11–20 of 54 posts
What the author wants does exist already: Retroshare is a secure p2p communication platform you can install on your computer. It even uses Bittorrent's DHT to speed up connecting to peers. You can also install it on your server and use its web interface (recently rebuilt with Mithril.js). Retroshare development started 10 years ago. PRs welcome: https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare
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[CORRECTION/RETRACTION]: I misunderstood ipfs. You can totally edit your DAG in ipfs (which gives you "delete" ability). So Yes cypherpunks01 is completely right. The explanation of how you do "deletes" in a DAG still stands. [Original comment:] ipfs doesn't have delete. It's basically a global immutable data store. Brilliantly well suited for a "permanent web" but not well suited for the kind of communication where…
Isn't the purpose of any merkle-dag infrastructure to be an immutable data store? How does hypercore support editing in this way?
Posted on Medium, a central, private, for-profit publishing platform. Oh the irony.
Posted on Medium, a central, private, for-profit publishing platform. Oh the irony.
+1. And you read it because you're visiting hackernews (also central, private, for-profit). It's a systemic problem. That's why we need new tools that let us operate outside that system.
Also, HN isn't for-profit (although YC is). Like, yeah, it's not a non-profit, but it's not designed to make any money either.
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+1. And you read it because you're visiting hackernews (also central, private, for-profit). It's a systemic problem. That's why we need new tools that let us operate outside that system.
But how would I discover content if I didn't use HN? Is there a way to aggregate and rank content without an authoritative server? Also, HN isn't for-profit (although YC is). Like, yeah, it's not a non-profit, but it's not designed to make any money either.
Something like RSS: Pick up all posts tagged such and such from these users.
I've thought a bit about this and if we really wanted to we could get really far with just a few hundred lines of code as well as some html templates.
Problem is, most people like facebook and instagram :-/
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But how would I discover content if I didn't use HN? Is there a way to aggregate and rank content without an authoritative server? Also, HN isn't for-profit (although YC is). Like, yeah, it's not a non-profit, but it's not designed to make any money either.
> Is there a way to aggregate and rank content without an authoritative server? Something like RSS: Pick up all posts tagged such and such from these users. I've thought a bit about this and if we really wanted to we could get really far with just a few hundred lines of code as well as some html templates. Problem is, most people like facebook and instagram :-/
The thing about HN is voting and comments, both of which require manual moderation to be effective.
Posted on Medium, a central, private, for-profit publishing platform. Oh the irony.
+1. And you read it because you're visiting hackernews (also central, private, for-profit). It's a systemic problem. That's why we need new tools that let us operate outside that system.
All the tools to create personal websites existed more than 20 years ago. They haven't disappeared.
If anything they're probably cheaper, easier to find and to configure now, and also, more diverse, slicker, have more features, etc... And as pointed out by others, distributed social networks have existed for probably about ten years now.
And yes, the fact that the author chose to publish this pompous trite on medium is laughable.
I think it's a fundamental problem with how you approach the relationship with a service like that: They give you a Terms of Service, or what you're allowed to do to be able to use that service. I think we need to flip that around entirely and instead mandate that Facebook has to ask, explicitly, for everything. And more importantly there need to be serious consequences for when those rules are violated. Every relationship with a network of any kind starts at a position of they own everything, and then they tell you what you actually own and I think it's backwards. We should start from a position of we own everything, and this is what you're ALLOWED to take and use.
I think that's far more feasible to do than a distributed Facebook. Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's a shorter route and betters the relationship we have with the things and companies we do business with overall.
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> Is there a way to aggregate and rank content without an authoritative server? Something like RSS: Pick up all posts tagged such and such from these users. I've thought a bit about this and if we really wanted to we could get really far with just a few hundred lines of code as well as some html templates. Problem is, most people like facebook and instagram :-/
RSS doesn't really have a method for 3rd parties to rank content, does it? The thing about HN is voting and comments, both of which require manual moderation to be effective.
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Isn't the purpose of any merkle-dag infrastructure to be an immutable data store? How does hypercore support editing in this way?
If you append to a merkle-dag then yes it's immutable, but you can always do the equivalent of a git rebase -- effectively removing a portion of the tree and then selectively re-applying the parts that you want to keep. That creates a new DAG, one that diverges from the DAG that was shared before. For example, if you accidentally commit a database password into your git repository and push it to github, you can go ba…
Consider the internet to be write only, forget maybe (you are not in control of that). If you accidentally commit a password someplace the correct response is changing that password.