Backup, organization and resistance forced into oblivion

"Time can even weather the stone to make buildings." "Not to mention human memory."

Because memory is the second most important thing that is lost with age (hmm? What is the first, we forget.), there are so many ways to preserve memory to a certain extent, from pen, ink, paper and inkstone to digital signals .

What are we talking about?

One of the introductions - the distributed entrance of Matters

The words "distributed portal" can be seen under the title of Matters' article. After clicking, you can see the fingerprint of this article on IPFS, which can be accessed through public nodes and IPFS clients.

• The demo article is @edmond's IPFS distributed network can resist content censorship?
• The following "click me to view in IPFS" is a User Script, from @catding's Matters article IPFS link generation plug-in - the fireplace article is also applicable .

The principle is that there is a <script> tag named "__NEXT_DATA__" in the source code of the webpage, which stores the metadata related to this article, including the fingerprint on IPFS. (Search for the dataHash in __NEXT_DATA__['props']['apolloState']['data']? And how to use the mediaHash after the URL...)

And in addition to the articles found by catding that can be seen in the furnace in this way, even the hidden articles will have these metadata, so there is still a chance to see them from IPFS.

Introduction 2 - Let's start with personal backup

Backup (English: backup), in the field of information technology and data management, refers to copying the data in the file system or database system; in the event of a disaster or wrong operation, it is convenient and timely to restore the effective data and normal operation of the system.

Can't understand it? That's right, we too... In simple terms, a backup is to copy some data from one place to another. In case the original data is lost or damaged, it can be restored with the previously copied part. As for the annihilation, right (huh?).

Of course, you may have used backups explicitly or implicitly in various places, such as local (Windows' File History and macOS' Time Machine), various enterprise-provided network storage (OneDrive, Google Drive or iCloud) , they all have the function of placing part of the data on the system on network storage, which can be regarded as a kind of backup.), if a little broader, the passphrase of password managers and digital currency wallets can also be counted as some kind of backup. backup. They all require a certain amount of up-front investment, such as purchasing storage (local hard drives or paying for network storage), learning and using matching facilities (software or website, etc.), and the most critical operation backup.

The old and possibly modern adage "Don't put your eggs in one basket" applies to backups as well. For some backups that are important to you, you may have thought of putting multiple copies in separate places. And for those backups that are out of your direct control, you may also consider other means (encryption or read-only media, etc.) to protect them.

The feeling of wanting to protect the fleeting content

Since the birth of the Internet, a lot of content has been created, and there is also a lot of content that has disappeared for various reasons.

But the strange (or gratifying) thing is that the first website http://info.cern.ch/ has been well preserved by CREN. They even have a browser that mimics the early terminal: https://line-mode.cern.ch/www/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

The reasons for their disappearance are different. Although most of them are simply forgotten with the passage of time, some external forces are also a driving force. Typical examples are the oppression from various enterprises and governments.

Of course there are people who want to fight against time, such as the library that has existed since before the Internet was born, and the Internet Archive , which aims to establish a place of existence in the cyberspace (?). But this kind of organization that is responsible for protecting content later found that in addition to time, "copyright holders" and various governments and law enforcement agencies are sometimes (or many times) among the enemies. The Wayback Machine (one of the Internet Archive's projects to save web pages) has been blocked in mainland China for a long time.

(And although it may not matter, we suddenly remembered Swartz when writing this, and there may be a lot to say about him.)

Of course, in addition to large organizations like the Internet Archive, there are also many kinds of people trying to preserve all kinds of content that they hold dear, although sometimes their voices are so small that they are drowned in the ocean of the Internet, and in the long run they seem to be unable to escape the Forgotten fate.

But the power of groups can be great sometimes

Presumably you have heard the term "blockchain" more or less from the propaganda of various cryptocurrencies (or more generally "cryptocurrency", although some people are a little dissatisfied with this term) or elsewhere. , One of the keys to the blockchain is that this block has data related to the previous block, which makes it much more difficult to tamper with the block. (Although some places often say that the blockchain is "immutable", we do not admit it based on the prejudice that nothing is absolute.)

