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This page exists only if someone is looking at it

ephemeralp2p.durazo.us

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Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#31

Post by justaman »

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I love love love these kinds of experiments. Reminds me of the Early Web. I really wish WebRTC was easier to use. I wish there were some good faith free servers to do the… crap I forget the acronyms… the STUN and TURN stuff and whatnot to negotiate the connections. Ie. Not a proxy, just an operator. Having one I could use freely and comfortably would trivialize a lot of neat projects, particularly fun little multipla…

If you asked me 30 years ago what I thought the web would be in 2023, I would have said something similar to this.

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#32

Post by dchest »

Ancapistani wrote: post #22

Anyone know where I can find the source for this? I’d love to try to implement an extension attack to add some trivial content to the page, but don’t have time right this second (I’m at a work offsite)

What kind of extension attack this would be? The hash length extension attack will always produce a different hash.

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#34

Post by echelon »

MR4D wrote: post #19
101008 wrote: post #14

I understand the idea behind this page (and I really liked it), but the title made me think of more a "philosophical" question... do any webpage exists if nobody visits it? If the page is a static HTML you could say that yes, it exists in the webserver as a file. But what about dynamic webpages. The frontpage of New York Times (I guess it is generated dynamically from a database)... does it exists if no one access NY…

FTA - Your browser retrieved it from the browser of someone currently viewing this page. You're now a part of the network and someone who loads this page in the future may get it from you!

If it passes over a central server, does it really count as p2p?

If browsers grew p2p capabilities [1], we could begin to bypass centralization and build truly distributed (not just federated) social networks, news systems, and the like.

Imagine not having to run "archive.is" against headlines. You just share them - tamperlessly - with others. And the comment graph. You could even begin to boost high-value content with your own algorithm that you control.

P2P in browsers would return us to where many of us thought the internet would lead us in the early 00's. The disappearance of bittorrent and arrival of central platforms like Facebook felt like the future faded away and disappeared.

People are using Discord now, but in the 00's people used completely customizable open source clients to connect to their favorite messaging platforms. You can't even imagine that today. Everything is a platform.

[1] I doubt Google would ever get behind this. Centralization reinforces their ads business.

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#35

Post by Zandikar »

101008 wrote: post #14

I understand the idea behind this page (and I really liked it), but the title made me think of more a "philosophical" question... do any webpage exists if nobody visits it? If the page is a static HTML you could say that yes, it exists in the webserver as a file. But what about dynamic webpages. The frontpage of New York Times (I guess it is generated dynamically from a database)... does it exists if no one access NY…

> Do any dynamic webpage exists if no one requests it

Matter of perspective/semantics. A more general thought experiment in the same vein: Can you stand in the same river twice?

To answer the question: "does it [exist]?" you have to first define what a "it" (a dynamic webpage) is. My answer in response is "Is it cached?" if no, then no. Whether or not a person is involved at all is irrelevant imo. But I define a dynamic webpage by the existance of the DOM, not the services that generate it. I might make an exception if it can be proven those services are deterministic, which I wouldn't assume.

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#36

Post by developer93 »

MR4D wrote: post #19
101008 wrote: post #14

I understand the idea behind this page (and I really liked it), but the title made me think of more a "philosophical" question... do any webpage exists if nobody visits it? If the page is a static HTML you could say that yes, it exists in the webserver as a file. But what about dynamic webpages. The frontpage of New York Times (I guess it is generated dynamically from a database)... does it exists if no one access NY…

FTA - Your browser retrieved it from the browser of someone currently viewing this page. You're now a part of the network and someone who loads this page in the future may get it from you!

They read the article, they were making a different related point

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#37

Post by Waterluvian »

justaman wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I love love love these kinds of experiments. Reminds me of the Early Web. I really wish WebRTC was easier to use. I wish there were some good faith free servers to do the… crap I forget the acronyms… the STUN and TURN stuff and whatnot to negotiate the connections. Ie. Not a proxy, just an operator. Having one I could use freely and comfortably would trivialize a lot of neat projects, particularly fun little multipla…

If you asked me 30 years ago what I thought the web would be in 2023, I would have said something similar to this.

Same. The way people share memes and funny videos with their pals, I thought we’d all be sharing these kinds of things.

looks around at HN

Okay so maybe we still kind of are doing that.

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#38

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

echelon wrote: post #34
MR4D wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA - Your browser retrieved it from the browser of someone currently viewing this page. You're now a part of the network and someone who loads this page in the future may get it from you!

If it passes over a central server, does it really count as p2p? If browsers grew p2p capabilities [1], we could begin to bypass centralization and build truly distributed (not just federated) social networks, news systems, and the like. Imagine not having to run "archive.is" against headlines. You just share them - tamperlessly - with others. And the comment graph. You could even begin to boost high-value content wi…

> If it passes over a central server, does it really count as p2p?

you made me realize that this website is essentially torrent

(without splitting file into chunks)

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#39

Post by tysam_and »

dchest wrote: post #32
Ancapistani wrote: post #22

Anyone know where I can find the source for this? I’d love to try to implement an extension attack to add some trivial content to the page, but don’t have time right this second (I’m at a work offsite)

What kind of extension attack this would be? The hash length extension attack will always produce a different hash.

51%+ is a very powerful number.

Re: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

#40

Post by therein »

jaflo wrote: post #9

The page mentions the possibility of file sharing/torrents using WebRTC which does exist if anyone is interested: https://webtorrent.io/ and https://instant.io/ The projects are open source: https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent

Is it just me or did WebRTC supporting clients cause a split in the BitTorrent clients?

I come across many torrents that have a lot of seeders on the tracker and WebTorrent (in Brave and as a standalone app) is able to immediately connect to a ton of peers and begin downloading at high speeds while Transmission fails to find any peers even after a long time.

The opposite also often happens, I see lots of seeders on the tracker. WebTorrent fails to connect to any clients while Transmission is able to connect to a ton of peers and download at high speeds.

I observed this for a long time and then I remember reading somewhere that WebTorrent only supports connections over WebRTC and most other clients don't support WebRTC peering.

I have UPnP working just fine. No hole-punching issues in the network.

Does anyone know if this is accurate?

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