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GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

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Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the cheapness of CPUs networking and storage I’m still amazed that there isn’t a revolution in hardware offerings for single purpose boxes. If you need photo storage you should be able to walk into any store and buy something the size of an external hard drive that you can just plug into your router and it just works. Same thing for email, private messaging, social networking, calendars, whatever. Most people do…

Actually, alas, the challenge here is the durability of storage. Changing a disc out and synchronising its contents is out of reach for average joe, and nothing is foolproof enough. The cloud is about giving up responsibility, and sadly most people give it up gladly

These devices could be sold with access to an encrypted back up service so you can have you local data and search it and it's encrypted locally before being sent to an off-site back up. But then you get into those businesses going under, people not maintaining thier accounts, companies who do not actually encrypt because users really want cloud access at the end of the day, etc.

When I think of something that we should be able to do but can't ("I just want a button to do X" type requirements) it is usually apparent why that doesn't exist if I give it some thought.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#42
post #41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, alas, the challenge here is the durability of storage. Changing a disc out and synchronising its contents is out of reach for average joe, and nothing is foolproof enough. The cloud is about giving up responsibility, and sadly most people give it up gladly

These devices could be sold with access to an encrypted back up service so you can have you local data and search it and it's encrypted locally before being sent to an off-site back up. But then you get into those businesses going under, people not maintaining thier accounts, companies who do not actually encrypt because users really want cloud access at the end of the day, etc. When I think of something that we shou…

I don’t think site security is the main concern for the average person when it comes to this use case. They run the same risk with all of their physical possessions and there are existing solutions for this eg firesafes. Making sure that drive failure doesn’t wipe out your photos or files would be more important. Multiple redundant drives are the solution. If each is a small SSD and plug and play it’s something anyone could handle by just buying a new drive and swapping it out. Physical data appliances need to be as simple as a lamp. Plug it in, turn it on and occasionally replace a light bulb.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#43

I don’t understand the need for crypto and/or a global user name. I’m “withinboredom” in a lot of places and it doesn’t bother me when someone gets there first. I also have other names that are better well known, but I digress. Why not just stick a txt record on a domain? You can clone gittorrent://awesome.withinboredom.info. You can easily find a valid gpg key for me in the usual places.

Honestly some hash or public key would probably work fine. "withinboredom" means nothing to me (no offense) and it would be easy to add your ID as a contact or git remote and never deal with it again.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#44

Wouldn't an activitypub[1] type of github be the perfect solution? Like Mastadon or Peertube but for git. Anyone can setup their own hosting and interconnect to others. There can be global index like peertube is building and spam can be dealt with on each instance. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

This is being worked on: "ForgeFed" https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#45

This project really needs more attention. Would have resolved the issue we had earlier today. Some others ideas: * Write a client in C, JS sucks * Make a web-frontend for this so average users can jump on quickly.

I understand the sentiment “JS sucks,” but not in relation to C for most things. Modern js is rather nice in syntax, and quite performant in V8. Heck, you can transpile it to C with Bellard’s QuickJS (or just compile directly to binary) if there’s some C library interop that your comment is based on (although nodejs has a perfectly good C++ plugin system for this).

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#46
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the cheapness of CPUs networking and storage I’m still amazed that there isn’t a revolution in hardware offerings for single purpose boxes. If you need photo storage you should be able to walk into any store and buy something the size of an external hard drive that you can just plug into your router and it just works. Same thing for email, private messaging, social networking, calendars, whatever. Most people do…

Actually, alas, the challenge here is the durability of storage. Changing a disc out and synchronising its contents is out of reach for average joe, and nothing is foolproof enough. The cloud is about giving up responsibility, and sadly most people give it up gladly

I think doing some peer to peer striping should solve this. Selling a 3TB that only uses 2TB with an extra $5 to pay for a matchmaking service for 20 years.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#47
post #6

another promising project: https://pijul.org/

I believe the main developer of pijul has temporarily made his work closed-source for the past few years while he rewrites it to avoid receiving issues while it's unfinished. Looks like it's supposed to release soon, though [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/pijul_org/status/1319159283938983936

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#48
post #9

Hi! I'm the GitTorrent author. It feels strange to have it show up on the front page whenever GitHub does something bad, more than five years later. Bitcoin and BitTorrent v1 were plausible substrates in 2015, but no longer. I think Radicle ( https://radicle.xyz ) is the project most deserving of attention at the moment. The hardest thing about such a project is economic: how do you handle issue/comment spammers? Or…

How does this compare with having a Github/Sourcehut like "website" hosted via IPFS? It appears that Git's versioning model might be nicely compatible with IPFS.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#49
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, because it is truly innovative - and you're mostly in uncharted waters. We're at peak cloud right now, and what projects such as yours offer is a glimpse into the post-cloud future. We're going to look back and say - what were we thinking when we decided to move compute and personal data storage into datacenters while carrying powerful supercomputers in our pockets. Add: > And what happens when someone fo…

With the cheapness of CPUs networking and storage I’m still amazed that there isn’t a revolution in hardware offerings for single purpose boxes. If you need photo storage you should be able to walk into any store and buy something the size of an external hard drive that you can just plug into your router and it just works. Same thing for email, private messaging, social networking, calendars, whatever. Most people do…

Aren't you describing a NAS?

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub (2015)

#50
post #9

Hi! I'm the GitTorrent author. It feels strange to have it show up on the front page whenever GitHub does something bad, more than five years later. Bitcoin and BitTorrent v1 were plausible substrates in 2015, but no longer. I think Radicle ( https://radicle.xyz ) is the project most deserving of attention at the moment. The hardest thing about such a project is economic: how do you handle issue/comment spammers? Or…

I'm lost browsing the radicle website and all its links. Ultimately, I found https://github.com/radicle-dev/radicle-link , following the link "browse the protocol", which mentions: "WORK IN PROGRESS - In fact, there is nothing substantial to see here yet". Is it a yet unreleased software? (that would explain why I can't find a way to try it out). If it's the case and if anyone from the project is reading this, it wou…

But web of trust hasn't been very successful in practice. It's the usual reason quoted [citation needed] for the failure of PGP/GPG to become a mainstream success.

Keybase's approach is more scalable, but it's still centralized.

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