SKS rifles cost over US$600, a $200 licensing fee isn't infringing any rights compared to the right to a fair and speedy trial.

The term 'assault rifle' is used loosely by us, but in terms of law there are definitions: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1296...

> Use Signal to transfer messages and files

https://blog.erlang.moe/2020-12-01-acme-messenger.html

Still funny. >> https://jonyiveredesignsthings.tumblr.com/

The freeway sign was great >> https://66.media.tumblr.com/2fa4ae4cfe93b3662ca9ac0b60769861...

Running a project for three years alone on the side takes a lot of discipline. So often we become 'passionate' about some projects and quickly abandon them once the initial excitement wears off. Congratulations to the author!

Eerily, I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years [0]. It is also e2e encrypted, but compared to Inkdrop, needs more work on the UI. But it works perfectly as a CLI.

- [0] https://github.com/dnote/dnote

Also end-to-end encrypted without a central server and using rich text instead of markdown https://collect-app.com/

Funny that you mention that. One of my company’s initiatives is building social networking software to run on local networks and mesh networks. I also want to see a future where cellphone signals, energy generation and so on don’t go through “last mile” gatekeepers but those are just one of many commodity choices to connect to “the grid” / “the cloud” / “the mesh” whatever it is called.

I think that is super important given what’s going on:

https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang...

We have started to work on captive portals so your device can surf from wifi to wifi just like a cellphone does with towers, and check in wherever you visit without you doing anything (with your prior permission, of course)

https://qbix.com/blog/2017/12/18/power-to-the-people/

IPFS is great, as is BitTorrent. I have met a lot of the people running these projects, like Tom Berners-Lee and the guys from Solid (back then), David Irvine and the guys from MaidSAFE, and Petar Maymounkov from NYU who invented Kademlia DHT.

I think there are several things that are needed:

  NAT hole punching
  End to end encryption
  Kademlia or other DHT
  Small group consensus
  Merkle DAG with validators

All these can be incrementally added to an existing, web-based solution. The problem with BlockStack and MaidSAFE is that they require you to download a new browser that only works on the desktop. Instead of trying to build on the existing Web.

For me it’s not even so much about privacy as being permissionless. No gatekeepers.

Whether it’s your cellphone company or your cable internet ISP or the Google Maps API or Amazon Web Services, they require you to pay them for their closed-source infrastructure and data.

The infrastructure should be a mesh and the data should be open source. The challenge is simply in the software to coordinate the mesh participants, and for the data it’s software to enable the right rules to maximize the chances of data being correct.

There is tons, tons to do and frankly most VCs and investors don’t get it. The payoff is huge for humanity as a whole, and can unleash even more innovation than the Web did after it disrupted AOL etc. But they don’t capture even 10% of the whole value. It’s free to the world.

So we’re chronically underfunded but we have already put together so much. And now we are making money the old fashioned way: earning it from users and clients hahaha. The Basecamp guys would be proud.