Hey everyone!

I figured it was time to write another update on what we are working on at pico headquarters.

A wild company appears #

Firstly, we created a company: pico.sh LLC. We will be slowly updating all the documentation to mention the company across all of our services and sites.

The reason we created an LLC is because we plan to offer paid services, starting with pgs.sh and tuns.sh.

We are still figuring out all the details but we are slowly building the billing and pricing engines to support what we are tentatively calling pico pro.

If you are interested in reading more about pico pro then feel free to read our latest RFC for pico pro.

Data transfer updates #

We want to make it as easy for users to transfer files (whether it is prose posts, imgs, or static sites) to pico. With that effort comes a couple delightful changes we recently deployed to all our services.

Better sftp support #

We now fully support SFTP to data transfer, including connecting to any of our services using SFTP. For example:

sftp prose.sh

This will drop you into an interactive terminal where you can manipulate your blog posts!

Better rsync support #

pgs.sh is a zero-dependency static site hosting service for hackers. pgs requires recursive uploads of static files and with it comes better integration between pico and rsync.

With pgs users can now run the following command to recursively deploy a static site:

rsync -rv src/ <user>@pgs.sh:/<project>

With this work we also made it possible to only upload files that have changed between src and dest.

We also improved error handling when a user attempts to use an rsync option that isn't supported (e.g. compression is not supported).

IRC bouncer and chat client #

If you didn't already know, we use IRC for all of our comms. Antonio and I are very active in #pico.sh. We also recently deployed an IRC bouncer and web chat client free to all pico users. We know IRC has some rough edges when it comes to persisting chat history and "always only" functionality so we decided to self-host an IRC bouncer (soju) and a web client (gamja) to make it easier for users to participate in the pico ecosystem.

Please read the previous blog post on using pico to connect to these services.

pastes.sh updates #

pastes.sh is the easiest to use a pastebin on the planet. You don't need to install any tools, all you need is an SSH key loaded into pico and you have the ability to upload files or content into our pastebin.

We have been experimenting with different ways to manage content in the pico ecosystem without requiring a user login and password. With this comes SSH commands. We have always supported the ability for users to pipe contents to pastes.sh/help#pipe.

1echo "hi there" | ssh pastes.sh hello.txt

But now we support the ability to:

• Set expiration date (or even never expire a paste)
• Set the paste to unlisted (e.g. hidden)

1echo "hi there" | ssh pastes.sh hello.txt expires=false
2echo "hi there" | ssh pastes.sh hello.txt expires=1h
3echo "hi there" | ssh pastes.sh hello.txt hidden=true
4echo "hi there" | ssh pastes.sh hello.txt expires=10d hidden=true

Try it out and let us know what you think!

prose.sh style updates #

As you can see with this post, we have updated some of the styles on prose.sh. The primary changes were to make headers a little more obvious when scrolling through a blog post with many different heading sizes. This gives our headers a little more impact and stand out more when reading a post.

Web Tunnels #

Finally, we think we have stumbled upon a brand new way to authenticate users for the web.

What if you could use an SSH key to log into a website?

This has been attempted before, and Chrome's passkeys are a step in that direction, but it requires browser specific APIs to be implemented. Further there's no way to backup your passkeys except for company sanctioned mechanisms like iCloud. This sucks for the end-user because they don't own the keys. This feature is clearly targeting non-developers. We think we have a mechanism to support passwordless logins while still keeping the user in control. Further, we think this new mechanism could also allow users to authenticate to pico services on their mobile devices.

We are still in the planning phase, but keep an eye out for more information on this topic as we slowly begin to tease a revolutionary new authentication mechanism for the web, just for developers.

We are just getting started #

We are excited to get these changes out to users because we love using pico services; we use them everyday. We hope you enjoy them as well and would love any feedback from the pico community.