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BitTorrent v2

blog.libtorrent.org

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541–550 of 576 posts

Re: BitTorrent v2

#541

Post by tracker1 »

nicbou wrote: post #257
dchuk wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the problem with all cryptocurrency currently. It’s a massive user experience issue, in the sense that users have to experience the technical bullshit of how the currencies work, completely missing the brilliant part of real money: it just works. I hand people money, they give me things. I swipe my credit card, I get things. I can’t remember who aid it originally, but there’s a great test you can give…

It has been a few years, and despite a few attempts, I still don't really understand bitcoin. Yes yes ledgers and proof of work and yada yada, but I still don't know what I would need to do to buy something with bitcoin right now. As I understand I need to do something that's pretty much exactly like opening a bank account, but transactions take forever, they cost money, and the currency is not accepted by any busine…

You don't REALLY need something like a bank account (exchange account) except to convert to/from the currency. You only need an electronic wallet. The transactions are where it gets really weird though.

That said, unfortunately, short of a large nation state, or collection of banks also allowing exchange/transactions, I don't think it will ever take off. Even then, transaction times as you mention are not fast, and often are controlled by a limited number of organizations.

What the technology does offer, is a means for multiple parties that don't trust each other to proceed with a transaction. This is often where "smart contracts" come into play, and also why banks are considering a cryptocurrency system(s) for inter-bank exchanges.

In the end, those that win will largely be the incumbents imho.

I setup bitcoin on a few machines really early on... and had a couple coins... but I had no way to "use" them and it was just costing electricity at the time... I deleted it all and didn't look back until they cleared $20k a coin. Kind of wish I at least saved a zip file of the wallets somewhere. Though if I'd kept mining, may have been worth something.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#542

Post by tracker1 »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #193
cercatrova wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a tool that doesn't pitch that it's a P2P tool - it doesn't try to convince you with sob stories in how using P2P helps fight against the big bad evil web. Instead, you use it because it's genuinely the best at what it does: it being P2P is not a selling point, it's just how it happens to work, and that is exactly what it should be. This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products shou…

>This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products should learn. Consumers don't care how it works. I distinctly remember being a teenager and learning how bittorrent worked, thinking it's the coolest thing I'd heard of and laboriously explaining how it worked to a friend that sounded interested. At the end of the explanation he asked "So how do you download music with it?" And I realized all…

I have similar feelings... I often think of ways one might be able to have anonymous + secure + decentralized messages... unfortunately, any solution becomes easily DDoS-friendly. Then, thinking about which pillar to relax would be best. Then, thinking to hell with it, SMTP works well enough.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#543

Post by mwcampbell »

viktorelofsson wrote: post #526
miki123211 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using for the GUI layer, and what's your stance on accessibility? The fact it's Windows only gives me hope.

I'm using wxWidgets, so it's the Win32 API at the lowest layer. For accessibility I want to make it support the NVDA screen reader which I think would make it support other readers as well :)

wxWidgets is a decent choice. Not all of its controls are accessible though. Most infamously, the wxHTML control (wx's own HTML engine) isn't accessible, but the web view control (using the OS's web browsing engine) is accessible if you futz around at the native layer to force the keyboard focus into the right place. Also, on Windows, the list view control is accessible but the data view control is not. Frustratingly, the opposite is the case on Mac and (I think) GTK.

I suggest you test with Narrator rather than NVDA. Disclosure: I work on the Narrator team at Microsoft. But that's not why I say this. The reason is that NVDA and JAWS have some ugly hacks that they can use to make some GUI implementations (particularly using Win32 with GDI for graphics) accessible even if they're not accessible by design. For details, do some searching on the term "off-screen model". Narrator doesn't have this, so if your product works with Narrator, you know it's really accessible.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#544

Post by tomcam »

pessimizer wrote: post #481
tomcam wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you doing to help? Coding? Contributing money?

You're allowed to have an opinion on the quality of things that you're not involved in the production of. You should hear me talk about movies.

I see your point, but... Movies are (largely) by definition well-funded with people who make union wages whether they do a bad job. Parent seemed a little flippant to me considering that the work discussed is a labor of love used by millions, but remunerated by (maybe) thousands

Re: BitTorrent v2

#545

Post by denkmoon »

nicbou wrote: post #516
denkmoon wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't know what I would need to do to buy something with bitcoin right now. but I think you do. You find a seller who is willing to accept the currency you're using, and you use whatever interface to the bitcoin network you've chosen to do "send x money to y identifier". No different to a regular EFT. You identified the exact problems. It's not that bitcoin transfers are some weird foreign concept, it's tha…

> You find a seller who is willing to accept the currency you're using Well that's a non-starter. If I wanted to buy a beer with bitcoin right now, I'd probably end up drinking tap water.

Same deal if you tried to pay for a beer in the US using vietnamese dong.

