Autonomi are launching their beta rewards program tonight (8am GMT) and have opened signups for the second wave of noderunners. Anyone will be able to run nodes, even non-technical folks.
I ask this relatively regularly because I want to keep an eye on the landscape.
I'm a software engineer with a PhD in international criminal law. I am on the lookout for (open source?) projects that are useful to human rights researchers/activists/defenders. I am hoping to contribute as a volunteer software engineer.
If you know of a project like this, please get in touch. If you don't, please boost if you'd like!
@hgrsd#Autonomi is a stand out project, which has stuck to a set of democratising values, rejecting easy choices (such as VC funding) and taking the hard road for eighteen years.
It is now approaching launch and will be an opportunity to create a new generation of privacy and user centred apps. It levels the development playing field to give even individuals the chance to scale world-wide and take on the big centralised platforms without VC funding.
Oooooof. @baldur's take on the Jobs to be Done of modern software development is brutal.
The conclusion is pretty sobering too: that LLMs will become embedded in software development because they truly deliver on this promise of churn, and do it at lower cost than software developers.
Many consider that #p2p contradictory to such use cases as organizations, project teams, tasks, wiki, Jira-like or YouTrack-like software, and other use-cases that require restricted access and support of permissions.
But implementing such things would be a fascinating goal per se.
Sadly I don;t have too much time to spend on that, and I am not a pro in P2P development, just a newbie touching this scope with curiosity in this context.
@koteisaev
You don't necessarily need new skills to build #p2p apps these days.
I'm finishing off a demo app which publishes websites to #Autonomi and also acts as a viewer.
I can't really call it a browser because it is very basic, but it does one thing that the current web tooling doesn't support: you can browse every version of any published website, forever. No link rot!
Using #TauriV2 I can build for desktop and mobile, and have done early testing on Windows, Linux and Android.
Bux is in Texas right now at the Consensus conference waiting to wow the audience. Go @bux!
Currently we're beavering away to get another testnet out of the door, building on the successes of ThisIsNotBetaRewardsNet and knocking off a few rough edges.
We’re particularly keen to get discord bot fully integrated this time round to automate the calculation of nanos for those running nodes.
These stories when #State installs various #spyware such as #pegasus give me not just creepy/eerie feeling.
Such stories questions suitability usage of any electronic device, let it be a linux desktop/laptop or any smartphone, even suc as e/OS equipped, not speaking about standard iOS/Android devices.
And it pushes down motivation for developing any #p2p software as well, just because if your risk model includes government spyware installation on your devices, this is beyond their usage scope.
@koteisaev
I'm hopeful, even confident that #p2p can and will help with device level surveillance such as #Pegasus#spyware one day.
For example, it has been discussed and mitigations proposed on the #Autonomi forum, though not recently. Ideas such as booting from the network using any device, using the secure services it provides and then logging off without leaving traces.
Easier said than done, but something worth assuming for.
@hyde many here are saying people don't care but I don't think that's true. Look deeper.
They resist for many reasons and some are obvious. I've seen reports that most users of Facebook for example wish it didn't invade their privacy but what alternatives do they have and at what cost?
They know that acting on that desire is much harder than succumbing, so they resist in various ways.
I'm hopeful we can change this. It will never be easy but it can be done over time.
If only there was a way to integrate peer to peer payments into federated social media without relying on Stripe and Google... Maybe someday it will be discovered!
We have two new team members First, we are massively pleased that @Shu has agreed to join us to help out with monitoring, observability and visualisation of operations.
Second, we’re delighted to welcome Nic, who joins as product manager. This is an essential role as we move out of the R&D phase into delivery.
Sheesh, Mozilla has really lost their way. Putting ads in the search bar? We already have a search engine that does that, we don't need two running at the same time.
@cuchaz
I mostly use #Brave now (with the shit turned off) because #Firefox was degrading in performance and stability, and became unusable on my cheap mobile. For now that's ok.
That #Mozilla are doing this is very sad. I am though hopeful better days are coming, with new ecosystems based on #p2p that will bypass the enclosure and unleash the next generation of openeness & creativity.
I'm literally working on a demo to publish and browse websites on #Autonomi, so it's not just work thinking.
We have a new stable test network for you as PunchNet winds down. Impressive work as always from the community, and it’s wonderful to see all the dashboards brightening up the thread.
As a fun little experiment, @damon and I worked together to get a #Mastodon instance up and running that stores media on #IPFS! It was an interesting learning experience.
I don’t think we’re ready to announce anything yet, as this was in service of another project in development. But, there’s an increasing number of ways to host content on an IPFS node service, and tie it back to platforms like Mastodon using an S3-compatible API for Object Storage and some proxying.
This is all pretty rudimentary, but the big-brain realization is that a more robust version could be done by pairing Minio to s3x if we wanted to self-host an IPFS node with those specific features.
@deadsuperhero
I expect more of this, not just re #IPFS but as #p2p systems are happening, storage models will change for the better. #Autonomi is the project I'm most familiar with and they have already talked about this and have partners ready to upload their data. They are not yet revealed, but I wouldn't be surprised if replacing AWS was in there.
I'm working on a demo myself in the area of web publishing and browsing, and am very excited about this whole area, so I wish you luck. @damon
@molly0xfff
One answer to that perennial problem is: don't. Start building with p2p as soon as you can and support those who are building #p2p platforms you might use in future, such as #Autonomi.
Ten years ago I thought I'd finished programming altogether, then I stumbled on #Autonomi (then called Safe Network, no actually just MaidSafe then).
That compelled me to learn NodeJS, and after they switched from C++ to Rust in 2015 (this project is lead by a visionary) eventually I had to try that. And my "learn Rust with a little project" app is now in the Debian repositories.
Unbelievable for an old guy. All you young folk have plenty of time. Enjoy!
@robin
I haven't read your essay so don't know if you go into how to rewild.
I have been aware of the issues for years, but as time passes my understanding of their number and nature has increased.
Partly because I've been part of a community that recognises this from different perspectives since 2014, brought together by a tenacious visionary who set out to change this in 2006, and 18 years later is about to launch the truly autonomous internet: #Autonomi
A couple of years after starting a little project to learn #RustLang, that little app is in the Debian repos and I can install it from the latest Ubuntu 24.04.
I am so chuffed. A very happyborg to have finally given something back to the #FOSS community in the form of an app.
The app, #vdash is very niche, so not of interest to many but has an enthusiastic band of #Autonomi fans using it every day and sharing their observations by posting screenshots online. 🥳
Sadly I don't find this surprising. The costs of running Mastodon instances at large scale are very high.B0rk had posted her personal server costs and I don't remember the amount but they were very high for the number of followers she has.
This will require real funds. And what happens the day a new gov gets elected on cutting costs? Bye bye Fedi server?
Apps scale without costs for those developing or administering them. It's peer-to-peer, so no servers to run, maintain, get hacked or censored. Fully autonomous, so no gatekeepers either, just each user and their data, their apps and their privacy.
With this testnet we’re going to punch some holes!
Computers in a home network will normally be unreachable from the outside, unless ports are forwarded manually. Lately, we’ve been experimenting with relays and hole punching, meaning nodes from inside a home network can participate in the network.
Some good news to kick off with: we have succeeded in getting nodes and clients working from behind NAT firewalls with Quic so we’re definitely getting there in terms of nodes from home
So come and give it a whirl from home with our latest alpha network: PunchNet.