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HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

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131–140 of 227 posts

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#131

Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…

Because IPFS uses a distributed hash table like Bittorent, you don't have to know where stuff is--that's the problem with the HTTP, which is location addressed. IPFS is content addressed—the hash is the location. You never host anything unless you want to; you don't host random stuff. It's 2017, if you're using Google Docs or an instant messenger program and lose access to the backbone, you can't communicate with som…

"You never host anything unless you want to; you don't host random stuff."

Then explain that to the author of TFA, because they seem to imagine that websites and whatnot are just somehow going to be out there forever with IPFS, without having to rely on one's server. In reality, unless the content is popular and anyone's bothering to replicate it, it's going to still fall off the internet the moment the server's down in an IPFS-based web.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#132

Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…

Exactly, it's like how bittorrent doesn't work at all.

Bittorrent sure the Hell doesn't work anything like TFA imagines IPFS working...

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#133

Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…

Nobody is saying we can't or shouldn't have servers. "But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus?" The same people who do this now. Because nothing in this scheme says you can't have servers just like you do now. The difference is that you don't need a server to get started collaborating. If you want to host something to have it available offline, that's a built in featur…

"Because nothing in this scheme says you can't have servers just like you do now."

Pretty much all the defenders of IPFS here give me the impression they haven't bothered to read the article hyping IPFS that's linked at the top of this page.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#134

I need to comment because people are missing the point... there's nothing in this text that says the web won't need servers. Imagine that you and some friends want to launch a small local business and need to host a website. Instead of paying to host it "up in the cloud", why not plug a few raspberry pi's into the walls at each of your houses? Between that and also seeding it from your laptops, the site should have d…

> Imagine that you and some friends want to launch a small local business and need to host a website. Instead of paying to host it "up in the cloud", why not plug a few raspberry pi's into the walls at each of your houses? Setup, updates, maintenance, tech support, and uptime guarantees, just to name a few reasons that "the cloud" is better. A service like Wordpress.com or Wix beats the self-hosted Pi on all of these…

You can abstract away the Pi and updates as easily as the cloud abstracts away everything. 90% of AWS users can't even figure or don't care about out how to distribute across multiple availability zones, much less data centers. Two Pis would be fine for 99% of this 90%.

Seems like the future to me, it's just not in any big tech company's best interest right now as they fight over data centers.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine that you and some friends want to launch a small local business and need to host a website. Instead of paying to host it "up in the cloud", why not plug a few raspberry pi's into the walls at each of your houses? Setup, updates, maintenance, tech support, and uptime guarantees, just to name a few reasons that "the cloud" is better. A service like Wordpress.com or Wix beats the self-hosted Pi on all of these…

I don't literally mean a Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is the Apple 2 of what I'm imagining. I'm talking about some next generation stuff, picture a Firestick with a much more refined iteration of sandstorm, with distributed apps that have hardly even been conceived of right today in 2017. If my roommate can plug a Roku into the TV, and knows how to use Ableton Live and Squarespace, there's absolutely no reason he could…

Extrapolating the needs of business owners from your roommates behavior sounds like a winner ;-)

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#136
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering that too. There isn't much allure to it beyond "our hosting/CDN will be cheaper if we let the customers pay for it". If anything it weakens privacy a little, since any mean-spirited gremlin gets to snoop on who visits and hosts what.

> There isn't much allure to it beyond "our hosting/CDN will be cheaper if we let the customers pay for it". This is a very business/customer-centric perspective. What about resistance to censorship, ease of sharing without relying on central third-parties, resistance to linkrot of non-commercial content or even content from a business that went under, etc?

Censorship resistance is illusory without any anonymity. It'd make me a little sad if anyone gets into IPFS because of its censorship resistance when freenet and tor hidden services already exist. The central third party is preferable to potentially anyone being able to start logging who is viewing a given piece of content.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#137
post #24

Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…

- Even assuming all this, a hybrid approach of HTTP + IPFS (or DAT) is still better than what we have now, since IPFS is essentially a worldwide CDN for static files.(Sorry: an inter-planetary one.) - The content-addressing aspect makes it perfect for distributing commonly used libraries. - We already cache all this content locally. What a waste! Why do I have to fetch jQuery from fricking California when it's sittin…

Why do I have to fetch jQuery from fricking California when it's sitting on my girlfriend's phone in the other room?

Just for one? Because, if you have the ability to do that, your girlfriend's phone has the ability to detect whether anybody nearby is accessing any arbitrary file or page. It just has to host a copy of that page and see whether anyone pulls it.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine that you and some friends want to launch a small local business and need to host a website. Instead of paying to host it "up in the cloud", why not plug a few raspberry pi's into the walls at each of your houses? Setup, updates, maintenance, tech support, and uptime guarantees, just to name a few reasons that "the cloud" is better. A service like Wordpress.com or Wix beats the self-hosted Pi on all of these…

I don't literally mean a Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is the Apple 2 of what I'm imagining. I'm talking about some next generation stuff, picture a Firestick with a much more refined iteration of sandstorm, with distributed apps that have hardly even been conceived of right today in 2017. If my roommate can plug a Roku into the TV, and knows how to use Ableton Live and Squarespace, there's absolutely no reason he could…

But you still have all maintenance related problems? How do you upgrade a hard disk or memory, go to their home? What happens if their home net is down or slow, no one can visit the site? Back in the days I was running a few web servers from my office directly, and it's a lot of extra work that is just not worth it.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't literally mean a Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is the Apple 2 of what I'm imagining. I'm talking about some next generation stuff, picture a Firestick with a much more refined iteration of sandstorm, with distributed apps that have hardly even been conceived of right today in 2017. If my roommate can plug a Roku into the TV, and knows how to use Ableton Live and Squarespace, there's absolutely no reason he could…

But you still have all maintenance related problems? How do you upgrade a hard disk or memory, go to their home? What happens if their home net is down or slow, no one can visit the site? Back in the days I was running a few web servers from my office directly, and it's a lot of extra work that is just not worth it.

Why would you need to upgrade a hard disk or memory?
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