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And quite annoyingly, it's the opposite of how IPFS works. IPFS nodes only cache the content as long as it's actively requested. Depending on the cache policy

And quite annoyingly, it's the opposite of how IPFS works. IPFS nodes only cache the content as long as it's actively requested. Depending on the cache policy of the node, this can be as short as 24 hours. Yes, it could still exist on your private node that your running from your laptop, but this is the equivalent of saying that all published content is available forever because it's on your hard drive. Honestly, I like IPFS as a tech, and blockchain isn't useless, but the entire community just makes me want to puke because it's full of so many extremely ignorant people (at best), but mostly just fraudulent liars (at worse and most common).

chriswarbo 5y ago
> Yes, it could still exist on your private node that your running from your laptop, but this is the equivalent of saying that all published content is available forever because it's on your hard drive. No, the difference is that IPFS will use the same address to fetch content from anyone who's seeding it. If Hacker News shuts down, it will no longer be accessible at 'news.ycombinator.com'; all existing links to that address will die, or worse will start showing some unrelated content (probably domain-squatter spam). That cannot be prevented by making a copy on my hard drive (or even the Wayback Machine). On the other hand, an IPFS version will continue to exist at the same address for as long as anyone is seeding it. All links will remain working; anyone can join in the hosting if they like; even if it eventually stops getting seeded, it may still re-appear if someone re-inserts it, e.g. if they insert the contents an old hard drive they found in an attic (as long as the same hash algorithm is used, then the address will stay the same).
- jayd16 5y ago
  Doesn't a forum need things like user login? Is there an example of such a thing as a forum existing fully on IPFS?
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    > Doesn't a forum need things like user login? I was only talking about the HTML, not the backend server code. Still, you could look on https://awesome.ipfs.io/apps https://awesome.ipfs.io/apps for ideas.
- Linosaurus 5y ago
  > On the other hand, an IPFS version will continue to exist at the same address for as long as anyone is seeding it. I wonder how that would work, a naive direct translation seems impractical. An address identifies an exact piece of content, so a hacker news article gets a new adress every time a comment is added?
  - afiori 5y ago
    pulling things out the ether my guess is that during normal operation news.ycombinator.com constantly creates and propagates new content ids as new comments are added (the front page simply fetches the newest ids, and there is a system for querying for updated ids which simulate how browser refresh works now), if news.ycombinator.com dies it becomes impossible to create new ids or post comments, but all already propagated pieces of contents are still accessible (possibly refresh still works on outdated content). This is just a guess, though.
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    If the HTML differs, it would get a different address; just like the Wayback Machine, but the addresses are based on content rather than timestamp, and it's distributed. Anyone can do that right now, without any changes by (or permission from) the site operator (YCombinator in this case). You couldn't host the "live" version of Hacker News (with user accounts, new comments, etc.) unless YCombinator open up their databases, and re-architect the system to work in a distributed-friendly way. The latter is an interesting idea, but isn't required to fix HTTP issues like link rot.
pfraze 5y ago
To be fair, this is all hard work to get right. I think there’s a third, much larger category of people who are pursuing the idea but just haven’t solved all the problems yet.
kfarr 5y ago
Bingo. The marketing strongly implies permanence, but the only permanence is that same content chunks will have the same hash, not that you can always retrieve content for a given hash. Then you start digging deeper and realize you need to have a paid pinning service to ensure that your content remains available. And these pinning services are way more expensive per gb than traditional storage options.

chriswarbo 5y ago

> Yes, it could still exist on your private node that your running from your laptop, but this is the equivalent of saying that all published content is available forever because it's on your hard drive. No, the difference is that IPFS will use the same address to fetch content from anyone who's seeding it. If Hacker News shuts down, it will no longer be accessible at 'news.ycombinator.com'; all existing links to that address will die, or worse will start showing some unrelated content (probably domain-squatter spam). That cannot be prevented by making a copy on my hard drive (or even the Wayback Machine). On the other hand, an IPFS version will continue to exist at the same address for as long as anyone is seeding it. All links will remain working; anyone can join in the hosting if they like; even if it eventually stops getting seeded, it may still re-appear if someone re-inserts it, e.g. if they insert the contents an old hard drive they found in an attic (as long as the same hash algorithm is used, then the address will stay the same).

jayd16 5y ago
Doesn't a forum need things like user login? Is there an example of such a thing as a forum existing fully on IPFS?
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  > Doesn't a forum need things like user login? I was only talking about the HTML, not the backend server code. Still, you could look on https://awesome.ipfs.io/apps https://awesome.ipfs.io/apps for ideas.
Linosaurus 5y ago
> On the other hand, an IPFS version will continue to exist at the same address for as long as anyone is seeding it. I wonder how that would work, a naive direct translation seems impractical. An address identifies an exact piece of content, so a hacker news article gets a new adress every time a comment is added?
- afiori 5y ago
  pulling things out the ether my guess is that during normal operation news.ycombinator.com constantly creates and propagates new content ids as new comments are added (the front page simply fetches the newest ids, and there is a system for querying for updated ids which simulate how browser refresh works now), if news.ycombinator.com dies it becomes impossible to create new ids or post comments, but all already propagated pieces of contents are still accessible (possibly refresh still works on outdated content). This is just a guess, though.
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  If the HTML differs, it would get a different address; just like the Wayback Machine, but the addresses are based on content rather than timestamp, and it's distributed. Anyone can do that right now, without any changes by (or permission from) the site operator (YCombinator in this case). You couldn't host the "live" version of Hacker News (with user accounts, new comments, etc.) unless YCombinator open up their databases, and re-architect the system to work in a distributed-friendly way. The latter is an interesting idea, but isn't required to fix HTTP issues like link rot.

pfraze 5y ago

To be fair, this is all hard work to get right. I think there’s a third, much larger category of people who are pursuing the idea but just haven’t solved all the problems yet.

kfarr 5y ago

Bingo. The marketing strongly implies permanence, but the only permanence is that same content chunks will have the same hash, not that you can always retrieve content for a given hash. Then you start digging deeper and realize you need to have a paid pinning service to ensure that your content remains available. And these pinning services are way more expensive per gb than traditional storage options.