HN Explorer

Hacker News [keybase] proof just broke

43 points by eganist ↗ HN
Checked a few other users with proofs on their accounts e.g:

* Stavros (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stavros),

* Janisz (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=janisz),

* Simonebrunozzi (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=simonebrunozzi),

* divbzero (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=divbzero),

* as well as my own,

and all of our HN proofs seem to have broken with no profile edits or account changes of our own, and reverifying the proofs isn't proving to be successful in my case. However, it seems to be inconsistent, with users like

* Woodruffw (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=woodruffw) and

* axiomdata316 (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axiomdata316)

continuing to have valid HN proofs.

Can anyone else with an existing proof verify or refute this? And does anyone have insight into what might've broken? Comparing working proofs against nonworking proofs isn't yielding any syntactical differences... or really any differences or irregularities at all that could hint at what might be breaking.

23 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 75.8 ms ] thread
gus_massa
Send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com so they can take a look. Sometime they miss these threads.
eganist
Good thought, thanks! Still curious who's seeing this happen with their proofs.
ibejoeb
HN looks different in the past day or so, no? Not sure how keybase does it, but scraping the profile page sounds like the easiest.
woodruffw
> continuing to have valid HN proofs.

Lucky me!

sunshinekitty
broken here, with fears the acquisition was indeed the death for keybase..
stavros
Mine broke when I changed my username and I didn't bother reverifying! I didn't know anyone would notice, though.
eganist
Good to know. Odd though in that I didn't change anything. Not my profile, not my username, not my keybase account, nothing.
lox
Mine broke too.
yellowapple
Happened to me, too; got an email out of the blue that my HN proof broke. Seems like reverifying works as of a few minutes ago, though.

Not that I've really used Keybase at all. Have to dig up one of my old phones just to log into the app.

eganist
Yeah, whatever it was, it seems to have resolved in the last two hours. My proof works again... with no changes by me.

I wouldn't mind seeing a postmortem for this.

xer0x
Mine broke here too. Stumbled across this post after wondering if my HN account was hacked.
hnrj95
is keyoxide worth looking at?
lemonforest
not for extraplanetary applications. keymicrometeorites has known compatibility issues.
tsujp
After Zoom acquired KeyBase I was cautiously pessimistic and it looks like (in addition to the KeyBase client receiving comparatively 0 commit activity after acquisition) my fears ring true. Really sad :(
eurasiantiger
How odd, it’s almost as it was prudent for free people to avoid living in totalitarian states, digital ones included.
mattowen_uk
Can someone explain the point of keybase.io? Does tying multiple accounts together actually increase trust in the user?
lemonforest
It's just a mental construct such that if you know frank is really real and frank knows jenny is really real, it's fair to assume that jenny, who is frank has vouched for, is who she claims to be. But you aren't forced to trust that jenny is really jenny either.

Wiki usually does a better job of explaining stuff but I can always use the practice... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust

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atonse
Ahhhh is Keybase going to open source their server etc?

The zoom acquisition really killed it.

toomuchtodo
Anyone at Zoom want to sell Keybase to a non profit to run in perpetuity as an identity provider? Let me know with a reply!