It's so strange that this should have been a solved problem decades ago, but somehow a robust and secure non-commercial solution never gets off the ground.
Speaking of which, how is the IPFS project doing these days?
Speaking of which, how is the IPFS project doing these days?
Ha! I do wonder if I'm the only person who has errors where sometimes an AirDrop attempted transmission, from two devices sitting right next to each other, just hangs indefinitely, even if a transmission between the same two devices a minute ago succeeds. Like all Apple solutions that Just Work, it's great when it Just Works, but, when it doesn't, great effort seems to have been taken to make sure that there's no way to find out why not.
It doesn't have to be a dedicated system where you manage how long you seed, port forward, and other technical requirements: torrents already work well when you just seed while downloading because the server can never get overloaded, pretty much no matter how viral something goes. So long as it keeps serving the tiny torrent file, a few blocks on occasion, and the few packets needed to set up a NAT punch between people (STUN/TURN server? I always forget what's what), people can get the file from each other and you don't have huge bandwidth costs or have the site go down once the included bandwidth is exhausted. There's a reason Facebook and Twitter use(d?) this for distributing server updates¹, and I don't think someone remotes onto every server to visit the pirate bay, which torrent technology has sadly become synonymous to and people don't realise it is a transfer protocol just like FTP, HTTP, and other TPs that I'm forgetting
> some public standard that gets implemented on all platforms
What this is based on doesn't matter. It can be http, it can also be torrents. It's not very useful if you're sending files from and to one person almost every time (perhaps at the end of a holiday with friends, more than one person would want everyone's photos, but still), I'm just objecting to torrents being misunderstood as the only thing most people used it for: downloading copyrighted material in dedicated (and often unwieldy) software :)
¹ https://torrentfreak.com/facebook-uses-bittorrent-and-they-l... Article also mentions that a university cut 20 of the 22 update-distributing servers, I didn't know of that example
“Buy your mom an iPhone” and how Apple buried beeper mini into nonexistence was a nice example.
During the brief period that open Airdrop / bluetooth file transfer was a thing, there was a short fad of spamming porn to nearby people on public transport. So that was the end of that.
My recollection is that the end of that was Apple's worry about the protests in China, not any concern about spam on public transit. (The first Google hit: https://restofworld.org/2022/apple-airdrop-china-memes/.)
Or the simple fix of just not having this P2P transfer option always enabled. It should be off until you toggle it on because you and someone you are with want to transfer a file.
I think it'd be great if Apple supported this, even if it meant an Apple AirDrop app for Android. Especially if it meant an Apple AirDrop app for Android.
libtorrent supports something called 'SSL' torrents that require both peers to be signed by the same root.
All the pieces are there to build on top of.
Modern American SUVs are an abomination too. The American auto industry started pushing them because they're legally classified as "light trucks" which lets them take advantage of certain safety and environmental standard loopholes
The problem with bittorrent is ports, just like ipfs. I have to tell somebody to open a port to the outside who may never use bittorrent again.
Opening ports can be obnoxiously hard for someone who doesn't know anything, even if it sometimes just means finding the UPnP checkbox; 90% of the time it involves trying to figure out how to access the UI for their router, and after that trying to figure out what their password could possibly be or how to reset it.
Now, they've got a port sitting open for a piece of software they might never use again, and that's not something I want to be responsible for.
People who often share files should be setting up standing private networks. Group chats/texts can last for years, they should be packaged with an entire range of services that the members can easily provide for themselves (like file sharing and voice/video messaging.) So many companies make their money from centralizing and siloing this.
Biggest mistake ever was not to grow it organically/incrementally while maintaining backwards compatibility!
Recently I had to send file from Whatsapp to Telegram, because apparently it is forbidden to download file from the Whatsapp and it's a "feature". Facepalm....
PS: afaik IPFS doesn't guarantee file storage, a separate paid middleman is required for that.