> so long as the name of a piece of data is known (its hash)
But that's also the fatal flaw. It's pretty definitionally true of stuff on the web that the person who owns / controls it wants to be able to change / update it. That isn't really supported at all at present for this distribution method, and it's hard to see how it could be in the future without introducing a single choke point.
Case in point: the vast majority of torrent traffic is for new torrents, because people want to download the stuff that's just been released, not the stuff that they either already have or could have had months ago. You lose 100% of this traffic with this "p2psearch" method, because the database can't be updated. Or if it can be updated (stick it on a traditional website for people to mirror), you rely on everyone updating to the newest version of the database.
It's also incredibly slow compared to traditional sites. It took longer than it took me to type this comment to see a single result for the popular title I tried to search for.
despite the downvotes, there is some substance to this. mutability is useful.
however, as implemented, all that is needed is for the user of p2psearch to refresh and the browser to pick up the latest database. i imagine most users are not keeping torrent search open 24/7, so this doesn't seem onerous.
it's probably a bit of a process for the host of the frontend to update the database, prepare a new torrent, update the code [0], and then rebuild the bundle regularly, but this could be automated.
regardless, it doesn't seem so unreasonable from an end user perspective, and i personally don't mind if my torrent search index is behind by a few days.
> it's probably a bit of a process for the host of the frontend to update the database
Right, I suppose I didn't put my point very well, but as I see it there are only two options:
* Everyone gets their code (with the built-in torrent for the database) from the same source, presumably the source that created / seeds the database. In this case the host is arguably just as vulnerable to the authorities as The Pirate Bay. If p2psearch doesn't make torrenting more resilient than TPB, what purpose does it serve?
* One brave citizen creates and hosts a single copy of the database, and it goes viral. Lots of people host it. It never gets updated, because the whole point of using IPFS / torrents is that everything can be addressed statically. In this case the advantage of p2psearch is obvious - it functions as a DHT with a built-in search that is more or less impossible to take down! On the other hand, the lack of mutability greatly reduces the value, since as I said in my OP most torrenting is focused on new releases.
It worked instantly for me. As good as anything else.
You get other features with it for free. Popular chunks will be easier to obtain as many have them and preservation starts with rare pieces. You'd want common use to be fast and uncommon to complete eventually.
If a new torrent uses the same folder name the new files will appear next to the old ones but if so desired the old files may be duplicated into the new torrent.
Its not IPFS but it works.
If you can get a person or organization to sign off on the data I'd say its a feature rather than a bug?
Let the professor publish his data set and let interested parties store it without much effort.
But that's also the fatal flaw. It's pretty definitionally true of stuff on the web that the person who owns / controls it wants to be able to change / update it. That isn't really supported at all at present for this distribution method, and it's hard to see how it could be in the future without introducing a single choke point.
Case in point: the vast majority of torrent traffic is for new torrents, because people want to download the stuff that's just been released, not the stuff that they either already have or could have had months ago. You lose 100% of this traffic with this "p2psearch" method, because the database can't be updated. Or if it can be updated (stick it on a traditional website for people to mirror), you rely on everyone updating to the newest version of the database.
It's also incredibly slow compared to traditional sites. It took longer than it took me to type this comment to see a single result for the popular title I tried to search for.