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Torn - Developers WANTED! Open Source Project!
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Torn - Developers WANTED! Open Source Project!

0xdragon0xdragon Member
edited March 2014 in General

Hello everyone,

I've been working on a project for a little while now and after numerous rewrites and countless delays, I've decided to make this a community project.

Project Page [Temporary]

My Project's Name: Torn

Objective: To provide a high-availability email blog system for users around the globe.

Target Audience: People who want a blog and people in countries where they have restricted access to the Internet.

Pricing: Free plan with option to donate to obtain more space/bandwidth (which would then be spent on more LES's).

Server Implementation:
Two servers will be used to host static content for the other server (and my sponsored Italy server).

The remaining server will be connected to a HAProxy in order to ensure uptime and availability. Note: I will be adding my sponsored Italy server to this one in order to make a total of 4 servers. Two front-end, two back-end. More servers will be added to the frontend (more bandwidth) and backend (more storage).
The front-serving server will be running PHP.
The static-content serving servers will be running lighttpd. (One server will probably be on the Italy node, due to the SSDs)

Use Postmark for email sending/recieving! (Feel free to recommend me another service)

Software Implementation:

Development Plan:

Days 1-3: Get the servers set up, optimise web-servers and get HAProxy serving them.

Days 4-7: Start coding, using BitBucket for commits.

Weeks 2-3: Code!

Week 4: Bug testing, private alpha.

Month 2: Private Beta/Waiting list: Get users onto our networks and get word out to social media.

Months 3-4: Public Beta: Continue developing.

Months 5-12+: Keep services up and running, continue development.

Documentation Plan:

All steps will be documented on the main BitBucket repository for anyone to re-create themselves.

All code will be under Creative Commons Share and Remix.

How can people sign up to Torn?

People can sign up by simply going to the main site and entering their email address and filling out a captcha. This then shows them their unique identifier on the screen, which they can choose to either be sent to their email (in the case of a normal blogger) or record to physical media (doesn't want the unique identifier attached to their email - censorship).

How will Torn help people in places where the internet is censored?

Most censored countries still allow one particular form of communication to get through; email. Although the main site of Torn might be blocked, the email addresses associated with the site will not be. Even if they are, we will have multiple ways that a user can get to our mail servers.

Torn will have a special address (ex. [email protected]) to allow users to sign up even if they have no idea how to circumvent censoring. In cases of extreme censoring, this address can be obtained from a friend or colleague (written on physical media such as paper). They will then be sent back a challenge image which they must fill out in order to ensure their signup isn't spam.

Still, how can others in censored countries read their posts?

Anyone who is signed up to the network gets a special address and identifier that will allow others to do different things. Emailing the blog with the words "Latest Posts" in the title will send you back their latest posts, for example.

What about ordinary people?

Anyone who can access the site will be able to control their account and post to their blog via. a web-based interface with all those lovely bells and whistles. It appears quite like a pastebin, but you can search for a unique identifier within it, causing it to have a "Discover" (everyone's posts) mode and a "Read" (single blog) mode.

Why email?

Email is available to pretty much anyone, and since it is an unblocked protocol in most censored countries, it seems like a good choice.

Why markdown?

You can store Markdown as plain-text in order to remove the need for a database. The idea here is not to encrypt posts as there is simply no point.

Any cool features planned for later?

Users will be able to post to each others blogs (like Facebook walls).

Users will be able to collaborate on posts (using Github/Bitbucket etc).

Users will be able to host more than just static text (planned once storage is added).

What's this about donations?

This allows for the service to have a total of 500 users with no extra nodes.

Donations are optional, but highly regarded. I will probably give donators a special badge or something.

Why not free?

I reconsidered. It is now free, but donations are what will keep this service running.

Why this?

Because I need a new project, that's why! Plus, this has been on my mind for about a year now and I need a bit of a kick and/or motive to get me going.

Comments

  • PwnerPwner Member

    This sounds awesome. If you want, I can gladly promote this project and get you some users when the beta comes along. I know plenty of people who live in censored countries that would really appreciate this.

  • i was gonna say, i would rent ya a RPi if ya wanted to put it on that :-P
    but LES is just as good :D

  • @AutoSnipe said:
    i was gonna say, i would rent ya a RPi if ya wanted to put it on that :-P
    but LES is just as good :D

    I'm not so sure on using Postmark anymore. I might take you up on that offer! :)

    @Pwner said:
    This sounds awesome. If you want, I can gladly promote this project and get you some users when the beta comes along. I know plenty of people who live in censored countries that would really appreciate this.

