amitu

Joined 17 years ago

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403
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Member since
Mar 12
founder, fifthtry.com ([email protected]). creator of fastn.com (a full stack programming language designed for non programmers), and malai.sh (a peer to peer internet protocol).

Email: [email protected]

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Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
We are using iroh, so you can start with https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-dns, and checkout their docs to understand how iroh itself works.

The malai stuff is relative not very interesting (we write some HTTP/TCP services/proxies that forward their calls over iroh connection, and write the other side to bridge back to HTTP/tcp). Code should help, or come to our discord: https://malai.sh/discord/ (currently it will say fastn, we are in the process of changing it to FifthTry server or something, we do not want to maintain multiple discord servers, and thinking of putting all FifthTry open source stuff on a single discord server).

Comment · 1 year ago
We are built on top of https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-dns, and iroh uses the public key as the node identifier. Unfortunately the iroh id is 64 char long, which can not be used in subdomains, subdomains have a char limit of 63, so we are using dnssec base32[1], which comes to 52 chars, and we use that 52 char string as the primary identifier (instead of IP:port, which is used the "old school net" (tongue firmly in cheek), and we call it id52.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5155/

Comment · 1 year ago
It's open source. Or not depending on any company[1]. The overall malai/kulfi project is quite different than these projects, malai itself can be compared with these two maybe.

[1]: we are built on top of https://www.iroh.computer so their caveats apply, and while we do run a http-over-kulfi over http-over-tcp bridge, you do not have to use it, you can run your own, and soon when kulfi browser is ready, you will not need the bridge. Checkout this work in progress kulfi browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_GmbtxCHw

Comment · 1 year ago
You are on the right track, this is bastion like setup, but without needing another ssh host. This is one layer on top of SSH, so all SSH security applies for ssh over kulfi, but you get extra benefits like not having to expose SSH port to public, or not having guessable identifier (the IP address).
Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
Since its built in Rust, we can call it rus(t)-malai also :-)
Comment · 1 year ago
So let's see, I am Amit Upadhyay, I am the (solo) founder and CEO of FifthTry, which is YC W21 company (we also have some other seed investment). We started with a documentation tool, the Notion like you mentioned, caveat: it was not WYSWYG, it was always based on a "language". The language was initially called ftd (FifthTry Document), and eventually fastn.com. fastn started as markdown++, but became a full stack web development language. We moved from being just a documentation tool to general purpose website building tool. FifthTry.com is now a hosting solution for fastn powered websites and webapps.

fastn is done in Rust, and has relatively small foot print. It is language, compiler, package manager, web server, wasm runner, all in one, and technically can run on say a mobile device, on a "Amazon Fire Stick" like mini TV module, you webcam and so on. fastn is probably the only web server you can run on those devices (not yet tested, but it should be).

The issue is those web servers do not have public IPs (nor should they, as that can expose them to security risks), so we are building a peer to peer network, an identity based network, so you do not have to have accessible IP/port to access the web service.

The network we are calling Kulfi net, and malai is a network toolkit for kulfi net, it exposes various services (TCP/HTTP) over kulfi net.

Kulfi itself is going to be a browser, that can talk kulfi protocol natively (as currently we need a "http bridge", eg kulfi.site that we are running, or you can install malai and run on your server).

Kulfi "browser", will also come with fastn built in, so you can run a web server on your phone and someone else can access that web server from another phone, talking http over kulfi protocol, and we can get near ideal networking solution (no intermediary, no need for public IP, etc).

Does this make sense?

Comment · 1 year ago
Yes, we are currently using iroh provided relay servers. malai will soon connect with any relay server, so in future you can use ones provided by us, or run your own.
Comment · 1 year ago
fastn is an ingredient to kulfi project. fastn.com is a full stack programming language we (FifthTry, Inc, the company behind these) have built, and it is the web server that is going to be part of Kulfi app.

The comparison posts, TODO, copyright etc we will do/fix when we get around to it. It's all open source, you can send PRs as well.

Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
malai: cream that forms on top of milk when it cools down, its a flavor of kulfi. kulfi: a milk based ice cream / desert. Nothing to do with networking etc, just a desert I enjoyed since childhood :-)
Comment · 1 year ago
Kulfi is a network (peer to peer) which support http/https even tcp can be sent over kulfi.

Kulfi App is a web browser that talks kulfi protocol natively, so you can open kulfi://<id52> natively. malai is the server side part of this story, and can expose existing HTTP/TCP services over kulfi:// network.

For DNS, here is my initial deign/thought: https://github.com/kulfi-project/kulfi/discussions/55

For access control, we are working on a "what-to-do" service, which is an bunch HTTP/JSON APIs, that will be called by the malai (which runs on your server, or even as part of Django/Node/Golang once we wrap malai as a cffi library, and write corresponding Python/Node etc packages). You will be able to write the what-to-do in any framework you like, and we will maintain a general purpose open source what-to-do service.

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