occult

Looks like the maintainer posted a comparison to Pond a while back on reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2zp1c9/opse...

This sounds like a fun exercise. I might give it a shot.

Something behind a firewall for sure and with the browser locked down.

These are good points. I feel the same way as another poster who commented that the maintainer is going after the raspberry pi crowd so during this nascent phase only the techie "masses" are going to use such a thing. Frankly, I see a lot of issues with this project but if the fundamentals were solid I could imagine overlooking them to bring it closer to the broader community space. I suppose if I were a Chinese dissident I might have a compelling reason to go for a turn-key solution but previous commenters nailed it that this thing requires too much trust to be more than an experiment. If I were to run it on a pi I'd be prepared to ditch the pi and attach it only to some open wi-fi network.

Good point. I had exactly the same thought. There's no way I'm downloading and installing anything off random darkweb site. I might build it myself and see how that goes but there's certainly still risk for sure. A more vibrant community built around software like this would provide a greater level of comfort, not to mention an independent security audit. Certainly anyone seeking to help this project might start with solving this important problem. I'll be putting some thought into it.

This is such a good point. There's a chicken / egg problem here where you need a critical mass of activity for anything interesting / useful to emerge but the barrier to entry getting to these places is high enough, and the pain / friction involved with spending time there is significant enough, that communities have a difficult time forming. I think LookingGlass is meant to try to overcome some of these problems. That said, strolling down darknet alley sure does feel a lot like wandering around Chernobyl.

For anyone interested the source code is here:

https://github.com/last-box/LookingGlass

Also, there's a subreddit here.

https://github.com/last-box/LookingGlass

There's a TOR-based IRC and Forum system too.