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Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

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Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#151

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #145
0xCMP wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed and I will add that a huge reason Google is used by so many was very effective spam filtering. A huge reason why hosting your own email is hard? Getting filtered by Google because of the massive amount of spam they are blocking. Spam filtering is a a very difficult thing to do well and Google's implementation was very good, very advanced, and trained on huge amounts of data. Something a normal person could nev…

> Spam filtering is a a very difficult thing to do well and Google's implementation was very good, very advanced, and trained on huge amounts of data. Something a normal person could never do on their own server I'm sure most normal people could install SpamAssassin and configure it to use community blacklists on their Dovecot/Postfix server. It's not that hard.

I run a mailinabox server for almost half a year and gmail is a pita. I send an email to a gmail user and it always goes into spam. I have to phone them to unspam it but next day same thing. Yahoo mail or others dont seem have this issue because I have 10/10 on the dkim something scorecard.

Google somehow wants to force me to not use my email server. Fuck them

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#152

Post by Moru »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #85
the8472 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Bittorrent could be made usable for 1:1 transfers. The building blocks are there. But you'd have to streamline the process and build a client optimized for that case instead of the more common usage. The main missing piece would be a standardized encryption format. That doesn't really need protocol changes, just a storage-level convention how the data is encrypted before turning it into a torrent.

Isn't this basically Resilio's Sync ? I've been using it for years on smartphone backups that otherwise wouldn't be able to hold a sustained transfer.

Yes, me too. It also have 1:1 functions for sending a file easily or sync a folder between all your oomputers and phones.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#153

Post by samatman »

bccdee wrote: post #150
samatman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see the point though? For 1-to-1 transfers, Magic Wormhole is the system to beat, and I struggle to imagine how it could be improved. https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole

I really wish magic wormhole worked conveniently on windows without obliging me to install python and pip and such. It's my go-to when sftp isn't an option, but for sftp not to be an option almost always means that one of the computers I'm trying to transfer between is a windows box.

That's reasonable, it's a great candidate for a rewrite in Go.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#154

Post by zzo38computer »

thesausageking wrote: post #12

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…

I run my own server for receiving, but use the ISP's server for sending. I have had no problems.

But, yes, that doesn't mean you have to run your own node. However, it should include the possibility to do so.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#155

Post by zzo38computer »

Yaina wrote: post #44

I largely nodded along with the post, I think it raised a lot of valid issues about the state of non-profit software Yet, I think one big reason why non-profit solutions are so unpopular is not primarily about marking, but about the terrible, truly terrible UX that most non-profit projects have. As far is I can tell this has (mostly) nothing to do with constrained resources and just with the extremely technical persp…

Which UX is good can be a matter of opinion, some people may prefer different programs. I use a IRC client which doesn't do a lot more than display raw IRC protocol messages with syntax highlighting and a few other things (such as shortcuts, macros, filters, auto-pong, etc), and I think it is better than any web chat that I have seen (profit or not), but I am strange, anyways. But, I am the kind of guy who use Heirloom-mailx for email (one thing it has is the ability to write an attachment to a pipe; most modern programs only support files and not pipes; a lot my own software is designed to import from and export to pipes instead of files, since I think that is more useful), who want to read the RFC before using the internet, and who learned Magic: the Gathering by reading the entire Comprehensive Rules before starting the game, and disliking USB, and preferring Plain TeX instead of LaTeX; which I think are the kind of things that most people hate. So, it is a matter of opinion, I suppose.

It seems to be a lot of more modern programs seem to have worse UX, in my opinion (part of the problem is lack of documentation, too); not whether or not it is profit. At least in my experience, profit makes many things worse because they try to be mass-marketing and more trying to earn money, rather than being first the quality of the product. And also, they put too many fancy animations and stuff.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#156

Post by mpva »

kanwisher wrote: post #81
mpva wrote: post #71

This person clearly has a biased view about bitcoin ( as evident by their talk about and distain of the market and its "scammers", although we all hate scammers), so much so that they mix blockchain and bitcoin up. Blockchain technology has not failed in its task, and as to bitcoin failing, well I guess we will see. It reads like someone just lost a lot of money in they recent dip and is venting. For the record, Ther…

Everyone is downvoting you cause it makes zero sense to use blockchain to do IOT. IoTA is also largely a scam, the technology doesn't work

I cant seem to edit my comment. I think my comment was misunderstood.

Firstly, I wanted to say that the writer seems biased, and due to this they disregarded the technology of blockchain. They mixed up bitcoin and blockchain and the use cases are completely different things

As for IOTA being a scam. I honestly do not know, I liked their use case but perhaps I am uneducated...If you have any papers or links to back up your claims then please provide them, i'm open to having my opinion changed.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#157

Post by Animats »

Decentralization would be easier if most user machines had IPv6 support plus a dynamic DNS system so you could find them. Then you could do voice and video calls without a central server. DHCP made the Internet asymmetrical.

Of course, running a server means you get constantly attacked, or at least bothered.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#158

Post by zzo38computer »

endisneigh wrote: post #11

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?

> ... an argument could be made that inherently a centralized app, who is trusted, available and resilient, will always be superior. Any thoughts?

Not necessarily. They will still need an open protocol, good documentation, etc. And even then, it may not be suitable for what you are doing (and yet, they try to use it anyways). Furthermore, it won't necessarily always be available; you cannot predict some things that will go wrong with it. And, you cannot really trust them for sure either, necessarily.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#160

Post by billytetrud »

It sounds like the author really should be saying open source fails because of profit motives. Clearly there have been many open source successes, so it just doesn't check out. And the author muses that "regulations" might be the solution. What regulations? Regulations aren't just a magic beauracracy that fixes things, you need a framework. Without suggesting specifics about what regulations might be helpful, I don't think it can really be said that the author suggested any solution at all.
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