Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It • Hacker News Board

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#91

Post by culi » Tue, May 26, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

ck45 wrote: post #41

culi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docuwiki (not to be confused with DokuWiki) is still the most thorough source I've seen for niche documentaries. https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Category:Name It is all ed2k links. Unfortunately modern clients for ed2k are quite lacking

ed2k, nice! That reminds me of this superb piece of software: MLDonkey ( https://github.com/ygrek/mldonkey ), written in OCaml.

That is really neat. I wasn't aware of it. Multi-protocol always sounds ideal but I've had bad luck finding any that still work. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#92

Post by nofriend » Wed, May 27, 2026, 4:33 AM UTC

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #79

nofriend wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the linux way works tho

it really doesn't hiding information from user is not good by any means

Am I missing something? Hiding things from users is a property of the windows approach. Did you reply to the wrong person?

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#93

Post by Suppafly » Wed, May 27, 2026, 5:18 AM UTC

qubex wrote: post #57

As the eldest of millennials, I regularly find myself going through “ah, they’ve reinvented a situation best served by Gnutellla” events. The most most recent was an ad hoc Resilio Sync library of epub files, and I did the “yeah that works… but have you ever heard of Gnutella?” routine I have become so accustomed to: “gather around the camp fire, young zoomers, for grandpa has a story to tell you”.

Everything popular is just a remake of stuff we already had, blows my mind that Discord is basically just IRC, tons of file transfer things are just FTP, etc.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#94

Post by Suppafly » Wed, May 27, 2026, 5:21 AM UTC

doublerabbit wrote: post #40

pndy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh so pretty much the "classic" share something rule; that was pain in the ass in DC++ times but quality of whatever you could find there was best

DC++ now that's some nostalgia. Myself used IRC XDCC bots connected to my 33k modem connected to my 486DX which would disconnect every three hours. eDonkey, WinMX, lovely fashionable protocols.

DC++ was the best for dreamcast games back when I was in college.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#95

Post by NooneAtAll3 » Wed, May 27, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

nofriend wrote: post #92

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it really doesn't hiding information from user is not good by any means

Am I missing something? Hiding things from users is a property of the windows approach. Did you reply to the wrong person?

GGP comment literally says that linux way is hiding file type in the binary information. If you consider that as more visible I have many questions

windows at least gets an option to display file type

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#96

Post by nofriend » Wed, May 27, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #95

nofriend wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I missing something? Hiding things from users is a property of the windows approach. Did you reply to the wrong person?

GGP comment literally says that linux way is hiding file type in the binary information. If you consider that as more visible I have many questions windows at least gets an option to display file type

Some file formats, eg png, require a particular file header in order to be considered valid. This is true regardless of your operating system, be it windows or linux. If that is hidden information, then it is hidden regardless of which operating system you're on. On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png and could be opened with my image viewer with standard tools. On linux it will recommend you open the file with an image viewer regardless of the file extension. That seems to me like significantly less hidden information.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#97

Post by anal_reactor » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:05 AM UTC

nofriend wrote: post #96

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GGP comment literally says that linux way is hiding file type in the binary information. If you consider that as more visible I have many questions windows at least gets an option to display file type

Some file formats, eg png, require a particular file header in order to be considered valid. This is true regardless of your operating system, be it windows or linux. If that is hidden information, then it is hidden regardless of which operating system you're on. On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png and could be opened with my image viewer with st…

> On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png

And that's a good thing. Imagine receiving a file called "very_funny_cat.png" and Linux realizing that while it's not a valid PNG image, it is a valid ELF executable.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#98

Post by nofriend » Thu, May 28, 2026, 8:04 PM UTC

anal_reactor wrote: post #97

nofriend wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some file formats, eg png, require a particular file header in order to be considered valid. This is true regardless of your operating system, be it windows or linux. If that is hidden information, then it is hidden regardless of which operating system you're on. On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png and could be opened with my image viewer with st…

> On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png And that's a good thing. Imagine receiving a file called "very_funny_cat.png" and Linux realizing that while it's not a valid PNG image, it is a valid ELF executable.

Right, linux should instead go by the normal extension for an elf, which is no extension... instead this problem is solved by prompting the user if they want to execute the program.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#99

Post by NooneAtAll3 » Fri, May 29, 2026, 12:19 PM UTC

nofriend wrote: post #98

anal_reactor wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png And that's a good thing. Imagine receiving a file called "very_funny_cat.png" and Linux realizing that while it's not a valid PNG image, it is a valid ELF executable.

Right, linux should instead go by the normal extension for an elf, which is no extension... instead this problem is solved by prompting the user if they want to execute the program.

> instead this problem is solved by prompting the user

it is solved by informing user how the file will be used

aka file type

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#100

Post by netsharc » Sat, May 30, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

anal_reactor wrote: post #97

nofriend wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some file formats, eg png, require a particular file header in order to be considered valid. This is true regardless of your operating system, be it windows or linux. If that is hidden information, then it is hidden regardless of which operating system you're on. On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png and could be opened with my image viewer with st…

> On windows, if I have a png named .doc, then there is absolutely no way to determine that it is a valid png And that's a good thing. Imagine receiving a file called "very_funny_cat.png" and Linux realizing that while it's not a valid PNG image, it is a valid ELF executable.

The sane option would be to change the file explorer to have a column/field of "What type of file we've detected it is". We already do this for directories. Nowadays we just rely on naming convention that the last 3 letters of the name identifies correctly what the file format is.