream encryption? If you wish to stream authenticated decrypted contents, it would mean 2 layers of chunking.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is age designed to encrypt large binary files, which seem to increase the file size by 2KB.

<comment><USER10> Yes. age encrypts large files in 64 kiB chunks with 16 bytes of overhead per chunk, which strikes a balance between file size overhead and performance (particularly when seeking).

<comment><USER36> That's interesting and seem to be an alternative to encrypted zip or 7z which could be used in productions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Which crypto primitives does this tool use? x25519+chacha?

<comment><USER6> \+ poly1305 + scrypt

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Finally! :)

</comment><comment><USER39> How can we know there's no backdoor in it?

<comment><USER40> It's OSS?

<comment><USER41> Yeah. So all you need is a 10+ year experience in crypto algorithms and weeks of close inspection of the code to verify it!

<comment><USER42> Sooo you need to trust someone that does have that experience to do the verification. What alternative are you suggesting? Is there some cool way to write your crypto so that a layman can successfully verify the integrity of a binary?

<comment><USER39> > What alternative are you suggesting?

One solution might be if some big corporation or even a government, or why not Bill Gates himself, offered a big ongoing bug-bounty for this Open Source Software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> meh.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16056135/how-to-use- open...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16056135/how-to-use-openssl-to- encrypt-decrypt-files/16056298#16056298)

With that I'm guaranteed AES, a known-good encryption algorithm. I have no idea what these guys are doing without reading through their documentation. Hopefully they didn't roll their own.

<comment><USER3> That command line doesn't even produce authenticated ciphertext. I'm amazed that's the check-marked best answer on Stack Overflow.

<comment><USER44> I have seen many questions on security stack exchange and /r/crypto where the correct answer should have been "use age", but because it didn't exist the correct answer was something bad. openssl CLI is not meant to be used in prod (both because not AEAD and because the man page tells you not to use it). gpg is bad. rolling your own CLI tool using libsodium is not for everyone.

<comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/12107355525357527...](https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/1210735552535752705)

I'd be nicer but for the "hopefully they didn't roll their own" at the end.

<comment><USER43> It's possible this is the wrong way to get AES on the command-line; I haven't done it and no need to right now. But that's missing my point entirely.

<comment><USER41> The point being?

You've linked to a command that's wrong, from a random internet "everybody gets to answer a question and everybody gets to vote for the best answer, no qualifications required" website, and wrote "with that I'm guaranteed AES, a known-good encryption algorithm" as if that means anything.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Silurian hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-the-geological-record/77818514AA6907750B8F4339F7C70EC6/core-reader <comment><AUTHOR> Click on e.g. the "View HTML" button on the left below the abstract for the whole paper.</comment>


Show HN: The CO₂ Emissions for Flying - <AUTHOR> http://shameplane.com/ <comment><USER2> OMG, if no one ever traveled anywhere, there would less CO₂ emissions. Also, if we decided use nothing other than aspirin and penicillin, health car expenditures would be so much lower. If we all lived like pre-industrial revolution serfs, the earth would love us. After all, my grandmother got by without a fridge. Who needs a car anyway? Besides, we should just have a single brand of toothpaste. While we are at that, why should anyone be able to travel more than 50 miles away from where one was born? Why should you be able pick up and move somewhere else on a whim if that's going to interfere with the plans of the CO₂ Emissions Planning Board?

BTW, why do you keep emitting CO₂? It says here you filled up your lifetime quota last week. Chop chop!

<comment><USER3> I think the idea of this website is to show how much CO2 one emits when they take a flight, not to ask them to stop taking flights. Obviously with electric technology, and renewable energy, planes might be soon the only polluting technology that we will be using.

<comment><USER4> Normally I would agree, although the website is called "Shame Plane"</comment></comment></comment>