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Scuttleverse Newsletter #19 (2022 Edition)
Published on January 26, 2022 by Alexander Cobleigh
 

January 2022 Edition


Hi-ho butts, and friends, and extended internet-family! 

Seeing as it's been a while since last, this will cover a wide timespan of posts and dip into recent events as well as happenings from half a year ago. Without further delays it's time for another action-packed, glitter-filled, heart-warming, and generally superlatively-written newsletter! 


Community

 

Svendsolar


An ssb meetup called Svendsolar took place at the end of summer in beautiful Svendborg, Denmark—right when it looked like the whole pandemic, at least in the north of europe, seemed to be ebbing out—We Got Punk'd!

Back to the narrative: In Svendborg, bikes were rented, homebrewed cider from the local cider collective was had, and a huge countryside mansion was shared over a weekend of talks, hangs, and meals.

On the topic of meals, Hendrik-Peter's tacos were AMAXING—be sure to check out his method (0)

Continuing on the topic of Hendrik-Peter: he had brought gear all the way from nothern Sweden to record the weekend's various sessions! What a champ. You can watch & listen to the talks over at https://svendsolar-2021.hendrikpeter.net. (Note some sessions were started after the cider had come out, and so were a bit rowdier than others).

You, too, can be a cool p4p punk—and spare hp's bandwidth costs—by downloading over the hypercore-protocol:

npx global-install @hyperspace/cli
# syntax: hyp sync <hyper:// uri> <optional destination folder name>
hyp sync hyper://a337acab1fb4b6bb1b05b28c4937c5218f6c86fd0dace628d8faaac85f82273b/ svendsolar-talks-2021
hyp seed hyper://a337acab1fb4b6bb1b05b28c4937c5218f6c86fd0dace628d8faaac85f82273b/


Docs Docs Docs


A documentation improvement sprint came and went! It was facilitated by Zenna and Eileen. You can read a bit about the background of it all in (1)

What ended up happening were communal Jitsi sessions, some with planned agendas, some freeflowing. On the planned side of things were, for example, workshops splitting up the existing documentation and sites into discrete blocks that could be visualized, rearranged and connected together in a mindmap of sorts. On the freeform side were collaborative sessions reworking the structure of the main website to follow what was discovered when thinking about flows for different types of visitors (ranging from the curious onlooker to the developer). We also increased interlinking between various hypertext documents to increase discoverability of documentation hosted on other sites.

Alas! There's still work to do to land the ssb.nz revamp. Currently the work is in a distinct branch and not yet live. If calm html sorcery and moving around things sounds like a good way for you to get your volunteer juices flowing, then—heck—get into contact with glyph or cblgh on ssb! (or really, wherever you know to summon them)


NGI NO MORE


The ngi-pointer working group wrapped up in October of 2021! 

Thus concludes an extended & focused period of down-in-the-trenches work on new feed and replication primitives, improvements to go-ssb, launching of new solutions to old ssb problems like Rooms 2.0, new testing primitives in the form of netsim, and the demoscene-aspiring 8k-demo application. Among a lot of other stuff. Phew! 

If this strikes your fancy, get your butt into the #ssb-ngi-pointer / #ngipointer / #ngipointerpeach channels (consistency is an often-vaunted-yet-hard-achieved virtue ok) on SSB and start reading! Or continue reading this newsletter—both this specific newsletter, and the newsletter in general. More to come!

(BIAS ALERT: I was part of the working group! My hat rack is overflowing from all the different chapeaus I find myself wearing over the course of a year)


ACTUALLY: NGI ONCE MORE


The Scuttlebutt inspired and adjacent p2panda protocol received ngi pointer funding—congrats & hooray! Read more about that in the first pandaletter (2)

For more information on the project and how to get in touch, visit https://p2panda.org/


Indigenous Connectivity

Luandro: Wall in the Kalipety village with paintings representing the Mybia Guarani peoples

Read about Luandro's journey to provide connectivity to indigenous communities in and around the amazon in (3) It's honestly a highlight of any day when I see that Luandro has brought another story into the Scuttleverse from his travels. What he's doing and how he's doing it is very inspiring. 

Recently, Luandro dropped off another wonderful post. This one about making the best use of his house and land while he is out traveling, have a read in (4)


Community Reacts: Software Licensing


An interesting discussion was had a while back on the community's thoughts regarding software licensing within ssb projects. You can read the discussion, prompted by Mix (5)

  • how can these code bases interact
  • what is the most strategic long term strategy
    • what enables more people to use our work
    • what best supports and the values with which we work


Community Highlights

ssb as seen from hendrik-peter

  • Trav posted about his daily routine (including menditating, not a typo!) (6)
  • Hendrik-Peter created a new visualization of the entire scuttlebutt network (as seen from his perspective in the network) (7)

