
Pulse: open, trustworthy, decentralised sync and cloud service - nreece
https://ind.ie/pulse/
======
deftnerd
Pulse is either a rebranding or a fork of Syncthing. I'm not quite sure yet.

I just implemented Syncthing on a cluster of front-end web servers. I know
best practice would be using hooks to make all my web servers update from a
Git repository, but I prefer to do dev on one server and then just update one
production server when I go live. Syncthing simply replicates the right
directories to the rest of the front-end servers.

I have 8 static asset web servers that run on low-end VPS's with just 256 megs
of memory. Syncthing only consumes about 15 megs of that precious memory,
leaving plenty for Nginx.

Syncthing is competing with BTSync. BTSync has the disadvantage of being a
closed-source product, but it's far easier to setup and configure. Syncthing
will take a bit of configuration to get everything just right. It also comes
as a plain binary without a native way to make it a system daemon. You have to
come up with your own init.d, move config files to a shared directory, set the
right permissions on that config file directory, etc.

BTSync is also a lot easier when it comes to adding shared folders. With their
system, you share a folder on one computer and receive a key and a secret. On
other computers, you simply pick an empty folder, enter the key and secret,
and then everything synchronizes.

With SyncThing, you have to configure the relationship on all sides of the
connection. When you start setting up a big mesh of dozens of machines, this
gets very very tedious and you find yourself just picking one machine to be
the "master" and pointing each machine to that one master. This has the
downside of not being able to source pieces of the replication from all of the
various servers.

~~~
finnn
The first sentence on the page:

>Syncthing is becoming Ind.ie Pulse

would indicate it's a rebranding, but I see no evidence on the Syncthing side
of things that this is the case

~~~
nodata
The evidence is here: [https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-
and-ind-...](https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-and-ind-
ie/1074)

------
deftnerd
A description of the relationship between Pulse and Syncthing is here:
[https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-and-
ind-...](https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-and-ind-ie/1074)

It appears to be a valid rebranding of the project from the developers, who
are interested in extending their desire somehow to a privacy-centered phone
OS? Seems like quite a big pivot.

~~~
quadrangle
The phone idea already existed before. This is an alignment of previously
separate projects, I think, not a pivot of one project.

------
marco1
According to their "Team" page [1], ind.ie has three designers, one person for
operations and a single developer.

With that team, they want to create free versions of Dropbox (Indie Pulse),
Android/iOS (Indie Phone), Facebook (Heartbeat)?

Love the idea and intentions, so I hope they get good support on their open-
source projects.

[1] [https://ind.ie/team/](https://ind.ie/team/)

------
neolefty
I keep hearing that Syncthing (Pulse) is just like BTSync, except you set it
up manually, and that the developers don't have any plans to add peer
discovery.

But peer discovery is the _whole point_ of BTSync. Sure, Syncthing/Pulse is an
improvement over rsync, but only an incremental one. BTSync, with its peer
discovery, is a radical improvement.

Even having a roadmap for peer discovery would make me a lot more interested
in it. As it is, no thanks, I have better things to do than maintain N^2
configuration problems.

~~~
mieses
BTSync is a radical improvement in the network protocols but I still can't get
the btsync web ui to change my password. You could say that their priorities
are in the right place for an open source project, which they are not. Don't
get me wrong, I love the concept and most of the implementation of btsync. But
they are holding themselves back, leaving an opportunity for projects like
Pulse. That said, Pulse is dead in the water without peer-discovery. How do I
connect to a peer with Pulse if there is no central server?

~~~
rich90usa
I suspect that you have specified a password in your BitTorrent Sync
configuration file. Settings set in the configuration file will override
settings set through the WebUI (after restart). Consider specifying your
password either in the configuration file or using the WebUI, but not both.

------
dochtman
I'm a bit worried that, as far as I see, the Syncthing protocol doesn't really
allow having servers/peers that don't see plain-text. (Since I think it mostly
just uses TLS to keep things secret from eavesdroppers.) I've always been
looking for an open source Dropbox-like that allows having storage that only
sees ciphertext (despite the fact that it would require a little key
management from the user, which I think is a usability challenge, but one that
can be overcome).

~~~
rich90usa
BitTorrent Sync has functionality for generating "encrypted secrets" using the
developer API. It is possible to deliver a secret key to a peer which only
allows for that peer to access encrypted versions of the folder content.

------
aw3c2
That's such a non-descript name, I don't think this is a good move. Syncthing
is great, it's a thing to sync things. Dropbox, the box where you drop files
into. BTSync uses BT to sync things. Pulse? Uhm, maybe it's something about
heartbeats or social media analysis?

------
luxpir
Recently set up Syncthing on Raspberry Pi, N900 and Win7 laptop for the
'perfect' synchronised notes (mainly notes, anyway) system. Can also report
low enough resource usage to be useful on these systems. The phone battery
life is not significantly affected and the Pi continues to play media, run
Tmux and perform backups without hesitation.

Memory use is consistently under 15 MB and CPU use in the low single %
figures. I am only syncing my notes, for the most part, but it fits the bill
perfectly.

Excited to see where the project goes from here, having just read about the
Indie team's phone project in Linux Voice recently.

