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Comment by tomcooks | Hacker News Reader

Why not use Beaker[0] and achieve the same thing, but on linux and windows too?

It has a great community too

It's personal preference, some people will prefer Beaker, we personally liked the "drag some files to a folder and that's it" UX.

By the way, I'll mention this here because it isn't evident on the Hearth page right now: You can get your own username on Eternum for free, and it will redirect to the latest hash that Hearth publishes (i.e. the latest version of your website) automatically.

You can do this even if you don't use Hearth (we have an API for it), here's an example with my username:

https://www.eternum.io/user/stavros/

> we personally liked the "drag some files to a folder and that's it" UX.

Beaker does this...

In terms of getting a free username on a HTTP website, https://hashbase.io/

Disclaimer: I haven't used Hearth, so I can't compare, but Beaker doesn't seem like it could be much easier.

Oh I see, thanks. I'm not very familiar with Dat/Beaker, but I'll try it out some more, as I missed that mechanic.

Quick demo if you don't want to install: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwLaEyKGc90

Am I missing something? Beaker requires you to use their browser? Not really apples to apples

Beaker is a browser that supports http:// and dat:// - you can:

- use Beaker to publish/"host" dat:// websites (as you can use Hearth to publish ipfs websites)

- use Beaker or any dat:// client to browse dat:// websites

- use any browser to browse dat:// websites via http through hashbase.io (similar to eternum.io)

OK, but IPFS sites are just HTTP/S via a gateway. So any browser works. Indeed, there are IPFS gateways on Tor onion services.

The last point mentioned has that too, hashbase.io is a HTTPS gateway for dat://

On the cli side, you can also browse/explore dat content with https://github.com/millette/dat-shell

That website gave me a good chuckle. Was that your actual website from back when, or did you just "take inspiration" from the old days?

Haha, no, I just made that yesterday as a quick test of the redirection functionality (it uses bootstrap), although I did also find my actual old website from when I was 16:

https://anonymoussoftware.stavros.io/

Ahh, iframes and tables, so cutting edge :)

> we personally liked the "drag some files to a folder and that's it" UX.

How much extra work would it have been to add a "drag some files to a folder and run publish_website" interface, for Linux and Windows users? Hardly any, given that the functionality is already there.

Not only that, it would make the system more easily scriptable. For example, it is probably easier on MacOS to get a Makefile to run an executable than to drag files to a folder.

> For example, it is probably easier on MacOS to get a Makefile to run an executable than to drag files to a folder.

Easier for whom?

The person writing the makefile. Make can easily run executables. Getting it to simulate GUI movements is, I expect, possible, but harder to do.

Fun fact: Beaker used to support IPFS[0] and the IPFS creator used to work with the Dat project[1].

[0]https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/issues/480#issuecomm...

[1]https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/119#issuecomment-21827839...

I spent several years at Cargo Collective (https://cargocollective.com), a publishing platform for designers, musicians, architects, etc… Pre-SquareSpace, Wix, all that… Days away from releasing the public beta of Enoki, an experimental publishing tool for the peer-to-peer web. Currently running inside Beaker Browser and built on Dat.

Beta registration was opened last week, although it is still trying to fly a bit below the radar :)

https://enoki.site

Or BlockStack[0] even

[0](https://blockstack.org)

Or add realtime updates to IPFS, Beaker, or Blockstack using a P2P/decentralized Firebase: https://github.com/amark/gun

IPFS + Firebase = Lovechild ^

Wow, this is great. Thanks for sharing this.

I remember having read about Gun a few years ago [1] and there was a lot of (apparently) valid criticism. Do you know how much of that is still valid today?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076558

If you intend to use GUN for banking or any globally consistent (CP) system, then yes.

However, for everything else, the criticisms no longer apply.

GUN is an CRDT based AP (highly-available, partition tolerant) strongly eventually consistent system, and therefore should not be used for banking-like systems.

I hate the jargon so sorry to reply with it, but it allow for a quick/concise summary of GUN's tradeoffs. Some more resources below:

- Cartoon explainer of academic stuff: https://gun.eco/distributed/matters.html

- CAP Theorem tradeoffs: https://gun.eco/docs/CAP-Theorem

- How to implement the CRDT and how it solves for Split-Brain failures: https://gun.eco/docs/Conflict-Resolution-with-Guns

There are a bunch of other resources, but I'm more than happy to reply/answer any specific questions if you have them. Cheers!

That's exciting, thanks a lot! I was just considering using a graph database for a future side project.

I also read Neo4j was an inspiration. Is there any "human-made" comparison between the two? All I could find was "A vs. B" comparison tables.

Thanks again!

@edjroot I don't know if this is any different than what you already saw, but the biggest differences are:

- Neo4j is Master-Slave, GUN is Master-Master (or Multi-Master, or Masterless). Basically, GUN is P2P/decentralized, Neo4j is centralized.

- GUN has realtime updates/sync built in, Neo4j does not.

- GUN has offline-first features, Neo4j does not.

Other considerations:

- Neo4j has its own query language, GUN has a FRP (Functional Reactive Programming) based JS API.

- Neo4j is over a decade old, GUN since late 2014.

- Neo4j is more monolithic, GUN is more microservice-y.

Ok, but to access a site published on Beaker you must use the Beaker browser, right?

If it's published on Hashbase, you can access it with any HTTP client (though this of course somewhat defies the point of it being p2p).

Otherwise, you will need a dat:// client - Beaker is the main web browser with dat:// support, other clients sofar have more specialised uses, e.g. https://github.com/codeforscience/sciencefair

> though this of course somewhat defies the point of it being p2p

Not really. Need ways of bridging the gap.

I guess what I meant was that using hashbase exclusively over http and not switching to using dat:// clients would be somewhat defying the point, but yeah, it's a good bridge.

Yeah. This is where appropriating existing patterns like pay-walls becomes interesting. Instead of requiring registration and a fee, simply view in a p2p-enabled environment and help offset bandwidth costs. Of course there is more to it that that, but money not spent on infrastructure is money in the pockets of content creators and publishers.

Hashbase seems to function as one of the nodes in the DAT network, so even if none of the peers are online at least Hashbase is still there. That's what I gathered from a quick scan.

The DAT network seems interesting and is new to me, but like you said, needing a central node to cache the data seems like breaking the p2p story.

Hashbase is a convenience feature, bridging the gap, so to speak, between p2p and centralised systems. It's not required at all for dat:// to work.

The main benefit is that users of http browsers can visit your dat:// site.

> this of course somewhat defies the point of it being p2p

Beaker/Hashbase dev here. Not quite, imo. The key difference is that a service like Hashbase has no special authorship priveleges (unlike Google Docs or Dropbox), and is instead an agnostic peer. We think that's an important distinction.

Would it be possible to incorporate dat:// support into existing browsers as a plugin?

Yes. Look for "Support for Decentralization Protocols":

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/01/26/extensions-firefo...

Cool. I wonder when we'll see an uprise in internet websites that reference dat://

Is there a first HN reference to a valid dat:// website already?

Note that it's still going to require extensions

I find that Beaker doesn't cut through corporate/university firewalls as good as IPFS. I'd be interested to know others experiences.

Why Google Drive if you can Dropbox? Or whatever.

This comment is just advertising for the Beaker browser. It could at least be open about it and say: "Also check out Beaker, with similar functionality".

It's not nice or intelligent to say "don't do this in a different way because we are already doing it in our own way".

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