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Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

teetotality.blog

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Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#101

Post by momack2 »

buboard wrote: post #21

Wordpress is unlike github pages or medium. In theory a LAMP server could run on everyone's home router, and they 'd publish their blog there. With commercial interest , network configurations would change to accomodate that, and people wouldn't lose their content when any service decides to shutdown. It's scary how much of the web is being lost , i would wager most links to nonocorporate sites > 10 years old barely…

Some estimates here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot -- the most recent listed study (2017) estimates a half life of ~2 years for an average link on Yahoo.

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#102

Post by jtbayly »

NortySpock wrote: post #91
kalmi10 wrote: post #30

The thing I worry about with IPFS is privacy. If you use IPFS directly (as intended, not via a public gateway), and you visit a site, then you are automatically going to be seeding (like a torrent) the visited content, and thus you will be announcing/broadcasting the fact to the world that you (your node/your IP) have visited it. My current understanding is that this cannot really be avoided, since one needs to be ab…

Maybe a software delay where it only starts seeding 5 minutes later, or an opt-out button where you can avoid re-seeding if you don't like what you see.

Or perhaps better would be random seeding of additional content you didn’t view.

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#103

Post by momack2 »

StavrosK wrote: post #60
cyounkins wrote: post #36

Has Cloudflare made any commitments regarding the longterm availability of their IPFS gateway?

Probably not, but why does that matter? It's like asking whether Mozilla have made any commitments regarding the longterm availability of Thunderbird, just use another gateway or run your own.

The really awesome thing about gateways over central hosts is if one goes offline you can still easily access & verify the content from one of the many other gateways (https://ipfs.github.io/public-gateway-checker/). =]

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#104

Post by momack2 »

tylersmith wrote: post #45
aabhay wrote: post #43

Out of curiosity, isn’t the DNS gateway like Cloudflare ( https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web-gateway/ ) a single point of failure? Is there a solution to this without having to resort to a completely different desktop app?

Well there are many gateways which provides redundancy but if ipfs really takes off I think it'll eventually need to be supported by browsers so that you're using your own ipfs node for lookups but it's seamless for you the user or developer.

Agreed - having a lot of gateways helps (https://ipfs.github.io/public-gateway-checker/), but eventually integration directly with browsers is the upgrade path: https://blog.ipfs.io/2019-10-08-ipfs-browsers-update/

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#105

Post by mirimir »

zelly wrote: post #94
tetrisgm wrote: post #41

Disclaimer: I run the unofficial IPFS Discord and Matrix (found at https://permaweb.io/discord and /matrix) and have helped organize IPFS Meetups in SF. We also run an IPFS gateway and have built a groups app on top of IPFS and Textile. I generally agree with the conclusion, but there's a few downsides that aren't conveyed here. Let's look at the proposed upsides: 1) Ownership, control, censorship: That's partly corr…

> IPFS doesn't encrypt the content, or the connectivity, or hide the hosts. Solutions exist around that, but they're niche, and honestly I question the motives besides just ideology. I question the motives of people who would be against encryption, aside from it being a lot of work and just not having been done yet. Ideally: no one should know the true IPs of their peers, and no one snooping on the connection should…

I totally agree, but want to emphasize one thing.

Let's say that stuff was encrypted during transmission, and also when stored by peers. But peers could see each other's true IPs. That would basically give you a modern version of Freenet. And just like with Freenet, users could be arrested, and prosecuted based on hand waving. When you get down to it at trial, "plausible deniability" depends on having a suitable expert witness, and convincing a jury that the prosecution's expert witness is full of it.

So anyway, none of that helps unless true IPs of peers are hidden.

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#106

Post by momack2 »

olodus wrote: post #26

Last I checked a lot of the consensus were that the Dat project was more mature than IPFS and that it had some advantages over IPFS (such as not using as much resources to run). How is it now? Is it more mature? Even though I actually even sub to their newsletter I haven't really been keeping up to date if they have made any major releases. Not to be a downer on IPFS at all, btw. I'm very glad that both it and Dat ex…

You can check out this recent article comparing the two: https://medium.com/@jaygraber/comparing-ipfs-and-dat-8f3891d... -- they have their own foci and technical decisions (ex IPFS is aiming for more general content addressing/deduplication of data across many hosts, while Dat focuses on append-only feeds from a particular source)

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#107

Post by mirimir »

judge2020 wrote: post #89
mirimir wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one can use IPFS through Tor, and use gateways that are Tor onion services.

Obfuscating your IP doesn't solve the problem. If a malicious actor knew someone's info (such as address), they could give them an ipfs link with CP and report them.

Sure. You also gotta hide your name, address and all other information that could identify you. Otherwise, there's no point in obfuscating your IP.

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#108

Post by MiroF »

jtbayly wrote: post #102
NortySpock wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a software delay where it only starts seeding 5 minutes later, or an opt-out button where you can avoid re-seeding if you don't like what you see.

Or perhaps better would be random seeding of additional content you didn’t view.

This is a good idea - my only worry is you might end up unintentionally seeding illicit content like CP

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#109

Post by MiroF »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #38
kordlessagain wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPFS isn't designed for private communications. It's designed for highly decentralized publishing of content. Safe, in this context, means the data is safe to "be".

Honestly I think the simplest and most effective method is to keep things as they are and have archive.org/.is keep backups of websites. A backup on archive.org is much more likely to stick around after 10 years than the users seeding a file.

Not if there is a government issued takedown notice it isn't.

Re: Why build this blog, or anything, on IPFS?

#110

Post by qqii »

zelly wrote: post #92
kalmi10 wrote: post #30

The thing I worry about with IPFS is privacy. If you use IPFS directly (as intended, not via a public gateway), and you visit a site, then you are automatically going to be seeding (like a torrent) the visited content, and thus you will be announcing/broadcasting the fact to the world that you (your node/your IP) have visited it. My current understanding is that this cannot really be avoided, since one needs to be ab…

IPFS really needs onion routing built-in. When I was reading this, I thought about running an IPFS node on my desktop but remembered it doesn't have onion routing built-in. So I'd have to run a proxy like torsocks and torify the IPFS server. Then I have to worry about all the ways that IP can leak from this. Then I have to figure out how to connect to other IPFS nodes through TOR. So forget it, I'll do it when I have…

At that point aren't you looking for Freenet/Zeronet?
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