Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 322 posts

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#31

Post by [deleted] »

jeroenhd wrote: post #24
lurker137 wrote: post #7

I don’t know how it would be implemented but I always thought it would have been better if there was more meaningful separation of domains, and that you need a different browser to connect to a different domain. That way the net could be divided. There could be a domain for only verified information. A domain for public use. A domain for only educational content, etc. I have no idea how it would be moderated though

Such a categorisation already existsed in the form of the original top-level domain names, but it was never enforced. .gov for government, .mil for military, .com for commercial, .edu for educational facilities, etc. For good reason, though. Who says what information is "verified", the government, the news media, the publishers? And what governments, media, and publishers get a say? Perhaps it'd be nice for browsers…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#33

Post by dentemple »

YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #19

What a great question. One of two things: A) Establish the expectation that websites "close" in the middle of the night for ~5-6 hours, local time / for each timezone. I don't know if would best be done via cultural influence -- giving talks, writing essays, personal communication, testifying / making inroads with politicians -- or via creating some sort of protocol. The idea is to prevent the unhealthier aspects of…

Regarding A, for which timezones? Any attempt to narrow browsing time would ultimately fail as soon as the web goes global.

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#34

Post by bruce343434 »

jedberg wrote: post #23

TL;DR: Constants shouldn't be hard coded in the software, they should always be in a separate config The problem is that it's the 60s. My first thought was "security", but unless you an also teach them about elliptic curves, they're going to use the security of the 1960s, which as we now know isn't very secure. Maybe at least having security baked in would help make it easier to switch to better security later, like…

I really don't understand what stopped ipv4 from being extended like this: w.x.y.z == 0.0.0.0.w.x.y.z

In fact, you can even ping any 32 bit unsigned integer and it will turn it into an ipv4. Try it: `ping 134744072` will ping `8.8.8.8`

So why not 64 bit? 32 bits fit in 64.

Instead we now have 2 concurrent protocols.

ps. 8*256^3 + 8*256^2 + 8*256 + 8 = 134744072

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#35

Post by NewNetNow »

YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #19

What a great question. One of two things: A) Establish the expectation that websites "close" in the middle of the night for ~5-6 hours, local time / for each timezone. I don't know if would best be done via cultural influence -- giving talks, writing essays, personal communication, testifying / making inroads with politicians -- or via creating some sort of protocol. The idea is to prevent the unhealthier aspects of…

Lurker here. These ideas, especially #2, sound interesting for a discord-style (when they did embedded comments only) startup.

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#36

Post by NewNetNow »

an_opabinia wrote: post #18

The most toxic part of the Internet today is identity. Some of the IP address space should have worked like mobile phone numbers - paid for by subscribers and representing single identities. Even better, after the invention of RSA, the government should have backed ISPs or states issuing signing identities for a protocol level identity standard - sort of like SIM cards that would “represent” you on a single, authorit…

My guess is that most people who use the internet by 2050 will be strongly authenticated, whereas the current anonymous internet will remain as a relic of barbaric times for most, but still in use.

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#37

Post by YossarianFrPrez »

dentemple wrote: post #33
YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #19

What a great question. One of two things: A) Establish the expectation that websites "close" in the middle of the night for ~5-6 hours, local time / for each timezone. I don't know if would best be done via cultural influence -- giving talks, writing essays, personal communication, testifying / making inroads with politicians -- or via creating some sort of protocol. The idea is to prevent the unhealthier aspects of…

Regarding A, for which timezones? Any attempt to narrow browsing time would ultimately fail as soon as the web goes global.

Good question. Ideally, each user's timezone would be required information. The server would check to see if the requesting user's local time meant that the website should be "open" for them.

Re: Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?

#38

Post by dbingham »

Find a way to better decentralize it, so that it doesn't rely on single hosts(and later sites) as the source of truth for any particular function.

The original idea was that protocols would allow any one to participate by simply making their own webpage. But dynamic IP addresses, the DNS system, and even just HTML design were out of reach for most people so that got lost and monsterous websites under centralized control became the mediators for most people.

So if we could find a way to bake that decentralization into the protocols even more strongly while making them accessible to non-technical people, that's the change I would make.

The aim is to create a world where central platforms are not dominant, but any user can easily participate in the communication protocols with out there being a central point to collect all the data or force changes from.

...of course, I have no idea how one would go about doing that, and there in lies the rub.

Post reply on HN