Couldn't agree more, kind of embarrassing for a so-called decentralized service. MaidSafe could also be a possibility

Evolution of the net became clearly visible.

I used to use symform.  Donate 2G of local storage to the cloud, get 1G of cloud storage for free.  Very simple set-up.  It was a sad day for me when they shut that service down.

I rent my hard drive to storj now, but it's not very friendly as a storage provider for windows.  So far, I haven't been willing to spend the time it would take me to figure out how to do it.  Same issue with ipfs.  I'm looking forward to when those platforms become more useable.

Maidsafe.net is the same isn't it?

I had posted on this topic a while back, all my photos in that post were uploaded to IPFS. During this blackout I went back to that post to see if my photos in that post were accessible and they weren't, surprisingly. 

I am not sure if IPFS is the solution. In theory its great and Juan Benets video really makes you enthusiastic but its been a while coming and its still not here in a big way. Storj or Maidsafe or Sia may be better solutions.

IPFS is basically the love child of git and bitorrent.
I've used it, it works well.  But my preference right now is for https://zeronet.io/

I find the adjustments they made to the IPFS protocol to be more secure and more scalable.

The big problem with all of these storage schemes though is that your data can age out of the system.  In the case of Storjx if you don't pay the bill, you lose your data, simple as that.

This makes it unsuitable for long term storage.

All of them though eventually fall back to AWS S3 or something similar and this leaves us with the cloud problem.
https://xkcd.com/908/
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_cloud.png

The only solution to that is going to be the adoption of content addressable networks and a change in internet topology to open mesh networks.  That will require the realization that unlimited high speed internet is as fundamental to the modern human experience as electricity was to the previous generation and water to the generation before that.

Until we have those things in place, we will keep facing these same problems.

Thanks! I was wondering what was up. Been seeing AWS all over. Learned something today!

Upvoted

@shayne

I personally have a hard time understanding where the extra hd space and bandwidth should come. One problem with a decentralized crypto storage is that many files will eventually be duplicates, but can't be treated as duplicates, but as individual files. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you encrypt a file once, and someone else encrypts the same file in a different location it will not be recognised as the same file anymore, right?

The way I see it many of these technologies don't account for redundant files that hog up space, where as they could be identified as identical from the get-go and then replicated with the same identifier, so whenever someone needs that file, they don't need to go after their own copy, but they can use the same copy everyone else is. That would free resources for all; storage, bandwidth **and** the search algorithm.

I finally managed to beat the bot and give you a 100% UV finally after most of the last 3 weeks. I wonder if I will be flagged by a whale for my generosity.

Just what I was thinking storj are attempting to go head to head with AWS. Did you manage to get involved with the equity offering recently?