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Dominic and James are a few key figures in a community of eccentric open source hackers gathering in a social network independent from mainstream internet. The unique properties of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) make it possible for digital information to spread easily even in the absence of Internet Service Providers (ISP) and the internet's backbone. What makes that possible is a decentralized protocol based on the mechanics of word of mouth.
Scuttlebutt is decentralized in a similar way that Bitcoin or BitTorrent are. Unlike centralized systems like PayPal or Dropbox, there is no single website or server to connect when using decentralized services. Which in turn means there is no single company with control over the network.
However, Scuttlebutt differs from Bitcoin and BitTorrent because there are no "singleton components" in the network. When accessing the BitTorrent network, for instance, you need to connect to a Distributed Hash Table (DHT, think of it as a huge round table where anyone can come and take a seat). However, to get access to the DHT in the first place, you need to connect to a bootstrapping server, such as router.bittorrent.com:6881 or router.utorrent.com:6881. These are very lightweight servers which simply introduce you to the DHT. They still depend on the existence of ISPs and the internet backbone. Also, those systems are concerned about public information. For instance, with Bitcoin, each peer stores the entire log of all transactions ever sent by anyone.
...
In Scuttlebutt, the "mesh" suffices. With simply two computers, a local router, and electricity, you can exchange messages between the computers with minimal effort and no technical skills. Each account in Scuttlebutt is a diary (or "log") of what a person has publicly and digitally said. As those people move around between different WiFi / LAN networks, their log gets copy-pasted to different computers, and so digital information spreads.What word of mouth is for humans, Scuttlebutt is for social news feeds. It is unstoppable and spreads fast. Once the word is out (just an arbitrary example) that Apple is releasing a new iPhone model, there is no way to restrict that information from spreading. A person may tell that piece of information to any of their friends, and those friends may in turn spread that information onwards.
With typical gossip, however, information deteriorates as it spreads and eventually becomes harmful rumor. Scuttlebutt on the other hand makes word of mouth secure with cryptography. Each Scuttlebutt account is comprised of simply two things: an append-only diary and private/public asymmetric crypto keys. An account's identity is its public key. There are no unique usernames, because you can't guarantee two people in separate places from choosing the same username, much like you cannot forbid the name "John Smith" to be given to a newborn in Canada if it is already taken by another person in Australia.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Lagg on Sunday April 09 2017, @05:21PM (2 children)
With simply two computers, a local router, and electricity, you can exchange messages between the computers with minimal effort and no technical skills.
No shit? Is this before or after I download the 8 gems, 4 npms, 2 pips and 1 bigass fucking framework so that I can just end up writing roughly the same amount of $language that I would in C to send whatever equals GET /this/fucking/post in the relevant protocol. There's like 8 npms that scuttlebot relies on, and finding the actual protocol implementation - ssb-ref - took me like fifteen years. I was literally lost in the great pacific for a while. Holy fuck wait no ssb-ref doesn't mean reference implementation [github.com]
Also the blag and site disagree with each other:
This seems like a silly name, but I assure you, this is real science. Read this: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/rvr/papers/flowgossip.pdf [cornell.edu]
Or, if you're lazy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt [wikipedia.org] (laziness will get you nowhere, btw)
Unless he thinks that you're supposed to take his word that it's secure. Heh.
Also worth noting that this is the second [wikipedia.org] person [wikipedia.org] I [wikipedia.org] know [e14n.com] of with the uncanny ability to generate new buzzword friendly projects at the rate of -15 FGPS (Fucks Given Per Second). Social media's a good market breh.
P.S.
Captain Lagg,
Day 74
HEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLP
"ssb-blobs": "^0.1.6",
"ssb-client": "^4.0.2",
"ssb-config": "^2.0.0",
"ssb-keys": "^7.0.0",
"ssb-msgs": "~5.2.0",
"ssb-ref": "^2.6.2",
"ssb-ws": "^1.0.1",
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Tuesday April 11 2017, @11:37PM (1 child)
How did you do that? Every time I try to post ACSII art, I get hit by the lameness filter.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:42AM
I use <ecode> tags. But the lameness filter checks for a signal to noise ratio so you'll probably still be hit by it.
Oh and even though I could not give less shits personally. Sometimes mods don't like when you post offtopic and will rate as such. Wanted to note that as well in case it's a point of concern.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