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Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

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Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#381

Post by s73ver »

fivestar wrote: post #315
VvR-Ox wrote: post #275

Thank you for starting this interesting debate. I have a slice of hope still that we (the whole community, dev's just like users who need to use services) can "make the world a better place". The proble I currently see is that: 1. We are too few ATM 2. Facebook, Google, Apple,... already nested into the minds of many people, even the one's who claim to "think different" 3. There has to be something: - big - useful -…

Think: FTP, TELNET, IP. You know, protocols. The open things the Internet was originally based upon.

Those protocols were superseded for a reason.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#382

Post by edraferi »

jwint162 wrote: post #248
doke01 wrote: post #60

Make your website of record your website. Make social media platforms and others (e.g. Google) secondary to that. Don't let Google and Facebook control how you build your website. I am amazed at companies that take their websites and subjugate them to their Facebook page. You may gain social attention but you are handing over control. Never, ever, ever say to contact me go to facebook.com/xxxx or my email address is…

The problem with this is that these platforms thrive because of their existing network effects. Even if you own your very own well built .com the vast majority of these dot coms will still have a combination of facebook, twitter, youtube accounts etc which mirror content available on your personal site. This provides distribution that is otherwise difficult to come across. I have been working on a purposed solution o…

How is this different from about.me? The user still doesn't own a domain, they just have a hosted page to link to their other profiles. Is that the full point of the product? What am I missing?

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#383

Post by olyjohn »

rdiddly wrote: post #260
monk_e_boy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not use another single sign on service? Look. I'm not an idiot. I write open source. I love free and open web. Google login works. We use use Gmail - it works. We use google classroom - it just works. Most websites offer Google Login - it just works. When you have 30 students and you waste 2 minutes logging into a website -- that is 2 x 30 == 60 minutes of student learning lost. Little things like that add up.

It's not 60 minutes of learning, it's 2 minutes of learning. 2 minutes went by. You're not running a factory so you don't need to use factory-style productivity metrics. Anyway what's the hurry? What could be so crucial that not a minute can be spared? Maybe this is why school is uninspiring? The feeling of being on a breakneck treadmill, never having time for anything? Education shouldn't be about quantity, it's abo…

Having worked IT at a college, I can tell you that it's very important to get every minute out of your class. When your class is only 60 minutes, and you spend the first 2-10 minutes getting logged in every single time, that's a huge chunk of wasted time. People are paying one way or another to be there, sitting there staring at a spinning cursor doesn't make anybody happy.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#384

Post by p1esk »

Pxtl wrote: post #350
restalis wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm tired of creating accounts and managing umpteen million passwords." That's your choice. You can use the same credentials for all accounts you create and manage the entire mass as one. It's a bad practice, I know, but it's still a solution.

> It's a bad practice That's the understatement of the century.

Sure, "not recommended", but works fine for 99% of people 100% of the time.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#385

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mundo wrote: post #43
ellius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder though if you could create a compelling product that would keep the customer from ever knowing they "own" a server. I've thought about a service where I effectively would run one big "load balancer" front end that would route a customer's traffic entirely to prefab cloud servers that I would spin up & configure via tools like Terraform and Ansible on the back end. I wanted to load those mainly with privac…

There is a chicken-and-egg thing too - it's not normal for Joe Internetuser to have a $5/mo cloud server in addition to his Netflix/Hulu/etc because there is no easy-to-use-for-regular-people software to run on one, and no one builds such software because such users don't have $5/mo cloud servers to run it on. This is sort of the fatal flaw of app portals like Sandstorm, but it doesn't need to be that way forever.

Well, you can use a managed version, both Sandstorm and Cloudron can be subscribed to as online services. I also think there's a lot of opportunity for families and small groups. Most people I am close with would not run their own server, but perhaps would use mine if I offered it.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#386

Post by ctrlc-root »

staticelf wrote: post #330
jgaa wrote: post #261

Me? I don't use Facebook. I consider Google evil and harmful and avoid them. On my phone I run my own apps, and apps from F-Droid - I don't even register with Google. I have a shit-list of companies I will never work for (Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and every Government entity anywhere in the world). I browse the net from VM's with specific purposes (one for HN). I use Tor for most browsing, including re…

That sounds incredible time consuming and very frustrating. How do you manage to stay so hostile against everything around you? Do you never wake up and just feel depressed about the state of things? Ever wanted to just say fuck it and create a facebook account?

I'm not the person you replied to but I can tell you what my perspective is. I haven't implemented all the measures he mentions yet but I'm working towards all of them and more. It is time consuming but it doesn't feel frustrating. It gives me the peace of mind that I still own my life and am not dependent on companies like Google or Amazon to live the life I want to live. I do occasionally feel depressed about the state of things but there's not much I can do about it on a grand scale so I tend to just focus on myself and those around me. I did have a Facebook account for about 6 months in high school before I deleted it and I've never felt the urge to re-activate it (afaik accounts are never permanently deleted).

In my opinion it all comes down to putting your money (and time, effort, convenience or lack of it, etc) where your mouth is. I don't like Google, Amazon, or Facebook's policies and practices so I choose not to participate. That most people around me are subsidizing their lives (free storage, free email, 2-day shipping, easy home automation, etc) in exchange for their privacy and independence doesn't really factor into my own decision. I do try and raise awareness and encourage others to take similar steps but ultimately they need to make the decision for themselves of they won't commit to it.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#387

Post by p1esk »

alphydan wrote: post #369
hibikir wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every few days we have an article here in HN about a relatively big company, and people throw the classic comment that they don't understand how they need hundreds/thousands of programmers to do what they do, when the prototype of their website can be done by 2 people over a weekend. What you are doing is just a slightly more complex version of this, but the answer is still the same, scale. Software is easier to copy…

Here's an idea: A team of coders in a basement combine lots of AI discoveries done by others (Think merging orthogonal approaches like Numenta + Google Brain + Vicarious + etc). With it, they crack the neo-cortex algorithm (or a rough approximation). It learns outdoors (cameras, actuators), indoors (talking), on the internet, in libraries, on wikipedia, etc. It becomes actually useful. Not: "OK, google set an alarm."…

Yeah, maybe, but the coders able to "combine lots of AI discoveries done by others", as well as those who make those discoveries, are likely to work for Google/FB/MS/IBM/Apple/Amazon/etc already (or want to work there).

A group like OpenAI also has a good chance to make a breakthrough, but you can hardly call them "a team of coders in a basement".

It's unlikely that any a single company (even a large one) will have any significant advantage, because the research everyone does is highly public (everyone tries to publish asap). The research right now is at the stage where people are still looking which way to go, so as soon as someone stumbles upon a promising direction, everyone will jump on it (e.g. AlexNet success in 2012).

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#388

Post by virmundi »

nilved wrote: post #338
cuonic wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're still "managing umpteen million passwords", hence the name password manager.

That makes no sense. You use a password manager so you don't need to manage the passwords. If you don't like the concept of having passwords at all then use a stateless, hash-based password generator instead.

How does one integrate that with Facebook or Google or Nameasite?

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#389

Post by oliv__ »

ryan-allen wrote: post #213
aswanson wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just look at the number of 'zombies' on the streets Get used to the zombies...they are going to become far more prevalent. When Neuralink or whatever technologies converge to directly project experiences mind-to-mind, people will not be broadcasting selfies...they will be broadcasting self , as in their current, total sensate experience. People will tune in and live the most exciting virtual life that they need...whi…

Zuck looks pretty happy about it http://imgur.com/a/UL7HX

That picture is so sad.
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