    Thanks! :) I really want this to take off, and that's why I'm asking for help.

  • NickMNickM Member

    On the surface, this seems like a pretty decent idea. Definitely an interesting project.

    Are you planning to allow people to stay entirely anonymous? You may want to consider making the whole thing available via Tor as well as the public net.

    If you're worried about censorship, you probably shouldn't base your system on an app run by an American company (Postmark). You also only mention the location of one server (Italy). Where are your other servers hosted? All it would take is a little pressure from the US government, and not only would you be shut down, you'll be opening yourself up to potential legal problems.

  • @NickM said:
    On the surface, this seems like a pretty decent idea. Definitely an interesting project.

    Are you planning to allow people to stay entirely anonymous? You may want to consider making the whole thing available via Tor as well as the public net.

    If you're worried about censorship, you probably shouldn't base your system on an app run by an American company (Postmark). You also only mention the location of one server (Italy). Where are your other servers hosted? All it would take is a little pressure from the US government, and not only would you be shut down, you'll be opening yourself up to potential legal problems.

    Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it!

    The main focus of this platform is not anonymity, but it's certainly a factor. I can understand your concerns about the NSA/FBI/big bad government agencies etc and that was my reason for the correction in the above comment. I am probably going to move the platform to Iceland as the write-up above is a little old :)

    Yeah, I can understand the legal stuff, but then again, I could simply comply with requests for stuff to be taken down.. Or just hide the whole thing over TOR and put it in a privacy-respecting country. But like I said before, I'm not out here to hide all the whistleblowers, just some of them.

    Thanks again for your comment!

  • @0xdragon The idea sounds great. But I see one problem: Because email (more specifically, the SMTP protocol) is not encrypted, a person posting content by email to the blog is still subject to interception and censorship by his or her country.

  • NickMNickM Member

    No offense, but if you're willing to take stuff down at the request of [insert government entity here], the service is worthless as a means to avoid censorship.

    Upon further thought on this... this just seems like an NNTP clone with a web interface.

  • @NickM said:
    No offense, but if you're willing to take stuff down at the request of [insert government entity here], the service is worthless as a means to avoid censorship.

    Upon further thought on this... this just seems like an NNTP clone with a web interface.

    Interesting, I've never seen NNTP before :)

    You're right. Like I said, I'm not going to be bulletproof, no matter how hard I try. But I can certainty dodge a few by using specific locations and TOR :)

    I think I should make anonymity the first goal of this service.

    @hwdsl2 said:
    0xdragon The idea sounds great. But I see one problem: Because email (more specifically, the SMTP protocol) is not encrypted, a person posting content by email to the blog is still subject to interception and censorship by his or her country.

    That is correct! And this is where using PGP to protect your email's contents between you and the servers comes into play. Thanks for the comment!

  • Not to shit on your parade, but.. email? lolwat.

    Thanked by 1manacit
  • tchentchen Member

    0xdragon said: I've never seen NNTP before :)

    That made me so sad and feel old at the same time :(

    Thanked by 2NickM flrichar
  • Just to be pedantic, should be NNRP Client not NNTP.

    Thanked by 2netomx tchen
  • 0xdragon - what about allowing PGP encryption/signing to either encrypt contact being transferred via SMTP and also for validating the sender.

  • @MarkTurner said:
    0xdragon - what about allowing PGP encryption/signing to either encrypt contact being transferred via SMTP and also for validating the sender.

    As per my comment above, yes, I'm using PGP :)

    @blergh_ said:
    Not to shit on your parade, but.. email? lolwat.

    I know email sucks just as much as the next guy. But emails tend to get through filters so..

  • I'd love to help with this. I love the idea and can see it being really benificial to a lot of people in countries with hardcode censoring / blocking.

  • @ksubedi said:
    I'd love to help with this. I love the idea and can see it being really benificial to a lot of people in countries with hardcode censoring / blocking.

    Sent you a PM :)

  • @0xdragon said:
    I know email sucks just as much as the next guy. But emails tend to get through filters so..

    I have a slight feeling that you have never seen these solutions in action, have you? Good luck using email.

  • @blergh_ said:

    Enlighten me.

  • flricharflrichar Member
    edited March 2014

    What's to stop it from becoming a cesspit of spam and abuse? Anyone remember when nntp news servers weren't full of porn, warez and viruses? Yea, it was a while ago. ;oP

    [Edit]: Erp, obviously missed the part about pgp to validate the sender.

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