thanks for your questions. i have a few links to share i hope will help answer your questions. but i will also try to answer them here. i think there is much to say, but i will try to keep it brief.

• How is it hosted? What is the network topology? Which Trent must be trusted?

  • https://positive-intentions.com/blog/statics-as-a-chat-app-infrastructure/
  • https://positive-intentions.com/blog/decentralised-architecture/
  • the app is hosted from me on AWS S3. the app is predominantly emphesising on browser-based client-side functionality for things like data storage, webrtc and cryptography.
  • same app is also hosted on github pages to show how users can take more control over their version of the chat app.
  • id like to make more time into investigating resiliancy by having federated modules hosted on multiple cloud providers. (currently its only on s3 and gh-pages)

• Has the cryptography been audited? What are the primitives and protocols used? What kinds of guarantees, aside from basic privacy, are actually established?

  • https://positive-intentions.com/docs/research/threat-model/
  • https://github.com/positive-intentions/cryptography
  • the cryptography is a federated modules as seen above. its intended to be a thin wrapper over the cryptography offering from a typical browsers as described here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SubtleCrypto
  • im actively looking for feedback on the cryptography and would like to have it audited by a professionals. im currently in the process for asking for support from https://www.opentech.fund/labs/security-lab
  • as a sideproject, i dont want to undermine the efforts ive put into it, but i dont know what i can say for what i can guarantee. making the project open source is a big step towards clarity in how it works. at this early stage in development. i expect there will be breaking changes as i make changes and improvements. its important to note this project is a work in progress.

• What happens during a disaster? Am I easy to dox, track, etc.? What bad things happen if somebody takes my phone from me?

  • https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat?tab=readme-ov-file#security-and-privacy-recommendations
  • maybe the threat model i linked previously can help answer that.
  • there is not registration database to hack so nothing traditionally centralized to be hacked. on the website im using google analytics. on the app itself is using nlevel-analytics.
  • a user profile in the context of the app is entirely browser-based and can be removed as simply as clearing site-data on any modern browser.
  • the user profiles can also be exported an imported. this functionality in the app is a bit flaky at the moment but it is intended to be a feature. ive tested it out enough to know its works. i would like to make it more robust.
  • im separately investigating having data encrypted at rest in the browser: https://programming.dev/post/21417459 (this investigation is far from finished, but is something i would like to introduce to this app)

“P2P encrypted” doesn’t sound like actual security

here is a previous post i made on the matter: https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/1fmoykr/secure_and_private_encrypted_p2p_chat_in

i hope this answers your questions. please feel free to ask more questions for clarity. i will do my best to answer them.

thanks for the tip. youre right i think i need to do more housekeeping there. i dont give it much attention, because as a solo project, id mostly just be doing it to myself with admin stuff.

i previsously made an attempt for things like issues, but it doesnt seem to have made any different and is just an additional overhead that im ignoring: https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat/issues

i used to pay more attention to it, but its only my time being wasted if nobody else is interested (thats fine… but it results in the amount of attention i give it. and i have a lot of things to do already when i dont have enough time for it)

thanks for your thoughts!

a scenario so that people who aren’t immediately familiar ‘get’ what it is you’re achieving

i think the ability to tell a story is important here and id like to put more time to learn how to frame it. its a very secure chat implementation from what i understand about what ive created. im keen to be challenged on if its the most secure chat app out there, but this typically seen as confrontational and seems to hurt public opnion of the project (and thus i dial it down).

here is an attempt to try explain it as “more secure than mainstream solutions”: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptography/comments/1evdby4/is_this_a_secure_messaging_app

while i think i have a point about the security implementation. im also aware that the project is not very user friendly and full of bugs which makes for a very unappealing product.

its worth noting, that im trying to communicate about the project to cybersecurity professionals at the moment to see if the theory hold up and i think it does. i iteratively improved the UI in an attempt to gain traction. as a webdeveloper i know that i can spend more time on the UI that everything else combined, but that wouldnt be a good use of my time compared to some under-the-hood changes for stability and fixes.

thanks! i’ll make time to create those.

