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Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

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Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#31
post #18

Why is this not a locally running webapp? Running an unsandboxed app like this would not be smart.

Why is this person being downvoted? I thought the same - aren't local webapps prone to portscanning and effective cross origin (for lack of a better description?)?

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#32

I'm probably ignorant to how this app uses IPFS (and IPFS in general), but from what I remember IPFS has a fairly strict code of conduct on copyrighted material. I'm more curious than anything, but what's stopping the legal team over at Protocol Labs from shutting this down?

It's not really feasible to remove content from IPFS. You would need all of the nodes hosting the content to remove it. The most likely scenario would be for common IPFS gateways like ipfs.io, cloudflare, and pinata.cloud to not host the content. That would make it much harder for that material's CID to resolve in a timely manner, if any other nodes are hosting it.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks for explaining

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#33
post #23

Can we create decentralized library (catalog) protocol , so it can't be taken down? I'm thinking about libgen/sci-hub/whatcd(RIP), but entirely decentralized, protocol-based. We already have basically all necessary tools: BitTorrent/IPFS to distribute files, magnet links to link them, DHT to discover peers. We just need to combine them together in a smart way and maybe add some bits of missing functionality, like: -…

Yes, this is exactly what we are working on for 16 years now. Longest running torrent, trust and Tor-fork project: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki

Its as hard as making a decentralised Google and decentralised YouTube at the same time. Over 75 master students and PhDs put their coding efforts in it at Delft University.

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#35
post #7

The ´Books' tool [1] has been doing the same for a long time as well, can be used anywhere where Bash runs and - given its shell-based nature - is eminently hackable. It comes with a CLI (named 'books'), TUI ('nbook' and 'nfiction') and GUI ('xbook' and 'xfiction') and supports both IPFS, Bittorrent as well as direct download. It can search on all fields. Source: I wrote this about 6 years ago and maintain it every n…

That is really cool project, but I can't give this to non technical people

So lets work on making the people around us more technical.

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#36
post #23

Can we create decentralized library (catalog) protocol , so it can't be taken down? I'm thinking about libgen/sci-hub/whatcd(RIP), but entirely decentralized, protocol-based. We already have basically all necessary tools: BitTorrent/IPFS to distribute files, magnet links to link them, DHT to discover peers. We just need to combine them together in a smart way and maybe add some bits of missing functionality, like: -…

I honestly know nothing about the space.

Is this what you're talking about? At least as an MVP. :

https://libgen.fun/dweb.html

?

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#37

I wanted a dead-simple Library Genesis Mac app so I released one called Alexandria ( https://github.com/Samin100/Alexandria ) a while ago, and recently just updated it to use IPFS via the Cloudflare gateway. Compared to the previous Libgen servers, book downloads are nearly instant. When IPFS works, it works really well.

This is cool but "loading sources..." never seems to complete on my machine. Great icon.

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting point. In my experience, it's very common for HTTP(S) to be used for the "last mile" for content that originates from IPFS. Generally this is done via public or dedicated IPFS gateways. Even when you have a local IPFS node (which is not common), the "last meter" delivery is still done using HTTP too, via a local gateway

> it's very common for HTTP(S) to be used for the "last mile" for content that originates from IPFS Indeed, it seems very common, but that doesn't make my original point less true. > the "last meter" delivery is still done using HTTP too, via a local gateway Yeah, that seems common too, but less "wrong" to call it "IPFS support" in that case, in my opinion. Running your own IPFS gateway at least makes the content act…

>Running your own IPFS gateway at least makes the content actually fetched from the network (internet) via IPFS while using ipfs.com/cloudflare-ipfs.com is not any different than just using a CDN (except usually you have to pay for CDNs, IPFS gateways seems to be free (for now)).

I think there's still a lot of value in this way of using IPFS: using ipfs.com/cloudflare-ipfs.com makes it much easier to swap to another IPFS gateway (including your own local one) if those gateways ever give you issues.

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#39

I wanted a dead-simple Library Genesis Mac app so I released one called Alexandria ( https://github.com/Samin100/Alexandria ) a while ago, and recently just updated it to use IPFS via the Cloudflare gateway. Compared to the previous Libgen servers, book downloads are nearly instant. When IPFS works, it works really well.

This is cool but "loading sources..." never seems to complete on my machine. Great icon.

Which book did you search for? Sometimes the Library Genesis servers take a while to respond.

Re: Library Genesis Desktop app, now with IPFS support

#40
post #34

Does somebody know of a plugin for Zotero to automatically fetch a file from LibGen? I tried writing one but it seems like libgen does something weird to not show the download link... s.t. I gave up.

Just commenting to say how great site to is and I’m always surprised at how little I hear about it in the wild.
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