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Comment by kijin | Hacker News Reader

Interesting concept with an unfortunate name. Foarnicate? Foarnicator? With just the right font and kerning, "m" becomes indistinguishable from "rn".

Also, a common problem with all browser-based authentication systems seems to be what happens when the user loses the browser. (Hard drive failure, theft, etc.)

With LastPass, I can retrieve my passwords by reinstalling the add-on and entering my master password, because all the data is kept on their servers. With browser-based authentication schemes without a central server, once you lose your browser, it's gone. It's also virtually impossible to remember a randomly generated private key, unlike even a 10-word passphrase. So I'll only ever be able to use this with unimportant sites, not e-mail or banking. I see that this problem is mentioned in the "technical limitations" section, but any good idea to fix this without asking users to trust a central server?

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I also had to double take on the name...

For issue with losing the browser key, probably can be resoled by having a prominent backup/restore on USB drive feature.

Well, the problem is that ordinary people don't take regular backups, right? I don't think it can be solved by bugging people to back up more often. Next thing you know, people will be asking on forums how to disable those annoying backup notifications.

I have to assume the name is on purpose and Dan Fox (the author) thinks it is clever.

While the cleverness of the name is debatable (likely depending partially on how old you are), the name basically guarantees that a large portion of the population won't take this project seriously. I'm very liberal and far from a prude and the name just makes me eye-roll/groan and assume the worst about the maturity of the project owner.

Save the clever names for bands. If you want your work to be taken seriously in a computer security context, come up with something less likely to make an 8th grader snicker.

Just as a counterpoint, i do consider myself a prude (esp. since I hit 30), and the cleverness of the name never even occurred to me. The name was much less interesting to me than the implementation. Speaking of which...

I realize the binary download is an issue, but it isn't much different from what I use now, which is a combination of GnuPG and KeePass (with encrypted offsite backup to S3 and a flash drive).

To be honest, I didn't think about the similarities between the words. I named it that as an homage to the project's birthplace, a coffee shop named Foam Coffee and Beer.

And yet, people are getting the impression that this has something to do with Rick Santorum's frothy mix of you-know-what. I hope you find a more serious-sounding name soon, before you take whatever the next major step in your project is. What about foamauth? You could argue that it makes the traditional login form disappear into foam, or something like that :)

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