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Thali and the Mesh Mess
Thali's base communication mechanism is Tor hidden services. This enables Thali devices to reach each other regardless of what NATs or Firewalls are in their way in a manner that is resistant to...
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node-gyp and node.js on mobile platforms
As I’ve previously discussed I want to get node.js running on Android, iOS and WinRT. But to make that happen we need to understand the node.js ecosystem and that includes native add-ons and node-gyp....
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Derived keys and per user encryption in the cloud
I use a program called ESPlanner to help with planning our insurance and retirement portfolio. ESPlanner wants to move to the cloud. Below I explore who I imagine would want to attack a site like...
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How do we exchange identities in Thali without making our users hate us?
In Thali identities are public keys. But typing in a 4 Kb RSA key or even a 512 bit EC key isn’t exactly easy. So how do users securely exchange their keys? Our original approach was using QRCodes....
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A FAQ about JXCore, a fork of Node.js for Mobile platforms
JXCore is a fork of Node.js that introduces multi-threading support and a Javascript engine abstraction layer to plug in different Javascript engines. They have support for iOS using Spidermonkey and...
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Looking at JXCore’s perf
Asking about a system’s performance is usually an invitation to a fight, not to useful data. But I did want some idea of how JXCore, a fork of node.js that runs on mobile OS’s, performed on iOS and...
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Picking another backlog manager for Thali
Awhile back I ran an analysis to pick a backlog manager for Thali. My winner was Pivotal Tracker and I really like it. It’s super slick. But as an open source project we need to run our backlog out of...
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Peer to Peer, ACLs and PouchDB
As part of Thali we are trying to enable people to easily build peer to peer apps on mobile devices using PouchDB. A problem we have run into is how to implement ACLs in a way that doesn’t cause...
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A user’s bill of rights for Thali local discovery
As part of the Thali project we are working on using BLE and Wi-Fi Direct to provide for local discovery. That is, the ability to discover who is around you using BLE/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi. This feature has...
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Thali’s Story -1 – Getting Node.js and Local P2P to play well
As part of developing Thali we have a series of stories. One of our stories is -1 whose goal is to enable the native discovery and high bandwidth P2P frameworks we have on iOS and Android to...
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Android/iOS Local Radio Interop – Oy
As part of Thali we need to enable iOS and Android devices to communicate to each other just using local radios. For reasons explained below the only way we can figure out how to do this involves...
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Thali Story 0 – The lights are officially on!
Thali’s mission is to create an open source/open standard peer to peer web. This means both local peer to peer (e.g. you and I are standing next to each other, can our devices talk directly even if...
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Identity Exchange Specification for Thali
We previously outlined the basic protocol exchange for identity exchange for Thali here. But implementing this protocol requires dealing with a lot of details. The purpose of this specification is to...
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Can Thali’s local P2P capability survive Android Marshmallow?
Starting with Android Marshmallow (see here) it is no longer supposed to be possible for programs running on Android to see the local device’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth MAC address. This is a major problem...
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How Google can fix the Marshmallow MAC Mess and enable P2P apps
Google in Android release Marshmallow prevents applications from seeing their device’s local Bluetooth or WiFi MAC addresses. This puts a big roadblock in front of peer to peer apps. There is a really...
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A survey of options for applications that want to embed Node.js
Node doesn’t really have an application model in the normal sense since Node sees itself as a server technology. But as Electron, NWJS, JXcore and JXcore-Cordova have shown there is a real need for...
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What is the Peer to Peer Web? WebRTC, the browser and Thali
Twice in the last week or so I’ve had people ask me about using WebRTC with Thali. I’ve already addressed WebRTC and Thali here. But recently Dominique Legault pointed me at a very cool project,...
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node-gyp and node.js on mobile platforms
As I’ve previously discussed I want to get node.js running on Android, iOS and WinRT. But to make that happen we need to understand the node.js ecosystem and that includes native add-ons and node-gyp....
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Why would anyone want to write a phone app that embeds Node.js?
A big part of the Thali Project is running Node.js directly on “edge devices” like embedded hardware, phones, tablets, laptops, etc. I recently got asked why anyone would want to do this. My short...
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Thali, San Francisco and Emergency Response/Recovery
I went to SF to meet with folks from the city of SF to discuss how we could use Thali to help improve recovery after a major earthquake. The meeting was both productive and eye opening. Our next steps...
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