I haven't really planned anything to write about today and I've left it a little late to get anything of value down in words so all you're getting is a mini rant on Keybase.
As you may, or may not have heard - Keybase was recently acquired by Zoom (Yeah, that Zoom). You can read about it on their blog here: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom
Keybase made confusing things easier for the masses, and in general, life easier for those of us that could, but couldn't be bothered. Me included. While the purchase by Zoom could bring their knowledge and skills of security so far to the users of Zoom, I have my doubts. All I see here is a product grab to try and strengthen a brand that is hurting and haemorrhaging trust (and probably money). The simplest solution to this is to drop some £££ on something that is all about security and say "look, we're good again".
Business-wise, this makes a lot of sense. Trust-wise, this is not going to end well for Keybase and it's existing userbase who trusted it. Granted, the dent those of us leave make is probably going to be negligable to the influx of users they may pull in from the Zoom customer base. But then again, who knows what will happen with the products. Not even the Keybase team know right now as they said on their blog post:
So, our shortest-term directive is to significantly improve our security effectiveness, by working on a product that's that much bigger than Keybase. We can't be more specific than that, because we're just diving in. – Keybase Team Blog
That's it for now, mini rant over. I'm incredibly disappointed by the initial news and will probably start stripping Keybase out of my workflows over the coming days. Maybe I'll keep a draft post going on that process and make a longer piece out of it.
What are your thoughts on the #Zoombase squish?