Wayback Machine back in read-only mode after DDoS, may need further maintenance.

Wayback Machine back in read-only mode after DDoS, may need further maintenance.

    • Pasta DentalEnglish
      56•1 month ago

      One of the rare use cases of a blockchain actually being useful. A federated internet archive that uses a blockchain to validate that the saved data has not been altered by a malicious actor trying to tamper with proofs

      That would be really cool but horribly inefficient because of the sheer amount of storage required

        • Pasta DentalEnglish
          10•1 month ago

          To be fair that would not necessarily be because of the blockchain part, more because of the decentralized/federated nature of this theorical network

          • @[email protected]English
            22•1 month ago

            Sure, but the networking and consent-finding are defining features of a blockchain. Nobody calls a git repo a blockchain.

      • @[email protected]English
        30•1 month ago

        I mean you don’t need the blockchain for that. The same way that distro mirrors don’t need the blockchain. It can be federated, with each upload being verified through hashes that they are in fact the real upload. I would argue that something like blockchain would remove the authority from them, granting the position of a bad actor spinning up enough servers to be able to poison the blockchain just because they had the computing power, claiming authority

        • @[email protected]English
          5•1 month ago

          Bro hear me out bro

          We put the whole thing on a blockchain. BUT

          • entry order isn’t super important

          • you don’t need to validate the entire archive

          So basically a blockchain, but for a bunch of files, not ordered. So instead of a native token, users can just trade bits of information as currency. 🙀

          If it goes really well, we could even recruit one of the Bitcoin developers to help.

          • @[email protected]English
            5•1 month ago

            lol I fucking hate this because idiots will read this and be like “oh shit is this the new blockchain”

            Well done

        • @[email protected]English
          5•1 month ago

          Yes, this is a great example of where ipfs would work (specifically for file hosting, not necessarily for the actual web interface), and also, no ipfs is not a blockchain, and it shouldn’t be. I thought we were past the whole “can this be a blockchain” thing, but here we are. Blockchain is cool tech. It’s also incredibly inefficient for anything beyond a transaction ledger, or in today’s case, money laundering and trying to avoid taxes and regulation.

      • _NoName_English
        2•1 month ago

        We don’t need a blockchain for that.

        Having multiple servers which store file checksums would have much less overhead, would be easily repeatable and appendable, with no need for unnecessary computational labor. Linux mint currently uses the checksum process for verifying that an ISO downloaded is not altered in any way, and it can work for any file (preferably not humongous files).

        Strive for K.I.S.S. whenever possible.

  • Flying SquidEnglish
    28•1 month ago

    This absolutely made my morning.

    Edit: Never mind, already knew about the Wayback machine. I thought it was the rest of the archive.

    Still good news.