Is there anywhere I can hire a software engineer to work on a project for me and simultaneously teach me how they're doing it, so I can learn skills to develop the project and others myself?
How much would it cost?
Replying to @light@noc.social
It's a centralised forum with signatures and hashes on every post, and hash chains ("blockchains") for threads and boards. All hashes and public keys are cached by the client. For moderation transparency and accountability, so that edits and deletes are visible.
Criticisms of my plans welcome.
Replying to @light@noc.social
Come to think of it, @silverpill this is similar to Mitra. Have you considered writing a forum, and using hash chains for transparency? (A delete or an edit is a visible break in the hash chain)
Replying to @light@noc.social
@light Mitra now can host federated groups - in the same way Lemmy, PieFed, NodeBB and other forums do. The mechanism we all use is compatible with my nomadic identity proposals.
However, nomadic identity doesn't use hashchains, it relies solely on signatures. I considered content-addressing early on but decided against it because in my opinion social data should not be immutable.
What kind of forum do you want to build? Centralized forum with a fully verifiable history is an unusual requirement.
Replying to @silverpill@mitra.social
(A delete or an edit is a visible break in the hash chain)
I didn't notice that yesterday.
A traditional hash chain can't have breaks, e.g. you can't remove a commit from git history without changing all subsequent commit hashes.
Replying to @silverpill@mitra.social
@silverpill
That's what I meant. If there's a delete or an edit, then the hash chain breaks and it's visible, even if an admin tries to hide it.
Replying to @light@noc.social
@silverpill
It might not be a common problem, but I think it's an important one.
Replying to @light@noc.social
@light So, what kind of forum do you imagine? If there is a single instance, then there would be no peers who replicate the hashchain and do the verification. This means an admin can rewrite history
Replying to @silverpill@mitra.social
@silverpill
> All hashes and public keys are cached by the client[s]
Maybe a public auditing thing like IIRC WhatsApp said they were doing with key transparency as well (but not Signal; their auditors are a permissioned list of Trail of Bits and Cloudflare). But I still don't understand how those work.
Replying to @light@noc.social
All hashes and public keys are cached by the client[s]
The cache of a hosted web client can easily be manipulated by an instance admin. But if clients are independent, this might be a good solution (depends on your security requirements).
public auditing
Bluesky's did:plc is a good example of this. It's a centralized server but anyone can view and audit the ledger.
GitHubGitHub - did-method-plc/did-method-plc: Public Ledger of Credentials: a cryptographic, strongly-consistent, and recoverable DID methodPublic Ledger of Credentials: a cryptographic, strongly-consistent, and recoverable DID method - did-method-plc/did-method-plcReplying to @silverpill@mitra.social
@light Back to the original question: I can implement the thing. How much would it cost is hard to tell atm; not enough information.