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Why I Wrote PGP (1991, revised 1999)

https://philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html
35•GaryBluto•1d ago

Comments

adastra22•40m ago
A well-intentioned ideal from a bygone era.
Joel_Mckay•28m ago
Good ideas demand to be free. =3
tptacek•21m ago
There's a good idea in PGP, and a very bad one. The good idea --- and PGP genuinely deserves credit here --- is end-user, consumer-facing strong cryptography tools. That's now universally accepted and has been for decades. The bad idea is a tool with PGP's design, of "cryptographic jack-of-all-trades". PGP's design has aged like milk, and PGP itself is a security liability in almost every system that hosts it.
m348e912•16m ago
>PGP itself is a security liability in almost every system that hosts it.

Elaborate

some_furry•12m ago
https://gpg.fail/

https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem

Recommendations: https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/

We don't need to keep elaborating or re-litigating the same discussion. The PGP idea of "one tool to rule them all" is a terrible cryptography design, and the world is better off the sooner we stop trying to make it work.

BeetleB•34m ago
> In 2013, an article on "Zimmermann's Law" quoted Phil Zimmermann as saying "The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier"
dylan604•7m ago
The biggest issue of using PGP was using PGP. You were pretty nerdy to be on the internet back then, but even then using PGP was beyond what the majority of people wanted to do. Exchanging keys was problematic. Writing text in one app, encrypting in another app, copying encrypted back to an email was just tiresome.

I'm still glad that it existed as its mere existence seems to have pushed things in the right direction as far as protecting everyone's ability to use encryption if they chose. It just never became the panacea it was envisioned to be.

datas•4m ago
There's a lot of negativity around pgp, but I actually like the fact that you see the raw ciphertext as opposed to everything happening in the background.

I also like the portability of openpgp.js its pretty versatile in my opinion.

https://openpgpjs.org/

Muse Spark Open

https://research.meta.ai/blog/muse-spark-open
356•bigwheels•2h ago•227 comments

Neural networks are clean

https://already-clean.goodfire.com/
298•themgt•4h ago•90 comments

E Ink Launches Latest Version of Color EPaper Platform, E Ink Kaleido 4

https://www.eink.com/news/detail/EInk-Launches-Latest-Version-of-Color-ePaper-Platform-E-Ink-Kale...
42•Perroboc•1h ago•11 comments

Wayland desktop for Linux with skeuomorphic design

https://github.com/fyzugx/DEsk
393•FinalDestiny•6h ago•162 comments

Krea 3 – An image model built for editing at scale

https://www.krea.ai/krea-3
172•dvrp•4h ago•66 comments

Someone on Torrent Sites Kept Fucking with My Sonarr

https://thereallo.dev/blog/someone-on-torrent-sites-kept-fucking-with-my-sonarr-setup
32•speckx•43m ago•10 comments

Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran

https://fortran-lang.org/news/2026/09-15-Fortran-birthday/
158•rbanffy•5h ago•63 comments

Why I Wrote PGP (1991, revised 1999)

https://philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html
35•GaryBluto•1d ago•8 comments

The engineering that allows articulated buses to bend

https://www.theautopian.com/you-wont-believe-the-incredible-engineering-that-allows-articulated-b...
22•CharlesW•19h ago•7 comments

Delta’s Biscoff cookies were supposed to be temporary

https://www.seriouseats.com/biscoff-history-12168161
114•mhb•1d ago•101 comments

Libreboot 26.10 "Ominous Olive" released with UEFI, Chromebook support

https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot2610.html
210•iamnothere•7h ago•124 comments

Zero-Click Spyware Delivered via Targeted Ads: AdFection

https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/
267•jcomp•9h ago•67 comments

Show HN: Unfenced – Land for sale that borders public land

https://unfenced.land/
217•otherwatersflow•8h ago•152 comments

Simons Foundation launches $15M effort to help mathematicians navigate AI era

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/news/simons-foundation-launches-15m-effort-to-help-mathematician...
193•aaraujo002•5h ago•168 comments

The technical actions needed to ensure the continuity of UTC

https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2026/resolution-5
74•gliffie•3h ago•34 comments

Why We're Banning AI

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-were-banning-ai
155•vinyl7•1h ago•117 comments

Show HN: Proa – A Rust web framework with fast SSR and multi-target rendering

https://proa.so/
56•burnrate•4h ago•9 comments

We are entering a period of overlapping crises

https://hamishcampbell.com/we-are-entering-a-period-of-overlapping-crises/
15•speckx•1h ago•10 comments

I know why the mathematicians weep

https://www.derekthompson.org/p/i-know-why-the-mathematicians-weep
294•RickJWagner•6h ago•471 comments

C++26 Contracts: Introduction to Preconditions and Postconditions

https://www.cppstories.com/2026/cpp26_contracts/
105•ibobev•6h ago•101 comments

Steam Client is now faster than Epic's new vibe coded launcher

https://respawnfirst.com/steam-client-is-now-faster-than-epics-new-vibe-coded-launcher/
196•starkparker•4h ago•221 comments

Wanted to download an ISO, ended up writing a kernel exploit

https://blog.dfb.sh/blog/eap770-root-for-two-zeros/
316•0xdeafbeef•2d ago•155 comments

Game of Life – But Multiplayer, Hypermedia and Python

https://stario.dev/apps/life
23•bobowski•1d ago•9 comments

Show HN: Sygal – Convert PDFs, scans and web pages to Markdown, locally

https://sygal.app
24•cyrillsemah•3h ago•5 comments

An Israeli firm is sending zero-click spyware through online ads

https://www.theverge.com/tech/1011956/discover-tech-zero-click-ads-spyware
203•drewfax•3h ago•87 comments

Jev Meets the Trolley Problem

https://zachlandes.com/trolley-problem/
116•zlandes86•3h ago•53 comments

More on Anthropic's Scion ripping off Mononoke

https://sunshowers.io/posts/anthropic-mononoke-2/
177•sunshowers•2h ago•52 comments

Prompt injection in HTTP headers: what 217M web responses show

https://www.signalscorps.com/blog/prompt-injection-in-http-headers/
74•panoramas4good•5h ago•11 comments

Turn an old junk phone into a Talking Jack-O-Lantern

https://jack-o.io/
14•dakila5•1d ago•7 comments

The largest eagle hunted unlike any other bird of prey (2021)

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/december/worlds-largest-eagle-hunted-unlike-any-other-bi...
42•EndXA•2d ago•2 comments