Don't we use Tailscale for this?
Indeed. https://tailscale.com/kb/1312/serve
Tailscale serve is within your tailnet
Tailscale funnel is publicly accessible
Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
51–60 of 72 posts
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#52Kulfi red flags: Does the same thing as a bunch of other systems (e.g. Tor) without providing any comparison of what this one does better. Docs pages are TODO, certainly don't explain how it works. Website is "Copyright 2025 YourCompany, Inc." Discord link goes to something called "fastn" with apparently no relation to Kulfi.
fastn is an ingredient to kulfi project. fastn.com is a full stack programming language we (FifthTry, Inc, the company behind these) have built, and it is the web server that is going to be part of Kulfi app. The comparison posts, TODO, copyright etc we will do/fix when we get around to it. It's all open source, you can send PRs as well.
It sounds a lot like you're trying to reinvent things that already exist for the purpose of having them be your intellectual property, so you can convince everyone to use your thing instead of the free thing, and possibly rugpull them later. Embrace, extend, extinguish!
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#53Feedback: This crowd likes technical docs. These docs are nothing like that, and raise more questions than they answer.
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Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#54Kulfi red flags: Does the same thing as a bunch of other systems (e.g. Tor) without providing any comparison of what this one does better. Docs pages are TODO, certainly don't explain how it works. Website is "Copyright 2025 YourCompany, Inc." Discord link goes to something called "fastn" with apparently no relation to Kulfi.
Vibe coding tools need a post step to fix all the templating issues like wrong links, wrong names, etc.
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#55Don't we use Tailscale for this?
Among other clear differences, it looks like tailscale requires you to sign in with some cloud provider and Malai does not. I use and like tailscale for similar purposes, but I can see why some people might prefer to skip that aspect, especially.
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Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's id52? I feel like I'm missing a lot of context to understand what's being shared here.
e.g. https://github.com/kulfi-project/kulfi/blob/malai-0.2.5/kulf... $ echo -n c1b2d4463e503765b7422e126ea7ff5633ba5903f97b700ac818 | wc -c 52 It would appear the leading "org-", "account-", et al are a separate namespacing of the id52 key
I figured as much, but that's an example for an id52, but not a description of what it is.
The actual answer seems to be that these are zbase32-encoded 32 byte iroh node IDs: https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-global-node-discovery
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#57This is insane.
I dug and the site led me to another site, which led me to another site, which is supposedly a video conferencing suite. All code is skeleton, e.g. how on earth is that supposed to work?
-- import: fastn
-- fastn.package: lets-talk-template.fifthtry.site
-- fastn.dependency: lets-talk.fifthtry.site provided-via: lets-talk-template.fifthtry.site/lets-talk
-- fastn.dependency: design-system.fifthtry.site provided-via: lets-talk-template.fifthtry.site/ds
-- fastn.dependency: lets-auth.fifthtry.site
-- fastn.app: Lets Auth App mount-point: /-/auth/ package: lets-auth.fifthtry.site
-- fastn.app: Lets Talk App mount-point: / package: lets-talk.fifthtry.site
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#58Malai website says it is created by FifthTry. On the FifthTry website is says you are backed by Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/fifthtry
But it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the current company? Are you a Notion-like editor still? Because the editor section of the site says “coming soon” even though your YC page says you were in the Winter 2021 batch. I guess I’m not really clear on any of this and how it relates to Malai.
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#59Malai website says it is created by FifthTry. On the FifthTry website is says you are backed by Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/fifthtry But it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the current company? Are you a Notion-like editor still? Because the editor section of the site says “coming soon” even though your YC page says you were in the Winter 2021 batch. I guess I’m not really clear on any…
So let's see, I am Amit Upadhyay, I am the (solo) founder and CEO of FifthTry, which is YC W21 company (we also have some other seed investment). We started with a documentation tool, the Notion like you mentioned, caveat: it was not WYSWYG, it was always based on a "language". The language was initially called ftd (FifthTry Document), and eventually fastn.com. fastn started as markdown++, but became a full stack web development language. We moved from being just a documentation tool to general purpose website building tool. FifthTry.com is now a hosting solution for fastn powered websites and webapps.
fastn is done in Rust, and has relatively small foot print. It is language, compiler, package manager, web server, wasm runner, all in one, and technically can run on say a mobile device, on a "Amazon Fire Stick" like mini TV module, you webcam and so on. fastn is probably the only web server you can run on those devices (not yet tested, but it should be).
The issue is those web servers do not have public IPs (nor should they, as that can expose them to security risks), so we are building a peer to peer network, an identity based network, so you do not have to have accessible IP/port to access the web service.
The network we are calling Kulfi net, and malai is a network toolkit for kulfi net, it exposes various services (TCP/HTTP) over kulfi net.
Kulfi itself is going to be a browser, that can talk kulfi protocol natively (as currently we need a "http bridge", eg kulfi.site that we are running, or you can install malai and run on your server).
Kulfi "browser", will also come with fastn built in, so you can run a web server on your phone and someone else can access that web server from another phone, talking http over kulfi protocol, and we can get near ideal networking solution (no intermediary, no need for public IP, etc).
Does this make sense?
Re: Show HN: Malai – securely share local TCP services (database/SSH) with others
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
malai: cream that forms on top of milk when it cools down, its a flavor of kulfi. kulfi: a milk based ice cream / desert. Nothing to do with networking etc, just a desert I enjoyed since childhood :-)
Yep, just wondered if there was some analogy/joke like malai is the layer on top and kulfi is.. I don't know, the rod that connects A to B or something (that's nonsense, but that's why I was asking!) Anyway, project seems great and all, but I'll wait for pista. :)
Since its built in Rust, we can call it rus(t)-malai also :-)