

BitTorrent's Maelstrom browser enters open beta - simas
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/10/bittorrent-maelstrom-beta/

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jszymborski
A totally neutral decentralize network run on closed software run by a
corporation? Forgive me if I don't buy into it.

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joshstrange
Amen, I don't trust BitTorrent (the company) at all. Sync was a MASSIVE let
down and it feels like they've backtracked on decentralization and are just
trying to slap their name on a bunch of products that leverage bittorrent (the
technology) in some way even when the products don't align with what, I feel
like, the majority of BT users want (open/decentralized).

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lewisl9029
Silently bundling cryptomining software with uTorrent is what crossed the line
for me (not that I had very high regard for the company in the first place).

I've since then switched to open-source alternatives of their products and
will not touch anything else they make from now on, and advise everyone I know
to do the same (unless they eventually open-source their products, which I
highly doubt would ever happen).

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ryanlol
Well, they weren't doing it "silently", users had to agree to install the
miner.

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homulilly
Cool idea but coming from the BitTorrent company? I'll pass. After what
happened with the original BitTorrent Client and BitTorrent Sync I'd have to
be an idiot to give them another chance.

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joshbuddy
Care to elaborate?

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homulilly
After they bought µTorrent they started bundling tons of adware, including,
most recently, a bitcoin miner. Sync started out as a pretty cool
decentralized self-hosted dropbox replacement that was incredibly easy to use.
After promising the free version would never be limited they did a 180 and
limited it to 10 shares when they launched a commercial version and ruined
usability with a bunch of access controls and user accounts.

Obviously they have to make money somehow and it's perfectly within their
rights to do so but they've shown that their business model has been to offer
a product for free and then, once they suck people in, break promises and use
underhanded ways to monetize.

Knowing maelstrom is likely to end up filled with ads or under an overpriced
subscription model once it's done killed any interest I might have had in the
product.

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danieldk
You can still create 1.4-style folders with 2.0. The 10 folder limit sucks and
they broke their promise with that. I think lot of people would've been
happier if 2.0 shares were limited to 10, but an unlimited number of 1.4
shares was still possible.

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pfraze
Copying my comment from the other thread today (which got lost):

I gave the beta a shot. It's a chromium fork with added support for browsing
to magnet links. Basically, it's making BT a Web protocol. Not a bad idea.

Performance is inconsistent so far. Sometimes the downloads stall or fail for
no apparent reason. Sometimes I can't find any seeders. Sometimes it works
great. (Same old bit-torrent!)

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sktrdie
Am I suppose to remember that long hash? I'd like if they provided us with
some information how this works. Otherwise [http://ipfs.io/](http://ipfs.io/)
seems like a better approach that works in a way that I can actually
understand.

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rich90usa
It doesn't look like ipfs has human friendly named pointers yet either? At
least that's what I gather from their documentation:
[http://ipfs.io/docs/commands/#ipfs-name](http://ipfs.io/docs/commands/#ipfs-
name)

In answer to your question: bookmarks have been a long standing solution to
remembering names. I absolutely understand that it's not the most ideal
solution - but hopefully acceptable for a beta.

Unfortunately, the linked to TechCrunch article doesn't do much to explain how
the browser works. One of the original-source blog posts does a (slightly)
better job of explaining how things work - or at least points you in the
direction: [http://blog.bittorrent.com/2015/04/10/project-maelstrom-
deve...](http://blog.bittorrent.com/2015/04/10/project-maelstrom-developer-
tools/)

The hashes directly represent the infohash for the created torrent website.

~~~
sktrdie
Do you guys plan to release a video about it works? For example, how do you
deal with content changing? If my index.html file changes, do I need to
distribute a new torrent?

I mean, it's a cool idea and all, but why not release a thorough explanation
perhaps in the form of a scientific publication?

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shortcut
Similar project, but OpenSource and works on any OS/Browser:
[https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet](https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet)
(Decentralized websites using Bitcoin crypto + the BitTorrent network)

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malkia
Centralized decentralization

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Torgo
I would really rather read technical details about how this works. I looked
into the mutable torrent specification (that lets you make changes to a
torrent) as a way to create a bittorrent "hosted" blog, but mutable torrents
ultimately need a feed hosted by an http server, which destroys the
decentralization. I am not on Windows, I cannot try this out if it's currently
Windows-only.

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michaelmcmillan
Forgive my ignorance, but could you not use the same concept as the
blockchain?

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sktrdie
Not really. The blockchain is meant to work for transaction type of
information, not documents. It also keeps all of the transactions ever made.
This type of web would probably contain a lot more information than that.
Therefore you wouldn't want every peer with a copy of the whole web.

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Adlai
The case where this is relevant is in decentralized source control. The only
project I know of that set out to tackle this is dead in the water:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain/post...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain/posts/994542)

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twoodfin
I continue to be surprised that the Web standards folk and browser vendors
haven't (AFAIK) pursued a standard for content addressable resources backed by
a common DHT. There's Magnet, but it doesn't have much traction outside of the
usual P2P clients.

