alt Hacker News> Last year, we decided that we wouldn’t realistically be able to solve these issues and so we reluctantly decided to shut down the project.
If these are actually the problems, then why not throw 200 dollars of GPT 5.6 at these instead of shutting it down? Were these systematic problems (Apple/Google hegemony, for example) that couldn't be beat with code?
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Fighting complex technical and non-technical issues "with code" may be the most programmer way of thinking about things.
To begin with, that 200 dollars need to come from somewhere. Are you going to personally contribute to that 200 dollars? If not, someone needs to find money from somewhere. Then, I can assure you it's going to be much more than 200 dollars before you realize it.
I don't get why you're being downvoted for that. It's a fair question.
In my opinion, the answer is that it's just a lot more complicated than it may sound. Using an AI may make them more productive, sure, but it will still be a lot of work.
It feels like they just haven't reached critical mass. Briar is a great idea, but if not enough people are willing to use it (and donate to it), then it cannot succeed, right? And the fact that they considered rewriting it from scratch means that it's not only a question of user base: there are fundamental problems that aren't easily solved.
P2P is just hard, as proven by the fact that there is almost no example of successful P2P system in the wild.
Because it is security-critical code. Throwing 200 dollars at anything that isn't a competent human developer is not only a waste of money, but will tarnish a very reputable project.
I agree. These are classic problems where LLMs really shine. I would be very surprised if GPT-5.6 couldn't fix them.
It's a privacy-focused application for secure communication, last place you want slop.
Try it. The AI will probably tell you that it's, of course, doable. You would have to start by making your own AOSP distribution and require an unlocked bootloader to even attempt to install it. You definitely can throw an AI agent at the problem, but a) it'll be significantly more than $200, no matter how you cut it; b) you'll end up with tens to hundreds of kloc of AI-generated code in a security-conscious context; and c) you can forget about having more than a handful of the most desperate users[1]. Both b) and c) are fatal for a project like this.
The locking down of the Android platform, IME, is a massive, decade-long process[2] with "full speed ahead" corporate backing. Even just a few years ago, you could maybe code around some of the restrictions (if supported by users going into settings and tapping some checkboxes); today it's impossible even with root. To get working "push notifications" outside of the official channel, you need to hack the support into the OS - or accept that you probably will get the notification, but it can be anytime from a few minutes to a quarter hour before your app receives it.
[1] In which case, making them use tens of thousands of AI-generated code "for security" is a clear moral hazard you probably don't want to walk into.
[2] I don't want to judge whether it's a move in the right direction or not - that's a separate matter. But it is happening.