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Comment by Sean-Der | Hacker News Reader

Super cool. It would be really awesome to get this in the web browser as well. I would love to have access to my music/movie collection on anything with a browser. You also wouldn't need to worry about setting up DNS/Public IP for the host.

github.com/anacrolix/torrent supports WebTorrent so it shouldn't be that hard.

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Not over bit-torrent but this exists: https://syncthing.net/

Syncthing does not work in the browser and does not provide on-demand access to files. It syncs directories.

Not yet, but it could.

The constant "Out of Sync" errors in Syncthing make me think it's not so great at it's first job.

On-demand access to files is a completely different workflow than syncing. It would also clash with the name, and require a change in technologies to run in the browser, as well as transport protocols.

I don't agree. Dropbox syncs files across all of my devices, but I can also get files out using a web interface and mobile device apps (which, coincidently, is why I don't use syncthing). Regardless of the name, I think on demand access would be complementary to it's primary purpose (syncing), and serving up the content over http would be trivial (as well as over bittorrent/webtorrent, considering existing library support [1] [2]). At it's core, syncthing is an object distribution orchestration system, therefore other transports besides native syncing should always be considered (imho).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23818659 (HN: Libtorrent adds support for the WebTorrent protocol)

[2] https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0019.html (WebSeed - HTTP/FTP Seeding (GetRight style))

You know what, if you are willing to spend this much time proving that you are "not technically wrong", I will give it to you. Sure, everything can be turned into anything, given enough effort. And Syncthing does show similarities if you squint really hard.

It doesn't change the fact that the "have access to my music/movie collection on anything with a browser" mentioned by the grand-parent is not what Syncthing does, and is not even close to what it does now or what the team is interested in implementing [1]. While it is a great piece of software (that I personally use), this recommendation was misguiding.

Have a good rest of your week.

[1]: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/6753#issuecomm...

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