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Comment by eranation | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I'll be that guy. But what stops a very clever hacker from creating something useful and seemingly naive as this, but adding some hard to find backdoor in it. I was about to just install it but then stopped and thought, what could be the easiest RCE out there. Make a useful app, a catchy domain name, professional landing page, get social proof by getting it to HN front page and have zero people comment what I'm currently commenting... There is no link to source, no link to LinkedIn profile of the creator. I'm sure this is a legit app, but makes me wonder, am I the only paranoid person here?

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I actually had the same thought after I had installed it and noticed that the binary was over 600MB. Sure, it's probably just Electron, but still, it was just enough to get me to hold off on actually trying it for now.

It's actually not Electron, it appears to be Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF), which is what Spotify desktop app uses. I'm speaking completely separately from OP's product:

CEF was supposed to be more efficient than Electron, but I think that framework heavily missed the mark. I'd be interested to know why the dev chose CEF instead.

Last year I answered on SO about the difference between Electron and CEF and which one to chose: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70620182/whats-the-diffr...

I actually use an Electron-like framework to make ClipBook, but it's not Electron and not CEF. It's Electron for C++ developers. It's called Molybden SDK. I'm one of the creators of this SDK. I decided to use it, because I know it really well and it allows me to write using C++ and closely work with the operating system. It's very important when you build a software like ClipBook.

There are three downloads: for Mac Apple Silicon, Intel, and Universal.

You see the 600MB binary, because it's probably Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel) DMG. To have a smaller size it's better to download DMG for your Mac CPU architecture. You can find all three versions at https://clipbook.app/download/

I should say that even Apple Silicon or Intel app will still be ~330MB. It's because of the SDK I use to build this app.

I'm the creator. Thanks for your comment. It's not about paranoid. It's critical thinking and I believe everybody should use it during the Internet epoch.

I'm not hiding and you can easily find me in social networks: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-ikryanov-9334915/ - GitHub: https://github.com/vladimir-ikryanov

I will definitely need to share the source code of ClipBook, so anybody can analyze it or build their own copy of the app.

Yeah, I absolutely need open source for this and me building it fully myself. I wouldn't be able to trust it otherwise, unless it came with the OS itself.

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