If you could buy a USB that you could plug into any laptop / pc and boot a temporary instance directly from a URL that included latest version of a lightweight OS, nostr relay, LN node, BTC node, etc. All on the flash and RAM db and it never touched the HDD/SSD.
And when you shut it down it wiped the USB back to iPXE boot loader only, and double delete the address space. So that you could take this thing through airports and spin up anywhere in the world…
Would anyone be interested in that?
👀👀👀
Yes. What’s the base, puppy? AntiX?
Some dudes at the last bolt.fun managed to run a lightning node as a wasm blob in the browser.
That’s impressive.
Sounds good! But what would be the difference with the Tails distribution?
Well…
Tails has a 1.3GB OS ISO on the USB. If someone find the USB they can see that it is tails.
I’m talking about nothing on the USB except kernel init, and booting an OS from a URL using the iPXE method.
The iPXE boot is only 4.2mb.
You could boot different machines/states from different URL’s. You can boot a tiny core OS (I can find distros that are as small as 16mb) or Tails, or Denbian, or any OS you want. You could boot a different OS every time, just by using a different URL.
You can boot any image, with whatever setup you require.
You could update the URL images so that they are always current and latest security patches so that you NEVER boot with known vulnerabilities.
It’s a bit weird, yes, but it’s Friday and I’m thinking about stuff that could be done.
Oooo Slax would be perfect for this
Slax IS perfect for this. Very interesting.
Would you enable or disable the persistent save? Nothing saves to the host computer, only the usr file on the usb stick
Pro - you can boot and go with your settings but if someone got a hold of it could be bad. I guess you encrypt the drive
Con - having to cold start each time with settings is a pain
I wouldn’t have persistent save on the device.
I’m booting from a URL, I am booting from WAN aka the internet. Suggest any persistent data should be encrypted and stored over the internet.
The USB has nothing except kernel init and boot loader firmware, 4.2mb in total.
You physically possess nothing.
No data not even an OS.
Ah I see. Very clever
Could you trust the sauce?
It’s a good question. It depends on the use case.
But you could host your own images.
You could have multiple boot URL options each for different tasks.
If the image was small enough <4MB could theoretically embed into the timechain?
Yes, I think you can do crazy things with iPXE and decentralised networks.
You can pop up anywhere, connect to anything, do your thing and then disappear again without a trace.
YES
This is what I’ve been looking at…
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