Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 190 posts

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#91

Post by publiush »

vgb2k18 wrote: post #87

I would love it if someone could change my mind on this: The words unblockable and uncensorable have been misused in the documentation. Real-world example: 99% of my colleagues cannot bring their own devices into our corporate workplace to access torrents via DHT. There are some network rules and filters in place to block most non 443 traffic. Those 99% are effectively blocked. Setting a remote HAProxy server to mask…

There are projects who are using collateral freedom to block censorship like Wireleap (https://wireleap.com/blog/routing-layer/). This would help in the circumstance you describe.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#92

Post by xwvvvvwx »

publiush wrote: post #25
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this literally uses a cryptocurrency (handshake) for domains

There's a dilemma as the magnet links/hashes aren't easily shareable. One option is to create a DMT directory, but this would be centralized. Handshake is the most mature decentralized domain name project, and I opted for it. It uses coins to limit abuse, since anyone can flood a decentralized system. You don't need coins to browse and use federalist. That said, if there are any other immutable DNS systems that aren'…

My comment was not intended as a criticism of your project (which seems excellent), but rather an observation that crypto may be more useful than the parent had assumed.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#93

Post by sudosysgen »

vgb2k18 wrote: post #87

I would love it if someone could change my mind on this: The words unblockable and uncensorable have been misused in the documentation. Real-world example: 99% of my colleagues cannot bring their own devices into our corporate workplace to access torrents via DHT. There are some network rules and filters in place to block most non 443 traffic. Those 99% are effectively blocked. Setting a remote HAProxy server to mask…

You have to set up your https tunnel on AWS or GCP and then tunnel that to your own server. They will not range block AWS, and you can vary the IP every day.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#94

Post by schleck8 »

publiush wrote: post #89
schleck8 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> censorship resistance Can someone tell me what is going to happen if let's say a terror group decides to use this for propaganda purposes, along the lines of religious fundamentalism/executions as we've witnessed before? Who is going to take the blame for providing them with what is advertised as an unblockable platform? Has abuse even been factored in?

This is an important debate that comes up all too often. I do think this is the proper forum for this, so I'm glad you brought this up and I would be happy to share my thoughts. The more information people have had in the history of humanity, the more freedoms and liberties we have also had. We would likely still be living in monarchies if not for the spread of information -- North Korea is a prime example. If inform…

> Just because there are gun abusers, you wouldn't want to take away the 2nd amendment which keeps the government in check

I don't think this is a good comparison. The second ammendment was appended in 1791 if I'm not mistaken, i. e. shortly after the war for independence on american soil against an empire, which was fought with militias (hence the third ammendement). That's a totally different scenario than the 21st century.

It should be monitored who acquires an assault rifle. Or you end up with the highest rate of school amok per capita globally[1], because gun owners are either mentally unstable themselves or not capable of preventing a mentally unstable person from getting hold of the rifle due to a lack or knowledge. Licenses make just as much sense as they do for cars.

Which brings me to the division of powers. The constitution balances executive, legislature and judiciary in its three articles. It is very difficult for either of these organs to abuse power without being met with a restriction. This has been the concept since the very beginning, as you surely know judging by the gh handle, and you bet the federalist paper authors favored an institutional solution over arming each citizen.

In other words, the second ammendement is just as little of an ultimate for checks and balances as the web 3 is for whistleblowing. We already have securedrop and globalleaks. Going a step further is possible, but not strictly necessary, and should not be treated as such in my opinion.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1155011/number-school-sh...

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#95

Post by publiush »

xwvvvvwx wrote: post #92
publiush wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a dilemma as the magnet links/hashes aren't easily shareable. One option is to create a DMT directory, but this would be centralized. Handshake is the most mature decentralized domain name project, and I opted for it. It uses coins to limit abuse, since anyone can flood a decentralized system. You don't need coins to browse and use federalist. That said, if there are any other immutable DNS systems that aren'…

My comment was not intended as a criticism of your project (which seems excellent), but rather an observation that crypto may be more useful than the parent had assumed.

