On Dat://

dat This page is also on dat.My teardown of Beaker and the Dat network.We’re probably all scrambling to figure out a future for ourselves—either by a Web browser for the distributed Dat The technology was just lovely.But: you can’t yet edit a website from a different browser (like on a can use a Hyperdb for that—but Beaker hasn’t settled the details.)So I left Dat alone. complicating the whole thing.Recently, it occured to me that maybe I don’t need multi-writer. should really be sure that the rest of Dat is as perfect as I think it is. So I started working on a limited (but full-featured) app for Beaker, with the Could the app handle this?The Muxtape home page listed recent mixtapes. upgrading the mixtapes too?I also didn’t want to think in terms of social networks. share.How would Beaker do with that kind of tool?Ok, so how does Dat work exactly? Teardown time!This creates a new Dat (new folder on your computer) from my Dat into that folder, your mixtape. images and Javascript and such from MY Duxtape dat! dangerous.)When you hit someone else’s mixtape link, the Javascript loads the Duxtape Nothing very server-like about any of that.But furthermore: when you are on the Duxtape homepage, your browser will Many Beaker apps keep stuff like this in a Dat. So no need to do this. It’s a neat feature—for a different app.So this allows you to work on your mixtape, add and delete songs, get it app doesn’t need a server—in fact, WebAssembly makes Dat even more compelling.Lastly, here are some calls that I used which are specific to the Beaker changes to songs—to publish the index.html for your mixtape.unlink: To delete songs—NOTE: that songs are still in the Dat’s history and may be downloaded.getInfo and update the name of the mixtape’s Dat if the name of the mixtape is changed by that’s how it should be.It’s clear that there are tremendous advantages here: Dat is apps without can right-click on Duxtape and ‘view source’ for the entire app. There is no app There is no central app to target. be renamed, rehashed, reminified even (if needed)—reborn on the network.This has a fascinating conflict with the need to version and centralize an app. A central Dat needs to authorize other Dats. Every Dat runs in secret—they are difficult to find. are perhaps the most urgent ones.But there is good recent work:These are all cool—but Dat has a long way to go. What Beaker may need most of actually teaches you very plainly how Dat works! ↩︎Apps on the Dat network have no ‘server’, they can be seeded ↩︎Clearly Dat apps will need to put extra work into providing a scratch area If you could move a tracker to the Dat network, much would be learned • posted to /en/dat, +1 dat