[Freedombox-discuss] search engine Yacy

[Marc Draco]

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to all of this - but is there any route to use a decentralised database based on some form of blockchain?

Search engines are absolutely central to the Internet and we need one that isn't controlled by a central authority. Google, for all the good it has done, has done untold damage with it's "appeal to popularity" algorithm which has pushed non-scientifically minded people toward fake news, bad science and BS treatments for cancer, etc. It's a long list and it makes me want to cry sometimes.

It's delisted or adjusted the likes of Natural News - *now* - but the damage that it's done will take decades to unpick. I know it's hard to debias a search engine but this is the sort of thing that only open source can be trusted to do.

Getting back to this point... I'm looking for a solution that can run on ephemeral machines - ones that might drop in and out of the bigger internet but not break the entire database.

Is this a pipe dream? I don't know enough about the technology but I've seen similar things done on the USENET with software to patch missing posts. Quite fascinating and totally beyond me. 

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On 10 July 2018 6:17 PM, Elena ``of Valhalla'' Grandi <valhalla-d at trueelena.org> wrote:

> On 2018-07-10 at 16:08:39 +0200, dns1983 at riseup.net wrote:
> 
> > Yes, I think It's important to maintain freedom box usable from a low
> > 
> > CPU machine, but I think that for reach our goal It's necessary to use
> > 
> > more powerful machines too.
> 
> I don't think that having a powerful server in each home is a
> 
> sustainable target: they waste resources in providing services that,
> 
> for a limited number of users, can be provided by much less resource
> 
> intensitive hardware.
> 
> A freedombox that can run on a computer that costs tens of eurollars,
> 
> can be powered by a small solar panel and is easy to stuff on a shelf
> 
> even in a <25 m² apartment is useful to way more people than one that
> 
> requires a full-sized computer that costs hundred of eurollars, needs to
> 
> be connected to the power grid (or to a full-sized off-grid power
> 
> generator) and either requires its own room or will cause sleep
> 
> distruptions with its noise.
> 
> the former can't always run the same programs as the latter, but in
> 
> most cases it's going to be able to provide the same services with
> 
> comparable quality.
> 
> > It's necessary that decentralized services are fast and efficient,
> > 
> > something that a low pc machine can't always grant.
> 
> I would be wary to call platforms like gitlab and redmine
> 
> “decentralized”: yes, they can be self-hosted, but they are still big
> 
> platforms that are designed to be hosted centrally by some organization
> 
> and most of their interesting¹ features only work when all of the user
> 
> involved have an account on the specific instance.
> 
> Installing them on a personal/household server that doesn't allow 3rd
> 
> party registration of users would have pretty limited usefulness
> 
> compared to lighter alternatives.
> 
> github/gitlab style collaboration in a true decentralized way is AFAIK
> 
> still not a solved problem, but I've seen some effort to integrate git
> 
> hosting with some decentralized social platforms to allow
> 
> functionalities like pull requests etc. between different instances.
> 
> ¹ as opposed to the ones for which there are lots of lightweight
> 
> alternatives, such as git hosting, pages, and even CI.
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Elena ``of Valhalla''
> 
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> 
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