5 ms·

For personal use, I’ve had good luck storing things in files. Then when I need those those things, I read the files.

christophilus 4y ago
Heh. Snarky but true. I store just about everything in a “notes” folder which is mostly markdown files. Easily searchable / editable with any tool you like.
chrisseaton 4y ago
This seems unnecessarily snarky. You can make anything sound silly by reducing its functionality to the most basic level possible, ignoring all aspects of ergonomics and packaging. And you could make this comment about any storage engine. Like the infamous Dropbox comment here.
- pydry 4y ago
  Dropbox explained itself pretty well. A simple one paragraph why at the top of this project's README wouldnt be amiss.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    For example > Its trivial to set up and operate kvass across multiple devices > remember the file we stored earlier? Let's get a shareable url for it!
    - pydry 4y ago
      I read it. Im pretty clear on what it does. Im still not feeling the why (or the differentiator from other things that store files and give you URLs). Remember when Dropbox explained itself by telling you you didnt need to carry around USB sticks in your jean pockets that get washed or lost? I thought that was pretty neat.
    - amelius 4y ago
      > Its trivial to set up and operate kvass across multiple devices Still, using a distributed file system is so much better, as its API is supported by basically everything else (including Dropbox!). I feel that a key-value store goes against the Unix philosophy and is solving an imaginary problem.
      - vineyardmike 4y ago
        A distributed file system seems like way more work to set up. Also not everything has to follow the Unix philosophy. Plenty of very useful things are better off less Unix-y eg ffmpeg. But this doesn’t seem to do a bad job - it’s a very dedicated tool to do one thing, it just doesn’t store everything as files.
- markstos 4y ago
  Fair. The project could do a better job of explaining what benefit is it has over the file system API.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    For example sharing a public link to a value. And syncing between file systems across a network is hard. (Before you say it's easy you can just do X, Y, and Z... remember that infamous Dropbox comment.)
    - markstos 4y ago
      It was easy to share public links to values hosted on the file system in 1995 with Apache. It remains easy today with Nginx and other web servers. Syncing filesystems across networks with rsync has worked well for years. If you are considering a personal key value store, you are probably already familiar with web servers and rsync. If not, they are two general purpose tools which are likely to be useful for other projects as well. I was absent the day of the infamous Dropbox comment.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        > It remains easy You're just parroting the original comment which was proven to be so so wrong in practice. Most people aren't able to / don't want to duck-tape random systems together like this. I could snakily ask you what's the point of Nginx? Why not just run a dial-in BBS? Don’t you have the skills to do that? Why do you need this fancy Nginx and why did anyone bother writing it? That’s what you sound like. There's value in building something that is integrated.
  - kaoD 4y ago
    Mostly the "remote" command as seen in the README.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  What's wrong with Dropbox comment? I still didn't find any use for this service, but rsync works for me almost every day. IMO Dropbox is useless.
  - NoraCodes 4y ago
    Many people do find it useful, and the people who created it have become very wealthy. I'm in the same boat as you, but there are more kinds of people and situations in the world than just us.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > What's wrong with Dropbox comment? ... IMO Dropbox is useless. That's just repeating the original ignorant Dropbox comment. Over 15 million paying users don't think Dropbox is useless. And hundreds of millions of non-paying users don't either.
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
    yc and Dropbox realised that people would like to pay for it. in the same logic, a toaster is useless, I can always just heat bread in a pan no?
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
    a browser is useless, you can always send a request through curl and read the html.
- dadoge 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is the infamous Dropbox comment?
  - whenlambo 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - lkschubert8 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 The gist is the original yc debut of Dropbox had a comment that described a pretty technical way to get the same functionality as drop box. It's commonly referenced when folks on hackernews dismiss a product when they can do the same with 10 unix commands, not realizing they might not be the target customer. Interestingly I think this situation is the exact opposite, Kvass seems to be more complicated for a non technical user than file systems as the top level comment responded with.
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
Yeah but is your filesystem endorsed by a fun & quirky children's cartoon beaver? Can it do QR codes? Didn't think so.
nkrisc 4y ago
To your point, the very first examples don’t really demonstrate much value, even if they are the most basic examples of how it works. It’s a bit like selling a car by showing all the different things you can hold in the cup holders.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  There are literally hundreds of distributed networked KV stores used by software developers for all sorts of projects. Showing how to store “hello world” seems like a pretty good intro. Why can’t people see a use case for this? It maybe doesn’t compare as unique against the hundred other KV stores but it’s also a toy project and a KV store seems to have an obvious use? Personal, I’m going to try this out since I was actually looking for a similar KV store. Only because I was looking and HN presented it to me tbh. My use case is that I have a few Raspberry Pis at home (aka low powered) that I wanted to have a distributed config on. I wanted something easy to manipulate with a command line that was lightweight (eg not redis or consul or a password manager). Since it’s for LAN use (or actual Tailscale) the security wasn’t really important.
goodpoint 4y ago
This is spot on. Filesystems are more powerful, fast and scalable than people think.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Heh. Snarky but true. I store just about everything in a “notes” folder which is mostly markdown files. Easily searchable / editable with any tool you like.

