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Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

blog.sia.tech

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Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#161
post #78
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step is to fight the idea of "illegal content". Bits are just bits, some just upset the elites, just like nipples.

And some of it is child porn. Does that only upset the elites?

Open questions :

1) If childporn was not banned, how many people would consume that content anyway?

2) What about hyper-photorealistic childporn movies with fictional characters and future rendering technologies? How will you tell the video is true or not and worth to be removed?

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#162
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that censorship resistance is a key value proposition for decentralized file storage. So its agnostic handling of illegal content is a feature, not a bug.

I wonder about whether it's right to be renting your storage space away without knowing what it's being used for. I don't want to directly contribute toward bad things happening.

It's fine then because you'd only be indirectly contributing. Just like paying your taxes or buying fast food and clothes.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#163
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they verify that a host can actually store all of the data?

Ajedi32 is not correct. Data is verified probabilistically on the Sia network. The blockchain has access to the Merkle root of the data that the host is supposed to be storing. The blockchain will request that the host provide a 64 byte segment of the data (chosen randomly) along with a Merkle proof that the data is part of the Merkle root. If the host can provide the data and the proof, the host is rewarded as thoug…

How often are they queried, and what percentage of the payment is the punishment?

A bad host could only store, say, 1/3 of the data that they say they are, and play the odds that they are storing the requested random chunk.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#164
post #74

> Today it is possible to purchase a refurbished 1 TB hard drive for about $20 — so buyers are essentially paying Amazon each month the entire cost of the hard drives used to store their data! What a refurbished hard disk does not give you: - Redundant storage - Redundant power/network/etc. - Geographic distribution - A network API - Any networking, or uplinks at all - Access control - A team ensuring the reliability…

I think the use-case of cloud storage is mostly marketing by cloud provides to show relevance to the consumer. They are are loss leaders at best; used to lock you in to their services / track your every move; at worst.

I think the comparison with a $20 1TB hdd is perfect. Cloud providers, and phone makers, have convinced you to have your photos, music, data, online, always. Like a bank. Among other things, its much easier to mine your usage patterns that way and enforce DRM of other cloud services.

I have my IDE PC drive from 20 years ago. It still works. I can burn a CD if im that worried about failure. I dont need the redundancy of a billion user website, a networking api, access control, all that other crap you use in enterprises that comply with ISO standards.

Before cloud providers, people didnt take their photos to Apple and tell them to store them. The only reason u do it now, is because of marketing and service integration.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#166
post #64

These ideas are all the wrong direction to decentralize. We don't need more layers and more complexity and more blockchains, we need simple, reliable, accessible household appliances. For storage, for sharing, for posting. Please stop adding layers and layers of calculations, it's a waste of energy.

From what I understand, right now these projects are working on the backbone of the systems. In the future, other developers will be able to create services on top of these platforms to resell the storage space. So maybe someone will have an online cloud hosting service with a simple drag and drop online interface. They will charge a fee to the customer and the website operator will simply buy storage contracts on SIA or similar providers to provide the actual hosting and distribution of the files.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#167
post #78
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step is to fight the idea of "illegal content". Bits are just bits, some just upset the elites, just like nipples.

And some of it is child porn. Does that only upset the elites?

Technological progress will not stop because some people abuse the technology.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#168

Hi all, author here, just wanted to say I am thrilled to see the HN community discuss decentralized cloud storage in more detail. There are many drawbacks today and narrow use-cases, but our goal is to continue to improve Sia – and over the coming years we will prove that decentralized storage can compete directly with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. We feel confident that the marketplace dynamics, in particular, will…

Pretty arrogant to say you're going to make cloud storage providers obsolete when you haven't even built a competing solution. You can't even share data yet... And what about all the other features that cloud providers offer? You say "[the] Sia software is exponentially improving, and performance and featureset is quickly approaching Amazon S3", but I see absolutely no evidence of even the most basic features of clou…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#169
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storj was a brilliant idea then suddenly someone put blockchain into it.

You can use storj to host your files without using blockchain. I think they accept credit cards directly. Also storj is doing a lot to make sure only reliable hosts are allowed to continue to operate on the network. If you aren't serious about having a reliable hosting node then you'll eventually get booted from the network.

> You can use storj to host your files without using blockchain

Can you use storj to host anything at all, regardless of blockchain? As far as I can tell they don’t have a product in the market.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#170
post #93
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they say their intent is to compete on price with S3 / CDNs, it seems possible to be able to download a file without having permissions to delete that file. If that were not the case, then Sia would be limited to personal backup only.

It's confusing, because they refer to themselves as a potential competitor to S3 several times in the linked article, but I thought I read somewhere that conceptually what they're building is actually just the data persistence layer of a service like S3? A complete S3-like service would require a third-party tool on top of Sia. Goobox[1], for example, uses sia as a storage backend and provides an S3-compatible API[2]…

A complete S3 service on top of Sia is what SiaPrime[0] is doing.

[0] - https://siaprime.net/

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