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BitTorrent Launches Beta of Torrent-Based Browser Project Maelstrom

Posted by timothy on from the bits-and-pieces-from-all-over dept.

An anonymous reader writes BitTorrent today launched Project Maelstrom, the company's distributed browser, in beta. The company also released new tools on GitHub that let developers and publishers build content for the browser. Announced in December, Project Maelstrom, then just an invite-only alpha, was described as "the first torrent-based browser." The launch today is an open beta, meaning anyone can now try an early version of Maelstrom. You do, however, need a Windows computer. Windows users can download the beta now from here. Since the alpha, BitTorrent says it has improved stability, integrated support for automatic updates, and added DHT visualization for users when loading torrents.

2 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Freenet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not really, freenet has many features that this lacks, such as encryption and deniability.

    This has some features, such as being distributed and every download is bit perfect.

    This is primitive compared to things already available, really.

    See IPFS.io for something that builds off the ideas of git, bittorrent, freenet, camlistore for a more permanent solution. In fact, they call it The Permanent Web.
    https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs
    https://sourcegraph.com/blog/ipfs-the-permanent-web-by-juan-benet-talk
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa4pckodM9g

  2. Re:Freenet by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, because the concept behind freenet is that it's impossible to track from source to destination, and more popular content gains redundancy while unwanted content vanishes from the network -- and the entire thing is encrypted making it virtually impossible to track what anyone's looking at.

    This project, while using DHT, is otherwise completely orthagonal to Freenet -- it's all about using nearby/fast nodes to get you the content you're looking for as quickly as possible via a distributed mechanism. There's no privacy involved (you're broadcasting what you want to view to a huge number of nodes), and the distributor of content (and anyone else who wants to help) have control over seeding the content being viewed.