SAFE broadcast system

Deff yay for me. This would be an important feature at this point of the development. Nothing complicated, just a note if there’s a newer version, and a summary of the updates maybe. With a link to the cat video of the day :heart_eyes_cat:

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Sorry for the wait. I party especially hard on weekends. Even more so because of SAFE’s long awaited emergence. After my sixth cup of cheap vodka I was gone. :sleeping:

If you say so.

Yes, I envision a succinct breakdown of the most significant events relating to the network in a global broadcast embedded into the launcher.

Reading something to the effect of:

“The network is undergoing heavy development and maintenance, your files and websites will likely not remain on the network for long.”

“There have been reports of uploads not completing, were working to fix this.”

“The network has been reset, this means your files are no longer on the SAFE. Please continue to help us by reuploading your data.”

Blah blah. You get the idea (hopefully). We can fine tune this.

This would surely save me and others from checking dead links. I could then, by that message board, be directed to the section of the forum that maintains a list of fresh links.

Practice must adapt. SAFE is far from standard. As ridiculous as this might sound, there are naive people who believe that merely asking questions on the clearnet is enough to deanonymize them on systems like SAFE. :confused:

Experiencing instability without having their expectations tamed would lead to abandonment.Those who are bold enough to ask questions could have some of them answered prior to heading to the forum for ones that are still open in their minds.

I thought I already clarified that in my previous post. Seems I keep leaving too much room for interpretation. You strike me as a guy capable of filling in the blanks. Sorry.

Tim understood or at least arrived at what he did using creativity and reasoning.

Depends on how you look at it. If the news conditions users to be more patient and aware of the current state of the network, it could reduce the workload of the support group like us. In addition, people will be informed of open issues and proper support channels because of this broadcast.

Intel has many supportive qualities. :wink:

What!? First, you won’t be presented with this information before log on. It’ll be presented in the launcher as a small text field.

Second, it doesn’t have to be thrown at the user to garner attention. The launcher in it’s current state is fairly plain. Having a few words about what’s happening with development and proper support channels might be a welcomed addition to the bland/ relatively uninformative UI.

I knew that would rall you up. Likely the reason for the opposition in the first place. I called you a dick because you posed the suggestion as a question when you knew it was not outside the scope of possibility (you’re a coder for god sake). I’m surely not one of the main devs so it didn’t make sense. We both know It was a subtle jab. :relaxed:

I feel you threw this in just to add substance to your argument. None of you listed matters.

My proposal is for the very short term (1 - 3 months). Who’s to say this couldn’t be expanded to alert farmers. It’s not helping the non tech savvy is contradicted by the agreement of a few from that very group… :expressionless:

My proposals aren’t so rigid. People are free to refine them further. I’m more than happy to have people brainstorm improvements.

I knew calling someone a dick might be taken offensively, but I’m shocked at how irrational it has made you. Saying this is likely to make you more angry. :neutral_face:

Well being that you’re omniscient I guess you’re right. You know of everyone who will want to use this network and their technical capacities. NOW I’M BEING A DICK. Lol! :smile:

Oh man! :weary: Couldn’t you have brought this up several posts ago? Honestly I’ve never played with or used RSS/Atom feeds in my life. If it achieves the previously stated goals, what was keeping you from bringing it up? I find this exchange strange and fueled by something other than a differing opinion on effectiveness. :unamused:

Are our future interactions forever tarnished? I didn’t think you would be so sensitive. I really am sorry that I assumed you would just brush it off. Will you accept my apology? :innocent:

Oh dude, no harm done. I’m just discussing one teeny tiny aspect of something that isn’t even implemented yet. My opinion differs from yours - no big deal. I hold someone who has an opinion in much higher regard than someone who doesn’t.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Ayn Rand

And - as I think you’ll see below - we had different definitions of “early stages”, causing each to misunderstand the points that the other made.

BTW - the “being a dick” tags that I put was because in there I was using attacking language instead of my goal of using a neutral fact-based approach. I think the last time I was a dick on these forums you “threw a pillow at me” - no we’re just playing man it’s all cool. Hope you got schwasted and had a good time last night!


I see two possible approaches here:

The one I brought up “several posts ago”

But that’s an app/addon and would be on the Permanent Network - not the Testing Network.

