This is a feature, not a bug. Torrent file/magnet link contains hash of a data which is immutable. Just publish new link (you should anyway, even with http)
This is a feature, not a bug. Torrent file/magnet link contains hash of a data which is immutable. Just publish new link (you should anyway, even with http)
Agreed, it's cool that you can reverify a torrent from 3 years ago and make sure the data on your disk isn't lost or damaged.
That's useful if you did not prepare for that eventuality. But if you do want to store data long-term it's better to generate error-correcting codes like PAR2 so that you can actually recover partial errors without having to rely on seeders being available - and when you do that you no longer need the torrent for verification.
Imagine if for websites you had to get a brand new domain if you ever wanted to change the contents of your web page. You can't just go to google.com because it would be immutable. You would have to somehow know you have to go to google10393928.com and any links to google on the internet would be linking to some old version. The ability to have a link always refer to the latest version is useful. The same applies to torrents. It's possible for the magnet link to the latest version to get lost and then a bunch of people are accidently downloading old, worse versions of the file with no way to find the newest version.
What a dumb strawman. Domains are not hashes.
But imagine if domains didn't exist then. At least try to see their point instead of calling it a strawman.
Immutability of specific releases is great, but you also want a way to find new related releases/versions.
I don't need to imagine domains do not exist. They exist. OP brought in domains as an example.
For some you want a name where the underlying resource can change, for others you want a hash of the actual resource. Which one you want depends on the application.
> I don't need to imagine domains do not exist. They exist. OP brought in domains as an example.
In the context of webpages, a domain lets you deploy new versions.
With a torrent file, a domain does not let you do that.
Please try to understand the comparison they're making instead of just saying "domains are not hashes" "domains do exist".
> For some you want a name where the underlying resource can change, for others you want a hash of the actual resource. Which one you want depends on the application.
Right.
And torrents don't give you the choice.
Not having the choice is much closer to "bug" than "feature".
Needing a new magnet link is fine. The old magnet link working indefinitely is great. Having no way to get from old magnet to new magnet is not as fine.
The OP brought in domains as an example but domains are not applicable.
Everybody on HN should know how a domain works. I think most people on HN understand what a hash is and how a magnet link works. The fact that you can't easily replace the resource under a magnet link is a feature not a bug. If you think for a bit about the consequences of what would happen if you could easily replace the resources associated with a magnet link rather than just having the 'convenience of being able to update a torrent' and you'll see that this is not a simple thing at all.
Torrents are simply a different thing than 'the web' and to try to equate the one to the other is about as silly as trying to say that you can't use a screwdriver to put nails in the wall. They're different things. Analogies are supposed to be useful, not a demonstration of your complete lack of understanding of the underlying material.
I distribute some software that I wrote using a torrent with a magnet link, so I'm well aware of the limitations there, but these limitations are exactly why I picked using a torrent in the first place.
> The fact that you can't easily replace the resource under a magnet link is a feature not a bug.
I didn't even go that far. I just said link to a new one.
You're the one that said replacing can be good! What is this.
It's a straw man because no one is telling you to replace domains with torrents. You'd replace the download link to https://yourwebsite.com/files/download-1.0.zip with https://yourwebsite.com/files/download-1.0.zip.torrent or the magnet URL corresponding to that file. Even if you wanted to replace HTTP with torrents entirely then the domain would be updated to point to the current torrent - after all the whole point of domains is that you have a memorable and persistent name that can be resolved to the current location of a service.
That works fine if it's a download link on a website. You offload the updating to the website.
There are many other ways torrents get used, where people aren't looking at the website or there is no website.