5 ms·

Peermaps

149 points by bpierre 7y ago

vcavallo 7y ago
seems like a great idea. i’m not familiar enough with the domain to know how unique this implementation is.. good luck!
Sephr 7y ago
Seems too focused. I would rather work on improving OpenStreetMap extensibility. Peerweb (still in development) will be able to add the same functionality to OpenStreetMap with a more generalized and reusable implementation.
- gniv 7y ago
  Can you say more? Which peerweb? Looking at the search results for "peerweb" [1], none of them seems like a serious active project. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=peerweb https://www.google.com/search?q=peerweb
  - canadaduane 7y ago
    I think "the peer web" and "decentralized web" / "dweb" are emerging terms that are trying to describe all of the efforts to make software work peer-to-peer without centralized servers. e.g. 1. https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html 2. http://thaliproject.org/ http://thaliproject.org/ 3. https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ 4. https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/ 5. https://blockstack.org/ https://blockstack.org/
    - rolandog 7y ago
      Would PeerTube and Mastodon be considered decentralized?: 6. https://joinpeertube.org https://joinpeertube.org 7. https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social
  - Sephr 7y ago
    I am referring to https://peerweb.com https://peerweb.com, an in-development project of mine. There are no public-facing docs at the moment, but I will be providing updates on my Twitter.
wildduck 7y ago
How is the does the peers discover each other? Via DHT? Or is it implementing webtorrent?
- lgierth 7y ago
  Most of it uses Dat and IPFS under the hood.
  - ilaksh 7y ago
    Dumb question.. why do people use dat instead of torrents? Other dumb question. Are there dat builds for Android? The client is Node I believe.
    - fwip 7y ago
      Torrents are static, dat archives can have updates pushed to them.
      - pabs3 7y ago
        There is a BEP for updatable torrents: https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html
orblivion 7y ago
What I see this helping is the proliferation of OpenStreetMap applications. For instance, OsmAND and Maps.me (as I vaguely understand it? Please correct me if I'm wrong) have their own data files served from their own servers, copied from the source OpenStreetMap DB. Periodically, the app developers update the data on their servers, and users soonafter get those updates. (I like this system at least as an option; offline maps are convenient and at least in theory more private.) Where it gets interesting is if you fork the program. Perhaps OsmAND and Maps.me aren't so fond of having their data used by forks of their applications, for whatever reason. This creates a pretty major barrier for people who want to make a fork; they now have to maintain a data server. (Fortunately for F-Droid users like me, there is a fork of Maps.me simply called Maps. It removes ads, so I imagine Maps.me isn't interested in subsidizing it in the form of server access. I'm not sure what they worked out as far as storage.) It always occurred to me that they could mostly solve this problem with bittorrent. But if the entire database is torrent-like with Peermaps, that's even better. It could remove one of the barriers to experimenting with new apps. Or so it seems to me.
- jhoh 7y ago
  Didn't know about this app but it looks great! Here's the F-Droid link for anyone interested: https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps
- rmc 7y ago
  Yes the OSM data format is good for editing, but includes everything, and isn't sorted or anything like that. So data consumers process the data, keep what they need, clean up data, process it and make into whatever format they want/need. You're right that the 'whole planet' is a lot of data to process, and this can be a barrier. But there are regional extracts of OSM data available (e.g. http://download.geofabrik.de/ http://download.geofabrik.de/ ). So one can always maintain just data for your region
  - orblivion 7y ago
    It sounds like you're saying that the reason these applications have their own data files is that they tailor it for the application; nothing to do with bandwidth issues. In that case, I don't see how peermaps would make things any different for them.
ilaksh 7y ago
This type of thing seems very useful if you are ever going to get a viable public alternative to Uber as an open network and platform that providers can build off of. I wonder if peermaps makes it convenient for peers to update maps? Because OpenStreetMap is missing a lot of key information such as not having addresses in many places. But a peer to peer mapping technology with a more complete OSM plus a scalable cryptocurrency such as Eth 2.0 and maybe a smart contract plus some distributed coordination for bidding on rides could make things more practical. Right now arcade.city is doing something similar but is limited by some of the factors I mentioned.
- orblivion 7y ago
  What would you do differently about OSM contribution? Presumably peermaps pulls from the main OSM database. Would a distributed system somehow make contributions easier?
- rmc 7y ago
  > Because OpenStreetMap is missing a lot of key information such as not having addresses in many places. OSM is a wiki. So you know the solution to that? Just keep mapping and adding data!
chippy 7y ago
How would this work with expiry of tiles or data? Would a swarm only carry the "latest" stuff? Can you go back in time in theory?

