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HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

ipfs.io

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Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#301

Post by TheOtherWW »

TeeMassive wrote: post #22

Ok cool, I love decentralized content distribution frameworks too. But what do I have to install to use it? As with most of these attempts to decentralization, it fails because of the mostly absent effort spent on ease of use.

Layer 2 solutions that focus on ease-of-use and other properties to make these technologies become more mainstream are starting to emerge. One such solution is Filebase, which offers an S3 compatible abstraction layer to Sia, Storj and other decentralized networks. You can use any S3 compatible tool right out of the box, or simply drag and drop.

[1] https://filebase.com

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#302

Post by grumbel »

hannasanarion wrote: post #293
grumbel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPFS doesn't give you any guarantees about if the content is actually stored anywhere, it however gives you reasonable guarantees that the addresses for that content stay the same. Meaning if somebody finds an old backup tape decades down the road, they can just stuff it back onto IPFS and all the dead links start functioning again. That's something that is impossible with HTTP, as there isn't even a guarantee that t…

That still requires you to deliberately decide to archive a certain page, which you can do just as easily with http. The SingleFile browser extension will grab everything that's linked to a page and build a locally stored directory with all the dependencies of that page.

> That still requires you to deliberately decide to archive a certain page

You don't "archive" a page with IPFS, with IPFS everything you keep a copy of stays available under the same address, that either happens automatically via cache or via a manual 'pin'. That's fundamentally different than what HTTP does.

The archive copy you create of a HTTP site is your own personal copy and completely inaccessible to anybody else. Even if you put it online, people would have no clue where to find it. With IPFS the document never leaves the address space and stays accessible to everybody under the same address, no matter who decides to host it.

Another important practical difference is that IPFS has native support for directories, so you don't have to try to spider around to try to guess all the URLs, you can just grab the whole directory at once. That in turn also has the nice side effect that .zip archives essentially become irrelevant, as you can just upload the directory itself.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#303

Post by PLDiscordian »

davidgerard wrote: post #164
Gigachad wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPFS claims to solve this with their name service IPNS which can update to point to a new hash with a revised file. Where the original hash can be cached and used but users can refer to the NS version and get the latest version. But last I saw, the name on IPNS had to be frequently pushed by the original server or it would go away.

IPNS doesn't work. Whenever you press them on this point, they'll admit it doesn't work. But IPFS has the crypto problem of conflating the stuff that works now with the stuff that's hypothetical in its marketing, and not admitting that the latter is janky nonsense that doesn't bloody work.

Sorry, I don't know when you last tried out IPFS, but IPNS does in fact work: https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/ipns/

Again, I'm not sure when it wasn't working, or when it began working (it's always worked since I've been around), but IPNS has made huge strides, I use it every day. Even https://ipfs.io is using IPNS, it's very popular.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#304

Post by PLDiscordian »

anaganisk wrote: post #254

As long as there are no actual, native iOS, android and PC Apps built on top of IPFS or even an access GUI or interface with browser on those platforms, IPFS can stop dreaming of replacing HTTP. Apart from mere 1-2% of world population who use internet, no one else is going to download a binary and run a CLI, and visit 127.0.0.1:8080/ipfs. For majority of people chrome is a gateway to internet (for them Http is a pre…

We're actually working on that, and have made progress with Brave and Opera. You're right that for wide, mainstream adoption, we'll need to expand onto platforms like Android/iOS, and that's the dream, honestly. Working on URIs like IPFS:// and IPNS://, which are supported in Brave/Opera to an extent.

It's a long road though, with lots of negotiations with lots of organizations. I do feel optimistic about it though.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#305

Post by PLDiscordian »

ptaq wrote: post #124

Economy of scale is hard to combat with a technically decentralized protocol. Let's assume all goes well and in 2-5-20 years IPFS is the web. A random Joe has an IPFS server in his basement, because it's profitable or at least convenient for him. Most of the traffic never reaches AWS or CouldFlare. What do they do about it? They pretend to be random Joes and mirror the same setup. Obviously Amazon will manage their s…

At least in your universe, if AWS goes down, some things still work.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#306

Post by ultra_nick »

It's crazy how many people don't get the IPFS/Dweb.

It's like the invention of personal computers. It's going to change everything like the shift from time share department computers did. Imagine what programmers could do if YouTube size infrastructure was free for every developer. IPFS is just the boring protocol the enables the next internet of stuff. The stuff that comes out in the next 20 years will be crazy.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#307

Post by 7373737373 »

ultra_nick wrote: post #306

It's crazy how many people don't get the IPFS/Dweb. It's like the invention of personal computers. It's going to change everything like the shift from time share department computers did. Imagine what programmers could do if YouTube size infrastructure was free for every developer. IPFS is just the boring protocol the enables the next internet of stuff. The stuff that comes out in the next 20 years will be crazy.

It won't be free, but it may be cheaper

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#308

Post by PLDiscordian »

shp0ngle wrote: post #245
shp0ngle wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Estuary is currently in its alpha testing phase. Because of this, there are some restrictions to the service: > The service is temporarily limited to users wanting to store meaningful public data. You can apply for an invite → so… no?

Ah, I can also use my own machine. > Enough space to store the current Lotus chain (preferably on an SSD storage medium). The chain grows at approximately 38 GiB per day. The chain can be synced from trusted state snapshots and compacted or pruned to a minimum size of around 33Gib. The full history was around 10TiB in June of 2021. Ugh. OK I will pass then

Don't be discouraged! Using your own machine might be painful, but in the meantime https://web3.storage should give you long-term storage for free. It's built on top of Estuary, and the only reason why data isn't said to be kept "forever" is because forever is a long time, and life doesn't give guarantees, but data will persist as long as possible, and notices will be sent out of the service is ever terminated to the best of the team's ability.

I look at web3.storage type services as an excellent resource into getting your data on IPFS/Filecoin for free, without needing to work with the current intimidating situation which is lotus. I'm fairly sure work is going in to make it easier to monetize your free space, but I'm not as deep in the Filecoin teams, and I'm not 100% sure what the work on that front looks like right now. Lotus is really only needed if you want to store other people's data as I understand it.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#309

Post by PLDiscordian »

ftyers wrote: post #248

There is still only one implementation of the protocol and no fully functioning Python API. (Disclaimer: I love IPFS, but until it has better support for programmers who don't want to use Go, it's unlikely to get much traction).

While I do use Go, I just use the HTTP API to interact with the go-ipfs daemon. Are you looking to use it in a different way in Python?

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#310

Post by Tom4hawk »

ativzzz wrote: post #119
ugjka wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think streaming is killing torrents and the fact that you need a VPN in many countries to avoid getting fined

I agree with this, I haven't torrented anything in a very long time as most of things I want are streamable somewhere (and I don't care about file ownership), or set up for direct download on some forum somewhere.

There are other problems. I personally encountered this issue with Netflix: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/community-netflix-and-hulu-remo...
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