Thread

1. itake · 1789794836 · focus · HN ↗

   > the keys never leave the phones, and the record of who did what can be checked with a script that has no Seal in it.

   What happens if someone loses their phone or buys a new phone? What happens if they forget to tell you that they need a new key?

   1. jpage2 · 1790012734 · focus · HN ↗

      Thank you for these questions!!

      In an example, my mom holds a piece of my key. She upgrades her iPhone. She signs into iCloud, Face ID works, she opens Seal and it knows exactly who she is. Everything looks normal. But her piece of my key is dead, because that piece was locked to the old phone. She has no reason to suspect anything is wrong, which is why I need to fix this in the app ASAP I think. She needs to Seal her Envelopes again with the new phone's key.

      She can also have a backup hardware key to restore the credential but she has to re-seal again as well in this scenario if she is logged out of her Apple account or broke her main hardware key.

2. sebmellen · 1789795330 · focus · HN ↗

   > What is not done

   Rewrite this Readme without Claude?

   Also

   > There's also no server at all besides a free Cloudflare static site. The encrypted bundles of passwords and photos are in Cloud Kit. Sign-in/identity is a passkey Face ID/Touch ID or a Hardware Key. It's all Crypto Kit, so there's no dependencies required.

   To me, this clearly implies that there’s a server involved… Apple’s server. Am I wrong?

   1. jpage2 · 1790011634 · focus · HN ↗

      Ngl this is humbling I need to hit the textbooks or something because you're definitely right lol there has to be a server... It's just not Seal's server or decryptable by Apple, us, or anyone without the designated keys. It's Apple's Cloud Kit container so they can delete or deny access to any of it... which is a real fault. Also, the database is readable so counts, timing, account IDs and your rule(s) are visible. Also, Apple could decide to terminate my developer account with the container associated with it which would be devastating.
3. evil-olive · 1789796481 · focus · HN ↗

   > If you don't log into the app for months

   > After 90 days of countdown, 21 days of warnings, and 14 days of grace, the envelope opens

   vs

   > it needs that company to still exist and be honest on the day it matters

   > there's no company in the middle

   which is it?

   there's no middleman, but also I need to log in to your app regularly to avoid being declared dead?

   1. skeledrew · 1789806568 · focus · HN ↗

      > I need to log in to your app regularly to avoid being declared dead?

      Technically, until we get to a point where we still have embedded "life signal" chips, there's no way to automatically detect that someone has died. Other than those who've actually seen a body, the best we have is "not seen - at Y - for a while".

      1. jpage2 · 1790011260 · focus · HN ↗

         Yes ty for making that point! And it's worth mentioning that the letters open not close whenever someone goes inactive rather than are closed forever.
   2. jpage2 · 1790010949 · focus · HN ↗

      You're right, sorry I should have painted the picture in a better way because I just basically shifted the middleman dependency compared to 1password or something.

      With a company ran vault, they can mess up by failing to exist, not being honest, and they have to make the correct decision when someone dies.

      With Seal, no single person makes the decision when the person is gone/inactive. There's no company to decrypt anything, which is what I was trying to paint the picture of with "no company in the middle", but yeah you have to also make sure the software exists so they can check in.

      The envelopes also will open when the user can no longer check in because the countdown will end and the family can use the keys to decrypt without a backend needed.

4. sicutarinaru · 1789798936 · focus · HN ↗

   Very coool side project! how are you currently sourcing or curating the ads featured on the wall? is it an automated scraping pipeline or manual submission?

   1. jpage2 · 1790014351 · focus · HN ↗

      This project? or birthed.app? sorry for the late reply or if you we're talking about something else lol I curated them from wikipedia and gemini iirc
5. skeledrew · 1789806200 · focus · HN ↗

   > there's no company in the middle

   Yet this seems dependent on Apple's ecosystem. That's a company in the middle.

   1. pixel_popping · 1789809397 · focus · HN ↗

      Why it's not also available in the web running client-side?

      1. jpage2 · 1790014300 · focus · HN ↗

         Sorry, it's just one person working on this so it can be hard to do multiple platforms at a time. We want to do Android and Web eventually.

         I think the main thing restricting it though is that there's nothing in the browser where the person's piece of the key is locked to their phone's chip and cannot copied? Sorry I could be wrong

   2. jpage2 · 1790013797 · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

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