I am a programmer who has spent the last three years prototyping, studying, and thinking about what software we need.
There is a lot of software that is just now becoming possible to build and I have been extremely excited to be exploring just some of those possibilities. One thing that has challenged me has been trying to determine which projects are the most important, so that I could focus my effort on them. Additionally, running at the scale required (~350 million people in the US and ~8 billion people worldwide [though only about half currently have Internet access]) presents many challenges that do not have many well-known solutions. Much of my last year-and-a-half has been spent searching, finding, researching, and creating tools that might allow the software I have been envisioning to be created and distributed.
At the top of my list of must have software is a publicly-owned, -built, -supported, and -maintained database of everything our leaders have ever said or done that has been recorded. The database will be web-accessible, so that anyone can quickly and easily access and search the entire known-history of a politician. Using technologies that have just become available to the web, anyone will be able to contribute live audio and/or video streams to the database as well.
There is a lot to think about with this project and I look forward to having many discussions about it. Ask me anything!
~~Edit: my comment votes and replies have been rate limited since starting this AMA. My apologies if I don't get a timely response to you, it is only because I can't :/~~
Edit2: I've been able to make some more responses ~~(though I cannot vote on comments for ~23 more hours apparently)~~. If I'm not responding to you, there is a good chance it is because I am rate limited and waiting to be able to submit my response.
~~Edit3: I'm going to try to get some sleep. I'll be back when I'm up!~~
Edit4: I'm back and responding~~, but rate-limited again~~. I will get to your question soon!
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[–] jsprogrammer [S] ago
I have only recently searched it a bit. Is it in actual use currently? My initial understanding was that it would be something users could interact with in a web-native way, but when I look at the site now, it looks like you must install software to use it?
I like the idea, but I need to learn more about exactly how it works.
[–] Genr8r 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
You need to install it to interact with files, but you can reference those files directly within a standard website. There is an image sharing site that provides a great use case... https://ipfs.pics/ You will want to understand the distinction between file permenance versus file persistence before using it for your datastore. You may still want to provide a server to provide persistence but the p2p/cdn like qualities of ipfs would dramatically reduce both the hardware and bandwidth demands of what you are describing. Your server would simply be guaranteeing that there is always at least one full copy of each video persisting within the network. I will leave it there for now but the possibilities blow my mind. So feel free to hit me with any other questions. I am just having fun playing with it.