149 points by bpierre 7y ago

seems like a great idea. i’m not familiar enough with the domain to know how unique this implementation is.. good luck!

Seems too focused. I would rather work on improving OpenStreetMap extensibility. Peerweb (still in development) will be able to add the same functionality to OpenStreetMap with a more generalized and reusable implementation.

gniv 7y ago
Can you say more? Which peerweb? Looking at the search results for "peerweb" [1], none of them seems like a serious active project. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=peerweb https://www.google.com/search?q=peerweb
- canadaduane 7y ago
  I think "the peer web" and "decentralized web" / "dweb" are emerging terms that are trying to describe all of the efforts to make software work peer-to-peer without centralized servers. e.g. 1. https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html 2. http://thaliproject.org/ http://thaliproject.org/ 3. https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ 4. https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/ 5. https://blockstack.org/ https://blockstack.org/
  - rolandog 7y ago
    Would PeerTube and Mastodon be considered decentralized?: 6. https://joinpeertube.org https://joinpeertube.org 7. https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social
- Sephr 7y ago
  I am referring to https://peerweb.com https://peerweb.com, an in-development project of mine. There are no public-facing docs at the moment, but I will be providing updates on my Twitter.

wildduck 7y ago

How is the does the peers discover each other? Via DHT? Or is it implementing webtorrent?

lgierth 7y ago
Most of it uses Dat and IPFS under the hood.
- ilaksh 7y ago
  Dumb question.. why do people use dat instead of torrents? Other dumb question. Are there dat builds for Android? The client is Node I believe.
  - fwip 7y ago
    Torrents are static, dat archives can have updates pushed to them.
    - pabs3 7y ago
      There is a BEP for updatable torrents: https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html

orblivion 7y ago

What I see this helping is the proliferation of OpenStreetMap applications. For instance, OsmAND and Maps.me (as I vaguely understand it? Please correct me if I'm wrong) have their own data files served from their own servers, copied from the source OpenStreetMap DB. Periodically, the app developers update the data on their servers, and users soonafter get those updates. (I like this system at least as an option; offline maps are convenient and at least in theory more private.) Where it gets interesting is if you fork the program. Perhaps OsmAND and Maps.me aren't so fond of having their data used by forks of their applications, for whatever reason. This creates a pretty major barrier for people who want to make a fork; they now have to maintain a data server. (Fortunately for F-Droid users like me, there is a fork of Maps.me simply called Maps. It removes ads, so I imagine Maps.me isn't interested in subsidizing it in the form of server access. I'm not sure what they worked out as far as storage.) It always occurred to me that they could mostly solve this problem with bittorrent. But if the entire database is torrent-like with Peermaps, that's even better. It could remove one of the barriers to experimenting with new apps. Or so it seems to me.

jhoh 7y ago
Didn't know about this app but it looks great! Here's the F-Droid link for anyone interested: https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps
rmc 7y ago
Yes the OSM data format is good for editing, but includes everything, and isn't sorted or anything like that. So data consumers process the data, keep what they need, clean up data, process it and make into whatever format they want/need. You're right that the 'whole planet' is a lot of data to process, and this can be a barrier. But there are regional extracts of OSM data available (e.g. http://download.geofabrik.de/ http://download.geofabrik.de/ ). So one can always maintain just data for your region
- orblivion 7y ago
  It sounds like you're saying that the reason these applications have their own data files is that they tailor it for the application; nothing to do with bandwidth issues. In that case, I don't see how peermaps would make things any different for them.

ilaksh 7y ago

This type of thing seems very useful if you are ever going to get a viable public alternative to Uber as an open network and platform that providers can build off of. I wonder if peermaps makes it convenient for peers to update maps? Because OpenStreetMap is missing a lot of key information such as not having addresses in many places. But a peer to peer mapping technology with a more complete OSM plus a scalable cryptocurrency such as Eth 2.0 and maybe a smart contract plus some distributed coordination for bidding on rides could make things more practical. Right now arcade.city is doing something similar but is limited by some of the factors I mentioned.

orblivion 7y ago
What would you do differently about OSM contribution? Presumably peermaps pulls from the main OSM database. Would a distributed system somehow make contributions easier?
rmc 7y ago
> Because OpenStreetMap is missing a lot of key information such as not having addresses in many places. OSM is a wiki. So you know the solution to that? Just keep mapping and adding data!

chippy 7y ago

How would this work with expiry of tiles or data? Would a swarm only carry the "latest" stuff? Can you go back in time in theory?