pokcup / whispers Goto Github PK

100 Million Books exists to bring serendipity & unrestricted freedom back to book discovery, just like the old days before algorithms took over with social networks and search engines. Several thousand people already use the Chrome extension and Android app.

The service also serves as a critique of modern media and the damage it's done to discourse on current affairs. Check out Why and A More Medium Medium to learn more.

To maximize the integrity of this environment of intellectual freedom, user privacy is a top priority. That's a big reason this source code is open, and we'll continue to open access to other client code, server code, and underlying data as we can.

Whispers is a desktop client for the 100 Million Books service. It offers discreet notifications of meaningful ideas from random books throughout the day. You'll probably miss most of them, which is intended (the goal is to blend in with your work, not distract you from it), but the ones you do notice may open your mind to ideas & inspiration you wouldn't have seen anywhere else.

Here's an example of a notification:

Did you catch it? It appeared for a split second on the bottom right: greyscale, no graphics, and slightly translucent. Very easy to miss. If you prefer, you can configure the notification to show even more briefly.

But if you do happen to catch the notification, and if it sparks your interest, you can hop over to the program window to see more detail:

This program is currently in beta, meaning it's an early release. Although it's been tested across a number of machines, it may not be very stable.

Please send feedback! You can submit an issue here, send an email, or tweet.

None of the install files are signed. macOS and Windows will complain, but I sign every commit and release here with a GPG key which you can verify is mine on Keybase.

Furthermore, you can verify the integrity of the install files with the .sig files bundled in each release.

Thus you can be confident the install files are safe for your computer. Otherwise, you're welcome to inspect the code and build the program yourself with the steps outlined below.

If you're on a Debian-based distribution, you'll be better off using the .deb binary. If you use the .AppImage binary, the program won't start automatically when you log in (unless you manually tweak the startup path...since an AppImage is basically a portable program, the OS won't know what file to execute upon logging in unless you specify it).

To build, make sure you have npm and yarn. By habit I use npm for development, but the build tool works best with yarn. You might be able to get with using yarn for everything, but I haven't tried that.

In any case, this works:

1. Run npm install.
2. Then run yarn.
3. Make sure build settings in package.json are to your liking.
4. Run yarn dist. You'll find what you want in /dist.

Whispers is free software, licensed under Version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License.

In short, this means you can fork this repository and do anything you'd like with it. If you distribute your changes, you must:

1. Publish your changes under the same license. This ensures the software remains free.
2. Use a name that's substantially different from "Whispers" and "100 Million Books" as well as a logo that is not similar to the one at the top of this document. This allows for competition without confusion.

See LICENSE for complete details.