The Sceptic's view on SAFENet (+refutations)

Help me list all the sceptic’s backwards arguments you have received or can think of, with the retaliation you gave - or wish you had given.

Try to be razor sharp, focus on the argument. Don’t try to explain the entire SAFENet concept in every argument (it won’t hold IRL as people’s attention span is way too short for it).

I’ll start:

“I’ve seen this cloud backup service before, didn’t become much, is there really market for it?” (Googles for the mentioned service, and sure it does look kind of dead).
My answer: Look at Amazon, Microsoft etc., don’t they sell a shitload of storage?

“Why would people use this money?” (Talking of safecoin).
(It was very hard to answer this shortly)

“If data is going to be really really cheap to buy, doesn’t that also implicate that you will get almost nothing paid for the storage you provide?”

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As storage gets much cheaper we also use much more of it, so more cheaper == still get paid :slight_smile:

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Why would we completely change to a new internet? That means we would have to build everything again from scratch.

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Response:

Because MAID safe solves many fundamental issues with the internet; for instance did you ever go to a website like facebook and it’s just slow because you know there’s a lot of people online/accessing the page you’re accessing?

MAID safe solves this issue. On MAID safe a lot of people accessing a resource on the MAID safe net actually speeds up the page. This reason is one of many reasons alone why the people’s choice will be MAID safe.

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Also, not from scratch. Much can be translated. Some translated and improved.

But like the current internet where companies bring out new versions of their site, the new version will simply be built on SAFE reusing much of what was already done (logic)

Also the current web didn’t appear overnight, it took years, and likewise SAFE sites will be built over time and not the “rewrite everything” but evolve everything with site upgrades, version rewrites being done on SAFE rather then the insecure web.

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Why would companies like google, amazon and facbook join safe ? Have they not invested alot of money on servers.

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Its not so much “join SAFE”, as it is “use SAFE” really. In terms of server investments then it’s not straight froward. Companies like these will buy via “capital costs” things like servers, desks, buildings etc. These are written down (basically written off) over a period. Usually computer equipment is written off at 25% per year.

So a company like Facebook would buy a ton of servers and replace them every 4 years. Adopting new tech could mean doing that over 4 years as the old is replaced then use SAFE to replace it for instance. Of course there are other priorities, such as 100% secure network password security may mean for banks etc. replace now and don’t wait (assuming SAFE is proven).

So not straight forward, many options.

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This is important to understand. One doesn’t have to “join” everything one uses.

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We don’t have to. You can use safe net as little or as much as you like. You just install a client and can then run any safe apps you choose to on your machine.

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They will support safe net when customers demand it. If that demand isn’t fulfilled, a competitor with dreams of being the next Google, Amazon or Facebook will.

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Thanks everybody :slight_smile: here’s another questionI’ve heard:

If it is so liberating and has the power to free humanity “paraphrasing” why has this technology not been destroyed?

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Because it came from Scotland… Nobody goes to Scotland… :relaxed: :joy:

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Many have claimed this in the past and came to be unfulfilled.

The authorities are worn out trying to keep up with all the software products that claim to free society in one way or another. Basically they cannot afford the expense of evaluating all the products and especially one that isn’t even ready to operate. Also they are unlikely to be convinced of the claims.

Just like those who question the project so too do the authorities if they look at SAFE’s claims. I am not even convinced they have even taken the time to look at or even know of SAFE

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That sir is the perfect answer!

When maid gets there - all this crypto madness would have been the perfect camoflage in my opinion. Everything seems to have worked out in its favour. But time shall tell.

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I commented about decentralised internet and SAFE to a friend who provide cloud services to businesses (e.g. Amazon cloud) and told me that something like SAFE would be very slow. Centralised servers provide fast responses, he said.

Thinking about this, I imagine this could be true also because Amazon uses the latest technology in terms of server specs, whereas someone like me offering a bit of space in my humble computer would not be using purpose-built hosting technology.

What is the answer to this?

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The answer is, it depends :slight_smile: Seriously what would be slow, delivery of data to clients, bittorrent shows distributed p2p is not slow.

Tying together requests with who, why etc. would be slower (and very difficult) but do we even want that?

The bottom line is that a local sql server will be faster at SQL and that is OK, but it wont be scale-able. Facebook / Amazon etc found that out, so scaled to distributed locally protected networks. So distributed and partially decentralised networks are what they use. They though will interconnect these with high speed bandwidth channels so it will be fast.

Then you consider they ignore security to a great extent, but surround their network with firewalls etc. and lots of administrators. So this ignore security also speeds things up. In addition they own the hardware, so spec it appropriately and also manage it (network management agents per machine reporting health etc.). This allows them to ignore failover protections or self healing properties, again speeds it up.

However to do this, they need something we don’t think any company or person should have and that is control over access to information. In fact usually with T&Cs they own the information you give them.

With all those caveats they can be faster, but so can a car if you remove the brakes and seat-belts :smiley:

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I guess this is a multi leveled question, because there are writes and there are reads.

Reads can be faster (I guess?), because of caching in nearby nodes. But additionally can scale virtually unlimited, and thus will provide access (be faster) when services you compare to will be bogged down and slow.

Writes I suppose, would always be slower. Perceived write speed would depend also on how many confirmed replicas are needed before returning OK.

BUT, as dirvine says above, the services we compare that with now, provide that speed at a cost.

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Mmmm, this means the two networks will be competing at some point, and the slowness could play against the widespread adoption of SAFE. I can even imagine a whole (terrorist?) operation against SAFE, paid by mainstream corps, to hack the network, and maybe make it very slow (DDoS or so). In the end, the fight is against the most powerful corporations in the world so some bloodshed/sabotage is to be expected. Sounds like another sceptic’s question.

Mmmm, this means the two networks will be competing
[/quote]

I don’t see it like that, one is aiming for Freedom and the other is aiming for profit. They may compete in some ways like trains compete with cars (GM story in West USA is good on this) but essentially they are different enough I feel.

I suspect you are right though, there will be attacks, but we must expect that and actually look forward to it. Like any tech, such as bitcoin, bittorrent etc. if you run their first version today you would get hacked silly, however they learn and upgrade. I suspect this will always be the case. I think it will happen just as we (hopefully) become more mainstream, but still small enough to attack.

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Aah, but you see DDoS would not have that effect.
Not for read requests at least, since caching would make it more available on more nodes, so it would only improve performance.
(Some upper limit should exist I guess, but the larger the network, the harder it would be to get hands on enough computer power to reach that limit).

For writes there is a cost, so it would be very very costly to incur any prolonged disturbance.

Small network => vulnerable.
Large network => resilient.
Mature, large network => very resilient. (Flaws are discovered and fixed along the way).

In summary the sceptic’s question about large competitors, sabotage etc. there are answers like:

  • it’s not necessarily competition. It might also be used by “competitors” (see big corps adoption of block chain etc.).
  • hacking attempts are to be expected, and will even be encouraged perhaps as to mature the technology faster.
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