I know VERY little about this topic. But it has occurred to me that P2P could vastly reduce the need for insanely sized data centers and, subsequently, the environmental footprint of data.
Yes? If so, why isn't it used more widely? Not a good fit? Practical issues? Commercial interests? Political control?
@terjefjelde the main reason IMO is that it's hard, and by its nature is not getting the development money that centralising models can attract from VCs etc al.
However, things are coming together IMO. Several #p2p projects are coming to fruition, and one of the good impacts of the crypto sphere has been a source of money to support some of this work (cf. #libp2p).
I've been following one, #SafeNetwork for a decade which is close to launching with unique promise (no Blockchain).
ValentinesNet is still going strong, so all being well we’ll keep it alive til we run out of space or release a breaking change.
We are moving ahead with updates on the fly, and hope to put it to the test on the current testnet. Basically what will happen is that node IDs and data will be seamlessly retained even as the sn_node software is updated.
We have a suspicion that the high-mem nodes are those that subscribed to gossip for royalties. This testnet is aiming to probe that hypothesis by removing gossip royalties!
The aim here is largely to see if we have avoided such high memory nodes.
Imagine what amazing user respecting collaborative apps we could have on a #p2p network with a range of #CRDT / #LocalFirst data types.
That boggles my mind because right now apps are dominated by corporate imperatives and we have so much more imagination to put into a truly open peer-to-peer ecosystem.
Now, back to trying to understand how to use the #Rust#CRDTs crate in #SafeNetwork's mutable data types. I'm working on an example to print the history of a RegisterCRDT and my head hurts!
It's a way to support decentralised operations on various data structures - such as collaborative editing of documents - in a way that ensures everyone ends up with the same data/document once all changes are applied, regardless of the order. So lazy consensus.
@kepano
Same with #SafeNetwork: non-VC, your data forever and a level playing field for developers and creatives of all kinds at scale at zero cost to them. @obsidian
Yesterday we launched our latest testnet to analyse the effect of encryption on node memory performance. This builds on the previous QuicNet, which saw a move from TCP to QUIC, and drew a rapturous response.
QUIC is evidently the future. Nevertheless, this being cutting-edge engineering, for every step forward the law says there has to be half a step back ...
Ok so I think the IPFS is probably the most coolest and futuristic decentralized server project I have ever seen by far, huge game changer. The fact that you can host an entire HTML site free of charge is insanity to me. Think about the possibilities hosting your own indie musics, comics, arts, stories and games. It may not replace social media but it's great for creating personal website :BlobhajBlanketBlue:. #ipfs#decentralization#peertopeer#p2p#internetprotocol#technology
@TechpriestBaunach@trinityparadox
Also keep an eye out for #SafeNetwork which is coming together. Initially for perpetual data storage but websites will follow. Truly automous #p2p, so no gatekeepers, servers etc.
Uses content addressing like #IPFS but acts like one big server, so no need for you or any particular device to be online for your data to remain secure and accessible from anywhere.
I think 2024 is already a very exciting year for p2p networks. Can't wait for the apps.
🇬🇧 💶 "Digital euro": #Pirates amendment calls for real digital cash! 💻🏴☠️ In the digital age we should be able to pay as freely and anonymously as with notes and coins.
I've a bit more to do on #vdash which has given me more time to wonder about what next.
As #SafeNetwork is getting pretty exciting r.n. I'm veering towards something to help Devs with #p2p apps, and feeling a buzz around compiling the client API for #WASM, and showing how to build native cross platform mobile and desktop apps using your web framework of choice (eg #SveltKit), #Rust/WASM and #Tauri.
Then an LDP containers API so existing #Solid apps become Safe Apps in this setup. #LinkedData
@dentangle I made a proof of concept decentralised git hub for use with the #SafeNetwork, a #p2p storage and comms system (currently in testing).
