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Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

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Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#41
post #17
post #2

Yup. Calling it. This is the future, may not seem like it to everyone but this is a part of actually new and extremely useful, passively scalable technology. Imagine (good) unkillable zombie databases- so long as the name of a piece of data is known (its hash).. someone, somewhere, might make it possible for you to answer your query, without even needing to setup a server setup.. that’s _it_! Not to mention it might…

Unfortunately this is still killable. Someone needs to periodically publish up to date databases using some outside protocol. Also if you participate in the public DHT, then your participation is public and can have consequences on your real-life legal entity. If you want to use TOR and onion sites, I don't think this really adds anything to those. I think this just helps you optionaly crowdsource bandwidth.

I've have a answer to this same thread specifying something i'm working on, so in case you are curious, you can have more info by reading the details i gave in the other answer, and the way to solve this problem is through indirection.

You don't expose your data layer directly to the consumer, you expose an api that will resolve to one, two or several databases from one or many peers. The indirection allow you to define your rules and use your data layer in a way that fits your application goals in the best way possible.

So whats is immutable is your application, api and initial data, which you can mutate at later stages through other torrents or by consuming other api's from other peers and mutating your initial database state.

The problem is, the current browser is not meant for this, Javascript is not meant for bigger and complex applications (of course you can do it, but..)

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#42
post #36
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is still killable. Someone needs to periodically publish up to date databases using some outside protocol. Also if you participate in the public DHT, then your participation is public and can have consequences on your real-life legal entity. If you want to use TOR and onion sites, I don't think this really adds anything to those. I think this just helps you optionaly crowdsource bandwidth.

With a simple protocol on top it can be quite resilient. The database is updated only by a group of 3 admins, who perform the update once a week. When one admin initiates an update, the other two ask him the passphrase. If the answer is "tomato" (means "I'm compromised"), the update is rejected and they find another admin. Regular users are generally safe: the laws dont punish downloaders, only uploaders. You can exp…

Isn't the entire point of bittorrent that downloaders are also uploaders?

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#43
post #32

a decade ago, I had the idea of a distributed internet wide filesystem where the chunks could be duplicated over and over again over the internet. Something survivable and loosely/eventually consistent when updated. Someone appears to have built at least part of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filecoin

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know everyone is fed up with the cliche of web3, but having done some side projects with web3 (as in npm i web3) and ipfs, the posted article here is very exciting. This posted link could be another piece of the jigsaw (Solidity, IPFS, IPNS, ...) that I think will come together to make interesting apps in the future. Solidity doesn't mean necessarily spending $100 to make a function call - there are other chains, o…

What you’re describing is so 101 level, I don’t mean it in an insulting way but in bewilderment from the typical criticisms from within tech from which you’d think what you’re describing is impossible mythology or completely off the mark

Mind gracing us with a 201+ level? I believe you’re correct, I’m curious to know what you see

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know everyone is fed up with the cliche of web3, but having done some side projects with web3 (as in npm i web3) and ipfs, the posted article here is very exciting. This posted link could be another piece of the jigsaw (Solidity, IPFS, IPNS, ...) that I think will come together to make interesting apps in the future. Solidity doesn't mean necessarily spending $100 to make a function call - there are other chains, o…

What you’re describing is so 101 level, I don’t mean it in an insulting way but in bewilderment from the typical criticisms from within tech from which you’d think what you’re describing is impossible mythology or completely off the mark

can you expand on this some more?

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#47
post #20
post #2

Yup. Calling it. This is the future, may not seem like it to everyone but this is a part of actually new and extremely useful, passively scalable technology. Imagine (good) unkillable zombie databases- so long as the name of a piece of data is known (its hash).. someone, somewhere, might make it possible for you to answer your query, without even needing to setup a server setup.. that’s _it_! Not to mention it might…

> so long as the name of a piece of data is known (its hash) But that's also the fatal flaw. It's pretty definitionally true of stuff on the web that the person who owns / controls it wants to be able to change / update it. That isn't really supported at all at present for this distribution method, and it's hard to see how it could be in the future without introducing a single choke point. Case in point: the vast maj…

It worked instantly for me. As good as anything else.

You get other features with it for free. Popular chunks will be easier to obtain as many have them and preservation starts with rare pieces. You'd want common use to be fast and uncommon to complete eventually.

If a new torrent uses the same folder name the new files will appear next to the old ones but if so desired the old files may be duplicated into the new torrent.

Its not IPFS but it works.

If you can get a person or organization to sign off on the data I'd say its a feature rather than a bug?

Let the professor publish his data set and let interested parties store it without much effort.

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#48
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is the true Web3 then?

I know everyone is fed up with the cliche of web3, but having done some side projects with web3 (as in npm i web3) and ipfs, the posted article here is very exciting. This posted link could be another piece of the jigsaw (Solidity, IPFS, IPNS, ...) that I think will come together to make interesting apps in the future. Solidity doesn't mean necessarily spending $100 to make a function call - there are other chains, o…

Even as someone who profited well from Uniswap's initial token offering I still have to say that "swapping tokens" is an entirely useless functionality. Gambling, trading, scamming, and laundering are the only realized uses of crypto I have seen since I became involved with the ecosystem a decade ago. The fatal flaw of the decentralization argument is that humans are involved. People want to be able to negotiate chargebacks, even if it is a hassle. People are willing to surrender anonymity in exchange for forms of credit. All organizations require trusted parties. DAOs in a real world would still require forms of centralized trust to perform (AWS, Cloudflare, ...) and little stops one member from going rogue, stealing IP, and starting his own (legally recognized) business. This is before you even start opening an Econ 101 textbook to page 1.

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#49
post #2

Yup. Calling it. This is the future, may not seem like it to everyone but this is a part of actually new and extremely useful, passively scalable technology. Imagine (good) unkillable zombie databases- so long as the name of a piece of data is known (its hash).. someone, somewhere, might make it possible for you to answer your query, without even needing to setup a server setup.. that’s _it_! Not to mention it might…

Yep. This very well could be the future for sites with static content that does not change often.

This isn't a static site. It is dynamic requiring a lot of frameworks. I can think of a lot of better ways to accomplish something similar, especially with IPFS.

Re: Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

#50

Inspired by this, can anyone explain why distributed protocols more often opt for centralized consensus algorithms like Raft, instead of decentralized schemes like Chord or Kademlia? In all cases, the underlying data structure is a shared key/value store. Intuitively, the p2p approach feels more robust, since each node only needs to worry about itself, and every node is the same. So why add the coordinator node? Is i…

Obviously you don't need consensus protocols if you are not trying to build consensus...

It's like asking why we need filesystems and network cards if all we're trying to do is show lights on screens. Obviously not all patterns of lights are as easy to produce on computers.

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