Thank you, and no criticism taken! I agree. The problem with projects that incorporate cryptocurrencies these days has been that the cryptocurrencies themselves have been the focus and sometimes these projects have been going out of their way to incorporate them, in addition to a lot of projected hopes of what a system could one day become, not the reality of the utility of the system itself, today.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#96

Post by ancode »

schleck8 wrote: post #85
dane-pgp wrote: post #64

This looks like a great project, thank you. One aspect of censorship resistance is the ability for people to publish and read content anonymously (or pseudonymously). Could you add something to the README about that threat model? Also, I see that your IRC channel is hosted on Freenode. That seems an odd choice for a project that is opposed to censorship. Please consider a network with a better track record in that re…

> censorship resistance Can someone tell me what is going to happen if let's say a terror group decides to use this for propaganda purposes, along the lines of religious fundamentalism/executions as we've witnessed before? Who is going to take the blame for providing them with what is advertised as an unblockable platform? Has abuse even been factored in?

Wouldn't be resistant to censorship if you could prevent people from putting videos you don't like on it, would it?

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#97

Post by vgb2k18 »

lolspace wrote: post #67

What would happen if I created an illegal site? CP or selling guns?

If you created and seeded long enough to get active traffic, the host and DHT peer IPs might be flagged by LE. Once flagged the IP info passed to different investigators for prosecution purposes. Depending on your level of anonymity (VPN, tor, none, other) the investigation is either a dead-end or success. If success, warrant granted, home searched, PC seized. That's one potential scenario.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#98

Post by publiush »

schleck8 wrote: post #94
publiush wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important debate that comes up all too often. I do think this is the proper forum for this, so I'm glad you brought this up and I would be happy to share my thoughts. The more information people have had in the history of humanity, the more freedoms and liberties we have also had. We would likely still be living in monarchies if not for the spread of information -- North Korea is a prime example. If inform…

> Just because there are gun abusers, you wouldn't want to take away the 2nd amendment which keeps the government in check I don't think this is a good comparison. The second ammendment was appended in 1791 if I'm not mistaken, i. e. shortly after the war for independence on american soil against an empire, which was fought with militias (hence the third ammendement). That's a totally different scenario than the 21st…

When we have a government without corruption, we probably won't need to be armed. That isn't the case today. Checks and balances work in a young government, but after hundreds of years, friendships, camaraderies, it's not difficult to have loosely coupled groups infiltrating all branches. Things eventually crumble as perfect systems are hard.

This is akin to the monarchies, where a king may have risen to power as a good leader, but a later king may not have been so kind.

These things aren't perfect, but having multiple systems to pick up where other systems fail provides us the ultimate leverage in the end.

Would you take airbags out of cars because they sometimes fail and always harm those who feel their impact and chemicals and everyone is "supposed to wear seat belts by law" anyway?

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#99

Post by wyager »

schleck8 wrote: post #94
publiush wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important debate that comes up all too often. I do think this is the proper forum for this, so I'm glad you brought this up and I would be happy to share my thoughts. The more information people have had in the history of humanity, the more freedoms and liberties we have also had. We would likely still be living in monarchies if not for the spread of information -- North Korea is a prime example. If inform…

> Just because there are gun abusers, you wouldn't want to take away the 2nd amendment which keeps the government in check I don't think this is a good comparison. The second ammendment was appended in 1791 if I'm not mistaken, i. e. shortly after the war for independence on american soil against an empire, which was fought with militias (hence the third ammendement). That's a totally different scenario than the 21st…

> The second ammendment was appended in 1791 if I'm not mistaken,

When the first amendment was written, they only had primitive printing presses. Obviously it does not apply to the internet, electronic printers, etc.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#100

Post by wyager »

schleck8 wrote: post #85
dane-pgp wrote: post #64

This looks like a great project, thank you. One aspect of censorship resistance is the ability for people to publish and read content anonymously (or pseudonymously). Could you add something to the README about that threat model? Also, I see that your IRC channel is hosted on Freenode. That seems an odd choice for a project that is opposed to censorship. Please consider a network with a better track record in that re…

> censorship resistance Can someone tell me what is going to happen if let's say a terror group decides to use this for propaganda purposes, along the lines of religious fundamentalism/executions as we've witnessed before? Who is going to take the blame for providing them with what is advertised as an unblockable platform? Has abuse even been factored in?

Yes, censorship resistant means censorship resistant. Over time it becomes more apparent that the desire for a "middle ground" between extremely regressive censorship and absolute freedom is incoherent, because if you give people even the slightest wiggle room, they can create systems like this. I personally prefer a world where I'm allowed to have a general purpose computer, and incidentally it's also possible for ISIS to post propaganda online.
Post reply on HN