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
@light I’m a software engineer (sort of; technically at this point I manage a team of them, but until recently I was one for 26 years). I can teach you about things like that. What do you want to know?
Replying to @randrews@somewhy.net
@randrews
I wanted someone to implement my plans (and help me specify them further if necessary) and explain as if to a first-year student how everything works and answer questions. Basically engineering-cum-tutoring. Would that be possible? If so, how much would it cost?
Replying to @light@noc.social
@light Money isn't a big motivation for me at least, but I have thought about this kind of thing before, I'd certainly be interested in talking about the problem.
I was thinking this in 2021, when news stuff was getting censored for "misinformation" a lot. My scenario was that you have a story, you want to publish it, but you can't post it to a central place (because it'll get censored) and your readers need to know it's you who wrote it.
1/
Replying to @randrews@somewhy.net
@light 2/
This also answers another problem: if the site host can't moderate the site, if they have no more privileges than an ordinary user, why are they hosting it? What do they get out of it?
I think the answer is to make it peer-to-peer. You can talk to anyone on the network and get what they think is the latest news, cryptographically attested to be uncensored / unaltered. If one relay dies more take its place.
Replying to @randrews@somewhy.net
@light 3/3
The same thing should work for discussions also: no particular relay could censor stuff because they would just stop being the source anyone pulls that stuff from.
The problem you hit though is the discussion forking, and the general speed that things propagate through the network. Also filter bubbles: if I don't follow some news then I also can't relay that news to people downstream.
Not sure how to solve those yet.
Replying to @randrews@somewhy.net
Or at least your readers need to know the one who wrote it is trustworthy.