Live data from Hacker News

Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

nasdaq.com

21–30 of 414 posts

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#22
post #5

> “The DNS is like a phonebook for the internet. The addresses in the phonebook are the server IP addresses. DNS was created to give IP addresses human-readable names so with our platform, you’re finding the IP address through Handshake, not through a certificate authority ,” Namebase CEO Tieshun Roquerre told CoinDesk. (Emphasis mine.) Did this Namebase CEO just state on record that he doesn’t know how DNS works?

Followed by this: 'Handshake is “is effectively a decentralized domain name server,” Roquerre said.' -- thus implying that DNS is NOT decentralized? The article is pretty bad. For his sake, I hope they are taking his quotes out of context. Because I had a quick look at https://www.namebase.io/ -- and it does look interesting. It appears that they have decentralized the REGISTRY by putting it on the "Handshake" blockchain.

Can I configure my resolver to use this "Handshake" blockchain?

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#23

Just tried to download and install handshake. Requires docker. Just tried to download and install docker on windows 7, failed install, requires more stuff. Opinion: This will never become a realization until these people realize the average Joe is not going to jump through all these hoops just to get an alternative browser up and running. It should be simple and seamless. Less than 1% will bother with all this.

Get a VirtualBox VM running Linux, and take it from there.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#24
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he meant was that the domain resolution can be validated using the blockchain as opposed to needing a centralized/single actor certificate authority.

I think the point is that certificates are built on top of DNS, not the other way around. Domain resolution does not require certificate authorities.

Exactly. It doesn’t require strictly from a protocol sense, but from a security perspective you do want to validate certificates ON TOP as you said.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#26

Just tried to download and install handshake. Requires docker. Just tried to download and install docker on windows 7, failed install, requires more stuff. Opinion: This will never become a realization until these people realize the average Joe is not going to jump through all these hoops just to get an alternative browser up and running. It should be simple and seamless. Less than 1% will bother with all this.

Docker does not work on non-professional versions of Windows. Was very annoying as a student. EDIT: Seems that progress has lead to this no longer being true.

you can run docker using WSL/WSL2 but you will need to enable hyper-v on win10.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#27
post #15

Essentially, isn't this just another domain registrar (Namebase.io) providing a few TLDs, following a much more complicated process, the advantage being a much more solid DNS entry substitute? If you run a high-traffic site, won't you still be at the mercy of hosting providers, CDN providers, etc.? Related question: Is there a true uncensorable (sic) protocol for hosting a website?

freenet comes to mind but it's manyyears ago that I've looked into it. the experience than was rather lacking. other means might be an .onion site but I'm sure that a high traffic site is another beast

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#28

Just tried to download and install handshake. Requires docker. Just tried to download and install docker on windows 7, failed install, requires more stuff. Opinion: This will never become a realization until these people realize the average Joe is not going to jump through all these hoops just to get an alternative browser up and running. It should be simple and seamless. Less than 1% will bother with all this.

You can use nextdns.io which has an option to resolve handshake domains.

Other options also provided in the docs: https://learn.namebase.io/starting-from-zero/how-to-access-h...

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can only guess their motivations and who pulls their (Twitter's) strings behind the scenes. I am not sure that most of us here will ever find out.

And even if we do, we will never know for sure.

And even if we knew, we can never talk about it.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#30

Just tried to download and install handshake. Requires docker. Just tried to download and install docker on windows 7, failed install, requires more stuff. Opinion: This will never become a realization until these people realize the average Joe is not going to jump through all these hoops just to get an alternative browser up and running. It should be simple and seamless. Less than 1% will bother with all this.

Does the average Joe really reads articles from sci-hub ? The target public of sci-hub should be able to understand how to install a couple programs imo.

Windows 7 has reached EOL a year ago (minus two days), so yeah, maybe it's not very well supported...

Post reply on HN