Iroh doesn't use DHT as its main discovery mechanism. It uses DNS/pkarr and relays as the primary method. DHT is a separate feature if folks like to do that, we don't have it on by default and don't have it on the public relays.

The whole idea is p2p but trying to be realistic about what network environments actually look like.

Also you can join our discord and there's #showcase https://iroh.computer/discord

I would love to get an understanding of how the HN crowd sees diffing datasets should be (lets say >1GB in size).

Are you more interested in a "patch" quality diff of the data which is more machine tailored? Or is a change report/summary/highlights more interesting in that case?

Currently I'm leaning more towards the understanding/human consumption perspective which offers some interesting tradeoffs.

Depending how you look at it ie. Building networks or just chatting people up can lead to very different outcomes. The above was mostly focused on the 'getting started' part. Though the 200+ setup is successfully run by a team of 7 or 8.

Things change as you scale and the approach that works on smaller mumbers does not work on largers and vice versa.

Feel free to ping me on email or otherwise if you'd like to chat.

I pretty much agree that everybody kind of faces the same question and feelings. To be honest, I might have taken a small leap of faith as I pulled the trigger before securing a client. Though the only reason I felt comfortable with it is that I've been in the space enough to be pretty sure I can land a client in the first month or so (seems like it's happening).

The best advice you can have is 'talk to people'. Most starters think you're BSing them, but nearly everybody fails to leverage their network. You can't go indie fresh from college but after a couple years and some projects it's easy enough.

Talk, talk and talk some more. Don't be shy to send emails and chat people up on LinkedIn. Works wonders once you put yourself out there. Look at your contacts list now and you can surely find at least one that would be able to get you started with some work now or in the very near term.

The reason everyone keeps iterating on the same 'general/bland advice' is that it really is the bread and butter of it. Talk more, can't say it enough. Be honest, be respectful, don't spam, but don't be shy to talk to strangers in your line of work.

Not sure if this helps anyone, but just wanted to say it's easier than most of you think. You need a marketable skill, a minimal network and to talk. If you're doing honest work, things pick up on it's own.

Known pitfalls - there's more to running a consultancy than just talking and working, admin work takes a lot of time as well. Plan for the extras.

The two types of applications I've seen so far generate real value (and thus have monetary value where you can actually earn) are: - Automate existing processes to either reduce the amount of work needed to be done (feature extraction from images or audio, document parsing) or to introduce a higher level of resolution/response time. For example forecasts for the next day every day or live detection of audio/visual events.

- Generating models to extract signals from massive or complex data. Usually once you're done here you can revert to traditional methods based on the newfound insights. Rarely is there "magic" solutions to optimize away your problems. In general it proves more to be a tool in the box to do analytics than it is a solution.

Either of those create new value and you can put a price on it. There's decent opportunity once you understand what are appropriate use cases.