i took a brief look. this looks like a really good read! thanks for pointing me to it!

thanks! i’ll make those changes when i can.

completely understandable conclusion.

it started off as a curiosity, but i think there is something to it. I’m aiming for something that looks and behaves like react, but without the overhead of the react tooling for transpiling.

im not trying to take a share of that market, i come across this solution as pf of the chat app project. id like to build up this ui framework well enough to rebuild the chat proct with it… the chat app is made with react and material UI. with this framework, i am aiming to create a more simplified version of the chat app where the “no need to transpile” is a feature for its transparency. perhaps it doesnt make sense right now without the ability to effectively demonstrate it.

thanks. i think then i should continue as im going and see where i end up.

thanks for you thoughts.

i previously didnt have the “unstable” warning. this results is people saying that i should make it more clear. i think the project is in its early enough stages for it to be sensible to include there. im already planning on breaking changes which could make things worse so this is something i hope make it clear to users about the status of the project. before i had that notice, i would get complains from people that the app is terrible and doesnt work (which was basically true because it still is a work in progress and full of bugs.). i added a bit of a polish on it so it leads people to think its a finished product.

im looking for contributors on the dim repo because there part things i would like to do (and tried), but reached the limits of what i understand. i can learn and figure it out if i pour more time into it, but i have already poured time into it. im hoping someone with relevent experience would want to help.

im hoping to get a following on lemmy, mastodon, reddit in order to get traction on the projects. as it stand its just me and so its a bit of an uphill to get traction on something like the chat project. what you might be interpreting as ego, is a mannerism i have to adopt if i want to actively promote it as being a “secure chat system”. otherwise, feedback is a lot more dismissive about the project. that would surely sink the project immidiately.

im a developer not a sales person… but since working on these project ive learnt to moderate how cautious my tone should be to balance the communication of technical details as well as promoting something. i dont think i do the best job of it, but im still in the learning process.

ive tried several variations in how to communicate about it.

with blog link/with repo link/with a mix

https://programming.dev/post/21417457

it seems my projects are well recieved, but i guess it just isnt interesting for the minority of developers that would consider contributing. i also dont explicitly ask for contribution. this post this the first time im doing that to see what it could yield.

https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat https://github.com/positive-intentions/dim

i dont think my documentation is as clear as it could be, but i dont think its unclear: https://positive-intentions.com/blog/dim-functional-webcomponents

i think i have put efforts towards a good landing page, readme, documentation etc. id appriciate if you critique those.

thanks. maybe i havent reached the point at which people are using my projects enough for them to to improve a part of it.

thanks for the tips.

i typically mention the git repo’s involved.

i’ll give it a go with something like contribution welcome. my projects are on github and i think i have something setup for issues tracking.

i suspect my projects might be a bit complicated and so unappealing to a random contributor.

its further described by this previous post: https://programming.dev/post/23381812 … to put it simply, its a javascript UI framework.

i have another project https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat … but that project is very complicated. too complicated for me to easily explain how it works.

Thanks for input. I think it could still work without js-painting given that it’s using the customElement.define().

I’m aiming for something that looks and behaves like react, but without the overhead of the react tooling for transpiling.

Interesting idea!

thanks!

when i started, the attempt was to try to create this functionality without using any dependencies (including Lit). the Lit html function is well done and makes things very convenient for handling things like the lifecycle methods and caching states.

i would like to revisit that attempt, but i found that Lit does it very well and for me to create something from scratch would take much more consideration and i expect i would overlook some nuanced detail. i’ll see what i can make of it in future changes.

while im sure Lit users could benefit from this, as for contributing to the Lit ecosystem, im not really sure what steps to take for this. similarly, React 19 also introduces “support” for web components.

no. it isnt better or more stable than React. its all an experimental proof-of-concept.

its an idea im trying out. i thought maybe others might find it interesting.

im aiming to see if i can get something that looks and behaves like React, but works natively in a browser without the need to build or transpile. i think in theory it could work.

thanks for the info. i’ll take a look later, it sounds like an interesting idea.

Thanks!