Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#1

Post by galapago » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 11:39 AM UTC

Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent
github.com

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#2

Post by sdfjkl » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 12:31 PM UTC

This README is a bit short on telling what it actually does. Anyone?

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#3

Post by CHY872 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 12:40 PM UTC

sdfjkl wrote: post #2

This README is a bit short on telling what it actually does. Anyone?

Pretty sure that it's: When you want to go on a wikipedia article, it requests the file from other peers in the network using the bittorrent protocol. It's a copy of Wikipedia placed on bittorrent, presumably with some semantics for article updates.

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#4

Post by sleepychu » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 12:45 PM UTC

Why? Specifically - why would I choose to browse this way over just accessing wikipedia?

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#5

Post by tormeh » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 1:06 PM UTC

sleepychu wrote: post #4

Why? Specifically - why would I choose to browse this way over just accessing wikipedia?

You wouldn't ask if you lived in China. Though bittorrent traffic may need to be disguised.

Decentralising the internet is generally a great idea.

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#6

Post by madsravn » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

sleepychu wrote: post #4

Why? Specifically - why would I choose to browse this way over just accessing wikipedia?

I don't think it is so much a question about why. More that is pretty cool idea.

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#7

Post by freeall » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

The idea is to showcase how a large dataset is pretty good at being shared without having central servers. Here using bittorrent.

mafintosh showed how wikipedia could be shared without a central server(s), and instead rely on a network of peers.

subtack did something similar, peermaps, which is a showcase on how you can share geo data over bittorrent. Imagine a google maps without a google servers. https://github.com/substack/peermaps

Of course there's many unsolved questions, like "how do you update?", "how do you manage the data?", etc. But the examples are pretty solid.

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#8

Post by higherpurpose » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 1:11 PM UTC

Is this like Popcorn Time for Wikipedia?

I think Bittorrent is also working on a similar project for the whole web, called Maelstrom:

http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom-the-...

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#9

Post by mafintosh » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 1:12 PM UTC

Author here. If anyone is interested I presented this at jsconf.eu last year as part of a BitTorrent talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTCsSwCpGP8 (slides: http://mafintosh.github.io/slides/jsconf-2014/jsconf-eu-2014...)

Re: Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent

#10

Post by freeall » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 1:16 PM UTC

higherpurpose wrote: post #8

Is this like Popcorn Time for Wikipedia? I think Bittorrent is also working on a similar project for the whole web, called Maelstrom: http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom-the-...

Closed source?