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Neocities Becomes the First Major Site To Implement the Distributed Web

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-cat's-blog-doesn't-count dept.

An anonymous reader writes: HTTP has served us well for a long time, but will we continue to use HTTP forever? Since Brewster Kahle called for a distributed web, more people have been experimenting with what is being called the Permanent Web: Web sites that can be federated instantly, and served from trustless peers. Popular web hosting site Neocities has announced that they are the first major site to implement IPFS, which is the leading distributed web protocol, and they published the announcement using IPFS itself.

51 comments

  1. whats old is new again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I remember when this was called NNTP...

    1. Re:whats old is new again... by cruff · · Score: 1

      Heh, I've been reading "net news" since about 1983-ish. Many of the news groups I've been following over the years have dwindled off to almost nothing or nothing at all, some just quite recently. I remember downloading one of the early versions of Perl with a news reader.

    2. Re:whats old is new again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're that old you should probably teach yourself a bit about computing. This is nothing like NNTP at all.

  2. I didn't get the joke at first by anchovy_chekov · · Score: 1

    Until I visited https://ipfs.io/docs/install/ and got a 502 Bad Gateway response.

    1. Re:I didn't get the joke at first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the link works for me, am i missing something?

    2. Re: I didn't get the joke at first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. The joke.

  3. IPFS? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

    If Slashdot taught me anything about acronyms, surely IPFS means "Internet Protocol First Shooter".

  4. But what does IPFS mean? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 5, Informative

    InterPlanetary File System

    There, I did part of Soulskill's job. Where's my check?

    1. Re:But what does IPFS mean? by NotInHere · · Score: 2

      Is your username an IPFS peer id?

    2. Re:But what does IPFS mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just a search hash for the distributed table housing the node information of his true identity.

    3. Re:But what does IPFS mean? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      InterPlanetary File System

      There, I did part of Soulskill's job. Where's my check?

      You tight bastard.

      You're gone to the restroom every time there's a check to be picked up.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    4. Re:But what does IPFS mean? by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      His username is actually also his password hash, and his password hash is his username. It's like the circle of life.

      --
      The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
  5. I know by meeotch · · Score: 1

    that a certain amount of story-lag is to be expected on slashdot... but c'mon - twenty years?!
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Beverly+Hills+Internet,+builder+of+interactive+cyber+cities,+launches...-a017190114

  6. "federated"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Um, what?

    1. Re:"federated"? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1
      They sold TV sets in LA back in the 80's. With Dr. Fred Rated.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  7. IPFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's nice, but you are STILL doing it wrong.

  8. Buzzwords galore! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I just viewed https://ipfs.io/ and it has a section that I think is rife with buzzwords. I've emphasized the ones I can see:

    How it works

    The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. In some ways, IPFS is similar to the Web, but IPFS could be seen as a single BitTorrent swarm, exchanging objects within one Git repository. In other words, IPFS provides a high throughput content-addressed block storage model, with content-addressed hyperlinks. This forms a generalized Merkle DAG, a data structure upon which one can build versioned file systems, blockchains, and even a Permanent Web. IPFS combines a distributed hashtable, an incentivized block exchange, and a self-certifying namespace. IPFS has no single point of failure, and nodes do not need to trust each other.

    1. Re:Buzzwords galore! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

      Holy crap....if you played "Buzzword Bingo" with that paragraph, everyone in the Western Hemisphere would be drunk.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    2. Re:Buzzwords galore! by pspahn · · Score: 1

      I felt like I was reading a description for a VX Module.

      Shit, maybe I was, because I'm pretty sure VX Modules can be amalgamated to handle distributed tasks without concurrency constraints.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    3. Re:Buzzwords galore! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      I felt like I was reading a description for a VX Module.

      Even a VX Module has a clearer distributed mode interface description than that.

      Shit, maybe I was, because I'm pretty sure VX Modules can be amalgamated to handle distributed tasks without concurrency constraints.

      I'm waiting for some intrepid soul to write a VX Module to manage systemd interactivity with the Ring 0 processes. Just imagine the performance scalability impact in holistically-generated vertical markets.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    4. Re:Buzzwords galore! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the paper was pretty nice, but the implementation turned out to be based on buzzwords.

  9. Freenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How is this different from Freenet? (Which has existed for over 15 years!)

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

    1. Re:Freenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, was about to say the same thing.

    2. Re:Freenet? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Freenet includes a lot of privacy measures. This comes with a severe performance cost, so it's slow and painful to use.

  10. For a second there... by Dusthead+Jr. · · Score: 5, Funny

    For a second i thought they were bringing GeoCities back.

    1. Re:For a second there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Looking at the sites, I think they have...

    2. Re:For a second there... by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      If Yahoo played their cards right, Geocities could have been what Facebook and Blogger is. It was the first big "instant amateur site" system. They had the audience. But, their content editors were crappy. (I hand coded my Geocities pages, which is one up-side, as an option.)

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:For a second there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That is, explicitly, what Neocities is, and has been since the beginning. This is just them experimenting with a new technology that furthers the mission of everyone having their own web space.

    4. Re:For a second there... by antdude · · Score: 1

      Same here. :/

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    5. Re:For a second there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This one will take you back! http://anlucas.neocities.org

      Sign my guestbook. There is where I keep my animated GIFs! At least they got rid of the ridiculous "neighborhoods" that were always seemingly full.

    6. Re:For a second there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, but they did!

      But now it is all future and junk, hence the Neo in front of it.

  11. Freenet-- by flink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This seems an awful lot like the Freenet project, minus attempting to guarantee anonymity or plausible deniability. It is definitely interesting if it takes off as it would be nice to have a global public DHT-based CDN, but seeing that Freenet was around in beta for in the late 90's, this is nothing particularly new.

