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BitTorrent v2

blog.libtorrent.org

451–460 of 576 posts

Re: BitTorrent v2

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was good design to decouple the transfer protocol from the search protocol, to allow different technologies to be explored, but in practice people ended up relying on the "good enough" solution of using the web for search. Setting the precedent that media companies can seize domain names and force ISPs to block access to search engines if they don't like some of the search results (while ruining the lives of the p…

Yes. For all the P2P distributed praise ITT, torrent as a whole, as it is used in the real world, is very centralized. If the Pirate Bay is shut down, that stuff is gone. Uploading became a privilege, something that normal average people don't do. Earlier people ripped their own CDs, DVDs, magazine scans, digitized their VHS, recorded shows with their TV card etc. and shared these files. I don't know anybody who has…

Well, no. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, you still have the hashes and the files are invariably somewhere else too. That, and thousands upon thousands of backups of their database made by thousands of different people.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#452

Does anyone care to summarize the changes?

As far as I can see, TFA is the summary of the protocol changes. If you want a summary of TFA, I suggest reading each section's heading and first sentence or two. Possible exceptions are the hash trees and directory structure sections, which are more technical than user-facing (read all or none of them).

Not trying to be rude – I found the blog post rather informative and concise!

Re: BitTorrent v2

#453
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a tool that doesn't pitch that it's a P2P tool - it doesn't try to convince you with sob stories in how using P2P helps fight against the big bad evil web. Instead, you use it because it's genuinely the best at what it does: it being P2P is not a selling point, it's just how it happens to work, and that is exactly what it should be. This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products shou…

This is exactly the problem with all cryptocurrency currently. It’s a massive user experience issue, in the sense that users have to experience the technical bullshit of how the currencies work, completely missing the brilliant part of real money: it just works. I hand people money, they give me things. I swipe my credit card, I get things. I can’t remember who aid it originally, but there’s a great test you can give…

Its bottom up, those in a "first world" bubble dont notice its effects. Its already a revolution, banking the unbanked and those at the bottom of the dollar\euro tottem pole. Africa for example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-africa-...

Adoption will establish itself in Africa, S.America, Asia first.. and then it will compete head on with traditional western banking services.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#454
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Kosovo, Venezuela, El Salvador: these are all places where war and strife and economic turmoil and the Wests' sanctions have led a significant number of their citizens to use Bitcoin - and other cryptocurrencies - to manage their lives and feed themselves, and their families. It beggars belief that someone would so callously call the situation in these countries 'hypot…

> Please, inform yourself about the war and strife that is occurring outside your own bubble. User adamsea is informing himself, that's why he's asking a question here.

Yeah, I didn't see the questioning as "is there really war someplace right now?" but rather "is there really a place where you (or your grandparents) can get bread and milk for bitcoins when normal money collapsed?"

Re: BitTorrent v2

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this hypothetical situation you describe exist anywhere outside of the hypothetical situation posited by a character in a Neal Stephenson novel? Seriously in reality the specifics of any sort of wild situation like the one you describe matter. Which countries? Which currency? Which kind of illegal behavior? And (I ask out of ignorance) in this scenario you describe why would whatever group managing whatever bitc…

Argentina is literally in that situation now. The government charges a surplus 30% tax on any foreign currency purchase (cash, Netflix, anything outside the country), and only allows you to buy 200 usd a month legally. The inflation rate is over 50% there, Bitcoin is more stable than the Argentinian peso. Basically, the government has made it illegal for you to legally save money on a different currency than the Arge…

and yet, bitcoin use is still negligible.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#456
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's true that trying to buy/sell bitcoins via an exchange will subject you to AML requirements, but in-person transactions won't. Nobody does bitcoin transactions in person, at least not in America and not anyone I know. I have several bitcoins and the only way to use them is through an exchange like coinbase, who require the same identity documents that a bank does. You could argue “but you just have to find vend…

>Nobody does bitcoin transactions in person, at least not in America and not anyone I know. https://localbitcoins.com/ >You could argue “but you just have to find vendors who accept bitcoin!” But with 3 bitcoin I won’t find enough vendors to spend it on. There are also bitcoin-for-gift-card stores, which vastly expands your vendor options.

localbitcoins has KYC now

Re: BitTorrent v2

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be nice if it made QUIC and/or TCP-FO heavily recommended.

why?

For multiple reasons. QUIC or HTTP/3 is going to be the next web standard widely deployed. Getting mandatory encrypted UDP traffic that looks like web is a big benefit. TFO recommendation primarily because torrenting is big, the feature is not super well-known, it would be a chance to increase its adoption, need for its support and that would benefit the web in general.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#458
post #274
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been a few years, and despite a few attempts, I still don't really understand bitcoin. Yes yes ledgers and proof of work and yada yada, but I still don't know what I would need to do to buy something with bitcoin right now. As I understand I need to do something that's pretty much exactly like opening a bank account, but transactions take forever, they cost money, and the currency is not accepted by any busine…

>As I understand I need to do something that's pretty much exactly like opening a bank account Not really. If I want a bank account I need to fill out a page of paperwork requiring my name, address, social security number, citizenship information, income, occupation, date of birth, scans of various pieces of ID and/or other documents. Compare this to bitcoin where you only need to install an app, and new identities c…

> Credit cards aren't free either. The cost (around 2-3% in the US) is borne by the merchant.

In EU, regulation caps interchange fees at 0.2% of the transaction value for debit cards and at 0.3% for credit cards.

> "Free" bank transfers (eg. vemo, SEPA) are typically restricted to consumers, are often part of a bigger banking package, which have fees or minimum balance requirement

A bank that i use has free SEPA transfers, no montly fees and negligible minimum balance reqirements, both for consumer and business accounts.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nearly impossible to obfuscate a protocol to work around filtering. You'd want to look like some other protocol and you want that protocol be encrypted by default. Otherwise yours will get fingerprinted via the deep packet inspection. The most obvious choice is to run your protocol over TLS. But then they can just throttle long-lived bulky TLS connections where neither side is on 443. You can then require the re…

The problem is that most residential users don't care about upload speed. This allows ISPs to throttle uploads with very low risk of pissing off the bulk of their customer base when their detection algorithm gives a false positive.

Presumably this is changing somewhat with so many people working from home.
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