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perenzo

124 karma · joined July 2, 2011

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perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
Ok, I get the point. I opened a ticket to use a clearer wording: https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/issues/51 Thanks clarifying the ambiguity.
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
I use coturn. Find installation details here https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/blob/master/app/INSTALL...
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
That's a good idea. I don't know the internals of IPFS, but the related https://libp2p.io/ looks promising. Follow up https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/issues/52
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
It is basically the same. Briefing is a bit more modern and has a few more features. As I mentioned in the help text on https://brie.fi/ng#help I started the project as a spin off of a virtual classroom project https://peer.school/ Sources https://github.com/holtwick/peer2school
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
Indeed, it is a rather simple algorithm [1] But you can set any name you like, either in the input field or directly in the URL. Protected rooms, where the participants need to know a common secret, are planned to be added to the project, see [2]

[1] https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/blob/master/app/src/com...

[2] https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/issues/1

perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
Well technically it is possible to avoid the signaling server, but you'll need some other channel to exchange the peers connection data. This is pretty inconvenient though. But a signal server is a rather light thing and easy to install on a location you trust: https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/tree/master/signal
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
This is a Firefox Nightly release, correct? Current stable release is 77.0.1 Do you experience those issues with the stable release as well? If so I would like to ask you to file a bug here and add the OS version. Thanks for letting me know! https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/issues/new
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
Well, IMO the definition of the word "anonymous" still fits how personal information is handled in Briefing: "Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's name is unknown" [1] And this is true regarding the Briefing service.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymity

perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
Thanks for the feedback, I'll take Olm/Matrix and Signal into consideration, although I believe for the described purpose of Briefing the current implementation is sufficient and secure.
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
But it only works with Blink/Chrome right now because it depends on Insertable Streams:

https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/

https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6321945865879552

Hopefully this will be implemented in other browsers as well soon.

perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
By using the term "anonymous" I wanted to say, that no user account is required. To hide one self's identity and network location I would expect the users to make use of browsers like Tor or using VPN. I don't know of any way to provide anonymity on web application level. If somebody knows more, please let me know.
perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
That's correct, I use https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs-models/tree/master/body-p...

It is indeed slow. The video signal first is drawn to a canvas and then from there streamed as a video again. Some browsers perform better than others. Probably due to WASM support, but I did not dig deeper here.

The "pro" though is it all happens on the client in the browser.

perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
I did not want to say Jitsi is bad. It is one of the best solutions around. But you still have to trust the server if e2ee is not turned on and more than 2 participants are using it [1]: "This outer layer of DTLS-SRTP encryption is removed while packets are traversing Jitsi Videobridge"

I believe it is correct to say, that WebRTC is end-to-end encrypted. What you are referring to is, if you can trust to have a direct connection to the other participant and that you can make sure she is the person she pretends to be. This layer is indeed missing and will be added [2]

I would very much appreciate your help on the project to eliminate those concerns.

[1] https://jitsi.org/security/

[2] https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/issues/1

perenzo··on How to create a video call application with WebRTC
I added an own entry here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23523830

Learn more about the details: https://brie.fi/ng#help Also see https://webrtc-security.github.io/

WebRTC is end-to-end encrypted by default. There is a signaling server that helps establishing the connections between users in a room, but after that the communication is encrypted. Also those TURN and STUN servers are only required for technical reasons to get peer-to-peer working. So no content is ever passed unencrypted.

That's the difference to other services like Zoom and Jitsi, where a server in the middle is receiving the video streams unencrypted and then redistributes. Although Jitsi is adding encryption support for that as well soon.

perenzo··on Show HN: Briefing – Anonymous, secure, open source WebRTC group video chat
Correct. Scroll up the page to learn about the details: https://brie.fi/ng#help Also see https://webrtc-security.github.io/

WebRTC is end-to-end encrypted by default. There is a signaling server that helps establishing the connections between users in a room, but after that the communication is encrypted. Also those TURN and STUN servers are only required for technical reasons to get peer-to-peer working. So no content is ever passed unencrypted.

That's the difference to other services like Zoom and Jitsi, where a server in the middle is receiving the video streams unencrypted and then redistributes. Although Jitsi is adding encryption support for that as well soon.

perenzo··on How to create a video call application with WebRTC
https://brie.fi/ng - a modern pure open source WebRTC implementation. It can even blur peoples background for visual privacy. Sources at https://github.com/holtwick/briefing/
perenzo··on FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format
Introducing better compression of images and animations would be another small step fighting climate change. Less data, less transfer, less energy consumption!

https://www.dw.com/en/is-netflix-bad-for-the-environment-how...

perenzo··on I've been building a Markdown note-taking app for 3 years
Also end-to-end encrypted without a central server and using rich text instead of markdown https://collect-app.com/
perenzo··on Programming Fonts – Test Drive
It get's even better with ligatures for common coding sequences https://github.com/vikky49/patchedFonts-Ligatures
perenzo··on OnSen UI – Develop HTML5 hybrid and mobile web apps
Alternatives: https://framework7.io/ and https://ionicframework.com/

Did anybody evaluate all of them? On iOS I experienced that most approaches have issues keeping the header in place when the keyboard shows up.

perenzo··on Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases
With https://collect-app.com I'm indeed trying to build such a tool that is not requiring any service and giving you back 100% of privacy and data control, right now. But it is in a very early state yet. But I would love to get some feedback on the idea.
perenzo··on Crash and error reporting: Sentry as HockeyApp alternative
What alternatives for macOS/iOS would you recommend?