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Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

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Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#51

Post by masukomi »

whimful wrote: post #19
Cyberdog wrote: post #14

How does this compare to Mastodon/GNU social? From what I can tell, this is inviting me to run a P2P program on my own system rather than on a server; is that just an implementation detail?

it's like federation, but at the level of a user. Much easier to set up, much easier to curate / moderate what you want to see. There's still emergent community in the space, it's just not tied to the politics of hardware

I wouldn't say it's "like federation" at all. In no scenario do you have an entire group of people who suddenly loose their accounts and connections if the owner of the "server" they connect to decides to stop hosting it (as has happened with many mastodon instances).

In addition in works offline (including images). Many of us catch up with friends and reply to their posts when on the train, plain, boat, road, whatever and sync up when we get to a net connection, or local connection to a local friend with SSB.

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#52

Post by masukomi »

ewok wrote: post #34

This sounds very interesting. I hoped for somebody starting a better(decentralized) signal client! Owning your own pub is nice. You got me in! Thanks for sharing.

owning your own pub is cool, but most of us don't bother because you really don't need one to use the system. Well, you don't need _your own_.

There's active work going on to improve the support for private groups.

if you do want to set up a pub i'd recommend ssb-pub. It's trivial to get up and running (but is command line only). easy-ssb-pub provides a web UI that your friends could request invites from but it needs some TLC right now.

https://github.com/ahdinosaur/ssb-pub#readme

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#53

Post by masukomi »

DividableMiddle wrote: post #15
Asturaz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not work like that, the gateway will not be able to show anything, and if you would like to go through a gateway you would have to share your secret key with that Gateway, which means full control of your log. The first time you use Secure Scuttlebutt will be boring because it will be an empty town, you will not have anything and you will not see anyone's feed either. The magic happens when you start followin…

Although I understand the purpose of a new user having no data on first use I do not agree with it. Using a platform for the first time can be foreign and it eases the mind of the user if they can see what it would look like day-to-day. Maybe just have some test material and a very obvious button to wipe it clean when they are ready?

If you follow the instructions in the Getting Started Guide [1] it will not be "an empty town". That would be a pretty crappy getting-started experience.

Just connect to a pub and you'll find tons of content.

I would also recommend AGAINST ever doing `rm -rf ~/.ssb` as one commenter suggested. That will wipe out your keys, and thus your identity, and you'll never be able to post anything as that identity again (unless you backed up your secret file or connected it to another identity (advanced usage)).

[1]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#54

Post by masukomi »

whimful wrote: post #20
Rhapso wrote: post #4

Are there plans to implement the ssb protocol in a language other than JS?

Some of the code you might be interested is _in_ scuttlebutt, as in there's a git implementation that lives in this p2p database / network. It's called git-ssb, and it has a github like interface. https://github.com/clehner/git-ssb Here's a window into this p2p land : https://git.scuttlebot.io/ go gentle on it, it's a little server Welcome to the cloud proper

there's also hosting of node modules over ssb :)

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#55

Post by masukomi »

internalfx wrote: post #30

I really like this. I decided to host a pub for tech enthusiasts. technology.ssb-pub.com

cool. I see you've added it to the wiki.

You should probably mention it with the #scuttlebutt tag as well as just saying hello in #new-people :)

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#56

Post by masukomi »

marknadal wrote: post #29

Congrats Dominic and co! I saw that even Julian Assange was recommending scuttlebutt on Twitter!! A couple people have asked about browser based access and some people have replied that that wouldn't work? Could somebody explain why? Me and Dominic have debated design a couple times, and on my own system we have P2P cryptographic identities working just fine in the browser (see https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-b…

Browser based access is absolutely possible. Not only that it exists.

It has 2 forms: If you want a read-only version of the network there are a couple servers that do that. It's useful for showing people who aren't on ssb interesting conversations.

If you want to actually interact with the network that's possible too but there are... limitations / issues.

There are 2 aspects to this.

1) it's a distributed network. So, either you need to stick a client in the cloud with a web interface (Patchfoo [1] is just such a client, but the interface is.... meh) OR you need to run the entire client in your browser, and the problem with that is where do you store the data? You're going to quickly exceed the max of local store (i forget what that is but if you start following lots of people and they post photos you're going to exceed it).

2) You can't afford to loose your private key. SSB uses Public Key Encryption and as such if you loose your key you can no longer prove that you're you so you become disconnected from all your prior posts and people following the old you no longer get updates from "you" because "you" can't post as the old you anymore.