chrisseaton 4y ago

This seems unnecessarily snarky. You can make anything sound silly by reducing its functionality to the most basic level possible, ignoring all aspects of ergonomics and packaging. And you could make this comment about any storage engine. Like the infamous Dropbox comment here.

pydry 4y ago
Dropbox explained itself pretty well. A simple one paragraph why at the top of this project's README wouldnt be amiss.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  For example > Its trivial to set up and operate kvass across multiple devices > remember the file we stored earlier? Let's get a shareable url for it!
  - pydry 4y ago
    I read it. Im pretty clear on what it does. Im still not feeling the why (or the differentiator from other things that store files and give you URLs). Remember when Dropbox explained itself by telling you you didnt need to carry around USB sticks in your jean pockets that get washed or lost? I thought that was pretty neat.
  - amelius 4y ago
    > Its trivial to set up and operate kvass across multiple devices Still, using a distributed file system is so much better, as its API is supported by basically everything else (including Dropbox!). I feel that a key-value store goes against the Unix philosophy and is solving an imaginary problem.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      A distributed file system seems like way more work to set up. Also not everything has to follow the Unix philosophy. Plenty of very useful things are better off less Unix-y eg ffmpeg. But this doesn’t seem to do a bad job - it’s a very dedicated tool to do one thing, it just doesn’t store everything as files.
markstos 4y ago
Fair. The project could do a better job of explaining what benefit is it has over the file system API.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  For example sharing a public link to a value. And syncing between file systems across a network is hard. (Before you say it's easy you can just do X, Y, and Z... remember that infamous Dropbox comment.)
  - markstos 4y ago
    It was easy to share public links to values hosted on the file system in 1995 with Apache. It remains easy today with Nginx and other web servers. Syncing filesystems across networks with rsync has worked well for years. If you are considering a personal key value store, you are probably already familiar with web servers and rsync. If not, they are two general purpose tools which are likely to be useful for other projects as well. I was absent the day of the infamous Dropbox comment.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      > It remains easy You're just parroting the original comment which was proven to be so so wrong in practice. Most people aren't able to / don't want to duck-tape random systems together like this. I could snakily ask you what's the point of Nginx? Why not just run a dial-in BBS? Don’t you have the skills to do that? Why do you need this fancy Nginx and why did anyone bother writing it? That’s what you sound like. There's value in building something that is integrated.
- kaoD 4y ago
  Mostly the "remote" command as seen in the README.
vbezhenar 4y ago
What's wrong with Dropbox comment? I still didn't find any use for this service, but rsync works for me almost every day. IMO Dropbox is useless.
- NoraCodes 4y ago
  Many people do find it useful, and the people who created it have become very wealthy. I'm in the same boat as you, but there are more kinds of people and situations in the world than just us.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > What's wrong with Dropbox comment? ... IMO Dropbox is useless. That's just repeating the original ignorant Dropbox comment. Over 15 million paying users don't think Dropbox is useless. And hundreds of millions of non-paying users don't either.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  yc and Dropbox realised that people would like to pay for it. in the same logic, a toaster is useless, I can always just heat bread in a pan no?
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  a browser is useless, you can always send a request through curl and read the html.
dadoge 4y ago
Out of curiosity, what is the infamous Dropbox comment?
- whenlambo 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- lkschubert8 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 The gist is the original yc debut of Dropbox had a comment that described a pretty technical way to get the same functionality as drop box. It's commonly referenced when folks on hackernews dismiss a product when they can do the same with 10 unix commands, not realizing they might not be the target customer. Interestingly I think this situation is the exact opposite, Kvass seems to be more complicated for a non technical user than file systems as the top level comment responded with.

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

Yeah but is your filesystem endorsed by a fun & quirky children's cartoon beaver? Can it do QR codes? Didn't think so.

nkrisc 4y ago

To your point, the very first examples don’t really demonstrate much value, even if they are the most basic examples of how it works. It’s a bit like selling a car by showing all the different things you can hold in the cup holders.

vineyardmike 4y ago
There are literally hundreds of distributed networked KV stores used by software developers for all sorts of projects. Showing how to store “hello world” seems like a pretty good intro. Why can’t people see a use case for this? It maybe doesn’t compare as unique against the hundred other KV stores but it’s also a toy project and a KV store seems to have an obvious use? Personal, I’m going to try this out since I was actually looking for a similar KV store. Only because I was looking and HN presented it to me tbh. My use case is that I have a few Raspberry Pis at home (aka low powered) that I wanted to have a distributed config on. I wanted something easy to manipulate with a command line that was lightweight (eg not redis or consul or a password manager). Since it’s for LAN use (or actual Tailscale) the security wasn’t really important.

goodpoint 4y ago

This is spot on. Filesystems are more powerful, fast and scalable than people think.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]