Then someone started to imagine using the blockchain to save files, and as a result, a really incredible guy came out, which is the IPFS mentioned earlier. (The full name is InterPlanetary File System , which is translated as "Interplanetary File System" in Chinese. It can be seen that their goals are very high. (laughs)) Because the distribution of files is based on the BitTorrent protocol, it is similar to BitTorrent. Find what you're looking for on the web, or let Gateway help you find it.

However, it is difficult for a bigger project not to attract the attention of all parties, and the enemy has begun to try to prevent the expansion of IPFS with methods that were once feasible. The typical method is to block IPFS Gateway. For example, https://gateway.ipfs.io/ used by IPFS for demonstration and https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ run by Cloudflare have also been blocked in mainland China for a long time. And Spain also blocked several IPFS Gateways in order to suppress the Catalan independence referendum around 2017, because the Catalans moved the website to IPFS after Spain blocked their independence referendum website set up on the Internet for the sake of.

However, this trick is not so effective against IPFS, because there are many IPFS Gateways, and users can also build them by themselves, and the later blockade often lags behind. And through software such as IPFS Desktop, IPFS network can be accessed without Gateway. Unless censorship shuts down the entire internet, which of course is another matter (though governments have already done so).

Too much reputation propaganda is often unhelpful and harmful(?)

In many places, when promoting IPFS, it is mentioned that the files stored on IPFS will be permanently saved, but it is not so beautiful. IPFS ultimately relies on physical storage space, and the storage space of each independent device on the network is limited after all. IPFS Destop (or its command-line version, IPFS Deamon) has a caching mechanism that deletes old unused data to save space when storage usage exceeds a set threshold. Of course, you can also use the "Pin" operation to fix this data in your storage space, and then keep it in the entire IPFS network. Therefore, the key to keeping the files in IPFS for a long time (permanence is still not guaranteed) is to have a sufficient number of nodes to fix this file, which of course requires an investment.

Pinata introduced by @edmond is a service that helps users fix data. The price it introduces is 0.15$ per GiB per month (converted at the exchange rate of the city where this article was published, about 1.2 Hong Kong dollars per GiB per month, or less than 1 RMB). Although there may not be a price advantage over traditional network storage... (iCloud's cheapest paid plan is 0.99$ for 50GiB, and Google One is 1.99$ for 100 GiB) But this is stored on IPFS, don't you think it's cool? (Well, we really can't think of any reasonable explanation)

However, when everyone was picking up firewood, "Referring to Pinata's fees, each pin 1 GB of data only costs about HK$1.2 per month, that is, 1,000 citizens can spend 1 yuan each to pin this episode of the survey program on IPFS. Ten years. How, are you willing to give this tiny power?".

And don't underestimate the shamelessness of politicians... IPFS's goal is to facilitate the dissemination and availability of data on the web, so it lacks measures to protect privacy and anonymity. Therefore, the intentional regime can directly find some high-sounding rhetoric (or shameless, not even rhetoric) to declare the use of IPFS as "illegal", and use this so-called law to put the user on trumped-up charges (inciting subversion). Isn't state power the most appropriate?), and then you can "legally" deter and arrest users. Therefore, how to use IPFS relatively anonymously is also an urgent problem to be studied.

A resistance also helps

But in order not to die in slavery together, they still cannot give up their resistance. (And in a slightly irresponsible optimism, the regime may be more willing to target high-profile guys to slay the chickens. And the reason that the number of people in the regime will always be smaller than that of citizens.)

So what can ordinary Matt citizens like us and you do:

• You can install the IPFS Desktop and IPFS Companion browser extensions, and fix some content you like or cherish on your computer to save a power for the network.
• Support or participate in IPFS or related development activities, such as @appreciating the ISCN that the Citizens Republic is doing.
• And many more countermeasures you can think of that could work.

Thanks @catding for discovering the metadata in the source code, @黄牛山人 for throwing bricks at IPFS (although it may be another brick), and @taolesi and @I'm not a cat's movie The articles in the comments give us the idea to spend some time thinking about these questions (though there are still no definite answers).

above.