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Pico.sh – Hacker Labs

183 points| modinfo | 1 year ago |github.com | reply

41 comments

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[+] garyfirestorm|1 year ago|reply
Shouldn't the readme first explain what this project is about? How would I know if this is relevant for me/my work. Not trying to be obtuse, I am fairly new to CS and I would like to understand what I am looking at and how I could use it in future.
[+] vietvu|1 year ago|reply
The repo is terrible at tell us what is this about, the landing page is better: https://pico.sh, but still terrible.
[+] Gualdrapo|1 year ago|reply
Can't agree more. After scanning the repo homepage and their website, I still have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to do.
[+] kbenson|1 year ago|reply
From the top of the readme, it says to look at the docs on the website pico.sh. So, the readme does give info on what it's for by referring you to the authoritative location for that info. Should the source code README explain what it is? Maybe if the github repo was meant to be the main interaction for the project, but it's obvious from following that link that it's not meant to be, given the attention they put into that site.

I think what you're actually doing (whether you realize it or not) is criticizing the person who submitted this project's choice to link the github repo instead of the main site, which is a valid criticism, but that isn't really a fault of the project IMO.

[+] taneq|1 year ago|reply
It’s not just you. Looks like a bunch of scripts for web hosting? But I shouldn’t have to click through several layers for the first real clue, and no I don’t want to “Get Started!” with no prior information.
[+] pelasaco|1 year ago|reply
it is a bare bones infrastructure as service. It costs $2.
[+] tyingq|1 year ago|reply
Spent a little time poking around to see what this is...

It's a bare-bones hosting service with a limited free tier (25MB asset storage), and a cheap premium tier (10GB asset storage for $2/month).

The big selling point is this:

"The secret ingredient to all our pico services is how we let users publish changes to their sites without needing to install anything. We accomplish this with what is colloquially termed SSH Apps. By using the SSH protocol and golang's implementation of SSH, we can create golang binaries that interface with SSH in unique ways."

They offer these pre-built services + client side tools

- static hosting (pgs.sh for normal static hosting, prose.sh adds blog platform)

- expose your local/home webserver to the internet (tuns.sh)

- private docker registry (imgs.sh)

- private pastebin like service (pastes.sh)

- rss client, pulls rss feeds, sends email notifications (feeds.sh)

There's also a labs area with some experimental services, and it feels like you may also be able to roll your own stuff that uses the base pieces.

[+] epr|1 year ago|reply
It's nice to know that. Could not tell that easily by reading the entire readme or the linked docs. If founders/devs are reading this, it'd probably be a good idea to make it obvious what this is for up front. Even just a one paragraph explainer like the comment I'm responding to for context could help people know if this is even relevant to them.
[+] imglorp|1 year ago|reply
> imgs.sh

> 5GB image registry storage

That's cute, he says as he compiles another 10gb image...

[+] JonChesterfield|1 year ago|reply
I think the main thing here is https://pico.sh/pgs which works well as a landing page - it's a static site host that you push files to using rsync and can manage using ssh. Gives the impression someone built this for themselves and then rolled it out to the general public. At least, the subset of it that isn't overly frightened of a terminal.
[+] baq|1 year ago|reply
Both the readme and the plain pico.sh are abysmal. Your link is the first one that I actually found useful information on.
[+] nonoesp|1 year ago|reply
> To get started, simply SSH to our CMS.

pico.sh is a content management system (CMS) for hackers.

That's what I infer from the site, but it would be helpful if they added a one-liner to the home page and repo.

[+] fragmede|1 year ago|reply
should really link to http://pico.sh which has a better landing page for this project and what it can do
[+] pseudo_meta|1 year ago|reply
The GitHub page (and frankly, to a degree also the landing pages) do not explain very well why the project is so great.

Basically, pico.sh is a collection of minimal web services that you control via SSH. Since it uses your SSH key as identifier, there is no registration process needed. For instance, setting up a blog with prose.sh[^1] took me less than a minute.

There is no real GUI, you manage everything via the terminal. Since publishing stuff is just running a one-liner in shell,[^2] it is very simple to automate/customize stuff. Copied the one-liner into the shell commands plugin for Obsidian, and I was able to publish notes from Obsidian to my prose.sh blog with one hotkey.

[1]: here as a showcase mine: https://nanotipsforvim.prose.sh/

[2]: https://pico.sh/prose#publish-your-posts-with-one-command

[+] realsid|1 year ago|reply
How has your experience been using this service. Considering using prose.sh to start writing.
[+] jimmcslim|1 year ago|reply
Looks a bit like a competitor to http://omg.lol ? Just missing a Mastodon instance and a URL shortener.
[+] qudat|1 year ago|reply
Hey all, co-creator of pico.sh. We are reading your feedback loud and clear: we need to improve our messaging around what pico.sh offers.

I've updated the main repo README as well as the landing page. We will make it a priority to continue updating our docs.

Thanks for all the feedback!

[+] tarasglek|1 year ago|reply
I see that you guys do auth using ssh https://github.com/picosh/ptun and generally use ssh identities heavily.

I think you might wanna consider providing a vault alternative that's based on ssh identities too. Here is my draft implementation of this idea https://taras.glek.net/post/github-to-sops-lighter-weight-se...

I wrote my crappy script in anger at how poorly passwords integrate with gitops workflows. It's just a matter of making a nice UX for this flow to make it useful. All the libs you need for this are already done in go.

[+] nurple|1 year ago|reply
Interesting script! Really dig how it harvest pubkeys from a GitHub org. Does it support fine grained control of which secrets are available for decryption by a particular key?
[+] danhorner|1 year ago|reply
Thanks for posting. There are many things down this rabbithole and I hadn't seen pico.sh before.

The github repo has the sources for the backend, but the services themselves are accessible over https at eg: pico.sh, prose.sh, pastes.sh, pgs.sh

Onboarding to the free stuff is easy by sshing with an existirng Identity to pico.sh, which creates subdomains for you at the various services above.

The central idea is to expose a whole bunch of simple services using SSH for auth and for tunneling, and occasionally rsync as a file-transport. While this may not be an efficient way to run high-traffic services, it's a great way to stand up simple back-of-house tools and I wish more people were doing things like this.

Love the aesthetic and the commitment to proving this out.

[+] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
One description they provide for all of this is:

> We think of pico.sh as a hacker lab where we can experiment with new ways to interact with the web.

[+] INTPenis|1 year ago|reply
"For hackers" haha.

I have three lines in a CI definition and a git command and I'm publishing my site. Am I a hacker?

[+] oarsinsync|1 year ago|reply
I think they use “hacker” in the sense of a person who is curious about how systems works and will expend their own effort to understanding it.

Based on the comments on this thread, you likely are, given that the vast majority of people are dunking on how difficult it is to understand, while you’ve distilled it down to a workflow already.

Or to put it another way, you underestimate yourself, and possibly overestimate everyone else.

[+] Black616Angel|1 year ago|reply
This project is terrible at telling, what it does.

At first I thought, this was some Pi Pico shell-stuff with a web-interface, but the site doesn't really tell.

It's proprietary in a way, tries to seem open sourcey?

Gives you a way to have a static website or blog hosted?

I am still not sure, what they do, but they have a plus-tier which requires you to ssh-forward the port 1337, so they are hackers at least...