3 ms·

It looks interesting but I do not really understand what it does. Could someone put this into context and summarize it, please?

by and-hi 6y ago

Shared404 6y ago
It appears to be a project with the goal of being a "killer app" that will push people onto the fediverse. It appears to be both a game and a messenger, sort of like a distributed MMO. Edit: Someone please correct me if I've misunderstood.
- TotempaaltJ 6y ago
  I think this is incorrect. It looks like it's intending to be a set of libraries or protocols(?) to support development in the distributed web. > Spritely consists of a number of modular components bringing new and rich features, from distributed programming, to decentralized storage, to virtual worlds. "Fantasary" in particular seems to match with your description. I'd guess it would be built on top of the other mentioned things.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Ah, I missed that line. I had read it as all of the libraries/characters(?) being different parts of the same whole project, with the whole project being to achieve that goal. Thanks!
scribu 6y ago
It's a collection of features meant to sit on top of ActivityPub. ActivityPub is a general protocol for decentralised social networking. Instead of Facebook or Twitter servers generating a feed for each user, user's servers send updates to each-other.
- TotempaaltJ 6y ago
  This homepage doesn't do a great job at communicating this.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    I think the audience is expected to know about distributed systems and the fediverse. Think of it like being linked to https://luajit.org/ https://luajit.org/ without knowing anything about lua, programming and so on. Some links on HN are pulled from places where certain knowledge is pre-assumed.
paroneayea 6y ago
Okay, reply was long. tl;dr, just watch this video: https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de946fbd2 https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de... Hi! Spritely's main author here. Spritely is taking on quite a few things, so it's understandable that it might not be completely clear what from the tagline. Here's the short version: we'd like to bring better security, privacy, and rich interactions to the federated social web. I was one of the co-authors of the ActivityPub standard so I have some strong opinions about what it's capable of that isn't happening yet. If you want a friendly, semi-visual overview, here's a video I just recorded for the ActivityPub conference: https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de946fbd2 https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de... It goes over (most of) the layers in a fairly friendly way. Within all the subprojects listed, the most ambitious is the Fantasary one, which is distributed virtual worlds. Not as out there as it sounds, such a thing was built in the mid/late 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE But in the dot-com crash, went up in flames. However many of the ideas were carried forward by the object capability community, particularly the E language, on which Spritely Goblins is heavily influenced: http://www.erights.org/ http://www.erights.org/ The distributed games goal then becomes a driver for the other components, so even if that fails we should hopefully still get cool stuff. Spritely Goblins, the foundational layer, already exists and has support for such features as time travel debugging: https://dustycloud.org/blog/goblins-time-travel-micropreview/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/goblins-time-travel-micropreview... and distributed networked programming, safe to run in a hostile network... here's a chat program where the "protocol" authenticates the users joining the channel and also that the messages came from them, with the chatroom and user "protocol" both written in 250 lines of code combined... and without being planned at all for networked interaction, it just worked over the network... here's a gif of it working over Tor Onion Services: https://dustycloud.org/misc/goblins-chat-captp-onion-services.gif https://dustycloud.org/misc/goblins-chat-captp-onion-service... No code was added to the "protocol" to expect network interactions; Goblins' CapTP (Capability Transport Protocol) took care of that for us. Already that should sound pretty cool, but that's just the foundation for the system. Look at the other subprojects to see where we're going from there. Happy to answer questions if anyone has them!
- paroneayea 6y ago

It looks interesting but I do not really understand what it does. Could someone put this into context and summarize it, please?

by and-hi 6y ago

It looks interesting but I do not really understand what it does. Could someone put this into context and summarize it, please?

Shared404 6y ago

It appears to be a project with the goal of being a "killer app" that will push people onto the fediverse. It appears to be both a game and a messenger, sort of like a distributed MMO. Edit: Someone please correct me if I've misunderstood.

TotempaaltJ 6y ago
I think this is incorrect. It looks like it's intending to be a set of libraries or protocols(?) to support development in the distributed web. > Spritely consists of a number of modular components bringing new and rich features, from distributed programming, to decentralized storage, to virtual worlds. "Fantasary" in particular seems to match with your description. I'd guess it would be built on top of the other mentioned things.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Ah, I missed that line. I had read it as all of the libraries/characters(?) being different parts of the same whole project, with the whole project being to achieve that goal. Thanks!

scribu 6y ago

It's a collection of features meant to sit on top of ActivityPub. ActivityPub is a general protocol for decentralised social networking. Instead of Facebook or Twitter servers generating a feed for each user, user's servers send updates to each-other.

TotempaaltJ 6y ago
This homepage doesn't do a great job at communicating this.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  I think the audience is expected to know about distributed systems and the fediverse. Think of it like being linked to https://luajit.org/ https://luajit.org/ without knowing anything about lua, programming and so on. Some links on HN are pulled from places where certain knowledge is pre-assumed.

paroneayea 6y ago

Okay, reply was long. tl;dr, just watch this video: https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de946fbd2 https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de... Hi! Spritely's main author here. Spritely is taking on quite a few things, so it's understandable that it might not be completely clear what from the tagline. Here's the short version: we'd like to bring better security, privacy, and rich interactions to the federated social web. I was one of the co-authors of the ActivityPub standard so I have some strong opinions about what it's capable of that isn't happening yet. If you want a friendly, semi-visual overview, here's a video I just recorded for the ActivityPub conference: https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de946fbd2 https://conf.tube/videos/watch/18aa2f92-36cc-4424-9a4f-6f2de... It goes over (most of) the layers in a fairly friendly way. Within all the subprojects listed, the most ambitious is the Fantasary one, which is distributed virtual worlds. Not as out there as it sounds, such a thing was built in the mid/late 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE But in the dot-com crash, went up in flames. However many of the ideas were carried forward by the object capability community, particularly the E language, on which Spritely Goblins is heavily influenced: http://www.erights.org/ http://www.erights.org/ The distributed games goal then becomes a driver for the other components, so even if that fails we should hopefully still get cool stuff. Spritely Goblins, the foundational layer, already exists and has support for such features as time travel debugging: https://dustycloud.org/blog/goblins-time-travel-micropreview/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/goblins-time-travel-micropreview... and distributed networked programming, safe to run in a hostile network... here's a chat program where the "protocol" authenticates the users joining the channel and also that the messages came from them, with the chatroom and user "protocol" both written in 250 lines of code combined... and without being planned at all for networked interaction, it just worked over the network... here's a gif of it working over Tor Onion Services: https://dustycloud.org/misc/goblins-chat-captp-onion-services.gif https://dustycloud.org/misc/goblins-chat-captp-onion-service... No code was added to the "protocol" to expect network interactions; Goblins' CapTP (Capability Transport Protocol) took care of that for us. Already that should sound pretty cool, but that's just the foundation for the system. Look at the other subprojects to see where we're going from there. Happy to answer questions if anyone has them!

paroneayea 6y ago