6 ms·

Would be good to have some distributed model (like Bitcoin, etc.) for message platforms like Reddit?

by ErikAugust 10y ago

arcticfox 10y ago
I feel like Telegram will release something like this at some point...at least I'm hoping so!
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  Matrix.org will probably get there first
reddytowns 10y ago
Take a look at steem.io if you are interested in such a thing. As a disclaimer, I would not recommend investing much money in it.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Yeah. That would be great. I'd go so far as to say that it would be a really Useful network. If you catch my drift.
- rjbwork 10y ago
  Please, tell me more about this wonderful futuristic technology.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Well, you see, there used to be a network coexistant with the internet, backed by UUCP, because Unix didn't have internet support yet (among other reasons). And then there were these guys called Tom and Steve. And they wrote Usenet. And all was well until September fell. And then the usenet gradually faded into obscurity, as users moved towards walled gardens, and away from netnews. Some of these users were weeaboos: This is how the -chans made their way here from Japan.
    - ChuckMcM 10y ago
      Awesome! that totally reads like a future history of post apocalyptic script kiddy explaining the current state of the world. Usenet was created because "networks" were expensive and "fax lines" were cheap. If you did it correctly machine A could call machine B in its local calling zone which could call machine C in its local calling zone and a message could go from A!B!C!user without incurring any long distance charges (aka "free"). Because you would lose your news feed if you pissed people off, spam was low because no admin would tolerate one of their users putting their system at risk of disconnection. When networks because "free" and anyone could talk to anyone, there was no impediment to spam and no way to scale, and much of the infrastructure collapsed on itself. That said, there is absolutely nothing preventing anyone from creating their own peer to peer messaging network. They could re-use the netnews code or write their own with a bit more security built in. The argument to that is "but hey no one will use it." to which you say "Who cares? My friends and I will use it." and since it is free and it is just you and your friends it will be fun and enjoyable. And if you're very unlucky everyone will join you.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        It reads like that in part because I was aiming for that vibe (something along the lines of http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/humor/historyofnet http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/humor/historyofnet, or https://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/extra/Humor/ComputerHumor/PeaSea.html https://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/extra/Humor/ComputerHumo...). But also because my knowledge of Usenet history is very limited. So thanks for the crash course.
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        > And if you're very unlucky everyone will join you. That last line was very poignant.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        But true. I sure as heck hope that everyone doesn't join me in my communities: the magic would go away.
  - sonofgod 10y ago
    If you're wanting to explore the history of messaging, olduse.net has a 30-year delayed live newsfeed... Mostly I learnt that just about nothing has changed...
    - protomyth 10y ago
      As a nice supplement the Conference issue of Byte is on the Internet Archive. The issue has a painting of a ribbon cable on the cover.
      - protomyth 10y ago
        Since I'm off the road here is the link https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-12 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-12 Byte Magazine Volume 10 Number 13 December 1985 Computer Conferencing
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Ah, Byte. There's nothing like it, and there probably never will be. Where else could you find circuit diagrams, assembly listings, and explorations of HLLs, next to all kinds other computer-related explorations? It has a kind of magic to it, which I can't find in any other magazine to this day.
        ddingus 10y ago
        Seconded.
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  Thank you for this. Learn your history, kids!
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    ...I am a kid. Well, a highschooler at least.
    - Jaruzel 10y ago
      Kudos to you. If only other high schoolers knew the history of tech they use, we (us 40+ somethings) would not be fearing for our future.
    - Ericson2314 10y ago
      Yeah props to you, whatever your age! And fwiw I'm too young to have used the Usenet in its prime. "<Imperative>, kids" is just an ideom. The proverbial kid would be somebody here that hasn't heard of the Usenet or didn't make the connection—not you.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        >"<Imperative>, kids" is just an ideom. The proverbial kid would be somebody here that hasn't heard of the Usenet or didn't make the connection—not you. Yeah, I know. I felt that it was an entertaining enough juxtaposition that I said it anyways.
- ErikAugust 10y ago
  Usenet, I get it. ;) Maybe there's a sweet spot somewhere between the Facebooks and models like Usenet.
  - raattgift 10y ago