Now if you’re just talking about the Testing Network then that’s a whole 'nother ballgame. That opens the door to interacting with the clearnet and working with servers etc to get the Network up and running.

The plan is to reset it every two weeks ( @Ross said “fortnight” I think… ) so if this is just for testnet then we can have a countdown clock in the launcher until they are reset again. Since this requires time - I didn’t even think about doing something like this with your proposal. But if this is just for testnet then it’s perfectly fine.

The QA team has the stats of the servers that are being used to run the Network at the moment. They can have a server send that information to launchers telling them how big the Network is, what the uptime percentage is, the bandwidth, yadda yadda yadda. We can do a whole lot if we make this just for testnet.

If you re-read my posts in the sense that such a change would be on the Permanent v1.0 Network then they may make a bit more sense. In that case it would be much preferred to defer to an RSS/Atom feed-type addon to the launcher. But if we’re just looking to update people on the status of the testnet - only while the testnet is active and no longer once the testnet is over, then yes, it could be a good idea.

In my mind:
early stages != testnet
early stages == Internet circa 1995


Now, to do this, the launcher code itself would have to be amended to gather information from a clearnet server, as there is no guarantee that the information would be registered in the same spot in every version of the testnet - as it is constantly resetting.

I am - for obvious reasons - hesitant to do such a thing. But if could be done safely and securely then that negates the risk.

However, to do such a thing would require non-trival tasks of the team. QA would have to monitor error reports constantly and run tests to confirm or deny those reports. QA would also have to set up a service to push those reports out - probably another DO droplet.

Then on top of that, the devs would have to write the code for the launcher to not only display those messages, but to retrieve them as well - periodically. That would require a time-based operation for the launcher and I don’t know if the launcher has time or not.

They would also want to test that code to make sure that there’s no leakage between the Network and the Internet. I don’t know how they have it wired up ATM - and not sure if that’s something that they’ve already wrestled with or something that they haven’t touched yet.


Also, keep in mind that all this effort - even if they were to drop everything and institute this today - would only be valid for the duration of the testnet. And not just the duration of the testnet, but only the part of the testnet where we don’t have vaults.

If this is instituted and included the vault information (as proposed above), I would be dreading the release of the vault binaries because that means that all of my data statictic notifications go away as Maidsafe (the company) no longer has control of the vaults that are put onto the Network and cannot gather information from the Network as such. I want to be excited for when the vaults are released, not disappointed.


So even though, with the further clarification that this is only to be used on the testnet, I do agree that having information about the status of the testnet would be handy, I don’t believe that the tradeoffs along with the time and energy necessary to achieve this functionality would be worth it considering that the same service would be neither feasible nor needed on the Permanent Network.

P.S. For the record, I really am kind of a dick.

I got twisted as f@ck! :laughing:

Dude, I woke up with a mega slur, my shoes off, one sock missing, and a bunch of good weed clung to my sweater. Dutchmaster guts all over the floor. Kind of a waste but good times. :sunglasses:

On my way home I tripped on the curb and busted my ass! :joy:
I live in dense city. So you know there was at least one dude laughing. If it wasn’t for some fine ass chicks walking by, I wouldn’t of not felt so ridiculous. Oh well. I’m good now. Took a nap, drank a shitload of water and ate some oranges. The haze is slowly being lifted. :relaxed:

The ideas and points you made were all great. If there were some easier way of doing the broadcast thing, It would be nice. Maybe instead of having it embedded in the launcher we can just bundle it and have it pop up after log in. Kinda of like what you suggested initially. Or just embed some static info in the launcher. Something like: “Click here for FAQ.” “This is test software expect a bunch of issues. Click here to learn more”. Something short and sweet. These messages will of course be removed at v1.0. You think this would be easy/fairly secure?

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Can’t wait to party with you someday!


A static FAQ would be much more feasible - and also not be wasted energy as it would be utilizable in post- v1.0 releases. For each release it can list release notes and provide links to release forum posts (on the Network and/or clearnet), etc. So not a bad idea.

But to get the full functionality something bigger would have to come in the form of an addon - and it would have to be a protocol (like RSS/Atom) that anyone could utilize. This protocol has to reside solely inside of the Network as well. At that point I believe it should be both fairly secure, and fairly easy - given that the launcher supports addons.

That’d be cool though to open the launcher and find out that some of the entities that I’m following put out some broadcasts.

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