On My Pirate Stick…
Recently I posted a video and write-up on how I got my Pirate Stick up and running. There are always tweaks that I learn along the way to make things work for me, and I enjoy sharing those. I’ve been told that forwarding port 4001 on my router shouldn’t be necessary, but I also prefer to use NAT and IPv4 rather than getting the outside world to assign IP addresses for every device on my network. If IPv6 was running on my network, that might have also opened things up to function properly. That’s my theory, but I haven’t tried turning on IPv6.
Try Accessing My Media
I’ve re-published some of my media from my Art of Diesel Substack, as well as my recent how-to video in order to try things out. Please try out these links and let me know how they work for you. I don’t think anybody else is mirroring my content, yet, but I’m interested in how this works for you. The links beloow take you through ipfs.io as a gateway, and I believe that they will work from any browser. If you do this from your workplace or another location that blocks IPFS “file sharing” and such things, then you might not get through. Leave a comment on how this works for you!
Here’s an IPFS link for my Art of Diesel video on the installation of a two-post automotive lift: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRve2RRWaqJY6Qbqm6VhEzPDqCXkNQELMZeYeJ6wNbAEh?filename=2023_08_TwoPostLiftInstallation720.mp4
Here’s one for the Paracontrarian Pirate Stick how-to : https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmepNGh34ffUR4X3DntR1QkNTizRAitHSzvXvDKAUxbsEY?filename=2023_09_PirateStick.mp4
If you are using an IPFS node of your own, please consider pinning my content and send me some links to your own content. I’ll do the same (assuming it’s nothing nasty!)
Searchability
As I’ve stated before, to address dissident content creator needs, we need to find solutions that do three things. IPFS is not the only solution in the world, but let’s look at what I currently know about these three important ingredients when IPFS is being used:
Allow the publication of content. IPFS definitely does this, but will be a lot more effective if you can get others to “pin” your content, allowing faster access by others.
Drive viewers to the content. The first step is to have searchability. Let’s talk about this in a moment…
Allow monetization. IPFS doesn’t solve this issue, but layered solutions built on top of it might. This will be covered in future articles.
My train of thought right now is how to ensure that people can search for and find a creator’s published content. I’m open to information on how this can be done, but I think this is an area where IPFS needs work. Here are a few possibilities to consider:
Search engines. Perhaps there are others, but the one I’m aware of is IPFS-Search. This platform has been around since 2016, but the service has been paused since June. Being new to this, I can’t say how well the service worked or whether a content creator would have to take additional steps to ensure that their IPFS-published content and accompanying metadata would be picked up by this engine. At the very least, I expect that the webcrawling technologies used by conventional search engines won’t work on IPFS. However well this capability works, they are looking for funding and it’s a huge issue if it isn’t self-sustaining.
ARNIIE. Thomas Freedman, creator of the Pirate Stick, says that he’s setting up something called the “Alexandria Rescue Network of Independent IPFS Engines,” along with his next version of the Pirate Stick, which is tentatively “The Publisher.” He says that “Arniie's Publisher” and “Arniie's Search” will be the main applications on that system, but expects to include capabilities like Sideband and Nomadnet running on Reticulum, plus other applications like TOX, Briar, and Session. So, it will have all kinds of cool communication capabilities — but the list provided here is only tentative and we’ll have to wait to see the results of development. For this discussion, however, the bottom line is that there will likely be some kind of search on this system, and it sounds like it might be a part of a community effort to collect and curate content.
Communities collecting and curating content. I don’t have a high level of detail on ARNIIE, but I believe it will be an example of communities that will pop up with different interests and standards for acceptability. I know of another example of a curation engine that is under development that will reside on the “normal” internet, and I will share more of that when the time is right. Content consumers will be able to join such communities to ensure that they get what they want without being inundated with things that they don’t want to see. Consumers will likely pay for access to these services, but they will join to follow their favorite, trusted curators and see only the best quality content that is being produced. These content consumers may generally be more interested in focus than in the current eclectic, distracting mess of social media platforms. If so, they’ll be interested in this curation engine when it comes out. This may well be the model for finding good content on decentralized systems such as IPFS. Other instances may, in fact, be very broad, eclectic sources of information, and it will be up to the consumer to decide what they want to sign up for and support.
Do you have information on how IPFS and other decentralized systems might be searched and how people will find the best content on these systems? Do you have ideas to share? Is there something you’d really like to see these systems do?
Please comment on this article to share thoughts, ideas, and information. I want to see a lot of discussion and knowledge sharing on this platform. I have a lot to learn, so I’m eager to see what people have to say.
Thanks for reading!
—Mark-A-Billy