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Dat (and Beaker Browser) is one of those things that I think about playing with every time I see it pop up somewhere. The technology truly feels like something

Dat (and Beaker Browser) is one of those things that I think about playing with every time I see it pop up somewhere. The technology truly feels like something special. Then I sit down to actually start playing with it I struggle to think of anything to build that would actually take advantage of the tech aside from purely static sites. I would really love to see more complex examples folks have seen in the wild.

daffl 7y ago
A while ago I made a demo of a P2P chat application that runs on the beaker browser and uses the experimental P2P APIs. It's running at dat://feathers-chat.hashbase.io (slides from the talk at https://vanjs-decentralized.hashbase.io https://vanjs-decentralized.hashbase.io). If the peers can see each other you should be able to register with any email address and send chat messages between browser instances. What I realized is that this technology ticks a lot of the boxes of what we right now think only the big cloud providers can do. By using a more decentralized protocol it is by design - Actually Serverless - Offline-first - Real-time - Auto-deploying - Live-updating - 100% uptime I really think there is something there from both, a developer and user experience perspective. The problem is that a lot of it is still very experimental and far from the usability and maturity of e.g. a Firebase or Heroku.
- mmcclure 7y ago
  This is a really cool idea, but how should I be using it? Trying to test it out just now I opened up two tabs in Beaker but both rooms just have the one user in them. Love the design, by the way.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - daffl 7y ago
    I believe this is happening because it is using the same peer connection. If you start to separate instances of the browser (e.g. in a VM or another machine) you should be able to see both users. The design is taken from the Chat guide for https://feathersjs.com https://feathersjs.com. Feathers is a JS library that allows to architect APIs in a way that they are protocol independent. Which worked great in this case because I just had to swap out the existing REST/websocket Feathers adapter for a DAT/Beaker API Feathers adapter.
- amatecha 7y ago
  dude I love how many people in Vancouver seem to be interested in or even working with dat :) thumbsup
  - w_s_l 7y ago
    ;)
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  Why do you have to register with an E-mail address?
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  Can you explain how P2P chat is saved into dat? How can someone without the keys add their messages to the feed? Wouldn't only the initial creator have the keys necessary to add to the feed?
mattlondon 7y ago
Yeah same here- it reminds me a lot of "the old days" of the internet where you just stumbled across cool things from sites with lists of links and no real decent search engine or e-commerce going on. There is some interesting stuff people are playing with in Dat - e.g. their Twitter clone (1) has the actual posts distributed in what they are calling their WebDB. I.e. you as an individual publish posts at a dat:// address you control, and the central site just references that address when other users load the feed. Your posts are distributed across the other users so there is no SPOF. There is the kernel of something really interesting there in this GDPR-world where people need to be more aware of who has their data, and what can be done to control that. Interesting stuff. 1 - https://github.com/beakerbrowser/fritter/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/beakerbrowser/fritter/blob/master/README....
nanomonkey 7y ago
There is the Dat installer for installing Android applications (https://github.com/staltz/dat-installer/ https://github.com/staltz/dat-installer/). Also a bunch of zines and music albums are shared over DAT. There is hypercore (https://github.com/mafintosh/hypercore https://github.com/mafintosh/hypercore), a distributed append only log library. Rotonde, a DAT based social network (https://github.com/Rotonde https://github.com/Rotonde) Secure Scuttlebutt now supports dat attachments... Cabal (https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal-cli https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal-cli), a chat program.
- mmcclure 7y ago
  Thanks for these! Cabal looks especially fascinating, I'm going to have to try and get some friends to join one and test it out.
amatecha 7y ago
Rotonde [0][1] is/was a pretty fascinating social network built over Dat/Beaker which basically involved each user helping to seed each user-feed they followed, resulting in a pretty stable/persistent ecosystem. I think it has mostly fallen by the wayside, but of course you should still be able to access a lot of instances due to hashbase.io seeding. To kickstart the platform we started a really basic "user list"[2] where you could find your friends' Rotonde URL based on their twitter username, since dat URLs are not exactly memorable. [0] https://wiki.xxiivv.com/#rotonde https://wiki.xxiivv.com/#rotonde [1] https://github.com/Rotonde https://github.com/Rotonde [2] https://github.com/Rotonde/People https://github.com/Rotonde/People
- 0_gravitas 7y ago
  Every once in a while these xxiivv guys pop up and I find myself back in the hole of their website, wandering and exploring for hours, it's such an interesting personal wiki
  - elamje 7y ago
    Who are they? I want to know, but I felt like I would end up going down a lot of rabbit holes on their website to find useful information.
kickscondor 7y ago
I worked on a Muxtape clone (making and sharing mixtapes in the browser) that I've been quite happy with: dat://duxtape.kickscondor.com Code is here: https://github.com/kickscondor/duxtape https://github.com/kickscondor/duxtape.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Dat tape is a missed opportunity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
  - kickscondor 7y ago
    True dat!
- rzzzt 7y ago
  Duxtape is really nice, I enjoyed the writeup as well which was posted the other day. Thanks for writing cool things! :)
  - kickscondor 7y ago
    Taking the time to encourage someone is pretty sweet too. Glad you stepped out of the crowd to say hi - I'm enjoying looking through your HN comments.
kyledrake 7y ago
> Then I sit down to actually start playing with it I struggle to think of anything to build that would actually take advantage of the tech aside from purely static sites. Actually as someone that deals heavily with static sites, if dweb was only used for static sites and perhaps pushed us back to a more document-oriented web I and a lot of others would be quite happy with that. I don't think it needs to be capable of feature-complete replacement of Twitter and Facebook to be successful, and requiring it to be that way as a precondition for success is IMHO a losing strategy for dweb. Start with document-oriented and slowly increment.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  What is "dweb?" It isn't mentioned here.
staticvar 7y ago
I built a Connect Four clone you can play multiplayer over the Dat protocol. - dat://connect-four.hashbase.io - https://github.com/rjsteinert/four-in-a-row-game https://github.com/rjsteinert/four-in-a-row-game
faizshah 7y ago
This is something I struggle to understand as well. Can anyone explain what the steps would be to take say a server rendered MVC app or on the opposite end a JAMstack app and deploy it to Dat?
rzzzt 7y ago
Does anyone know when the unwalled.garden extensions land in beaker?
InafuSabi 7y ago
Beaker browser misses some simple stuff like dark themes which makes it look weird in my dark themed desktop manager. If anyone can point me to that, I will play more with it.

