[HN Gopher] Matadisco - Decentralized Data Discovery
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       Matadisco - Decentralized Data Discovery
        
       Author : biggestfan
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2026-03-25 16:45 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (matadisco.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (matadisco.org)
        
       | mentalgear wrote:
       | Decentralised Web Indexes are an important avenue if we truly
       | want to ever break free from the private indexes used and
       | dominated by Google and chatbots that in-transparently return
       | results based on their opaque preferences.
        
         | stingraycharles wrote:
         | Those indexes cost an incredible amount of money to build,
         | maintain and keep improving. It's worth it for these orgs as
         | these are considered a competitive edge and the "secret sauce"
         | of these orgs.
         | 
         | I find it hard to believe the same amount of investment will be
         | made into a decentralized web index, precisely for the reason
         | that it cannot be monetized.
        
           | dietr1ch wrote:
           | The keep improving part hasn't done so well in 10 years
           | already? Maybe this year the new force-fed AI answers got a
           | bit useful, but many times the risk of hallucination means
           | you still have to go and read a more credible source.
        
           | johnebgd wrote:
           | This. Unless in 2026, we suddenly see Costco sell personal
           | quantum computers for sub $2k, with practically unlimited
           | high speed crystal storage, all cooled/powered by unobtainium
           | fusion reactors that are made with 3D printers at your
           | neighborhood coop, then we either must accept private
           | entities that do this kind of indexing at scale or we should
           | ask government to offer it on taxpayer expense.
        
             | somat wrote:
             | On a pedantic note, that is unimportant to the discussion
             | at hand, but I want to talk about it anyway. quantum
             | computers have theoretical gains in some specific domains
             | but would not do anything for this one. Anyhow I have
             | doubts about even those specific domains, my gut says that
             | quantum computing is an inherently analog process and we
             | moved off analog computers for a reason. Bonus points if
             | you know why that was.
        
           | somat wrote:
           | No they don't. Sure, if you are trying to capture the entire
           | web with hourly latency for billions of users, that takes
           | significant resources. But if your goal is to catalog the
           | subsection of the web you are interested in with weekly
           | latency for yourself and share that catalog with like minded
           | individuals. any body can do that. Don't make gods out of
           | basic web indexing.
        
           | gessha wrote:
           | Are you familiar with any systems that use collaborative
           | filtering to distribute the work and the benefits among
           | users?
        
       | thenthenthen wrote:
       | The demo shows a bunch of Sentinel image tiles for me.
        
       | tomnicholas1 wrote:
       | Awesome to see this project here - it was partly inspired by my
       | blog post (original is linked from the OP, but there's a slightly
       | newer version on my personal site here[0]).
       | 
       | [0]: https://tom-nicholas.com/blog/2025/science-needs-a-social-
       | ne...
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-28 23:01 UTC)