Wormhole on HackerShow

Security and privacy

encrypted file sharing

SHOW HN2021

Simple, private file sharing

Shown by feross on Apr 1, 2021. Click the card to turn it over.

97points

49comments

#541of 2,533 in 2021

Top 22%of 2021 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

9 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 5 critical, out of 25 comments about the project. Thread score +0.12.

Idea: 2 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 1 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 againstPerformance: 1 for, 0 against

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

Fast and easy to use
From 4 comments
- This is insanely fast, wow Love the animation too
  nfsiddiqui on HN
- Very impressive, excited to try this out!
  andrethegiant on HN
- This really is wonderful, pleasant and incredibly easy to use. A lot of thought must have gone into making the process as streamlined and secure as possible - well done! The…
  jayelbe on HN
- Nice job, this works pretty well! I will say, however, that the background animation (even on the landing page, before sending) spinning up my laptop fans is a bit unwelcome.…
  LVB on HN
End-to-end encryption by default
From 1 comment
- This is sweet!! It's kind of amazing to me how annoying it is to still send large files in 2021. Default end to end encryption is huge here too. Kudos for such a clean and…
  bgu33 on HN

Name collides with Magic Wormhole and other wormhole tools
From 3 comments
- Yeah, this name collision is kind of odd. From what I see elsewhere it's a custom implementation, but it feels like it wouldn't take much googling to find existing literature…
  Klonoar on HN
- Pretty ridiculous to take the same name as another (more famous) product that does the same thing. Have you talked to a lawyer about changing the name?
  neolog on HN
- Please consider rebranding.
  jsilence on HN
Background animation spins up fans or causes motion sickness
From 2 comments
- Nice job, this works pretty well! I will say, however, that the background animation (even on the landing page, before sending) spinning up my laptop fans is a bit unwelcome.…
  LVB on HN
- This really is wonderful, pleasant and incredibly easy to use. A lot of thought must have gone into making the process as streamlined and secure as possible - well done! The…
  jayelbe on HN
Trust in encryption claims without open source client
From 1 comment
- How do we know if the file is really encrypted? How do we really know that the key is not uploaded to the server? Unless there is ability to view the source code for the client,…
  pritambarhate on HN

Open source the client and cryptography code
From 1 comment
- Auditing a web app is a challenging prospect with current web technologies. We really need a better way to "pin" a site to a current version and only update it with user consent.…
  feross on HN
Support reduced motion and an option to disable the animation
From 2 comments
- The CSS prefers-reduced-motion media query could also be handy here :) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-reduced-motion
  cryo on HN
- This really is wonderful, pleasant and incredibly easy to use. A lot of thought must have gone into making the process as streamlined and secure as possible - well done! The…
  jayelbe on HN
Instant expire button for links
From 1 comment
- how about adding something like an instant expire button which lets you expire the link before the 24 hr period. Great Tool!
  Ni9ht_5ury on HN
Longer retention than 24 hours or a paid option for semi-permanent links
From 2 comments
- This really is wonderful, pleasant and incredibly easy to use. A lot of thought must have gone into making the process as streamlined and secure as possible - well done! The…
  jayelbe on HN
- Excellent work! If there was a way to pay for semi-permanent links (a month?) I would probably cough up!
  confounded on HN

How is the business sustained long term
From 2 comments
- given Firefox Send was challenged in monetizing their product, what do you have in mind to keep this going as a product/business?
  propogandist on HN
- I'm curious about this as well -- it's absolutely great to have a Firefox Send equivalent back, but how long can this sustain itself?
  lacavao on HN
Is the URL-as-key approach secure enough
From 1 comment
- Very cool. Genuine question: is using the URL as the encryption key considered secured enough for most usecases? I imagine most people share these links via email, and if you or…
  kimar on HN
Is the project open source
From 1 comment
- Wormhole.app looks great! I use P2P instant file sharing websites like webwormhole.io and file.pizza extensively and so this is a welcome upgrade. I used Pirate Bay's now-defunct…
  ignoramous on HN

Magic Wormhole
From 1 comment
- Is this related to the existing Magic Wormhole encrypted file transfer application (which is called "wormhole" on the command line)?…
  wolverine876 on HN
webwormhole.io
From 2 comments
- There is also another - webwormhole https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole / https://webwormhole.io/
  lburton on HN
- Wormhole.app looks great! I use P2P instant file sharing websites like webwormhole.io and file.pizza extensively and so this is a welcome upgrade. I used Pirate Bay's now-defunct…
  ignoramous on HN
OnionShare
From 1 comment
- As it is a beautiful piece of technology, in this context I have to mention https://onionshare.org/ It is p2p file transfer without a central server required. All done on top of…
  l1am0 on HN
Firefox Send
From 1 comment
- There's no relation to magic-wormhole. wormhole.app is an independent design and implementation. It's a similar in spirit to Firefox Send (and uses the same ECE streaming…
  feross on HN
file.pizza
From 1 comment
- Wormhole.app looks great! I use P2P instant file sharing websites like webwormhole.io and file.pizza extensively and so this is a welcome upgrade. I used Pirate Bay's now-defunct…
  ignoramous on HN