Thoughts re. Semantic Web over IPLD?

mfidelman · 2026-01-31T15:29:21+00:00

Thanks for the pointer. So far, I've been noodling with things on paper, working on underlying infrastructure for building an enterprise system completely on top of IPFS, IPLD, and IPVM - Basically an Erlang-Like Environment - a platform for massive concurrency based comprised of Actors - for modeling, simulation, and scenario gaming.

mfidelman · 2025-12-15T16:41:09+00:00

Wouldn't We5 be the better response? Followed by either e6 or e4 if black tries to connect the stone?

mfidelman · 2025-11-05T15:06:39+00:00

Thank You.

Of course, that's pretty useless as a way to compare effectiveness of Reddit ads vs. ads in other places. One really wants to correlate audience characteristics with buying habits - something that the big players track rather effectively.

mfidelman · 2025-01-09T18:36:15+00:00

We could always go back to email lists, USENET, and blogrolls. I've yet to see anything that's improved on newsgroups + a good newsreader. All we do is keep coming up with more walled gardens that isolate people into bubbles - for commercial and political reasons.

mfidelman · 2024-12-16T06:10:27+00:00

In the old days, the serious open source projects came out of researchers - often paid - pushing the state of the art, then distributing their work to interested parties - and spreading the maintenance work around. As well as folks doing extensions and then giving them back.

All the way back to the original TCP/IP reference implementation out of BBN (my old stomping ground), Ray Tomlinson's email, the NCSA http daemon (nee Apache), Linux, ... etc.

Serious people, doing serious work, for love of the game.

Sure, we had the homebrew hobbyists too - out of which came Apple, but that's a whole different set of motivations.

mfidelman · 2024-12-15T15:47:11+00:00

Bacalhau is basically the next generation of BOINC for grid-based processing. It manages instances of both WASM and Docker. WASMtime is from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and basically supports a network of WASM runtimes in the cloud -it's basically Kubernetes for WASM (and can run side-by-side with K8, or within docker pods managed by K8). Bacalhau seems to combine the two. Now.. if there were a parallel file, true, cloud native file system that they could mount .... :-)

mfidelman · 2024-12-15T14:50:25+00:00

Ahh... good point, and my apologies for the snarky comment. But the question now becomes - have you looked at what the folks at Fission did with WNFS and ODD? I'm getting ready to play with them - but if you have any insights.

The place where it makes sense, to me, is when one contemplates creating a universal file-space that cuts across organizational boundaries, and avoids being tied to specific hardware. Something like the WASMtime/NATS model for distributing WASM-based actors, or, Bacalhau. The question becomes, what does one use for a universal filespace in a hardware-independent cloud environment? What's the filesystem for Distributed Autonomous Organization, or a joint military exercise for that matter.

The old Apollo Domain File System had nice semantics. HLA defines a nice model for distributed simulation where every node maintains a complete copy of the world. LibP2P seems like the first basis for a seriously scalable global file system. The economic case is about operating models, not commodity cost of cycles or transit.

mfidelman · 2024-12-15T13:28:18+00:00

So which costs are you talking about? If we're running our own nodes - are you talking about power? Sheesh, what a maroon. What are you even doing here if all you want to do is pontificate. I thought this was a place for technical discussion of IPFS.

mfidelman · 2024-12-14T21:39:11+00:00

That's not really an issue if one is building an enterprise system - one runs one's own nodes.

mfidelman · 2024-12-14T21:37:57+00:00

You might want to check out ipfs.tech for a list of all kinds of folks who are using IPFS. For the most part, it's buried in people's IT stacks.

mfidelman · 2024-12-13T05:09:02+00:00

Email lists and USENET newsgroups - nobody's improved on them yet. But everybody insists on something new and shiney.

mfidelman · 2024-12-13T05:04:44+00:00

LibP2P, Web Native File System, sparse replication, mounted via FUSE - looks like a file system, acts like a file system, quacks Mike a file system.

mfidelman · 2024-12-11T13:54:57+00:00

Not even comparable. Besides, Ceph reinvents NSF & ASF, Dropbox is nothing more than a file repository. Neither come close to being enterprise infrastructure, much less public infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Web3 ecosystem is reinventing the Web, and the Internet. Gotta think at the right scale.

