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Oh cool - wasn't really expecting to see this one on HN! The changes here are all a result of "iterating" on our product. Since we work in cryptography, it's no

Oh cool - wasn't really expecting to see this one on HN! The changes here are all a result of "iterating" on our product. Since we work in cryptography, it's not usually the case we can move fast. But this mini-blog post outlined some quick changes we could make. Stuff we learned from testers: (1) In many ways, Keybase's chat is like Slack (except encrypted!), but unlike Slack, our user database is public and connected to known identities. So there was an opportunity we were missing, namely to teach people about teams they might be interested in, run by people they are interested in. Seems obvious now, but we had our blinders on. (2) A large "open" team still makes sense on Keybase, even though anyone is allowed in. It's worthwhile because sender authenticity is extremely valuable. Protection from phishing attacks has been driving a lot of our team signups/migrations...especially in the cryptocurrency space. If there are any technical questions about these changes or how teams work on Keybase, happy to answer them here. As you can tell from my HN profile, it can be proven I'm keybase.io/chris .

malgorithms 9y ago
Actually, heck, to illustrate all this, I just made a team called `hners`, for "anyone who loves Hacker News." It's an open team. You can join straight from my profile in the Keybase app, or by running `keybase team join hners` in your terminal. Come say hi. [edit: switched to team name hners]
himynameistimli 9y ago
A little off topic but have there been any improvements to the chat experience itself? I tried pushing some of my team to use the chat a few months back but to be honest, the time it took to view and reply messages on iOS was too long and overall reliability was hit or miss. Not to say your other features aren't great, we are testing out using private git repos for some of our non-essential keys and so far no problem.
- stingraycharles 9y ago
  I second this. I have tried to move chats with some of my more technical friends to Keybase, but after a few months we all came to the conclusion it was not reliable. Messages not being delivered without any visual feedback, messages received out of order hours late, etc. I like the fact that keybase has a lot more functionality, but because of these issues in their core product I had to switch to Signal.
regnerba 9y ago
Any chance notifications on Android will be grouped anytime soon? I had to uninstall the app as it just got to crazy showing all the notifications for messages.
mdip 9y ago
It looks like I'm not the only one who visits your blog almost daily in anticipation that a feature as cool as Keybase Filesystem or Encrypted Git gets announced. While this was an iteration, you nailed a feature I really need with open teams -- I was about to start looking at Slack or Discourse because I'm in need of that right now. And the team management interface will be very pleasant -- I don't have to add people to my private teams often enough that I can ever remember the exact command-line without using "--help" (that's not a knock to your CLI; it's way more intuitive than a lot of the tools I use). Thanks, so much, for this product and the support that the team provides. I ran into an issue over the summer that affected Windows 10 Insider Fast Channel builds. It ended up being Dokany, not keybase, but your team was as involved as the folks were over there and you were the only Dokany down-stream that provided any help in resolving the problem. Having been in this industry longer than I'd care to admit, I've come to expect that support tends to have no correlation to the price paid for the product, but I fully expect "free" to mean "good luck" (though, paid often means the same thing)[0]. Your team treated it with urgency and was friendly to boot (a characteristic that can be rare in software development but is virtually non-existent in the crypto- space). Love it -- and you have the dubious honor of being the first thing that I install afte I load/reload a Windows / Linux machine/VM. [0] And couple that with the fact that I was running Insider Preview builds ... I'd have probably thought "well, what did you expect?!"
mathoff 9y ago
Hi malgorithms, I like team "badges". Is it possible somehow to embed my keybase.io profile into my website, e.g. as a widget?

malgorithms 9y ago

Actually, heck, to illustrate all this, I just made a team called `hners`, for "anyone who loves Hacker News." It's an open team. You can join straight from my profile in the Keybase app, or by running `keybase team join hners` in your terminal. Come say hi. [edit: switched to team name hners]

himynameistimli 9y ago

A little off topic but have there been any improvements to the chat experience itself? I tried pushing some of my team to use the chat a few months back but to be honest, the time it took to view and reply messages on iOS was too long and overall reliability was hit or miss. Not to say your other features aren't great, we are testing out using private git repos for some of our non-essential keys and so far no problem.

stingraycharles 9y ago
I second this. I have tried to move chats with some of my more technical friends to Keybase, but after a few months we all came to the conclusion it was not reliable. Messages not being delivered without any visual feedback, messages received out of order hours late, etc. I like the fact that keybase has a lot more functionality, but because of these issues in their core product I had to switch to Signal.

regnerba 9y ago

Any chance notifications on Android will be grouped anytime soon? I had to uninstall the app as it just got to crazy showing all the notifications for messages.

mdip 9y ago

It looks like I'm not the only one who visits your blog almost daily in anticipation that a feature as cool as Keybase Filesystem or Encrypted Git gets announced. While this was an iteration, you nailed a feature I really need with open teams -- I was about to start looking at Slack or Discourse because I'm in need of that right now. And the team management interface will be very pleasant -- I don't have to add people to my private teams often enough that I can ever remember the exact command-line without using "--help" (that's not a knock to your CLI; it's way more intuitive than a lot of the tools I use). Thanks, so much, for this product and the support that the team provides. I ran into an issue over the summer that affected Windows 10 Insider Fast Channel builds. It ended up being Dokany, not keybase, but your team was as involved as the folks were over there and you were the only Dokany down-stream that provided any help in resolving the problem. Having been in this industry longer than I'd care to admit, I've come to expect that support tends to have no correlation to the price paid for the product, but I fully expect "free" to mean "good luck" (though, paid often means the same thing)[0]. Your team treated it with urgency and was friendly to boot (a characteristic that can be rare in software development but is virtually non-existent in the crypto- space). Love it -- and you have the dubious honor of being the first thing that I install afte I load/reload a Windows / Linux machine/VM. [0] And couple that with the fact that I was running Insider Preview builds ... I'd have probably thought "well, what did you expect?!"

mathoff 9y ago

Hi malgorithms, I like team "badges". Is it possible somehow to embed my keybase.io profile into my website, e.g. as a widget?