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Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

ipfs.io

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Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#201

Post by walrus »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #47
TheDong wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you're doing then is fiddling with probabilities. You can do that just as well by changing the length of the sha unless you have a reason to think sha is broken. However, the probability of a hash collision is already incredibly low. As a demonstration of this, here's a list of a tiny subset of bitcoin private keys: http://directory.io/ The human mind just isn't capable of understanding how large of a number the…

Right, but fiddling with probabilities is exactly what you want to do in that case right? I don't know if a hashing algorithm that has no collisions exists (I suspect the answer is no, maybe other than the identity function). If collisions start to become a problem, you can move that problem further out (much much farther out) by mixing more hashing functions in, which was my point. It's well documented (of course al…

> I don't know if a hashing algorithm that has no collisions exists (I suspect the answer is no, maybe other than the identity function).

There is no hash function without collisions. The set of inputs is infinite but the set of outputs is finite. (The identity function isn't a hash function--its output isn't a fixed length.)

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#202

Post by DanBC »

beyti wrote: post #182

I just couldn't digest all, after I read this entence in the description: --- When neocitieslogo.svg is added to my IPFS node, it gets a new name: QmXGTaGWTT1uUtfSb2sBAvArMEVLK4rQEcQg5bv7wwdzwU. That name is actually a cryptographic hash, which has been computed from the contents of that file. That hash is guaranteed by cryptography to always only represent the contents of that file. --- And opened a reddit/eli5 ques…

Pigeonhole principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

I think you've correctly picked up on the difference between "uniquely" and "infeasable".

It's not possible to use a hash function to give every possible input a unique reference. But a cryptographic hash function aims to make the inputs to "hash collisions" be very different. So, for real world files the hash is unique, because the file that would produce a hash collision would be malformed and useless.

In general when you hash a message you don't want an attacker to make subtle changes and get the same hash.

"Here is my electronic payment for £100" should never have the same hash as "Here is my electronic payment for £10,000. Nice to meet you on the weekend".

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#203

Post by drzaiusapelord »

mortenjorck wrote: post #5

Reading this felt kind of like the first time I read a writeup on Bitcoin. There's the same sense of throwing out some old, formerly immutable rules here, the excitement of something that's going to test some boundaries and inevitably clash with some authority (how can you, for instance, comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten" when that information is scattered into a redundant mesh?). Interesting times ahead fo…

>for instance, comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten"

Easy: The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Oh, right, we're not calling this censorship yet. Funny how quick we are to put up mirrors to Tibet and Tank Man content but somehow we're on the hook to protect London businesspeople and corporations from criticism? Like Bitcoin or Bittorrent and other decentralized applications, it will not be able to follow the dictates of nation states and it will be on nation states themselves to filter appropriately. There's no one to call to remove "unwanted" content. No one to hit with fines, taxes, lawsuits, and fees.

Also, there's a discussion to have in regards to EU shakedowns of US companies. These billions of dollars in fees that go straight to the EU don't seem like consumer protection to me, but fundraising. Billions of dollars in fees for "bundling media players" or "having an Android monopoly" should give any wannabe entrepreneurs pause. Its a shame that the EU is unquestionable on sites like HN and reddit. There's a lot of questionable morality here and obvious signs of corruption. So yeah, not being able to be dictated by the EU or any nation state is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#204

Post by beyti »

VikingCoder wrote: post #200
beyti wrote: post #182

I just couldn't digest all, after I read this entence in the description: --- When neocitieslogo.svg is added to my IPFS node, it gets a new name: QmXGTaGWTT1uUtfSb2sBAvArMEVLK4rQEcQg5bv7wwdzwU. That name is actually a cryptographic hash, which has been computed from the contents of that file. That hash is guaranteed by cryptography to always only represent the contents of that file. --- And opened a reddit/eli5 ques…

Okay, I can't explain it like you're 5... But here's as close as I can get. You've got DNA. Everyone's DNA is unique (shhh, just go with me for a minute). In fact, let's say that we found about 140 GATC pairs, which were also unique (we don't need your whole sequence, just those 140 pairs). Meaning, if we take your 140 GATC pairs, and we take my 140 GATC pairs, we'd be guaranteed to get different results. Now, if I w…

Thanks for the response, I've just thought of that single example and couldn't digest it, but it is just me.