daffl 7y ago

A while ago I made a demo of a P2P chat application that runs on the beaker browser and uses the experimental P2P APIs. It's running at dat://feathers-chat.hashbase.io (slides from the talk at https://vanjs-decentralized.hashbase.io https://vanjs-decentralized.hashbase.io). If the peers can see each other you should be able to register with any email address and send chat messages between browser instances. What I realized is that this technology ticks a lot of the boxes of what we right now think only the big cloud providers can do. By using a more decentralized protocol it is by design - Actually Serverless - Offline-first - Real-time - Auto-deploying - Live-updating - 100% uptime I really think there is something there from both, a developer and user experience perspective. The problem is that a lot of it is still very experimental and far from the usability and maturity of e.g. a Firebase or Heroku.

mmcclure 7y ago
This is a really cool idea, but how should I be using it? Trying to test it out just now I opened up two tabs in Beaker but both rooms just have the one user in them. Love the design, by the way.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- daffl 7y ago
  I believe this is happening because it is using the same peer connection. If you start to separate instances of the browser (e.g. in a VM or another machine) you should be able to see both users. The design is taken from the Chat guide for https://feathersjs.com https://feathersjs.com. Feathers is a JS library that allows to architect APIs in a way that they are protocol independent. Which worked great in this case because I just had to swap out the existing REST/websocket Feathers adapter for a DAT/Beaker API Feathers adapter.
amatecha 7y ago
dude I love how many people in Vancouver seem to be interested in or even working with dat :) thumbsup
- w_s_l 7y ago
  ;)
PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Why do you have to register with an E-mail address?
brokenmachine 7y ago
Can you explain how P2P chat is saved into dat? How can someone without the keys add their messages to the feed? Wouldn't only the initial creator have the keys necessary to add to the feed?

