Comment by sharipova
5 years ago
Introducing anytype - an open-source distributed operating system that brings true data ownership to its users.
What is true data ownership? Many people think that data ownership means being able to access your data and decide who can access it and who can’t. It’s important in its own right because it protects us from potential adverse scenarios (surveillance state, digital dictatorship). But it’s a narrow view. True data ownership is being able to use your data in a context when it’s useful, so often not only inside one app but across many. Moreover, true data ownership means being able to control not only the data, but also a graphical interface for it.
How Anytype brings true data ownership? 1. Anytype works without a central server, so only users have access to their encryption keys and data. All apps run locally and exchange data directly in a peer-to-peer way without exposing it to intermediaries even when users work across devices and with others. 2. It’s a local-first software, so it works offline with full functionality. 3. Users can modify all interfaces and create new ones without code. Even if they have unique workflows or ideas of how they want to use their data - they will be able to do it. 4. The data is free - it can be used across all apps inside or outside Anytype. Also, users can use anytype software even if for some reason anytype the company is no longer around. So they can be sure that their data will never be trapped. 5. We will open source Anytype with the public release. Developers can add integrations, additional views for data, Machine Learning modules. It will also ensure that everything we tell about Anytype can be publicly verifiable, so users can trust our code, not our words.
Please, let me know what you think if anything resonates with you or on the contrary, or maybe you have questions. Our team is here to discuss and answer questions
1. If my computer goes to sleep, does my personal webpage go offline?
2. If my computer breaks, is all my data lost?
3. If my computer ever gets malware (which steals my key), does this mean attacker can forever access all of my private data? Will they still have that access even after I detect and remove that malware?
1. In case of public pages, as far as any of the nodes has your page saved it will be available.
2. In case the data is shared with someone(e.g. teammate or family) you always be able to restore it with the seed phrase. In case of private-only data, our plan is to encourage users to have multiple devices(mobile+desktop) to have a data backup
3. We plan to implemet per-device private key(like the keybase does) and use it to decrypt files' private keys. In case the device's private key was stolen you can remove this device from the list and it will not be able to receive new changes
Could not find on the web page details about
1. the security model and implementation details
2. team / entity behind this
3. could it support 1,000,000 files
4. could it support 10,000 todo items on a single page
5. could it store 1TB (or more) of data
6. how do you plan to make money
3. Yes, it can, but currently it depends on the ability of the computer, as your nodes should store all of them locally. But because this is local-first app the limitations are going to be close to the limitations of your local FS
4. Definitely yes
5. Again depends on the available disk space you have. If you have enough disk space - you can store your data
6. All users can use Anytype for free if they use their own resources. The first monetisation would be an option to buy backup of data - unlike in cloud solutions, Anytype will not have access to data there as well.
1. We are based on the IPFS and Textile library, using ed25519 for signatures and aes256 for files encryption. We are planning to release tech whitepaper closer to the public launch
What happens when the files get unpinned?
Who pins the files when my laptop is offline? Who pays for this?
What keeps my files online in the event of high node churn?
What happens if malicious nodes join the IPFS swarm and censor key/value lookups?
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2. We are a team of 10 from Berlin :)
What evil government spy agency is paying your salary?</joke>
But seriously, you may want to provide some transparency on the web site. Or perhaps a link to github for security-critical components.
All is lost if the master key is leaked through some side channel.
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