It's like [guid](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2977593/is-it-safe-to-ass...) as far as I can understand and even bigger that we shouldn't worry.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#205

Post by anc84 »

satyanash wrote: post #186
anc84 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A plugin that makes archive.org and archive.today save a snapshot would be ace. I would give (measly, sorry) 20$ if someone goes to crowdfund this as wordpress plugin.

You could use Crestify which automatically archives copies of your bookmarks to archive.org and archive.today Once you have a page bookmarked, you can use the archived links in your blog post http://crestify.com/ https://www.reddit.com/r/alphaandbetausers/comments/3j702x/c...

Not a fan of third-party hosted services unless necessary but thanks.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#206

Post by reit »

Confiks wrote: post #197
kang wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not native english speaker so perhaps was misunderstood again. You searched for a content by an author, and the network gives you multiple hashes, which one do you trust, without a central authority telling you?

As with my comment above: you trust the content that is ultimately (up the hierarchy) signed in an IPNS object with a valid signature. And there must indeed by some central authority giving 'ultimate trust'. This is Zooko's triangle. By default IPNS gives you 'decentralized' and 'secure', but you can also opt to tie an IPNS name to a DNS TXT record, and lose 'decentralized' (at least for the initial lookup) but gain…

I think there is a level where DNS -> IPNS ID is even then still better than DNS -> IP address. For DNS -> IPNS you could have a facility in there saying 'This DNS TXT record should not change, if it does something is wrong'. You could lock down the record for a period of time, such as the duration of the lease from the registrar.

Besides, the idea is that IPFS could happily support Namecoin[1], so there's the decentralized, secure, and human-meaningful DNS service. The only 'non-secure' aspect there is the unlikely event of a 51% attack.

[1] https://namecoin.info

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#208

Post by njloof »

rdancer wrote: post #198

When a massively distributed file system[1] was introduced into the Linux kernel circa Y2K, there was what I remember as a lot of hype. Nobody, but nobody wanted it then (or since, it's still part of the kernel), and I would be surprised if anybody wanted something similar today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System

All undergraduate accounts at Carnegie Mellon were on AFS in the 1990s. It may have been ahead of its time -- all I know is (a) it was much less reliable than NFS; (b) its security policy was different enough that people (admins included) left lots of security holes; and (c) *.struck

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#209

Post by adrusi »

collinmanderson wrote: post #177
adrusi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With IPNS, which allows the creation of links whose destination can be mutated by whoever has the private key, you can implement quite a lot of interactivity. You won't ever be able to implement facebook over this platform, but you can replicate all of its functionality by using a tumblog-like architecture. Facebook's design is inherently centralized, and therefore doesn't really fit into the world of IPFS. The idea…

A few questions about IPNS: - Is it possible to, say, log into my bank account, see my current balance, and set up bill pay? - Can I order a pizza over IPNS? - Can I do realtime chat? Also, this article says we could use Namecoin and not rely on ICANN for DNS, however, you still need ICANN to distribute ip address to get connected to the internet in the first place. Or am I missing something?

The first two cases you mention are about communicating with a specific real world organization. You can implement it using ipns, but it's inherently centralized.

The last one is a no. Well actually yes if you just poll a file, but that's not practical on a large scale. You need an external communication channel to implement that. It's possible to have that be fully distributed as well though, as in tox. You need this external communication channel to implement a lot of things anyway, so it would probably be part of the platform that forms around the idea of a distributed web.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#210

Post by zxcvcxz »

xhrpost wrote: post #207

I wonder what the legal implications are for hosting a node. I imagine you would have to comply with DMCA requests in the US, so just hosting a node would require you to setup a whole process for that.

Unless everyone just ignores DMCA requests and they become unenforceable.
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