Gregory's Server@anji I've used IPFS for three years, and I've yet to see broad adoption apart from crypto.
If something like archive.org were stored on IPFS, then that would be a game changer.
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17 comments
 @polychrome @anji Okay, but hear me out. What if archive.org was decentralized, and every library and university in the world ran an instance? @polychrome @atomicpoet @anji it's true - you cannot trust anyone who's motives are not preservation to preserve your media. Archiving has been getting increasingly difficult and expensive over the years as the volume and diversity of media goes up, and it's expensive. I'd go one further and say optical media - not necessarily CD/DVD, though - is the way to go - formed by irreversible chemical/ mechanical processes. Tapes and disks are fine - but are erasable and so less durable. @polychrome @atomicpoet @anji also - tape heads have a finite lifetime (in hours read). Many kinds of tape machines (and this heads) which were once common are no longer manufactured: thus there is a finite supply of tape heads. There are archives in the world which have more hours of media stored in them than there are tape head hours in the world. So some of the archive is already lost - it's just we have to decide which bit we don't recover.  @polychrome @atomicpoet @anji LTO Tape drives are quite popular for archival purposes, as they don't lose data easily when not in use for a long time. @polychrome @atomicpoet @anji You can't expect non-commercial instance to be reliable if you don't support it. Support instance (mastodon, peertube, etc..) or setup/share your own and will last forever.  I plan to use the 3.5"HDs to store expanded source trees, software/distro, and the complete EXR-stream renders of my output. The EXRs are "intermediates". Regenerating them is expensive, but it is an automatic process, once the software is running. I'll use the optical M-Disc media to store source files, PNG streams, video renders, and software archives. As for the volatility of PeerTube, that's why I'm running my own instance, now. Hopefully this works. 🤞  @polychrome @atomicpoet @anji the recent threat by #Google to oust #GSuiteLegacy users who wouldn't pay the ransom gave a new perspective on the net-archives, faced as I was with somehow finding new homes for 16 years worth of life-history data for 8 users. I think we must accept that "Digital Archive" is a contradiction in terms, a transient transport from A to B. Digital 'artifacts' are a 'volatile' variable contained within a scope that will inevitably be garbage collected. @atomicpoet @anji It looks like archive.org is actually planning to use IPFS. Have to look up the source later, currently at work. @atomicpoet @anji ok, here's a follow up to this. Looks like they removed any evidence for that, the only thing I could fine was a cut version of the interview on archive.org. The whole interview isn't available anymore. @anji @atomicpoet ipfs backs a lot of Library Genesis. It's working well enough for them. I think it's just a matter of time.  @atomicpoet IPFS is one of the distribution mechanisms used by Library Genesis. |
@atomicpoet @anji to use your example, neither PeerTube or IPFS are good archiving solutions. Google can't be trusted long term but IPFS forgets data as soon as someone doesn't pin it and PeerTube instances tend to shut down within months. I've been trying to use both and it's been very unreliable.
Disclaimer - I'm extremely pro-decentralization and pester everyone I know about it but I am also something of an archivist and I can't ignore the reality.
In the end long term data storage has to be done over offline media - which is also becoming a problem as more people switch to flash based storage since if you leave it unpowered for a couple of years the data will go corrupt and eventually useless much faster than on classic magnetic media.
The net will always be ephemeral on the long term unless we work up something insane like Xanadu. So for now the most stable online archiving option is with people who care - e.g. archive.org.
@atomicpoet @anji to use your example, neither PeerTube or IPFS are good archiving solutions. Google can't be trusted long term but IPFS forgets data as soon as someone doesn't pin it and PeerTube instances tend to shut down within months. I've been trying to use both and it's been very unreliable.
Disclaimer - I'm extremely pro-decentralization and pester everyone I know about it but I am also something of an archivist and I can't ignore the reality.