    You could implement the facebooks with USENET. Each user gets his or her own newsfroup subhierarchy which anyone may subscribe, cache, archive, or distribute. Postings are signed by the user, where the signature points to a parent, Merkle-tree style. A valid posting must encrypt its Message-Id and Newsgroups header lines with the newsgroup's posting-user's private key, and with half of a key shared with the hierarchical parent newsgroup's owner set out in e.g. the cmsg newgroup message and follow-ups to it. Postings may be signed cleartext or signed ciphertext with the decrypt key encrypted on the public keys of eligible readers. Postings may be dropped (and should not be presented by a reader UA) if a signature trace upwards, potentially to the root of the hierarchy -- there may be many hierarchies, but each would have unique root newsgroup -- fails. Posting would work like moderated newsgroups, with the "moderator" being whoever posseses the valid signing information, and any unmoderated postings going ignored. The equivalent of posting on a friend's wall would involve either posting into a subgroup of the friend's primary newsgroup for which the posting-friend has the appropriate signing information, or goes into a dropbox subgroup encrypted on the wall owner's public key, which the wall owner should monitor, and from which the wall owner could sign-and-promote postings onto her or his own wall or some other non-dropbox subgroup. There are similar drawbacks to USENET: once posted, a message cannot be unposted or edited reliably. Postings may be lost. Additionally, postings might not be permanently secret. Posting and reading credentials may be lost or stolen. Legitimate readers might repost information they shouldn't. None of these are too different from the facebooks. The bright side is that this could be started today with just UA work, using the existing USENET transfer-and-storage systems. Newsgroup creation and policies on expiration and peer-and-downstream transferring would need to be made more scalable; the line about "cmsg newgroup" exposes the problem even in the hundreds of users of USEFACE, let alone several orders of magnitude more newsgroups than exist today. However, there aren't obvious ultimate scaling limits thanks to hierarchicalization; the hardest part is probably organizing where UAs will get their NNTP reader service from -- it's unlikely to be just one reader that happens to subscribe to all USEFACE hierarchies and stores all postings indefinitely. This was already a problem for USENET, although there are various partial solutions that already exist.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  It might even develop its own alt.right community.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Naturally. I mean, where else would the right-leaning Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists hang out?
    - noir_lord 10y ago
      Congress?
    - DonHopkins 10y ago
      alt.religion.scientology of course.
      - Senji 10y ago
        alt.chan.4.pol
    - koolba 10y ago
      HN?
      - ethbro 10y ago
        Make Hacking Great Again
    - SSLy 10y ago
      Um, conflating anarcho-capitalists with alt-right is passe. https://fee.org/articles/five-differences-between-the-alt-right-and-libertarians/ https://fee.org/articles/five-differences-between-the-alt-ri...
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        ...You didn't get it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
MK999 10y ago
http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ is a twitter clone in bitcoin, so not a reddit clone. I've not seen a reddit clone yet.
- moridin007 10y ago
  steemit.com?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
RubyPinch 10y ago
there is already a system in place to have verified comments OpenPGP works for near anything
- Nadya 10y ago
  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 But it does get annoying to sign every comment. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- wsBcBAEBCAAQBQJYNp4wCRCuaVAPm2QoyQAAr8sIAHQaE5B+HYdCz6XBrysdHzr4 ykR81zq5TXoMR+/f9UwuSi2I4881H4pEWsN9Fa0/qnpK/asNk+grEaMtB74DOg3p 8Uy3lUvlVglj9QTPZ9Hf90e3HHLOW2OonXitYaf1xPoczIO8NgwwebDDZIVohU4u 4EySOfgbP+VjwGbmtUJFeh0BifGN6b3DtKQrgVziWyumyK3WL9oz1kDAr4s24mCr 227ty9d+7kwtYhaszkM8HwGnstZaNSan1jpVkmsLRMSr4JqNFyNWalN5LU85w2WV zwY0n8mA7tHnrCd+mWcjp845I8gGn7NoFPHXhG2m+yU/f1LDsyXUib5hut+iduQ= =jcN5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
  - RubyPinch 10y ago
    I do think relegating it to ${message} ${message sig metadata} ${message sig} could be done easily enough, and would look okay too. and then allow people to install an extension to verify automatically or the such
    - Nadya 10y ago
      Could you post an actual example? I'm having problems deciphering what that would end up looking like.
      - RubyPinch 10y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/60ya7x8.png https://i.imgur.com/60ya7x8.png I know its considered wrong to mess around with the structure, but this is reversible, looks neater, n' can be hidden (after verification) by third party tools with a simple "is this PGP-like, if yes, delete element" instead of mucking around, splitting arbitrary html
TD-Linux 10y ago
No need. Simple digital signatures of comments (and of their parents) would go a long way here.
dorfsmay 10y ago
So Usenet?
Natanael_L 10y ago
Absolutely! Here's my sketch for a system like that; https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-decentralized-hash-chained-discussion-system/ https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-dec...
eternalban 10y ago
Github.com can't modify your commit records without modifying top level (observable) artifacts.

