16:17 <asheesh> Howdy simonv3

16:18 <simonv3> hey :)

16:20 <asheesh> I'm excited about your work on Quick Survey, fwiw!

16:20 <asheesh> Also yes, the two minute reload cycle is the best we have at the moment for Meteor apps.

16:21 <asheesh> Which is pretty sad, I agree.

16:21 <asheesh> There's almost definitely some kind of better caching we can do. I haven't profiled it yet.

16:21 <asheesh> I don't know how much is CPU-bound and how much is network-bound, etc.

16:21 <asheesh> In other random news I am restoring a backup of my old asheesh.org wiki and going to attempt to import it into a Sandstorm grain.

16:32 <simonv3> Heh, yeah, re- reload cycle: I’ve gotten used to reading in two minute segments

16:38 <asheesh> simonv3: I have a question that I am not sure exactly what to do with, so I'll ask it here and maybe you can explore it with me, or you can get tired of it.

16:39 <asheesh> The question is: What is the value proposition that Sandstorm provides to people like you, and how can we better-express that?

16:39 <asheesh> Might have to brb for a bit; can say more shortly.

16:43 <simonv3> I actually started sketching that out in my head recently: http://piranhabay.co.uk/sandstorm-and-dog-fooding/

16:47 <asheesh> I attempted this ~1y ago per this strategy: https://sandstorm.io/news/2015-02-06-app-demo

16:48 <asheesh> But I now have been thinking merely using Sandstorm for "Click here to get a demo" sells Sandstorm short.

16:49 <asheesh> I also made this exist: https://sandstorm.io/install#EtherCalc

16:49 <asheesh> You can fill in whatever app name you want there.

16:49 <asheesh> The idea being that an app might link to this from its own website.

16:49 <asheesh> But that page hasn't been updated to refer to the fact that Oasis exists.

16:50 <asheesh> I like how clearly https://piwik.org/ separates "Self-hosted" & "Cloud"

16:51 <asheesh> Presumably we could offer a page that looks this good to app authors, or something.

16:51 <simonv3> Yeah, to me personally the value is my own cloud

16:51 <asheesh> Interesting; do you care about people using your app easily, too?

16:51 <simonv3> I use Davros and Idea Otter for personal things, and I think the self-hosting of productivity tools is pretty cool / important

16:52 <simonv3> Yeah

16:52 <simonv3> That’s the appeal of it for Quick-Survey

16:52 <simonv3> it’s in the name :)

16:52 <asheesh> (-:

16:52 <simonv3> ex - google drive is getting rid of web hosting apparently

16:53 <asheesh> Whereas Davros is *adding* it! : D

16:53 <simonv3> heh, yep!

16:53 <simonv3> And I don’t see myself hosting an instance of Sandstorm any time soon - cause effort - but I think it’s cool

16:55 <asheesh> simonv3: "obviously" you should get opensource.com to post this article that you wrote.

16:56 <asheesh> Or LWN.net!

16:56 <asheesh> LWN.net might be even better actually.

17:02 <simonv3> yeah, but then it becomes work :P

17:02 <simonv3> oof, they pay well for articles

17:08 <asheesh> AFK a bit

21:44 <ocdtrekkie_> simonv3: Maybe I am bad at reading, but your article makes it sound like Sandstorm itself os vagrant-based.

21:46 <simonv3> ocdtrekkie_: that is probably my own lack of knowledge and the inability to properly explain it

23:08 <asheesh> simonv3: I can offer a clarification/correction fwiw:

23:08 <asheesh> You wrote: "By using Vagrant to build virtual machines, Sandstorm sets up independent instances so that apps hosted on it are safe from each other and work within completely independent environments. No app can access data in another app hosted on the same server, at least not without a public API.

23:08 <asheesh> "

23:08 <asheesh> More details:

23:09 <asheesh> - Sandstorm (being server software that does complex sandboxing) requires Linux, but not every developer uses Linux as their main operating system.

23:11 <asheesh> - Therefore, for consistency, vagrant-spk is a Sandstorm app development tool that takes a directory of code (your app) and combines it with a Linux virtual machine with Sandstorm installed.

23:13 <asheesh> - When each of an app (which Sandstorm calls a grain) is running, Sandstorm does its own [security sandboxing](https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/using/security-practices/) of each grain from every other grain on the system. This uses Linux kernel features such as seccomp and namespaces, which are like Docker enhanced.

23:15 <asheesh> - In development mode, with vagrant-spk, as an implementation detail, each app gets its own install of Sandstorm. This means that each app you are working on runs it its own Linux virtual machine when you are developing it. This implementation detail of the development tooling goes away as soon as you install a second app on a Sandstorm server; regardless, Sandstorm doesn't rely on the virtual machine f

23:15 <asheesh> or security, but instead its own Linux (seccomp & namespaces etc.) isolation for security.

23:15 <asheesh> simonv3: ^ does that help at all?

23:15 <asheesh> This is info aimed at you, not necessarily "the general public", but I hope it clarifies this thing that ocdtrekkie_ raised.

23:16 <asheesh> Happy to go into more detail or answer other questions.

23:16 <asheesh> And hi TwoJames, too bad you wandered off for now, but hope to see you back again

23:17 <simonv3> yeah that makes sense

23:17 <simonv3> thanks for the explain!

23:17 <asheesh> You got it.

23:17 <asheesh> Feel free ask any follow-up questions or other questions whenever.

23:38 <asheesh> Also fwiw simonv3 -- w/r/t "test it a couple of times on a local faked Sandstorm instance" -- the local Sandstorm is real!

23:38 <asheesh> Of course it depends on the meaning of real vs. faked. But anyway, it is literally running the same Sandstorm software as real Sandstorm servers.

23:39 <simonv3> ah cool, I think I knew that but it didn’t come through in that.

23:39 <simonv3> It’s all a bit mysterious

23:40 <asheesh> Yeah; I think real vs. faked is a tough one to navigate since everything is both real and fake.

23:42 <simonv3> dummy?

23:43 <simonv3> temporary

23:44 <asheesh> temporary is good. I would probably just say "local Sandstorm instance" but I'm +0 on also adding "temporary" into the mix.

23:47 <simonv3> less words is always good

23:48 <asheesh> I guess that implies that you have to create it, possibly, so a "local, auto-created Sandstorm instance" maybe.

23:48 <asheesh> But who knows.

23:52 <simonv3> "you package your simple Meteor app and test it a couple of times on a local Sandstorm instance it sets up for you"

23:54 <asheesh> That seems right to me!