However if you wanted to purchase "illegal" drugs online you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who will accept your USD.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#546

Post by companyhen »

tuatoru wrote: post #400
companyhen wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communities can create value. The Bitcoin community believes Bitcoin has value, so it does. It has unique tokenomics with a limited 21m supply and is backed by math and cryptography. That's all there is to understand. Look into the history of money. Crypto just allows communities to have value. Soon you will see many communities online creating governance tokens, something like "reddit coins" but better, and you will…

> Crypto just allows communities to have value. So do stamps, coins, Star Wars figurines in original packaging, baseball cards, yada yada. At least you can look at those other things while you possess them.

You can transact billions of dollars across the globe securely with a minimal transaction fee via Bitcoin. Don't see how that's possible with Star Wars cards. Guess some people prefer government fiat currency with unlimited supply. I'd rather store my wealth in something that was launched more fairly for all and deflationary, even if it is high risk. The future for blockchain tech is bright, a lot has happened during the past bear market and the DeFi giant is looming. https://defipulse.com

Re: BitTorrent v2

#547

Post by adamsea »

Muromec wrote: post #396
adamsea wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this hypothetical situation you describe exist anywhere outside of the hypothetical situation posited by a character in a Neal Stephenson novel? Seriously in reality the specifics of any sort of wild situation like the one you describe matter. Which countries? Which currency? Which kind of illegal behavior? And (I ask out of ignorance) in this scenario you describe why would whatever group managing whatever bitc…

> Does this hypothetical situation you describe exist anywhere outside of the hypothetical situation posited by a character in a Neal Stephenson novel? That indeed is a bunch of real situations that have happened to me in 2014-2015 and some of that is still a thing. Check your privileges, sweet summer child. Like seriously — for the first 30 years of my life it was outright illegal to have a bank account in a foreign…

Fair. I don't know much about this world.

But, like, the classic "society could collapse" fear-and-doubt, doom-and-gloom, grab-the-gold-and-the-burner-laptop-and-the-ammo argument can be used for just about anything.

Heck, even when society actually is collapsing, the argument isn't actually that great an argument!

I'm not even arguing that cryptocurrency couldn't have value in the scenario you describe. Just that genuine, specific, examples are more compelling than generalized scenarios. Generally speaking ; )

For example, all of the more specific examples folks talk about below (Argentina, etc).

Plus the parent poster made fair points, based on my limited knowledge, about accountability issues with cryptocurrency. And trust. Especially for nontechnical folk, and even for technical folk. Even (especially!) when society is collapsing, there's always someone out to scam you ...

For arguments sake, if someone is in the scenario you describe, what are good initial resources for a nontechnical person? For instance, should I use something like a coinbase wallet?

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/fdykz3/is...

Re: BitTorrent v2

#548

Post by sedatk »

C4stor wrote: post #438
sedatk wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, why did BitTorrent work on such a costly change if it's not vulnerable against it?

For the purpose of operating a bait and switch on the files, the torrent creators controls the two hashes somewhat, so it's an easier to pull attack.

If you have control over the bait, I don't understand the reason to switch at all. Just make the bait evil and be done with it?

Re: BitTorrent v2

#549

Post by deathgrips »

d10r wrote: post #530
deathgrips wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This falls apart when you examine prohibited goods. Guns are illegal in most countries because they are very useful.

Are they though? I'm 38 and can't remember a situation in my life where a gun would have been useful. Not saying that I can't imagine such situations, I just find it a slightly weird example to make this point.

I also don't think that a fishing pole is useful, but that's because I don't like to fish. With a gun I could

* defend myself

* rob you

* murder you very effectively

* enjoy target shooting

* hunt wild game

* provide peace of mind in troubled times when law and order break down

The fewer guns there are per capita, the more useful they become for criminals. They are so useful, in fact, that people will spend a lot of money and subject themselves to costly and invasive regulations just to buy one gun. If no one found them useful, no one would find it necessary to ban them.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#550

Post by Muromec »

adamsea wrote: post #547
Muromec wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does this hypothetical situation you describe exist anywhere outside of the hypothetical situation posited by a character in a Neal Stephenson novel? That indeed is a bunch of real situations that have happened to me in 2014-2015 and some of that is still a thing. Check your privileges, sweet summer child. Like seriously — for the first 30 years of my life it was outright illegal to have a bank account in a foreign…

Fair. I don't know much about this world. But, like, the classic "society could collapse" fear-and-doubt, doom-and-gloom, grab-the-gold-and-the-burner-laptop-and-the-ammo argument can be used for just about anything. Heck, even when society actually is collapsing, the argument isn't actually that great an argument! I'm not even arguing that cryptocurrency couldn't have value in the scenario you describe. Just that ge…

Well, I haven’t really talked about collapse of society here. I guess it’s difficult to even define what it means precisely. I could imagine that Sarajevo siege and few years around 1991 in former USSR could qualify.

Then again people who I talked to in 2014, were still a bit in denial till the start of school year and only then left the area directly affected by war.

My point is simple — you take the ability to access banking system for granted, when it’s far from universal. It’s also not as unrestricted and interconnected as bitcoin or internet itself. Sometimes you have a bank and a card, but your ability to transact is restricted. It doesn’t always mean that you sit in the basement hiding from daily artillery strike or wandering post-nuclear desert on a cool bike.

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