mattlondon 7y ago

Yeah same here- it reminds me a lot of "the old days" of the internet where you just stumbled across cool things from sites with lists of links and no real decent search engine or e-commerce going on. There is some interesting stuff people are playing with in Dat - e.g. their Twitter clone (1) has the actual posts distributed in what they are calling their WebDB. I.e. you as an individual publish posts at a dat:// address you control, and the central site just references that address when other users load the feed. Your posts are distributed across the other users so there is no SPOF. There is the kernel of something really interesting there in this GDPR-world where people need to be more aware of who has their data, and what can be done to control that. Interesting stuff. 1 - https://github.com/beakerbrowser/fritter/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/beakerbrowser/fritter/blob/master/README....

nanomonkey 7y ago

There is the Dat installer for installing Android applications (https://github.com/staltz/dat-installer/ https://github.com/staltz/dat-installer/). Also a bunch of zines and music albums are shared over DAT. There is hypercore (https://github.com/mafintosh/hypercore https://github.com/mafintosh/hypercore), a distributed append only log library. Rotonde, a DAT based social network (https://github.com/Rotonde https://github.com/Rotonde) Secure Scuttlebutt now supports dat attachments... Cabal (https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal-cli https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal-cli), a chat program.

mmcclure 7y ago
Thanks for these! Cabal looks especially fascinating, I'm going to have to try and get some friends to join one and test it out.

amatecha 7y ago

Rotonde [0][1] is/was a pretty fascinating social network built over Dat/Beaker which basically involved each user helping to seed each user-feed they followed, resulting in a pretty stable/persistent ecosystem. I think it has mostly fallen by the wayside, but of course you should still be able to access a lot of instances due to hashbase.io seeding. To kickstart the platform we started a really basic "user list"[2] where you could find your friends' Rotonde URL based on their twitter username, since dat URLs are not exactly memorable. [0] https://wiki.xxiivv.com/#rotonde https://wiki.xxiivv.com/#rotonde [1] https://github.com/Rotonde https://github.com/Rotonde [2] https://github.com/Rotonde/People https://github.com/Rotonde/People

0_gravitas 7y ago
Every once in a while these xxiivv guys pop up and I find myself back in the hole of their website, wandering and exploring for hours, it's such an interesting personal wiki
- elamje 7y ago
  Who are they? I want to know, but I felt like I would end up going down a lot of rabbit holes on their website to find useful information.

kickscondor 7y ago

I worked on a Muxtape clone (making and sharing mixtapes in the browser) that I've been quite happy with: dat://duxtape.kickscondor.com Code is here: https://github.com/kickscondor/duxtape https://github.com/kickscondor/duxtape.

jacquesm 7y ago
Dat tape is a missed opportunity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
- kickscondor 7y ago
  True dat!
rzzzt 7y ago
Duxtape is really nice, I enjoyed the writeup as well which was posted the other day. Thanks for writing cool things! :)
- kickscondor 7y ago
  Taking the time to encourage someone is pretty sweet too. Glad you stepped out of the crowd to say hi - I'm enjoying looking through your HN comments.

kyledrake 7y ago

> Then I sit down to actually start playing with it I struggle to think of anything to build that would actually take advantage of the tech aside from purely static sites. Actually as someone that deals heavily with static sites, if dweb was only used for static sites and perhaps pushed us back to a more document-oriented web I and a lot of others would be quite happy with that. I don't think it needs to be capable of feature-complete replacement of Twitter and Facebook to be successful, and requiring it to be that way as a precondition for success is IMHO a losing strategy for dweb. Start with document-oriented and slowly increment.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
What is "dweb?" It isn't mentioned here.

staticvar 7y ago

I built a Connect Four clone you can play multiplayer over the Dat protocol. - dat://connect-four.hashbase.io - https://github.com/rjsteinert/four-in-a-row-game https://github.com/rjsteinert/four-in-a-row-game

faizshah 7y ago

This is something I struggle to understand as well. Can anyone explain what the steps would be to take say a server rendered MVC app or on the opposite end a JAMstack app and deploy it to Dat?

rzzzt 7y ago

Does anyone know when the unwalled.garden extensions land in beaker?

InafuSabi 7y ago

Beaker browser misses some simple stuff like dark themes which makes it look weird in my dark themed desktop manager. If anyone can point me to that, I will play more with it.