Taking it further was more than I could handle but I showed how it could be done using a SvelteKit web UI, and git in the browser on a decentralised filesystem, also hosting issues in the git repo (using git-bug as a library compiled to WASM).
so we have been batting around the idea of some kinda paper bot for awhile re: the question "how do we track discussions around scholarly work" and I am starting to think this paper-feeds project is the way to do it.
So say it is an AP instance and it has one primary bot user, you follow it and it follows you back. When you make a post with something that resolves to a DOI, then that post is linked to that work. Any hashtags used in that post are added to that papers keywords (assuming some basic moderation and word ban lists). Then keyword feeds are also represented as AP actors that can be followed and make a post per paper. I wonder if we can spoof the "in reply to" field to present all those posts as being replies to that paper.
So say the bot also has some simple microsyntax for linking your account to an ORCID - either directly in a profile field, or by @'ing the bot and checking a rel=me, or hell even oauth. Then you could also relate when the authors of given works talk about other works and use that as another proximity measure. Then you could make an author RSS feed/AP actor that is just the works someone publishes and optionally that they talk mention - so eg I could make an aggregate feed for the papers my friends are reading.
Then you could have instances of this feed generator follow one another and broadcast aggregated similarity information at a paper level not linked to personal information, and also opt-in info like the fedi account <-> ORCID link. Since youre on AP already you basically get that for free.
Thinking about what would be useful for social discovery of scholarly works, and there are a lot of really interesting ideas once you start actually yno doing it starting from a place of not having a product to sell or a platform to run so you avoid some of the scale and liability probs.
@jonny
FYI I worked with the help of the #Solid community including Timbl, to demonstrate that the Solid protocol, or at least a useful subset could be implemented and used on a #p2p data and comms network.
I believe the issues with centralised DNS and server based hosting (self hosting included) are not sufficient to meet the goals of Solid which include decentralization and self ownership of data.
I was able to run existing Solid apps running on p2p #SafeNetwork.
If someone wants to start a blog, and they'd like the content they publish to stick around on the internet for as long as possible into the future, what are their best options?
Buying a domain is tricky because domain names expire
GitHub Pages is pretty great, because GitHub is free and has, to-date, a great track record of not breaking *.github.io content
What are other great options? WordPress.com I think are good on this front
I don't trust anyone with less than 10 years of track record
Seeing a lot of how to save Firefox toots today, well two in a few minutes 🤷♂️ and another yesterday!
I know a way.
One said #Mozilla are suffering from a mature market, which is not the whole story but a good point, and a pointer to a way to put #Firefox on top.
If @mozilla Firefox were to build a Browser for #SafeNetwork they would have first mover advantage on a network that will not attract big tech, because it is user focused with privacy and security from the ground up. #p2p
The Anti-Capitalist Software License (#ACSL) can be adapted but as it stands does not require disclosure of derived code, instead limits use to individuals and organisations which do not exploit labour, but are either non-profit / educational, or employee owned.
So the British Library has been hacked and it is at a standstill for months, and it is not expected to recover any time soon.
Not even the physical copies can be borrowed, or even consulted in their premises, or even be located if they wanted to. The catalogue is electronic, and so unexisting for now.
What if something similar happens to the arxiv? Will we be able to carry on doing research in the way we are used to?
@MartinEscardo This is the kind of thing that cannot happen when using #SafeNetwork for storage. Coming in 2024, it will be a way to end ransomware and data-loss.
@chrisg you are describing the mission of many projects and #SafeNetwork is the one I've been helping with for nearly a decade because it is driven by values I share.
The are others though, such as #DistributedPress which I only discovered today. It has similar values and is driven by a coop.
Proud of my team at Distributed.Press / @compost for releasing our new feature, the Social Inbox — It allows dweb websites to publish their posts directly to the Fediverse and integrate their comment section with users there.
Hey @mai, nice work. I was already following @dweb and have added @compost today because I like what you are doing very much. I did something much, much simpler in the past to publish static websites directly to both standard hosting and to #SafeNetwork a while ago but that work has been overtaken, though the website still exists.