4 ms·
> But then again, could you ever do that? True in the absolute sense, but the effect size is much worse under the kind of content-addressable model you're prop
by akoboldfrying 2y ago
> But then again, could you ever do that?
True in the absolute sense, but the effect size is much worse under the kind of content-addressable model you're proposing. Currently, if I download something from you and you later delete that thing, I can still keep my downloaded copy; under your model, if anyone ever downloads that thing from you and you later delete that thing, with high probability I can still acquire it at any later point.
As you say, this is by design, and there are cases where this design makes sense. I think it mostly doesn't for what we currently use the web for.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoYou could only later get the thing if you grabbed its hash while it was still available. And you could only reliably resolve that hash later if somebody (maybe you) went out of their way to pin the underlying data. Otherwise nodes would forget rather quickly, because why bother keep around unreferenced bits? It's the same functionality you get with permalinks and sites like archive.org--forgotten unless explicitly remembered by anybody, dynamic unless explicitly a permalink. It's just built into the protocol rather than a feature to be inconsistently implemented over and over by many separate parties.