Checking out the Lemmy side of the sea—

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • IPFS has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Ethereum, or indeed any blockchain. It is a protocol for storing distributing and addressing data by hashes of the content over a peer to peer network.

    There is however an initiative to create a commercial market for “pinning*”, which is blockchain based. It still has nothing to do with Ethereum, and is a distinct project that uses IPFS rather than being part of the protocol, thankfully. It is also not a “proof of work” sort of waste, but built around proving content that was promised to be stored is actually stored.

    Pinning in IPFS is effectively “hosting” data permanently. IPFS is inherently peer to peer: content you access gets added to your local cache and gets served to any peer near you asking for it—like BitTorrent—until it that cache is cleared to make space for new content you access. If nobody keeps a copy of some data you want others to access when your machines are offline, IPFS wouldn’t be particularly useful as a CDN. So peers on the network can choose to pin some data, making them exempt from being cleared with cache. It is perfectly possible to offer pinning services that have nothing to do with Filecoin or the blockchain, and those exist already. But the organization developing IPFS wanted an independent blockchain based solution simply because they felt it would scale better and give them a potential way to sustain themselves.

    Frankly, it was a bad idea then, as crypto grift was already becoming obvious. And it didn’t really take off. But since Filecoin has always been a completely separate thing to IPFS, it doesn’t affect how IPFS works in any way, which it continues to do so.

    There are many aspects of IPFS the actual protocol that could stand to be improved. But in a lot of ways, it does do many of the things a Fediverse “CDN” should. But that’s just the storage layer. Getting even the popular AP servers to agree to implement IPFS is going to be almost as realistic an expectation as getting federated identity working on AP. A personal pessimistic view.














  • No One Lives Forever! Please and thank you.

    They’re both fantastic games, but the original (in which you go to Hamburg and a space station) felt more adventurous rather than the more grounded sequel (in which you go to the arctics and even more exotic locale: my hometown of Calcutta). Set it in the fictionalized disco-themed cold-war with the lead jet-setting around the world, and we’re golden!

    Also, only a single game, but: Arcanum. (At least this one’s possible to buy on Gog and Steam…)

    Arcanum supposedly had a sequel in the works at some point: Journey to the Center of Arcanum, and frankly, while I’d prefer to see other continents on that world explored a là Around the World in 80 Days, I’d still be sold on a hollow-earth adventure any day!

    [Finished with the edits now!]