Niltalk
Consumer and social
disposable chat rooms
SHOW HN2015
How HN took it
6 positive, 29 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 24 critical, out of 61 comments about the project. Thread score -0.21.
Privacy: 2 for, 21 againstIdea: 3 for, 0 againstDesign: 0 for, 3 against
The thread, comment by comment
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
What HN said
What people liked
Simple and instant to use
From 2 comments
This is an awesome service. Thanks for making it available to everyone. Can I ask what the use case is for this? I talk to my friends using FB messenger or Google chat and my…
untilHellbanned on HNReally interesting to read through the source code and get an idea of how you're using Go to write APIs, thanks for sharing!
paulspringett on HN
Objections
No end-to-end encryption; server can read messages
From 3 comments
I only feel safe using end-to-end encrypted chatrooms. Currently, niltalk can read every message. At the very least, AES encrypting messages by the chatroom's password will…
8rian on HNYes except it's all plain-text on the server?
hurin on HNYes, there is no end to end encryption as of now, although there is no persistence or storage of any sorts on the server.
knadh on HN
Hosted web code cannot be verified as secure
From 3 comments
Good work. Though I have to say I've seen so many of these web-based "secure, private, anonymous" chat services now, I've lost track. What we need is end-to-end encryption and…
hiddentao on HNUsers fall into two categories: 1) Don't really care about privacy. Might not want their chat on the front page of the papers, but aren't going to go to great lengths to achieve…
pjc50 on HN> That's kind of a shame. It would be nice if apps distributed over the web could be signed the same way they are from repositories. This sounds like a theoretical impossibility.…
lukeschlather on HN
Low bcrypt cost factor
From 2 comments
The number of bcrypt rounds is extremely low, too[1]. While the Go bcrypt lib will actually accept a cost of 5, that seems an unreasonably low value to me. Coupled with…
jfindley on HNIt's in a redis database, so it's not all that hard to get at, either, should someone compromise the system. "Not on disk" stops being such a good defence when it's stored in a…
jfindley on HN
Requests
Add end-to-end encryption
From 3 comments
Good work. Though I have to say I've seen so many of these web-based "secure, private, anonymous" chat services now, I've lost track. What we need is end-to-end encryption and…
hiddentao on HNAs all clients need a password to enter a room, the messages could be encrypted with that password. There are a lot of JS libraries that could do this, e.g. Triplesec
eliaskg on HNfirst off... this is great! I wonder if you could make it so when you create a room, you can attach a message. So for instance i could generate a password then sign it with my…
panamafrank on HN
Admin or separate posting passwords
From 1 comment
It's critical to ensure that anyone who is connected is able to quickly dispose of the room for security / privacy reasons. And if you're not a small number of trusted…
grey-area on HN
Move the dispose button away from input
From 2 comments
The dispose button is far too inviting where it is. I started to click it thinking it was the submit button till I read the text. Perhaps put it somewhere top right or someplace…
grey-area on HNIt's critical to ensure that anyone who is connected is able to quickly dispose of the room for security / privacy reasons. And if you're not a small number of trusted…
grey-area on HN
Questions
How to run the server after installing via go get
From 1 comment
How one runs this? I installed go, and redis. The ran "go get github.com/goniltalk/niltalk", which installed. The previous command created three directories under my $GOPATH, one…
Fastidious on HN
Whether the hosted code matches the public repo
From 2 comments
Guess we can check the code and see for ourselves, of course. Alas, you can't really know if the code on Github is actually the same running on their servers.
icebraining on HNAuthor here. I concur, just like any other open source software running as a hosted service. It has to be trust based.
knadh on HN
Alternatives named
Cryptocat
From 2 comments
I only feel safe using end-to-end encrypted chatrooms. Currently, niltalk can read every message. At the very least, AES encrypting messages by the chatroom's password will…
8rian on HNNew keypairs would be generated on the client every time you join a chatroom. Another member of the chatroom sends you the shared_key encrypted by your public key. Server knows…
8rian on HN
Ephemeral.pw
From 1 comment
I only feel safe using end-to-end encrypted chatrooms. Currently, niltalk can read every message. At the very least, AES encrypting messages by the chatroom's password will…
8rian on HN
Keybase
From 1 comment
Use keybase.io
TheSisb2 on HN