If you use multiple browsers then how would you sync the keys between them?

Also, SSB uses a blockchain for each user. If you have the same keys on multiple computers and one computer posts before it's synced up with the last post from the other computer then you've just forked your chain and it screws up everyone who's following you because you don't know which version of the chain each follower has ended up on.

[1]: https://github.com/ssbc/patchfoo

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#57

Post by masukomi »

tomcooks wrote: post #40
whimful wrote: post #23

If you want to check out the deep end, here's some writing which captures some of the _vibe_ of the community building this sociotechnical space https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical...

Mixed feelings about these writings. All great for the vibes, but _personally_ I'd rather read tutorials on how to get it running easily on an old solar powered raspberry pi, or how to install it on my dad's phone. The introductory video [0] to Scuttlebutt is an excellent example of concise, hands down, brief explanation on why this software is important (vibes + useful). Tutorials and brief explanation change the fu…

forgot to mention. There's a post with instructions [1] for setting up scuttlebutt on a Raspberry Pi Pirate box. I'd link you to it on the web but the user has chosen not to have their posts shown on our public gateways, but if you join the network you can just throw this in the search field and you'll see all the details.

[1] %DI98y9SukdIcd0RW5mp9MRc0mxHziGLP/+PNUu59pO8=.sha256

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#58

Post by tomcooks »

masukomi wrote: post #49
tomcooks wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed feelings about these writings. All great for the vibes, but _personally_ I'd rather read tutorials on how to get it running easily on an old solar powered raspberry pi, or how to install it on my dad's phone. The introductory video [0] to Scuttlebutt is an excellent example of concise, hands down, brief explanation on why this software is important (vibes + useful). Tutorials and brief explanation change the fu…

The getting started guide [1] is pretty comprehensive, I think. Let me know if there's something you think is missing. There phone version is _very_ alpha still. Installing it on your solar powered raspberry pi is just a matter of downloading the AppImage from the releases page [2]. I'd also note that if you actually have a solar powered raspberry you'll probably fit right in. There are a lot of "solarpunk" people on…

Yup been on sbb since saltz's article a while ago on HN, proud member of #solarpunk

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#59

Post by tomcooks »

masukomi wrote: post #57
tomcooks wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed feelings about these writings. All great for the vibes, but _personally_ I'd rather read tutorials on how to get it running easily on an old solar powered raspberry pi, or how to install it on my dad's phone. The introductory video [0] to Scuttlebutt is an excellent example of concise, hands down, brief explanation on why this software is important (vibes + useful). Tutorials and brief explanation change the fu…

forgot to mention. There's a post with instructions [1] for setting up scuttlebutt on a Raspberry Pi Pirate box. I'd link you to it on the web but the user has chosen not to have their posts shown on our public gateways, but if you join the network you can just throw this in the search field and you'll see all the details. [1] %DI98y9SukdIcd0RW5mp9MRc0mxHziGLP/+PNUu59pO8=.sha256

Thanks! As soon as i get it working on my arch laptop i'll try get it running on rpi

Re: Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt

#60

Post by marknadal »

masukomi wrote: post #56
marknadal wrote: post #29

Congrats Dominic and co! I saw that even Julian Assange was recommending scuttlebutt on Twitter!! A couple people have asked about browser based access and some people have replied that that wouldn't work? Could somebody explain why? Me and Dominic have debated design a couple times, and on my own system we have P2P cryptographic identities working just fine in the browser (see https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-b…

Browser based access is absolutely possible. Not only that it exists. It has 2 forms: If you want a read-only version of the network there are a couple servers that do that. It's useful for showing people who aren't on ssb interesting conversations. If you want to actually interact with the network that's possible too but there are... limitations / issues. There are 2 aspects to this. 1) it's a distributed network. S…

(1) is good! Great work!

(2) is a concern but ultimately depends upon the key management question - we already solved this and made an animated explainer videos of it: http://gun.js.org/explainers/data/security.html (and you can see a demo of it working in action in the parent posts, or just check the source code).

(3) the blockchain, yes that is problematic, and is exactly what me and Dominic were debating in 2014. If you use the CRDT approach (which is what we do) you don't have that problem.

So again, these are all things that have doable solutions, nothing can stop SSB!!! Not even pesky browsers.

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