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HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

ipfs.io

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Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#131

Post by warkdarrior »

supperburg wrote: post #84

Just create an easy way to host stuff. Support a cultural shift toward dithered images and a universal text format. Make hiring a host cheap and easy and make hosting locally easy. Small sizes makes backing up easier and cheaper. Create a service where people can store a shard of the backup of the new internet and in return have their content added to the collective backup. I really think it’s about a cultural shift…

> file sizes need to be reigned in

Tell that to all of the content creators, corporate or not.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#132

Post by Ericson2314 »

adrianmonk wrote: post #27
Ericson2314 wrote: post #21

I like to explain it by comparing Amazon warehouses to the post office. Post office send black-box data point to to point. Amazon gets you thinggy matching SKU from arbitrary location.

I guess it would be hard to do chess-by-mail via Amazon warehouses/shipping. And I can't order a bank statement from Amazon.

Of course. One does not replace the other.

It's most like I think we should nationalize the Amazon warehouse system and put under the post office.

Perhaps both are valid interpretations of the US constitution's postal clause, "To establish Post Offices and post Roads" even!

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#133

Post by Ericson2314 »

yholio wrote: post #29
Ericson2314 wrote: post #21

I like to explain it by comparing Amazon warehouses to the post office. Post office send black-box data point to to point. Amazon gets you thinggy matching SKU from arbitrary location.

And therein lies the problem with content addressable networks: they make no sense in the economic world of the internet, where data transport and storage is not free, they make sense in a world owned by a single corporation.

Huh? The same efficiency gains should apply to both applications of content based routing.

I do think there is a natural monopoly, but that is just and argument for nationalizing things. (And agreements like there being one IP protocol or whatever.)

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#134

Post by kortilla »

noman-land wrote: post #50
jeroenhd wrote: post #3

I like IPFS, I really do, but whenever I try to use it, it's either too slow to become usable or sometimes it plain doesn't work. I pinned a whole bunch of files on IPFS a while back to experiment with it and the system seems to work, but every time I try to fetch those resources from a location that hasn't cached the content yet, it takes several seconds to show me the HTML/JSON/PNG files. HTTP may be inefficient fo…

I love IPFS. It's one of my favorite recent technologies, but I think people have unrealistic expectations about such a young idea. Decentralized tech doesn't work well until the network effects build up. IPFS has the interesting quality that the more popular a piece of content is, the easier it is to get ahold of. If millions of people were using IPFS, the most popular content would be being served by many thousands…

It’s not a young idea though. The basic technology for p2p networks has been around for decades. DHTs, voting, vouching, etc were all got academia topics like 10-20 years ago. It’s just engineering skills at this point.

I remember popcorntime was as responsive as Netflix at the time it came out and it scared the shit out of the MPAA so they killed it with prejudice.

IPFS doesn’t have an excuse for sucking beyond a basic lack of engineering effort.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#135

Post by kortilla »

azinman2 wrote: post #114
noman-land wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at any public tracker and you'll find torrents that are very old, swarming strong.

Along with those that have 0 seeders.

IPFS solved that by making sure even popular stuff is difficult to get.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#136

Post by retrac »

noman-land wrote: post #98
vangelis wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason private trackers have to incentivize keeping the long tail alive.

Look at any public tracker and you'll find torrents that are very old, swarming strong.

Survivor bias, there.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#137

Post by Ericson2314 »

anaphor wrote: post #8

Named-data networking is literally what this is describing, except NDN works as a replacement for TCP, not HTTP. In the long term I'd rather have it work at a lower level and not have to think about it much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqGEMQveoqg

Well IPFS, or else something like it, need to establish the network/utility, and then we can increasingly optimize it with dedicated stuff at lower layers. I don't think going straight to the hard parts is going to work without much more government policy to push through the investment -- seems strictly harder than going the 0-cost overlay-network only approach, because clearly we are demand-constrained not efficiency-constrained.

I was tipped off to https://twitter.com/_John_Handel/status/1443925299394134016 which I honestly think might be the approach to think about how networks in a broader sense than regular telecommunications are bootstrapped.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#138

Post by _8j50 »

How do you manage access control with IPFS? Just because someone knows a hash does not mean they are allowed to access the content.

EDIT: It seems [1] they want you to encrypt content and do access control outside of ipfs. Imagine ext4 telling you to do acl's on your own. To me, it is a little more than bittorrent without acls and at-rest confidentiality built-in.

[1] https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/376

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#139

Post by v_london »

Pretty interesting. A lot of people here are focusing on permanence, but for me the main difference on addressing by content vs by host name is the loss of authorship it opens up for the web. Since a research paper of essay is referred to by its hash, the owner effectively gives away all control of the work when it's first published. There will be no editing, no taking down unwanted work, and no real way to build an interactive website that allows dynamic linking to other materials by the author.

It's interesting how the same people promoting the "creator economy" also tend to promote the cryptocurrency space and IPFS without an ounce of self-awareness. IPFS sounds awful for creators of all kinds in the same way as BitTorrent was awful for artists. I can definitely see a use case for IPFS as a file storage for trustless systems such as smart contracts, which are designed as immutable, trustless systems.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#140

Post by Gigachad »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #62
adfrhgeaq5hy wrote: post #58

IPFS needs to decide what it wants to be. Is it about being a decentralized caching layer? Is it about permanently storing content? Is it about replacing my web server? Is it about replacing DNS? Is it about censorship resistance? Right now it does none of those things well. The client chews through CPU and memory when seemingly doing nothing. If I try to download content, it is far slower than BitTorrent unless I go…

Imagine if we said that about web sites at the begining. The Web needs to decide what it want to be? A plaftorm to sell stuff? Contact people? Write? Listen to music?

It's been 6 years now and IPFS is still stuck with the same problems it had at the start with no real pathway to being useful. Most technology does something useful early on. I don't know the timeline for the web but I don't imagine it involved 6 years of marketing and selling to investors while not serving any purpose well.
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