Would be good to have some distributed model (like Bitcoin, etc.) for message platforms like Reddit?

arcticfox 10y ago

I feel like Telegram will release something like this at some point...at least I'm hoping so!

Natanael_L 10y ago
Matrix.org will probably get there first

reddytowns 10y ago

Take a look at steem.io if you are interested in such a thing. As a disclaimer, I would not recommend investing much money in it.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Yeah. That would be great. I'd go so far as to say that it would be a really Useful network. If you catch my drift.

rjbwork 10y ago
Please, tell me more about this wonderful futuristic technology.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Well, you see, there used to be a network coexistant with the internet, backed by UUCP, because Unix didn't have internet support yet (among other reasons). And then there were these guys called Tom and Steve. And they wrote Usenet. And all was well until September fell. And then the usenet gradually faded into obscurity, as users moved towards walled gardens, and away from netnews. Some of these users were weeaboos: This is how the -chans made their way here from Japan.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    Awesome! that totally reads like a future history of post apocalyptic script kiddy explaining the current state of the world. Usenet was created because "networks" were expensive and "fax lines" were cheap. If you did it correctly machine A could call machine B in its local calling zone which could call machine C in its local calling zone and a message could go from A!B!C!user without incurring any long distance charges (aka "free"). Because you would lose your news feed if you pissed people off, spam was low because no admin would tolerate one of their users putting their system at risk of disconnection. When networks because "free" and anyone could talk to anyone, there was no impediment to spam and no way to scale, and much of the infrastructure collapsed on itself. That said, there is absolutely nothing preventing anyone from creating their own peer to peer messaging network. They could re-use the netnews code or write their own with a bit more security built in. The argument to that is "but hey no one will use it." to which you say "Who cares? My friends and I will use it." and since it is free and it is just you and your friends it will be fun and enjoyable. And if you're very unlucky everyone will join you.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      It reads like that in part because I was aiming for that vibe (something along the lines of http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/humor/historyofnet http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/humor/historyofnet, or https://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/extra/Humor/ComputerHumor/PeaSea.html https://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/extra/Humor/ComputerHumo...). But also because my knowledge of Usenet history is very limited. So thanks for the crash course.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      > And if you're very unlucky everyone will join you. That last line was very poignant.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        But true. I sure as heck hope that everyone doesn't join me in my communities: the magic would go away.
- sonofgod 10y ago
  If you're wanting to explore the history of messaging, olduse.net has a 30-year delayed live newsfeed... Mostly I learnt that just about nothing has changed...
  - protomyth 10y ago
    As a nice supplement the Conference issue of Byte is on the Internet Archive. The issue has a painting of a ribbon cable on the cover.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Since I'm off the road here is the link https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-12 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-12 Byte Magazine Volume 10 Number 13 December 1985 Computer Conferencing
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Ah, Byte. There's nothing like it, and there probably never will be. Where else could you find circuit diagrams, assembly listings, and explorations of HLLs, next to all kinds other computer-related explorations? It has a kind of magic to it, which I can't find in any other magazine to this day.
        ddingus 10y ago
        Seconded.
Ericson2314 10y ago
Thank you for this. Learn your history, kids!
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ...I am a kid. Well, a highschooler at least.
  - Jaruzel 10y ago
    Kudos to you. If only other high schoolers knew the history of tech they use, we (us 40+ somethings) would not be fearing for our future.
  - Ericson2314 10y ago
    Yeah props to you, whatever your age! And fwiw I'm too young to have used the Usenet in its prime. "<Imperative>, kids" is just an ideom. The proverbial kid would be somebody here that hasn't heard of the Usenet or didn't make the connection—not you.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      >"<Imperative>, kids" is just an ideom. The proverbial kid would be somebody here that hasn't heard of the Usenet or didn't make the connection—not you. Yeah, I know. I felt that it was an entertaining enough juxtaposition that I said it anyways.
ErikAugust 10y ago
Usenet, I get it. ;) Maybe there's a sweet spot somewhere between the Facebooks and models like Usenet.
- raattgift 10y ago
  You could implement the facebooks with USENET. Each user gets his or her own newsfroup subhierarchy which anyone may subscribe, cache, archive, or distribute. Postings are signed by the user, where the signature points to a parent, Merkle-tree style. A valid posting must encrypt its Message-Id and Newsgroups header lines with the newsgroup's posting-user's private key, and with half of a key shared with the hierarchical parent newsgroup's owner set out in e.g. the cmsg newgroup message and follow-ups to it. Postings may be signed cleartext or signed ciphertext with the decrypt key encrypted on the public keys of eligible readers. Postings may be dropped (and should not be presented by a reader UA) if a signature trace upwards, potentially to the root of the hierarchy -- there may be many hierarchies, but each would have unique root newsgroup -- fails. Posting would work like moderated newsgroups, with the "moderator" being whoever posseses the valid signing information, and any unmoderated postings going ignored. The equivalent of posting on a friend's wall would involve either posting into a subgroup of the friend's primary newsgroup for which the posting-friend has the appropriate signing information, or goes into a dropbox subgroup encrypted on the wall owner's public key, which the wall owner should monitor, and from which the wall owner could sign-and-promote postings onto her or his own wall or some other non-dropbox subgroup. There are similar drawbacks to USENET: once posted, a message cannot be unposted or edited reliably. Postings may be lost. Additionally, postings might not be permanently secret. Posting and reading credentials may be lost or stolen. Legitimate readers might repost information they shouldn't. None of these are too different from the facebooks. The bright side is that this could be started today with just UA work, using the existing USENET transfer-and-storage systems. Newsgroup creation and policies on expiration and peer-and-downstream transferring would need to be made more scalable; the line about "cmsg newgroup" exposes the problem even in the hundreds of users of USEFACE, let alone several orders of magnitude more newsgroups than exist today. However, there aren't obvious ultimate scaling limits thanks to hierarchicalization; the hardest part is probably organizing where UAs will get their NNTP reader service from -- it's unlikely to be just one reader that happens to subscribe to all USEFACE hierarchies and stores all postings indefinitely. This was already a problem for USENET, although there are various partial solutions that already exist.
DonHopkins 10y ago
It might even develop its own alt.right community.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Naturally. I mean, where else would the right-leaning Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists hang out?
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    Congress?
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    alt.religion.scientology of course.
    - Senji 10y ago
      alt.chan.4.pol
  - koolba 10y ago
    HN?
    - ethbro 10y ago
      Make Hacking Great Again
  - SSLy 10y ago
    Um, conflating anarcho-capitalists with alt-right is passe. https://fee.org/articles/five-differences-between-the-alt-right-and-libertarians/ https://fee.org/articles/five-differences-between-the-alt-ri...
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      ...You didn't get it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

