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by throwawaycities 872 days ago
The cool thing about Vitalik’s blog is that it is decentralized.

The blog uses decentralized storage (IPFS) and uses a decentralized ENS domain (vitalik.eth).

If you use a web3 browser like brave browser vitalik.eth resolves natively in the browser without the need to use the ENS+IPFS (eth.limo) gateway.

3 comments

> The cool thing about Vitalik’s blog is that it is decentralized.

I’m not sure how you could read this post and conclude that “the cool thing” about it is that it is decentralized.

By far, the coolest thing about Vitalik’s blog is his writing, in its thoughtfulness and humility.

That it’s decentralized speaks to his commitment to his beliefs.

Not talking about Vitalik but about IPFS and about ENS:

- For IPFS see the other current thread on HN [1]

- For ENS I can say that it was and it is ridiculous. My company was relatively well known in the decentralized space when the ENS launched and obviously someone registered our name before us. This is not a support of the current DNS system but the "decentralized" nature didn't add any decentralized feature (e.g. DAOs) that enable you to protect your brand. It was decentralized as a bad anarchy is. This can be easily check on Reddit discussions about the issues I pointed. For example [2] and [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39208673

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5zmg76/serious_co...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5z4iiw/ama_we_are...

Regarding the other post I am lucky to know neiman personally.

Neiman is a PhD in mathematics and idealist. The solution he wants goes beyond just hosting a decentralized blog.

As far as ENS, I’m a fan. Though it’s too bad someone registered your well known business name you can always import your DNS into the ENS protocol (ENS is not the .eth extension, rather .eth is the native ENS blockchain extension but is reverse compatible with DNS).

Going back to neiman, for a time he was working on his own naming protocol named Woolball. Might be a fun read for you: https://neiman.eth.limo/2022-10-25/Woolball_a_name_system_wi...

Beyond your ad-hominem criticism on Neiman. I have used IPFS professionally and it is very slow. This issue is well known and gives an objective metric for the tool beyond idealisms. Extremely easy to check: [1] [2].

BTW, I come out with the paper "Is IPFS Ready for Decentralized Video Streaming?" [3] that could be an interesting read.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ipfs+performance&hl=en&...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=ipfs+performance+site%3Aredd...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39214634

>ad-hominem criticism on Neiman

What a bizarre thing to say.

Neiman is a friend and inspiration. I specifically said I’m lucky to know him personally.

Calling him an idealist isn’t an attack, it’s admirable.

IPFS is fine for hosting blogs and static websites, I have 50 IPFS websites using a pinning service neiman cofounded. However, his blog post speaks for itself and his considerations are greater than whether IPFS/IPNS can host a blog.

Nice work on your paper.

ty for the tidbit never really found an excuse to install brave before
Given the CEO's "history" [1] I'd heavily recommend against installing Brave

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

His history of designing JavaScript, co-founding and CTO-ing the Mozilla project and being a general expert in coding and the web? Yeah screw this guy. No way he'll ever be able to develop a successful browser.

If you make your technical decisions based on, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, 1 minor political disagreement with the project lead then you'll be as limited as Stallman when it comes to using a computer. That is an extreme position.

Interestingly, the Stallmann position still leaves you with a fully functional computer. Chapeau!
I don't fucking care about his political opinions, and I completely believe he is entitled for them and entitled to contribute to the causes he supports.

What all this small resentful and passive aggressive people did against Brendan was the only real shame on this history.

I'm a bisexual, in favour of marriage between arbitrary combinations of consenting adults(even if I have no interest in marriage myself), and I generally care about politics in tech when relevant.

I fail to see the relevance here.

Seems like he was forced out of Mozilla by a bunch of children who can't handle the fact that people have different opinions and perspectives. Even though I disagree with him on this particular issue, he was not the one acting wildly unprofessionally here. A brief look at his resume and the relative success of Brave as a company suggests he's perfectly qualified at his job.

To be clear, I'm not some Brave fanboy. I don't use Brave because it doesn't offer me anything I need that Firefox doesn't.

Brendan Eich's personal views have nothing to do with it.

You boycott Brave browser because the CEO? The CEO invented JavaScript, do you boycott JavaScript and all websites that use JavaScript?
For other reasons ;)
You really hate javascript that much?
i use and think about javascript everyday of my life so i'll give brendan a pass, idgaf about politics