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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why Carmack thinks blockchain should be a component of this. Anyone care to elaborate on how that would make this easier/better?

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I dont know why he suggest this but while I would like to read some old content that now cannot be found I am also respectful for people that dont want their content on the internet anymore.

So every time someone suggest to put some content on a blockchain I wonder if they realize that there are people that want to erase/remove their content from the internet. I also think it is dangerous to keep everything someone or some company created on the internet. It is too easy now to internet judge some adult about things they did while being young or to keep people accounted for mistakes they did and paid for them their duties to society.

I think if we ever build this feature on a blockchain I hope it is opt-in and people realize what that mean.

I think he's referring to something like IPFS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System

http://ipfs.io

You can put the storage costs on the nodes because storage at archive.org's scale adds up, especially when it's run by volunteers.

It looks like you could use IPFS to accomplish this without using a blockchain.

Isn't IPFS pretty closely tied with FileCoin?

It seems more accurate to say filecoin is tied to ipfs. IPFS itself is just another protocol. Maybe it is better suited to Blockchain applications that https? But it doesn't require blockchain at all to function. Filecoin does require a Blockchain.

"Immutable and existing in perpetuity" are good qualities for an archive service, and that's at least the idea with a blockchain.

It is interesting though, what happens if you put so much data into a blockchain. I guess only a couple of nodes would want to verify the validity of the chain (because you need all the data to do it). And would those nodes really be more likely to keep the data then the situation we are in now?

I guess after some time the nodes would agree on the hash and throw away the data because it would cost too much to store.

I stopped reading when blockchain was mentioned.

Why?

because it shows a lack of understanding of the basics of distributed computing. specially on top of the web we have today (which was how the thread started "IA as a default host-of-records" which implies said records must be reachable by a any tech illiterate lawyer today)

car analogy time: It is the same as reading a post about "how to lift my car to do work in the garage", and the the second paragraph starts with "using energy harvested from my perpetual motion machine"

I thought it was otherwise a reasonable idea, but yes-- it put me off a bit when he mentioned blockchain without further elaboration.

I see blockchain as a technology that may develop useful applications, but-- in terms of current day usage-- I'm extremely skeptical when it's referenced in conjunction with applications that might achieve the same goals without it.

I sincerely hope that we’re only witnessing

“Any sufficiently long Internet discussion will propose blockchain as a solution.”

rather than

“Blockchain is eating the world.”

.... He says it right after "to make internet applications that could outlive companies". If it's on the blockchain it doesn't matter if the company storing all of the archives shuts down, the content would still exist, forever, until their is a network running the chain. I suppose something like Torrent could be used?

He has a point, but it's that private companies shouldn't archives of record.

I actually think using blockchain for things like ensuring providence is interesting, since in archives being able to have a clean record of what happened to a piece is VERY useful. It just won't earn a ton of money, so we'll need to wait for the capitalism to burn off to see more not-for-profit uses.

Similarly how github is a blockchain. I think he means the ease of version control by this.

Github is a software development tooling provider, not a blockchain

For his defense, he probably meant Git and typed too quickly. It's still obvious what he meant.

Honestly, Git was not at all obvious to me from that. And I fully admit that it could be a failing on my part not to read that into his post, but nonetheless I didn't see it.

Filecoin is a mechanism for someone to pay to ensure that data stays available. So if a group of people wanted to ensure that myoldwebsite.com stays available through IPFS and the IA, they could spend Filecoin. The difference between it and paying some central provider with fiat is that anyone can provide the data availability. So if you don't trust IA to be the long-term provider of content or want a more decentralized provider, Filecoin lets you do that. See also Arweave.

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