🔗 Community Links

  • [(0)]: %vpJpHpCZiFoO2TdK9v4mAkyTIbW+G+BceQ7AA5ruI6Q=.sha256 taco secrets
  • [(1)]: %onCMGZNPer0lK7SdxCxVA74eda5OEh+DHuFsn1s503c=.sha256 docs sprint
  • [(2)]: %9D+i6NOV3UjTF6vyDVbmuIyWNfIW/VDFCe/dEODgoPY=.sha256 p2panda ngi
  • [(3)]: https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25YHmO0qmTE80rbu42bfzivK8NghiCIMO3y1tOclTvM3I%3D.sha256 luandro's quest
  • [(4)]: %mtjG7p3VTtza2dYHf5kotgDSEOdBzeYfHKwq6Q+NCb8=.sha256 luandro's house
  • [(5)]: %4SexIxPRp9RVEGlu2i70F45eI+GnRZTqTLscZSVrKbM=.sha256 software licensing
  • [(6)]: %Z1k0EJqVPY2lhQmwmGc1C5SmpcQQ3khhQb/bPLuKN34=.sha256 ideal routines
  • [(7)]: %ZAJpBnWgGaiKYaG9wsGq2vD9wN2gPEc8hb2z6C7VAos=.sha256 ssb viz


Finances


Community Funding Rounds


In the time since the last letter, TWO community funding rounds have taken place! 

The first round funded Patchfox, Manyverse Desktop development, and Luandro and Nico's P2P Access Point
  • Patchfox proposal [(8)]
  • Manyverse Desktop [(9])
  • P2P Access Point [(10)]

The second round funded Patchfox (with a new proposal!), Peachcloud (with the PeachPub proposal), and a recipe/inventory management app (proposed by a former newsletter editor—nanomonkey!)

Second round announcement [(11)] Second round proposals:

  • Patchfox proposal #2 [(12)] 
  • PeachPub proposal [(13)]
  • Inventory mgmt proposal [(14)]


Community Governance Retrospective


Erick (former newsletter writer & current postdoc extraordinaire) posted a retrospective on one of the community's funding experiments: The Handshake Council [(15)] 


Intermezzo


Intermission—if you want volunteer with your wallet instead of your time, well, you can!


Donate to:

  • Patchfox (the web-extensions based client!)
  • Peachcloud (the all-in-one pub hosting solution)
  • Manyverse (the application that's on all major platforms—from Android & iOS to Linux, OSX & Windows) 
  • The wider community's coffers (includes financing this very newsletter!)

🔗 Finances Links

  • [(8)]: %Y2iyBckEhcWvxX6a1+9ELeP6wFYD80QNdhvR50V1C7E=.sha256 patchfox proposal
  • [(9)]: %f5LvRb79CgCvz7+5f3h4tuZBalXilWxzZkuyt1+/s0U=.sha256 manyverse desktop proposal
  • [(10)]: %NCNj6nsTgbOR5Q/7GT6qruVqijkPOwtTd4U95BmDCsA=.sha256 p2p access point proposal
  • [(11)]: %cBoVhpkwrQLZa7YVQ9zbjVNE4Jpfg3Sk7Tvs5As7orc=.sha256 round 2 announcement
  • [(12)]: %1qMKADi2KZetWzBp0QcmrXmDO679od3VZtIZrm5rgeo=.sha256 patchfox #2 
  • [(13)]: %G2GOd0j0ZFBInhK5R/PyfVUGHaiJvm3lRxSxA9KD80c=.sha256 peachpub proposal
  • [(14)]: %AThjJFpqdTDYU1Y1ee6UCa6lYH4KO9Z/UrYvsQNPC4s=.sha256 inventory proposal
  • [(15)]: %gteW4KVz7CS5XONiNfGt24zQhB9kQLIX6ERRZySvisk=.sha256 handshake retrospective


Technical


A New Desktop App Appears

In absolutely massive news, a new ssb desktop application was launched! It wasn't any application either, but Manyverse Desktop's first version! 


This first desktop version is what we're calling MobPar (Mobile Parity), which means it can do everything that Manyverse Mobile does, apart from Bluetooth sync which is a special feature for Android only. If you're a frequent user on Android and iOS, you will have no difficulty in navigating Manyverse Desktop, it's basically the same thing, with minor changes to the layout such as the left-side menu custom made for desktop


ssb-db2 lands initial private groups support


Thanks to a lot (a loooooooooooooooooooot) of work and sweat (and maybe tears? i don't know!) the database module ssb-db2 landed initial support for the primitives that will allow ssb to launch a private groups concept.

The idea behind ssb's private groups is that you can have private circles of friends within ssb, where members are free to discuss among themselves without anyone from outside the group being able to peek inside and comment the group's happenings. One of the pot of golds so sought after by many 'butts! 


SSB NGI RETURNS (with technical links)



Patchfox


Patchfox added support for multiple identities, and improved theming support! Read more in the update from earlier this year https://opencollective.com/patchfox/updates/october-2021-update


Planetary


The SSB iOS app Planetary secured another round of funding and has resumed development across the board! Read more on the project's active development by joining the #planetary channel, or by following either Rabble, Matt Lorentz or nichoth on SSB!


🔗 Technical Links


  • [(16)]: %HtjkmuiQQmRmplONix50TRNWoIczXH56cBaOUJv58Fs=.sha256 db2 goes box2
  • [(17)]: %YEwPIk9F91tsEgWMuJAM5Rye2XkREWSOxcJztA9RD8s=.sha256 manyverse desktop release


Closing off


We did it gang, we got through another newsletter—and another year! Congrats to us all, and see you in the next one

2022-01-26 cblgh, signing off for now