MK999 10y ago

http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ is a twitter clone in bitcoin, so not a reddit clone. I've not seen a reddit clone yet.

moridin007 10y ago
steemit.com?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

RubyPinch 10y ago

there is already a system in place to have verified comments OpenPGP works for near anything

Nadya 10y ago
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 But it does get annoying to sign every comment. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- wsBcBAEBCAAQBQJYNp4wCRCuaVAPm2QoyQAAr8sIAHQaE5B+HYdCz6XBrysdHzr4 ykR81zq5TXoMR+/f9UwuSi2I4881H4pEWsN9Fa0/qnpK/asNk+grEaMtB74DOg3p 8Uy3lUvlVglj9QTPZ9Hf90e3HHLOW2OonXitYaf1xPoczIO8NgwwebDDZIVohU4u 4EySOfgbP+VjwGbmtUJFeh0BifGN6b3DtKQrgVziWyumyK3WL9oz1kDAr4s24mCr 227ty9d+7kwtYhaszkM8HwGnstZaNSan1jpVkmsLRMSr4JqNFyNWalN5LU85w2WV zwY0n8mA7tHnrCd+mWcjp845I8gGn7NoFPHXhG2m+yU/f1LDsyXUib5hut+iduQ= =jcN5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
- RubyPinch 10y ago
  I do think relegating it to ${message} ${message sig metadata} ${message sig} could be done easily enough, and would look okay too. and then allow people to install an extension to verify automatically or the such
  - Nadya 10y ago
    Could you post an actual example? I'm having problems deciphering what that would end up looking like.
    - RubyPinch 10y ago
      https://i.imgur.com/60ya7x8.png https://i.imgur.com/60ya7x8.png I know its considered wrong to mess around with the structure, but this is reversible, looks neater, n' can be hidden (after verification) by third party tools with a simple "is this PGP-like, if yes, delete element" instead of mucking around, splitting arbitrary html

TD-Linux 10y ago

No need. Simple digital signatures of comments (and of their parents) would go a long way here.

dorfsmay 10y ago

So Usenet?

Natanael_L 10y ago

Absolutely! Here's my sketch for a system like that; https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-decentralized-hash-chained-discussion-system/ https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-dec...

eternalban 10y ago

Github.com can't modify your commit records without modifying top level (observable) artifacts.