    1. Re:Freenet-- by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Freenet attempts to provide an extreme level of privacy, resistant to all forms of monitoring and censorship. Useful features, but they come with severe performance costs. Freenet is slow.

    2. Re:Freenet-- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One distinguishing feature of IPFS is that (as I understand it) you don't need to host or route data that you don't want to. This is important. Many people's arguments against Freenet is that by joining, you can inadvertently help the various Internet "underworld" distribute their data.

  12. SAFE Network aka Secure Access For Everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder if the author just hasn't heard about MaidSafe?

    The SAFE (Secure Access for Everyone) network can be best described as a fully distributed data management service. This network manages static and dynamic data as well as communications. Importantly the data held is either :

            Encrypted by clients
            Cryptographically signed by clients

    In either case the network cannot decrypt any of the data on the network. This can be thought of as a decentralized server that performs the tasks of today's httpd, ssh, scp, ftp, smtp, pop3, imap etc. servers.

    The SAFE network is made up of unused hard drive space, CPU and communications capabilities of commodity computers. These computers are likely owned by the very users of the system, but need not be limited to that. Each computer will effectively mine for credits which can be traded for many other goods and services. These credits are called safecoin.
    Client Applications

    SAFE network client applications access this network via some innovative steps including:

            Self encrypting data
            Access and create cryptographically secured id's on a decentralized PKI
            Self authentication (click here to download the white paper).

    Client applications can access, store, mutate and communicate on the network. The clients allow people to anonymously join the network and cannot prevent people joining. Data is presented to clients as virtual drives mounted on their machines, application data, internal to applications, communication data as well as dynamic data that is manipulated via client applications depending on the programming methods employed.

    Examples of client apps are; cloud storage, encrypted messaging, web sites, crypto wallets, document processing of any data provided by any program, distributed databases, research sharing of documents, research and ideas with IPR protection if required, document signing, contract signing, decentralized co-operative groups or companies, trading mechanisms and many others. The clients can access every Internet service known today and introduce many services currently not possible with a centralised architecture.

    These clients, when accessing the network, will ensure that users never type another password to access any further services. The client contains many cryptographically secured key pairs and can use these automatically sign requests for session management or membership of any network service. Therefore, a website with membership can present a join button and merely clicking that would sign an authority and allow access in the future. Digital voting, aggregated news, knowledge transfer of even very secret information is now all possible, and this is just the beginning!

    1. Re:SAFE Network aka Secure Access For Everyone by Raumkraut · · Score: 0

      I wonder if the author just hasn't heard about MaidSafe?

      Or perhaps the author doesn't think much of an "open source" project, owned and controlled by a single for-profit entity which operates a proprietary-relicensing model, and hence requires copyright assignment from any contributions.

    2. Re: SAFE Network aka Secure Access For Everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ohhhhhhh BURN!

  13. The first wiki trying it also by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    The first public wiki, the Wiki Wiki Web* founded by Ward Cunningham which covers soft. eng. philosophy, is trying to go "Federated", but so far users are confused up the wazoo.

    A determined "grammar vandal" mucked up the original wiki such that they had to rush out the federated one faster than planned.

    Related links:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
    http://c2.fed.wiki.org/view/we...

    * Sometimes known as the "Portland Pattern Repository"

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  14. Neocities who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Shouldn't "major web site" be something someone's actually heard of?

  15. .io by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    3rd rule of the internet:

    if a project is hosted on a tld-flavor-of-the-month, it will ultimately fail.

  16. Yawn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another hippie pipe dream that won't go anywhere.

  17. Irony by Lennie · · Score: 1

    They are talking about making content available everywhere forever.

    The IPFS article links to a YouTube video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) which 'the uploader did not make available to your country'.

    Well, that's funny, because the video isn't their original content. The content was produced in my country by a public broadcaster (aka publicly funded TV).

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  18. IPFS doesn't exist according to Wikipedia by austinpoet · · Score: 1

    Yea... Hype train avoided. Search wikipedia for ipfs and I get:

    The page "Ipfs" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.

    Not covered in the first 20 suggestions.

  19. I've got a better acronym for IPFS... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Intellectual Property For Sale ;)

  20. Been there, done that by nr · · Score: 0

    Sounds much like a project I was working on a couple of years ago. An distributed filsystem where everyone running a daemon could drop files into a pool (ocean) and the files was moved around as fixed size blocks/chunks. Automatically replicated so there was always 3-4 copies of each block/chunk available on different nodes to maintain full redundancy and resiliency if nodes was disconnected or disappeared.

  21. Ohhh..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "and they published the announcement using IPFS itself"

    That's why I never heard about it.

  22. No computation, not interested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Distributed file system only has been done. It's not interesting until you have a way to run the backend of the website amongst a pool of untrusted peers, and that's much harder.

  23. Check out zeronet.io by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know of several similar projects (freenet, maelstrom, ...), but my favorite so far is zeronet: http://zeronet.io

    It is also a distributed hosting solution implemented on top of the bittorrent protocol, but I find it is exceedingly well done. It includes a javascript API for implementing dynamic websites such as forums and blogs, which is remarkable since everything is hosted in a distributed, peer-to-peer fashion, and AFAIK is a unique feature among such projects.

  24. So.. it's like freenet by morgauxo · · Score: 0

    So it's like freenet without the focus on anonymity.

    1. Re:So.. it's like freenet by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      And potentially much better performance. Freenet's heavy focus on anonymity and censorship-resistance comes with performance compromises. Similar concepts, but designed for different applications.