beam
Infrastructure
remote file transfer
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
2 positive, 13 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 7 critical, out of 22 comments about the project. Thread score -0.27.
Idea: 0 for, 5 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 2 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Simple two-command setup with no binary to install
From 2 comments
No, because you have to install more crap. This thing is "already there" and it takes two commands. I like it a lot, tbh.
moralestapia on HN@kdsme9 I think this is great and you've done a great work putting it together and sharing it with us for free. Using the public key to match streams on both ends is super…
moralestapia on HN
Objections
Little advantage over ProxyJump or plain piping through SSH
From 3 comments
After reading the readme I’m confused what the advantage is over just regular piping. ‘’’ command-on-server1 | ssh user@server2 'command-on-server2' ‘’’
f-az on HNI don't see any advantage over plain "-o 'ProxyJump box.in.the.middle'"? I guess this is supposed to buffer things? But then again, that's what "tail -f" is for… More confused…
eqvinox on HNBut if you have ssh clients on both machines, you can use port forwarding to allow machine2 to connect to machine1 via ssh. Or you can connect both machines to the "SSH stun…
alanfranz on HN
Sending files through a public host raises privacy concerns
From 2 comments
This is a great way to send all of your files to the author of the utility / operator of the website.
Darkskiez on HNYeah, as with literally every other service in the web for the past 20 years.
moralestapia on HN
Requests
Document the use case more clearly in the readme
From 2 comments
That’s not clear in the readme. It might be worth explicating stating that this uses the SSH protocol but is designed to work on hosts that either dont have OpenSSH enabled or…
hnlmorg on HNThanks, makes sense. I'll update the readme.
ksdme9 on HN
Support automatic connection to the closest host
From 1 comment
It would be great for beam.ssh.camp to implement this (which would require no software, just configuring OpenSSH).
CGamesPlay on HN
Questions
Why not just ssh to the machine and use tail
From 1 comment
Huh? Why I cannot just ssh from machine 2 to machine 1 and just type `tail`?
whatever1 on HN
Alternatives named
magic-wormhole and portal
From 2 comments
Maybe better to use something like magic wormhole? https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole
lathiat on HNYup, wormhole and portal are better in most aspects. Beam is helpful when you have novel constraints like not being able to install arbitrary binaries, or if you have the need to…
ksdme9 on HN
socat over an SSH proxy
From 1 comment
I think a fully equivalent would be to use socat On Receiving Server ``` ssh user@proxy socat UNIX-RECVFROM:/tmp/foobar - ``` And then on sending server ``` ./foobar | ssh…
unsnap_biceps on HN
ssh-j.com
From 1 comment
This seems very similar to ssh-j.com (open source: https://bitbucket.org/ValdikSS/dropbear-sshj)
remram on HN
pipe.pico.sh
From 1 comment
I have used https://pipe.pico.sh/ for this. pico.sh also has a bunch of other SSH-accessible services, e.g. pastes, and paid (or free if self-hosted) port tunneling.
ilyagr on HN