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Briar notes

Briar is a P2P over Tor messenger that can also peer over LAN and Bluetooth.

my-accounts.csv has list of my Briar addresses, as there isnt support for multiple devices. They possibly should be in aminda.eu, but I dont know what would be a good way to show them as browser integrated CSV viewers are rare and I dont think these would be in so much demand.

Note that as per the FAQ, the connection request needs to be accepted within 48 hours by entering your Briar address. However after that introductions can be made without timeout concerns.

Briar doesnt hold as big place in my heart as IRC or Matrix to have a dedicated page either and my HTML table tendency is effort even if the page wasnt given a navigation menu entry.

Naming

I tend to name my accounts Aminda-HOSTNAME (%Y-%j) e.g. Aminda-Lumina (2022-153) where %Y is year in 4 digits and %j the day of the year (001 to 366). However the older the Briar account still in use, the more random naming scheme there is.

This is by no means a security feature, anyone can name their device like that, its more of convenience should there be older and newer me on same device in contacts lists. This doesnt either mean that I will remember this scheme or updating these files.

Briar desktop

  • TODO: what ports does it want opened in firewall for LAN peering?

I install it from Flathub and at the time of writing it doesnt support groups (where only creator can add users), forums (groups where everyone can add new users) or blogs.

Further reading and quotes

  • https://briarproject.org/quick-start/
    • Please note that Briar will only synchronize messages with your contacts, not with nearby strangers who are running Briar. And it will only sync the messages youve chosen to share with each contact. For example, if you invite your contacts X and Y to join a forum, and they accept, then messages in that forum will be synced with X or Y whenever theyre within range. So you can receive forum messages from X in one location, travel to another location, and deliver those messages to Y.

    • But this doesnt work for private messages: theyre only synchronized directly between the sender and recipient.

  • https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ
    • No. Unlike with adding contacts at a distance and its 48 hours timeout, theres no such thing for introductions.

  • https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar-desktop/-/wikis/Changelog
    • [0.2.0-beta 2022-02-22] Synchronize messages via local LAN