Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @01:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the next-level-of-utorrent-bloat dept.

TorrentFreak reports on the April 10th public release of BitTorrent Inc's torrent-powered browser Maelstrom:

In short, Maelstrom takes Google's Chromium framework and stuffs a powerful BitTorrent engine under the hood, meaning that torrents can be played directly from the browser. More excitingly, however, Maelstrom also supports torrent-powered websites that no longer have to rely on central servers.

By simply publishing a website in a torrent format the website will be accessible if others are sharing it. This can be assisted by web-seeds but also completely peer-to-peer.

Project Maelstrom's stated primary goal is to keep the Internet open and neutral:

If we are successful, we believe this project has the potential to help address some of the most vexing problems facing the Internet today. How can we keep the Internet open? How can we keep access to the Internet neutral? How can we better ensure our private data is not misused by large companies? How can we help the Internet scale efficiently for content?

TorrentFreak notes that it's not an all-in-one solution, though:

While Maelstrom can bypass Internet censors, it's good to keep in mind that all shared files are visible to the public. Maelstrom is caching accessed content to keep it seeded, so using a VPN might not be a bad idea. After all, users leave a trail of their browsing history behind.

Unfortunately, it seems that the project is closed-source, and the beta is currently Windows-only, with a Mac version announced. The devs have stated that a Linux version is planned, but is a low priority.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @06:42PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday April 20 2015, @06:42PM (#173230) Journal

    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. You'd have to create a new torrent for a single change. That's not so terrible for Game of Thrones, but pretty bad for any decentralized collaborative or ongoing effort. So this is focused on static content (which could include AJAX or link to files on the open Web, with obvious privacy implications). It's a weakness common to all torrents.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2859377/internet/project-maelstrom-detailed-more-info-about-bittorrents-vision-for-a-peer-to-peer-web.html [cio.com]

    Can Maelstrom work with common web applications such as storefronts and productivity apps like Google Docs?
    "They wouldn’t be able to run 100% via torrents at this point," says Averill. "We’re focused more on static HTML and Javascript apps at the moment"

    Could a Maelstrom site use javascript to pull and display remote content such as recent tweets, an RSS news feed, or the latest weather report?
    "HTTP requests can be made inside of a torrents and BitTorrent requests can be made inside of normal HTTP/S websites" "In this way, it’s possible that we could see a lot of intermingling of the two types of content. Maybe a HTTP/S served blog chooses to serve images or videos via a torrent and display them inline or maybe a torrent website chooses to embed live tweets via an HTTP/S API."

    Maybe they could combine this with a modified protocol like BitTorrent Sync [wikipedia.org] but then the whole idea might fall apart. About control and authorship, you cache the site (torrent contents) when you download them, seed it to other users looking for those contents, and the Maelstrom browser has a user-settable limit on the amount of cache space used. All you would have to do is save what you downloaded and you could republish it in the form of your choice. Of course that is the same as any static content found on the Web.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday April 20 2015, @07:07PM

    by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday April 20 2015, @07:07PM (#173241) Journal

    So this is focused on static content (which could include AJAX or link to files on the open Web, with obvious privacy implications). It's a weakness common to all torrents.

    I have a website or two that is static in nature, but I occasionally update or fix a typo. It sounds like a torrent-based browser would not be good with the occasional update. It requires that it be very static. Which implies that one would still have to go to a regular http / https site for most things. The best thing about a torrent-based browser that I've seen so far is the sudden-spike high volume scenario. I really like that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @11:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @11:22PM (#173319)

      On the contrary, the occasional change is nearly perfect for a torrent distribution. If you are making changes every hour, then no. But an update like once a week? Perfect.