Direct-to-customer Diffie–Hellman key exchange as-a-Service

We used to think that if we knew something unique about a person: their name, their social security number, their voice, their face, etc., that was enough to identify that person. Then deep fakes have arrived, and made us realise how insecure this approach is.

Fortunately, the solution for deep fakes exists. There is a tool we can use to confirm that me is me, that is virtually impossible to forge. It is called a digital signature via public-key cryptography. It is an extremely easy way to solve any deep fakes, and it has been polished by decades of behind-the-scenes technical work. In fact, the first digital signature scheme was proposed in 1976, meaning it will celebrate a 50-year anniversary this year.

Unfortunately, the digital signature is quite inconvenient to use and hard to understand today.

Another tool that is hard to understand and used to be inconvenient is passkeys. This is not a coincidence. Passkeys use a similar underlying technology to digital signatures. Simply put, a passkey to a password is what a digital signature is to your photo and voice. Passkeys, just like VPNs and password managers before that, are a good omen. They demonstrate that, in theory, our industry can make complex tech solutions more accessible.

So in principle, at any moment we may get a boom of digital-signature-based apps that will confirm our identity, like VPNs or Password Managers boomed in the past, or like passkeys are everywhere nowadays. Actually, passkeys may be the very digital-signature-based tool that we will use to fight deepfakes very soon.

And just like with online password managers, people will easily trust 3rd parties with their private key and their identity, if it will be convenient enough. But let’s not talk about that problem right now.

HackerNews in 2025

I rediscovered HackerNews recently. The main reason is that, unlike many other websites,

HackerNews works on my Nokia 3310

I use a Nokia 3310 (2017 by HMD, not the OG Nokia) for daily life. It can only do calls and sms, but still somehow has Internet access and Opera Mini to render web pages. ASCII symbols only, no JavaScript or multimedia. But I am a text-first person, not voice- or video-first. So, ASCII symbols are enough for me.

Sadly, not enough for websites. No modern social media or news website works on the Nokia 3310.

But HackerNews does. It is a very simple page with plain English text wrapped in <a link> html tags. Moreover, since HN attracts nerds like me, 3 out of 4 posts there refer to text-only blogs that also work on my phone. Making HN my website of choice to read on the go.

Of course, this blog also renders on a Nokia 3310.

Additional reading

• Maybe the default settings [for life] are too high - Did you like this blog? What if I told you that you would have liked it 3x more if you read it 3x slower?
• How I rebooted my social life - aka How to make friends in your 30s
• “Train Window” by Reinder Nijhoff for JS1k compo - “View of passing landscape from a train window. Winter is coming: wait for lakes, the night and more.”

Tech nerding

If you liked the “Train Window” from the section above and want to know more about the code behind it, read the “making of” this 1024-byte JS demo. Or read about my recent “Advent of Code Golf” adventure.