Show HN: Anytype – self-hosted open-source operating environment
anytype.io
anytype.io
What is true data ownership? Many people think that data ownership means being able to access your data and decide who can access it and who can’t. It’s important in its own right because it protects us from potential adverse scenarios (surveillance state, digital dictatorship). But it’s a narrow view. True data ownership is being able to use your data in a context when it’s useful, so often not only inside one app but across many. Moreover, true data ownership means being able to control not only the data, but also a graphical interface for it.
How Anytype brings true data ownership? 1. Anytype works without a central server, so only users have access to their encryption keys and data. All apps run locally and exchange data directly in a peer-to-peer way without exposing it to intermediaries even when users work across devices and with others. 2. It’s a local-first software, so it works offline with full functionality. 3. Users can modify all interfaces and create new ones without code. Even if they have unique workflows or ideas of how they want to use their data - they will be able to do it. 4. The data is free - it can be used across all apps inside or outside Anytype. Also, users can use anytype software even if for some reason anytype the company is no longer around. So they can be sure that their data will never be trapped. 5. We will open source Anytype with the public release. Developers can add integrations, additional views for data, Machine Learning modules. It will also ensure that everything we tell about Anytype can be publicly verifiable, so users can trust our code, not our words.
Please, let me know what you think if anything resonates with you or on the contrary, or maybe you have questions. Our team is here to discuss and answer questions
1. the security model and implementation details
2. team / entity behind this
3. could it support 1,000,000 files
4. could it support 10,000 todo items on a single page
5. could it store 1TB (or more) of data
6. how do you plan to make money
Who pins the files when my laptop is offline? Who pays for this?
What keeps my files online in the event of high node churn?
What happens if malicious nodes join the IPFS swarm and censor key/value lookups?
Peers who are interested in the content pin it.
- E.g. your teammates share the same files
- Your family have a shared photo album
- Your devices(mobile+desktop) share your private files
- Anytype provides nodes that store a small amount of encrypted data for free. Later we will provide an option to buy more backup space on our nodes to pin your encrypted data
- You also will be able to set up your self-hosted anytype node to pin your data
> Who pins the files when my laptop is offline? Who pays for this?
Currently, Anytype provides a small cache on our public nodes to store the last encrypted versions to mitigate offline/online problems.
You also will be able to set up your self-hosted anytype node.
> What keeps my files online in the event of high node churn?
- Peers who are interested in the content actually store it
- Anytype nodes
> What happens if malicious nodes join the IPFS swarm and censor key/value lookups
- First, you will do the local-network lookup. E.g. if you are working with your team in the same network you will be able to discover local-network nodes via broadcast msgs
- Anytype provide nodes that index the encrypted content. That nodes expose additional API that can be used to speed up P2P content discovery in that cases while being fully secure (because it is content-addressable)
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From your website:
> It’s free. No storage or upload limits
You said:
> You also will be able to set up your self-hosted anytype node to pin your data
> Your family have a shared photo album
> Your devices(mobile+desktop) share your private files
> Later we will provide an option to buy more backup space on our nodes to pin your encrypted data
So, it's not free. I'm paying for storage one way or another -- either by keeping it all on my always-on devices, or by paying you to pin it.
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From your website:
> Anytype works without a central server, so only you have access to your encryption keys and data. All apps run locally and exchange data directly in a peer-to-peer way without exposing it to intermediaries even when you work across devices and with others.
You said:
> Anytype provide nodes that index the encrypted content
So, when I'm not on the same LAN as the computer, Anytype is not only _not_ peer-to-peer by default, but also Anytype gets to see when people write data and learn how much data they wrote.
Not the author, I don't think you can accuse them of lying. I suppose you could use any provider to pin stuff. There might be free IPFS pinning services and non-free ones. You may not need to use AnyType at all.
> So, when I'm not on the same LAN as the computer, Anytype is not only _not_ peer-to-peer by default, but also Anytype gets to see when people write data and learn how much data they wrote.
I don't agree with your assessment at all. It is ok in P2P to have intermediary nodes that handle pinning, hosting, mirroring, propagation etc when the node is offline. That's the only way P2P can be viable.
What's important is that the protocols and standards are open. And that you can choose your own providers to handle the above mentioned services (pinning, mirroring etc). That seems to be the case here. You're criticism is unnecessarily acute.
My feed back would be to be clearer on how it works - because your initial set of users are going to be more technically proficient.
Based on this discussion, we will add a more detailed explanation of how it works to our site.
But seriously, you may want to provide some transparency on the web site. Or perhaps a link to github for security-critical components.
All is lost if the master key is leaked through some side channel.
BTW, I totally agree about transparency. We will opensource Anytype before the public release so anyone can inspect and build from sources
4. Definitely yes
5. Again depends on the available disk space you have. If you have enough disk space - you can store your data
2. If my computer breaks, is all my data lost?
3. If my computer ever gets malware (which steals my key), does this mean attacker can forever access all of my private data? Will they still have that access even after I detect and remove that malware?
2. In case the data is shared with someone(e.g. teammate or family) you always be able to restore it with the seed phrase. In case of private-only data, our plan is to encourage users to have multiple devices(mobile+desktop) to have a data backup
3. We plan to implemet per-device private key(like the keybase does) and use it to decrypt files' private keys. In case the device's private key was stolen you can remove this device from the list and it will not be able to receive new changes
From what I can see this is more a personalized portal but I may be mistaken.
But the whole idea is that most of the users can create their own apps without code (airtable way) using existing building blocks(no need for APIs). And a small amount of users who code can create new building blocks
- so it may be more private than dropbox, because cloud provider shouldn't be able to read your files on their servers
- you still need to pay this cloud service provider to store your data
Anytype is much more than file synchronisation tool.
- it gives users an ability to create their own apps without coding using simple building blocks
- allows to share those apps with your family, friends or teammates and collaborate together
- fully free when using your own disk space or self-hosted server
- It is P2P. This means that you can sync data in the same network much faster, even if you don't have an internet connection