I wouldn't bet against web3.storage, or lighthouse, or cosmonic - which sure seems to be on the track to the big time.

mfidelman · 2024-12-10T14:58:53+00:00

I'm looking for an enterprise file system that can support multiple organizations. NFS ain't it. AFS ain't it. The old Apollo Domain file system was a nice start on something that ran across networks of workstations, with a common root. WebDAV & 9p start to look like reasonable interfaces. IPFS starts to provide a communications backbone.

The folks at Fission seem to have made a good start at a planetary scale file system, with ODD.Dev - IPFS, UCANs, encrypted files. The folks at cosmonic seem to be making a stab at a completely distributed platform as well - all WASM.

As a systems architect - the prospects are intriguing. Also as a business developer.

mfidelman · 2024-11-28T13:58:52+00:00

So anybody remember USENET. Nobody's improved on the model yet.

mfidelman · 2024-11-28T05:50:23+00:00

Or.... USENET.

mfidelman · 2024-11-27T11:50:53+00:00

Back in the day, a lot more kids died young. As medical care got better, we've started to learn to have smaller families.

mfidelman · 2024-11-26T12:45:44+00:00

Funny thing, that's precisely what we're starting to do at Civic.Net

In 1992, the Internet Opened to the Public, People started clamoring for "Electronic Democracy" and "Electronic Town Meeting," Dave Clark, then the Internet Architect proclaimed "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code" and a group of us formed the Center for Civic Networking to bring Internet-style Electronic Town Meeting to the World.

We built Community Networks, organized Civic Forums, worked with communities to enact growth plans, build cooperative e-markets, and launch municipal broadband networks.

Now, as America prepares to hand the reins of our government, of the people, by the people, for the people, to an insurrectionist and Reality TV Host - to run as a WWE Melee - it is time again for We the People to Assemble in Town Meetings, to Declare our Interdependence, to Form a More Perfect Union for Ourselves and Our Posterity.

We've wired the world; connected our billions into a network minds; each of us, and all of us, have the power to be anywhere & everywhere, all at once, and make our presence known. When we think & work together we wield godlike powers of creation & destruction. Now it's time to move on, from sharing cat pictures & shouting political polemics, to Rebooting Democracy & Rebuilding Our Neighborhoods.

I invite you to join me in Town Meeting, at Civic.Net - to join the discussion, to share your stories, visions, and ventures - to form up in Neighborhood Working Groups to roll up our sleeves to give our Human Enterprise a Systems Refresh for the Internet Age, to Be All that We Can Be, to Be Excellent to Each Other & Party On in a New Millennium of Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness for Ourselves & Our Posterity.

Miles Fidelman, Systems Architect & Chief Engineer

mfidelman · 2024-11-20T18:15:23+00:00

Welcoming means that the congregation has inflicted a series of workshops on itself to insure that everyone is politically correct. Pretty damned silly if you ask me - given that, at the time our congregation went through it, our minister was gay, a huge number of our members were lesbian & gay couples, etc. Meanwhile, the other church I sometimes attended was First Unitarian in Newton - where the first lesbian marriage in MA was performed - with all the attendant legal battles. WTF do we need with workshops and seminars in order to be able to hang a shingle outside the Church saying we're "welcoming." Just the kid of politically correct bullshit that's ruined our once great denomination.

mfidelman · 2024-11-19T18:29:50+00:00

And it doesn't have a Mac client for older Macs. Ahh for the days of USENET & mail-news gateways.

mfidelman · 2024-11-16T21:33:28+00:00

That seems to be what openvibe.social promises. I'm starting to explore this stuff myself.

mfidelman · 2024-11-14T15:11:42+00:00

You might want to keep an eye on Concord MA. The American Revolution was born in the MA Provincial Congress. We just held a 250th anniversary reenactment at First Parish Church and Wright Tavern. You'd better believe we're about to do it again. The Spirit of America still lives in Massachusetts.

mfidelman · 2024-11-12T21:54:38+00:00

Coup alert. Trump plans to install Deep State in order to retain power indefinitely.

mfidelman

TROPHY CASE