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Comment by lyu07282 | Hacker News Reader

I find it a bit sad that the only two options we have is either using central services or everyone manages their own infrastructure (at the very least their own domain name).

I would've hoped that at this point we would have a true decentral solution for this sort of thing. Despite all the blockchain/dapp/web3 hype for many years they have no practical solution for anything.

We have all the pieces it seems, torrent and dht/magnet links work, ipfs works, web of trust works. And yet we don't seem to manage to work collectively on true decentral solutions to the issue of centralization of critical internet infrastructure. Why can't we all work collectively together and share resources so we aren't dependent on the whims of some shaky businesses, we are all constantly at risk of them turning on us for profit.

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The concept that escapes you has a name: tragedy of the commons [1]. Yes, it is frustrating and depressing, in the long run a feeling of hopelessness settles in, that we are unable to share resources: we have failed to do so with the bodies of dead dinosaurs, creating authoritarian glorified gas stations as a side-effect, and we have failed to do so with more ethereal substances such as compute.

All the cutesy technowords-of-the-day, blockchain/dapp/web3/torrent/magnet links, are just a bandage over a greater point: ever since the atomic bomb, once we became able to destroy the planet, we needed to become a new species, evolve our cone of care. We were unable to do so and hopefully we will be extinct before we destroy the planet, let some other species have their try in a few million years, before the sun runs out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

> We were unable to do so and hopefully we will be extinct before we destroy the planet, let some other species have their try in a few million years, before the sun runs out.

Eh, we can take solace in the fact we still don’t have the capability to destroy the planet. Vastly alter the current environment, cause mass extinctions, and irradiate the planets surface, sure we can do those things. But the planet won’t care, and life, well, life finds a way.

I find it a bit ironic that you link Wikipedia to make that point. The greatest encyclopedia in the world, a great demonstration of the potential of collectivist projects. I still remember when it was launched and everyone thought it was crazy and impossible and laughed at it.

I would also draw a distinction between web3 and torrent technologies. Torrents work great, and it doesn't even give its users a monetary incentive to seed, people do it anyway. But web3 makes everything transactional and builds everything around individualist monetary incentives, and yet no useful application was ever (so far) conceived by it. So perhaps torrents and the wikipedia (and similar projects) work because it doesn't built everything around the free market libertarian fever dream.

Sure, Wikipedia is great, like finding moissanites [1] in the mud: great, but you are still in mud.

Perhaps I am too doomy, but as we see every day, and now with the GPT advances, almost every hour, a bridge being built between the information space, the decision-making space, and the 3D space of the physical world, and this bridge being restricted to only certain entities, it makes one wonder: would a Wikipedia even be possible today?

[1] Diamonds are a De Beers invention and a monopolistic violent endeavour, moissanites are cheaper, no artificial scarcity, and better looking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning.

Wikipedia works thanks donations.

Voluntary donations are the free market libertarian equivalent of involuntary taxation.

Web3 doesn't work because there's not enough value being provided, party because paying micro transactions is too unfriendly. That's a hard problem and it's lack of success is a clear demonstration of the market working as intended and not rewarding something useless.

The socialist equivalent is a government owned web3 which we all have to pay with taxes and we're increasingly close to getting this.

People volunteer on Wikipedia, they write and edit articles, they do content and user moderation, etc. Everyone can edit Wikipedia, everyone can make a Wikipedia account, there are 42 million registered accounts, nobody is working and spending their time on Wikipedia for monetary gain, how does any of that possibly work and work so incredibly well? According to everything libertarians believe this should be completely impossible and yet it works, because libertarian, free-market and neoliberal ideology is WRONG.

Nobody except for paid editors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APaid-contribution_... andhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing#Editing_services

What's the incentive for people to run a node in a decentralised network though? It will always end up being abused and misused, and be a negative influence on one's time trying to deal with that.

If it is serving just the images you use the harm is minimal vs benefit of resilience.

But yeah, any system where you store blobs of other people that you yourself don't want is potential liability

That's indeed sad because docker images are content addressed.

Image registry over ipfs would solve the problem of decoupling who actually stores the image from the process of discovering the locations

Nerdctl/containerd has IPFS support :)

https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/blob/main/docs/ipfs.md

Because frankly in corporate network I want to add rule to proxy to allow access to this and that container registry and nothing else for security reasons.

"Just" docker registry proxy that had torrent support would be fine enough solution for the distribution. But good luck convincing anyone in ivory tower of security that opening some random ports to entire of the internet is a good idea

The problem here is everyone relying on Docker to foot an expensive bill for free forever. If it was always for a few, incentives would be more aligned and this blowup wouldn't happen. But as it is, it's a bit inevitable.

> The problem here is everyone relying on Docker to foot an expensive bill for free forever.

Tragedy of the commons at its finest.

Yeah, i kinda hoped someone would start building building something which would be automatic paying with a blockchain. Like when you upload a docker image, that will automatically pay a few cent or dollar for that storage which will be active as long as the money does not dry up.

Sadly that ship has sailed, until a dollar/government backed blockchain which allows to do such things will pop up. Which won't happen i think

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