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magicsethyesterday at 9:59 PM7 repliesview on HN

If apple approves it, ive got a solution: A keyboardthat attests to your humanity https://typed.by/magicseth/2451#2NyGLfAQxmqRiAOTlaX7ma3G4d1o...


Replies

mzajcyesterday at 10:10 PM

Brilliant! Just the thing we want: more hardware attestation, more deanonymization, less user control, all diligently orchestrated in a repository where the only contributor is Anthropic Claude [0]. Comes complete with a misaligned ASCII diagram in the README to show how much effort the humans behind it put in!

Yes, even their "humanifesto" is LLM output, and is written almost exclusively in the "it's not X <emdash> it's Y" style.

[0]: https://github.com/magicseth/keywitness/graphs/contributors

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Terrettayesterday at 11:58 PM

The first widely distributed and open source version of this typist timing validation idea I saw (and incorporated into my own software at the time) was released by Michael Crichton as part of a password 2nd-factor checker (1st factor a known phrase or even your name, the 2nd factor being your idiosyncratic typing pattern) in Creative Computing magazine that printed the code.

Original here: https://archive.org/details/sim_creative-computing_1984-06_1...

arrowsmithtoday at 2:11 AM

You’re getting a negative reaction from others but I share this feedback in good faith: I don’t understand what problem your product is supposed to solve.

Yeah I guess the cryptographic stuff sounds vaguely impressive although it’s been a long time since I had to think about cryptography in detail. But what is this _for_? I’m going to buy an expensive keyboard so that I can send messages to someone and they’ll know it’s really me – but it has to be someone who a) doesn’t trust me or any of our existing communication channels and b) cares enough to verify using this weird software? Oh and it’s important they know I sent it from a particular device out of the many I could be using?

Who is that person? What would I be sending them? What is the scenario where we would both need this?

Also the server can’t read the message but the decryption key is in the URL? So anyone with the URL can still read it? Then why even bother encrypting it?

Maybe this is one of those cases where I’m so far outside your target market that it was never supposed to make sense to me but I feel like I’m missing something here. Or maybe you need to work on your elevator pitch.

Just sharing my honest reaction.

xeyownttoday at 7:43 AM

Why 256-bit key AES? It brings nothing but longer key. 128-bit is more than enough. Please don't mention PQC :fire:

scoofyyesterday at 10:17 PM

Somewhere there is someone 3D printing a keyboard cover that an llm can type with.

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Velocifyeryesterday at 10:50 PM

This does not prove anything and it is only avalible to users with X.com accounts (you need a X.com account to download the app).

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toss1yesterday at 11:18 PM

Oh Gawd, not this idea again!

This idea of capturing the timing of people's keystrokes to identify them, ensure it is them typing their passwords, or even using the timing itself as a password has been recurring every few years for at least three decades.

It is always just as bad. Because there are so many cases where it completely fails.

The first case is a minor injury to either hand — just put a fat bandage on one finger from a minor kitchen accident, and you'll be typing completely differently for a few days.

Or, because I just walked into my office eating a juicy apple with one hand and I'm in a hurry typing my PW with my other hand because someone just called with an urgent issue I've got to fix, aaaaannnd, your software balks because I'm typing with a completely different cadence.

The list of valid reasons for failure is endless wherein a person's usual solid patterns are good 90%+ of the time, but will hard fail the other 10% of the time. And the acceptable error rate would be 2-4 orders of magnitude less.

It's a mystery how people go all the way to building software based on an idea that seems good but is actually bad, without thinking it through, or even checking how often it has been done before and failed?

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