41–50 of 103 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
thats why its best to extend email . it's already decentralized and people don't claim it helps drug dealers. i think the worst part of centralized services is they made police and states complacent and depend on constant spying
For 99% of the population email is extremely centralized.
The future of messaging, decentralized or not, is certainly something with a tractable protocol.
This is what I’m working on with Aether ( https://getaether.net ). A mass-communication method owned by no one, like email is owned by no one. It’s a modern, decentralised Usenet. I used to call it ‘email for mass communication’ but it confused people, since it’s not based on email, so I stopped calling it that. That’s the goal though. I also gave a talk on it at the Internet Archive last week, if you want a quick in…
This is what I’m working on with Aether ( https://getaether.net ). A mass-communication method owned by no one, like email is owned by no one. It’s a modern, decentralised Usenet. I used to call it ‘email for mass communication’ but it confused people, since it’s not based on email, so I stopped calling it that. That’s the goal though. I also gave a talk on it at the Internet Archive last week, if you want a quick in…
Thanks for your presentation at that meetup! It's definitely one of the most radically-decentralized & technically-principled projects, so it was good to see it alongside other presenters there, like Matrix (definitely headed in the right direction) & Planetary (built on similarly-principled Secure Scuttlebutt).
Protocols and privacy and chat features are all great, but let's not lose sight of the two absolutely killer essential features of every successful chat app / system: (1) The address book. (2) The easiest possible signup and setup. More generally for #1, whatever method(s) you use to find people's contact information and connect with them. Without that, you could have created the perfect chat experience in every way,…
Completely agree. For anyone who hasn’t come across it, check out the exciting work being done by developers of the Secure Scuttlebutt protocol: “Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem. Each user hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow, which provides fault tolerance and eventual consistency.[5] Messages are digi…
And the protocol spec page is fantastic: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/
... that said, it has some enormous problems around multi-device, rather costly replication (start at the beginning, catch up to now, otherwise you can't verify anything), and it's fairly normal to miss part of a conversation and not have any real way to get it filled in. There are a number of branching concepts with semi-compatible protocols that strike me as a lot more promising, but odds seem pretty good that the community will shift if necessary (which is a good thing).
Worth a shot for anyone to explore if they're curious though, there's even a largely-functional mobile app: https://www.manyver.se/
This is what I’m working on with Aether ( https://getaether.net ). A mass-communication method owned by no one, like email is owned by no one. It’s a modern, decentralised Usenet. I used to call it ‘email for mass communication’ but it confused people, since it’s not based on email, so I stopped calling it that. That’s the goal though. I also gave a talk on it at the Internet Archive last week, if you want a quick in…
Now, I recognize that regular e-mail uses proof of work as a spam prevention measure these days, so I don't want to be too harsh on a decentralized alternative.
That said, I've watched the energy expenditures of Bitcoin etc. with alarm, and I've become very concerned about the sustainability of anything using proof of work if it should become popular. Fundamentally proof of work makes people waste energy in order to accomplish tasks such as sending messages, at a time where we need to use as little energy as possible to reduce emissions.
Have you considered sustainability at all with Aether? Have you considered any alternatives to proof of work for dealing with spam?
It’s possible right now to clone a fully functioning XMPP stack from Github into Kubernetes in a day.
What’s constantly leading us to centralized platforms is the political ownership model.
A new protocol isn’t going to avoid the social gravity that comes with being a popular implementer who is then anointed with unelected political weight in exchange for changes in law to help them hang onto power.
Engineers could stand to meditate on how ideas like DRY can be applied to more than just coding.
This is what I’m working on with Aether ( https://getaether.net ). A mass-communication method owned by no one, like email is owned by no one. It’s a modern, decentralised Usenet. I used to call it ‘email for mass communication’ but it confused people, since it’s not based on email, so I stopped calling it that. That’s the goal though. I also gave a talk on it at the Internet Archive last week, if you want a quick in…
"In Aether, spam prevention is accomplished by requiring proofs of work". Now, I recognize that regular e-mail uses proof of work as a spam prevention measure these days, so I don't want to be too harsh on a decentralized alternative. That said, I've watched the energy expenditures of Bitcoin etc. with alarm, and I've become very concerned about the sustainability of anything using proof of work if it should become p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In Aether, spam prevention is accomplished by requiring proofs of work". Now, I recognize that regular e-mail uses proof of work as a spam prevention measure these days, so I don't want to be too harsh on a decentralized alternative. That said, I've watched the energy expenditures of Bitcoin etc. with alarm, and I've become very concerned about the sustainability of anything using proof of work if it should become p…
I suspect that the PoW energy costs of things like this would be negligible compared to that for cryptocurrencies, but I haven’t justified my guess.