

Yahoo's new killer app - junto
https://medium.com/geek-empire-1/511d89eb37f

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uptown
They're currently focusing on designing 29 logos people will like better than
their final design. They'll get to transforming global communications right
after that.

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JonFish85
This is silly. If I'm a shareholder in Y!, I don't want them wasting
time/money on something like this right now. Honestly, the majority of the
population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you.
A very vocal minority seems to care, for now, but your average accountant /
builder probably didn't spend 5 minutes caring. If Y! did do something like
this, I doubt it would last--just not enough people care to make it
profitable.

~~~
jkldotio

        "Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't care about the government email tracking or what-have-you. A very vocal minority seems to care"
    

I keep hearing it's supposedly a minority, but everyone I speak to has
concerns about the general issue. While my circles are biased I actually
haven't met a "think of the children/terrorists" person in my life, only
pundits in national papers and a seeming (biased sample again) minority of
people on the Internet support the anti-privacy position.

With regard to more concrete evidence there is a much larger group in the
opinion polls that see Snowden and his actions favourably than otherwise.[1] I
also highly doubt the recent vote on limiting the NSA would have been only
narrowly in favour of the status quo, 205 to 217, if it was a minority
concern.[2] Congress members are well aware of public opinion, or
alternatively the opinion of their backers.[3]

[1][http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-security-
po...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-security-poll-
idUSBRE95B1AF20130612) [2][http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2013/07/congress-nearly-s...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2013/07/congress-nearly-shuts-down-nsa-phone-dragnet-in-
sudden-217-205-vote/) [3][http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/money-nsa-
vote/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/money-nsa-vote/)

~~~
DanBC
I genuinely don't care about US / UK government agencies slurping my data. I
wish it actually did something to lower crime[1], and I wish it wasn't so
expensive, and I wish the money went to other places, but I don't care about
the privacy violation of my email being on more than one cache.

I am much more concerned about other privacy breaches that I'm subjected to.

People talk about the "decrypt your data or go to jail" parts of RIPA, and
while that is worrying I'm a lot more worried about the other sections of RIPA
which have been abused and caused actual harm to people.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000#Controversy))

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paulormg
Hey Junto, I suggest you put a date on the post, something like "Aug 09th,
2015", so people can understand more easily it's a fictitious post. But the
idea is awesome! I hope it can get to Marissa or some other visionary
executive/entrepreneur to make something like this a reality in the years to
come.

~~~
junto
Sadly, Medium doesn't seems to let me change it. I already looked. If their is
anyone from Medium.com reading, feel free to tweak the date in your db!

~~~
junto
I've just added it inline. Not quite as good but better than nothing.

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tonybaroneee
This is indeed an article from the future! (notice how it says "Two years ago
Edward Snowden released..."). It is basically saying that Yahoo has a serious
opportunity on their hands if they want to disrupt email right now.

~~~
junto
Indeed, it is just a serious opportunity for them to become relevant again.

~~~
wusatiuk
but not only Yahoo, also other could jump on the train now... it is not a
matter of $ in the beginning, it is a matter of conception.

@junto it took me some minutes to understand the article, thanks for this
awesome piece of content.

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macinjosh
Trusting coporations with our private communications has been disastrous so
far. Perhaps we should find ways to take out the middle man and communicate
more directly. P2P or federation perhaps?

~~~
trebor
That hasn't worked out so well for the Jabber protocol so far, and its
federated. We probably need something simpler with OTR built into it.

~~~
macinjosh
Jabber is just a protocol. They only did half the job. Non-hackers need
something more accessible that they can simply put on their devices without
having to run their own server. I don't have the answers, but the only thing I
see being truly viable in this environment is decentralized point to point
communication. The only reason the NSA can easily collect all this data is
that it is all bottlenecked through corporate datacenters.

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junto
A little idea I had after posting this earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185263](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185263)

Thought others might like the idea!

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RexM
> The replacement had to be open source, secure, no metadata leakage and as
> easy to use as email is today.

This actually sounds a lot like BitMessage [0], although it's not completely
trivial to setup, since you have to setup a not so user friendly address and
such.

[0] [https://bitmessage.org](https://bitmessage.org)

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jrochkind1
_update_ okay, so the whole article was fictional. That explains some of that.
But does not leave me any happier about it. \--------------

It sounds like an interesting protocol/app, which I hadn't heard of before --
and which this article told me just about NOTHING about.

"More importantly the NSA is screaming bloody murder" Really? Citation please?

And maybe a link to an actual software or project page?

And some summary -- or just a LINK to an explanation -- of what makes OMS more
secure than email?

I know that Medium is a collection of posts from different authors--but sadly,
this is what I have come to expect from medium. Their 'brand' is becoming, in
my mind, 'content farm'.

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stevewilhelm
> A multi-million dollar industry has sprung up around the OMS concepts.

Several million dollars would be a drop in the bucket of Yahoo's annual
revenue.

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trebor
Sorry, but I can't find any sign of an "Open Messaging Service" by Yahoo
anywhere. I can't find clients, I can't find sources. The OP doesn't cite a
single post but brazenly makes broad assertions with nothing to back them up.

Citations, links, anything, please?

Edit: Apparently the post is fictional. I didn't realize this when I skimmed
it.

~~~
junto
The post is fictional; set in 2015.

    
    
       "Two years ago Edward Snowden released a slow trickle
       of highly damaging revelations about the NSA and the
       erosion of privacy that affected people not just in the
       USA, but across the world."
    

Sorry, if that wasn't clear.

~~~
trebor
It would be nice to tag something as fiction in its title here, in a category
on Medium, or something like that. Sorry to be a downer, but I come here to
read news and often only skim the (oft useless) introduction to an article.

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hrktb
The "day dreamer" signature is relevant

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jasonshell
It appears to be a projection of what could be, if Yahoo! followed through
with juntos' vision.

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matteodepalo
I feel like this privacy issue only compels a small group of individuals to
find alternatives to email. A project like this would be never adopted by the
masses, simply because the cost of switching is too high and the immediate
return is too low.

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macinjosh
This is the most confusing blog post I've ever read. Is this guy on planet
earth?

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rajbala
I don't get it. Is this real?

~~~
maaaats
> Junto - Day dreamer.

From the page.

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rorrr2
If anybody develops a truly secure messaging system, free from NSA's snooping,
it won't be Yahoo. Simply because Yahoo is US based and can be secretly forced
to change the code or push a hidden update that will decrypt everything.

And by the way, such systems already exist

1) [https://crypto.cat](https://crypto.cat) (after a few bad releases it looks
like they got it right... probably)

2) [https://github.com/ChatSecure](https://github.com/ChatSecure) for iOS

There are a few more:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-
Record_Messaging#Nativ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-
Record_Messaging#Native)

~~~
susi22
Serious question: Could they build their IT center on big boats like casinos?

Sure, the traffic would still go through US, but that can be encrypted (with
something better than SSL).

~~~
junto
How do you power the data centre?

~~~
jeffasinger
A low latency uplink without a single point of failure is another major
problem too.

