11–20 of 311 posts
BitTorrent is great but I wouldn’t exactly call it mainstream. I do wish more sites used it for downloads though.
I haven’t sat down and researched this, but an argument could be made that inherently a centralized app, who is trusted, available and resilient, will always be superior. Any thoughts?
To me, "decentralized" doesn't mean every user has to run their own node. It means it's an open network, anyone can join, and there's no centralized control / censorship. You can buy a domain and use Proton, Fastmail, or any other provider to have your own email. If you become unhappy with them, it's easy to move. We have open specs that allow every service to interoperate, so you don't need to know or care what provider your recipient is using.
The author's definition of what makes a "decentralized application" is too strong and I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. To me, "decentralized" doesn't mean every user has to run their own node. It means it's an open network, anyone can join, and there's no centralized control / censorship. You can bu…
This is a really myopic view on uses of crypto and the BitTorrent protocol. There's so much more going on than criminal applications. BitTorrent is used in a lot of settings for data distribution and for software distribution. Saying it's just for pirating reveals the author's laziness. Several of these use-cases are listed in the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent As for crypto, I recommend peo…
How it's being used is a different problem, but it's certainly effective and popular.
In life, nothing is perfect. For example, I can't use a CPU based on an open ISA as my daily driver. Does that mean that CPUs "don't work"? Of course not.
The fact that something is used for illegal purposes means that it doesn't work? Does LSD "not work"?
The fact that something is hard to set up or maintain mean that it doesn't work? Does Linux not work? Do airplanes not work?
Does the fact that something is an environmental disaster mean that it doesn't work? Do cars not work? Do highways not work?
Is there even a single decentralized app that is mainstream? BitTorrent is great but I wouldn’t exactly call it mainstream. I do wish more sites used it for downloads though. I haven’t sat down and researched this, but an argument could be made that inherently a centralized app, who is trusted, available and resilient, will always be superior. Any thoughts?
The world wide web (the author complains DNS is too hard...well you dont technically need a domain name)
Usenet (was mainstream back in the day)
IRC is semi-federated, kind of obscure now, but was a bigger deal back in the day.
The author dismisses email, but that seems like an obvious answer.
DNS (hierarchical distribution. Depends how you define distributed i suppose) - what's more mainstream than that?
They dominate because they're better for end users who don't mind giving up compatibility/freedom to implement their own client, which the vast majority of people don't want to do. Slack/Discord/WhatsApp are far better instant messaging/voice or video conferencing software than IRC.
Is there even a single decentralized app that is mainstream? BitTorrent is great but I wouldn’t exactly call it mainstream. I do wish more sites used it for downloads though. I haven’t sat down and researched this, but an argument could be made that inherently a centralized app, who is trusted, available and resilient, will always be superior. Any thoughts?
If for some reason you don't want to use Google's platform, you're 100% free of creating your own mail server. The crazy thing is that it will probably work out just fine. The mail client/server model is really popular. You can go ahead and DIY your email and use all the popular clients without issue (maybe except Gmail? idk).
And sure, if you somehow become famous in a way Google doesn't like, they can effectively cut you off from lots of other people by not federating with your email server. In practice, though, this is probably pretty uncommon.