Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on Saturday November 27, 2021 @03:06AM (#29358474)

But you also need to find the file first. And sites to search for files are unreliable, often get banned. I remember long before bit torrent there were protocols like napster, edonkey, imesh etc that included search function and were superior to bit torrent in this aspect. Unfortunately, bad design won.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by grammarnazzzi on Saturday November 27, 2021 @04:37AM (#29358910)

> But you also need to find the file first

No. He's describing a distributor's options. You are describing a consumer's problem. Specifically pirate comsumers.

He doesn't need to find his own file; he needs to distribute it. Publishing is a separate issue. With napster, you only had one publishing option: napster.com. With torrents, you have many. As he said, "just dump the magnet link somewhere".

> Unfortunately, bad design won.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Napster and bittorent are different tools that solve different problems.

He's describing general issues involved in distributing something.

You're describing specific issues involved in stealing.

Saying "bad design won" is like saying hammers are a bad design compaired to hypodermic needles because you can't use a hammer to inject yourself with heroin.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on Sunday November 28, 2021 @07:26AM (#29368377)

Well, like it or not, stealing is 99.9% of practical usage of bittorrent.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by urbanmiffs on Saturday November 27, 2021 @03:47AM (#29358682)

Qbittorrent client has a built in search engine. Add the jackett plugin and you can search every public tracker in one click.

I haven't visited a torrent site in years.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by klntsky on Saturday November 27, 2021 @04:17AM (#29358821)

This is cool, but unfortunately the best content is on private trackers (you also need them to reduce the risk of abuse reports to your provider).

Not sure if the need to use private trackers can be fixed by the protocol, though. But, maybe adding a bit more of anonymity would be enough? i2p torrents provide that, but sacrifice speed. Clearly it's a spectrum and we need more "points" in the middle of it.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by urbanmiffs on Saturday November 27, 2021 @05:42AM (#29359156)

I disagree completely. I downloaded my first torrent months after the first client was released and my latest yesterday. In those 20 years I've never failed to find what I need and never had any problems with ISP(and would use a VPN if I did). I've never felt the need to check out private trackers.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by herbstein on Saturday November 27, 2021 @09:38AM (#29360475)

It depends on how niche your tastes are, or how specific you are about quality. Getting Blu-Ray REMUX files for smaller, forgotten movies on public trackers is nigh impossible in my experience. Meanwhile, private trackers gives the community incentive to seed these large torrents with tiny swarms.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Saturday November 27, 2021 @09:39AM (#29360483)

It is probably a matter of what kind of content you're after. I do retro game preservation and private trackers are often the only option for certain sets and certainly the most up to date ones.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by urbanmiffs on Saturday November 27, 2021 @05:39AM (#29359143)

I disagree completely. I downloaded my first torrent months after the first client was released and my latest yesterday. In those 17 years I've never failed to find what I need and never had any problems with ISP(and would use a VPN if I did). I've never felt the need to check out private trackers.

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