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The End of the Internet Dream

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Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#201

Post by matt_kantor »

RogtamBar wrote: post #197
pspace wrote: post #100

The internet dream is almost here! Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's (continuing to do so) and piracy is easier than ever. More countries are participating in the global conversation than ever before. Enhancements in security and privacy are evident and improving (albeit slowly). The internet is becoming a lot less like TV and will continue to do so. People care more about commenting and creati…

>People care more about commenting and creating content. They care about participating more than they ever did and this is increasing. I'm not sure if that is a good thing. Have you ever been to reddit? The entire place is practically overran with memes and inanity.

The trick with reddit is to carefully curate your subreddit list and continually clean house as the communities evolve (usually in a negative direction) over time. It's a lot of work, and the same goes for most other community-driven sites. My Facebook feed is garbage because I don't use it often enough to train the algorithm (or maybe the algorithm just sucks). My YouTube front page is only passable because I've taken the time to subscribe to a handful of channels and had made heavy use of the old (non-Spotify-only) Last.fm to listen to music I like on there. My Google+ home page consists of two people's posts plus spam because I haven't spent time managing my network. And so on.

Now that the web has more content creators than ever we also need better recommendation, search, and filtering tools. Hell, even though it's heavily moderated I still wish I could teach Hacker News not to show me the 50% of articles on here that I have zero interest in.

It's not the content that's the problem, it's the systems we use to find and consume it. Somebody wants to look at all those memes, it's just not you or I.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#202

Post by matt_kantor »

marssaxman wrote: post #191
k__ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look into our biggest open platform today, the web, you see that we have almost won. We got the whole power of our PCs sand-boxed and mostly standardized at our fingertips with ECMAScript, HTTP and company. Most of the old proprietary demons are defeated with so many companies switching from native to "the web". But with the rise of iOS and Android, new problems are rising. And if you look at the better perfor…

Almost won ? If you have to talk to the application over HTTP, then it's not your application: you don't control it, and you don't control the data it works on. From my perspective, we're very close to losing the whole thing.

> If you have to talk to the application over HTTP, then it's not your application

Huh? Just to give one counter-example, I talk to my Kodi mediacenter over HTTP (using https://github.com/jez500/chorus) and when I'm at home the packets never leave my apartment or touch a device I don't own. The whole stack is open source to boot.

I guess you're talking about Facebook-style walled gardens, but HTTP give you more control over those (vs some proprietary protocol), not less.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#203

Post by natrius »

simoncion wrote: post #195
runiq wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's it. With federated networks, you still rely on another party — the server you connect to. With decentralized networks, you are a part of the thing everyone else relies on.

Two things: 1) In a decentralized network where you are also the client, you also usually rely on another party: the party that contains the resource you wish to access. Not that many decentralized networks give every node a complete copy of all of the data in the network. 2) In a federated network with open federation (Tor, XMPP, email, etc...), you can choose to become a server in that network and be a part of the…

In a federated network, your identity is tied to your server. If you have a domain name, sometimes you can have portable identities that piggyback on DNS. This is a terrible solution for normal people. The cost of switching servers is high.

Decentralized systems have cryptographic identities. If you want to use a different client or a different server that participates in the network while you're offline, just fire up the new one and give it access to your identity via your private key or signing a new key.

Low switching costs are the key to progress on a network. It's why browsers have gotten so good. Similarly, competition will make the clients for decentralized networks improve rapidly, unlike XMPP or email.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#204

Post by zobzu »

7Z7 wrote: post #139
zobzu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a, say, 200 USD app or OS that isn't pretty shitty? There aren't many. In fact, I can't mention one on the post. I know of a few OSes and app that are decent (at least don't try to track you, show ads to your face, do weird stuff in the name of making profits for a company). These all cost 0 and are open-source. Weird uhm.

That entirely depends on your definition of "shitty". Some might care about an occasional ad in an app that they chose not to pay for, or never paying for software on principle, and will always choose open. Some might find the need to manage system-level functionality and installation, or make allowances for miserable UI/UX simply because it is open, too much to bear.

So there is none is what you're saying. I agree with that, there's none. F'king exactly.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#205

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Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#206

Post by loup-vaillant »

parasubvert wrote: post #199
loup-vaillant wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone can get a domain name for $5 and run a server for less. No they can't. They don't know how, in part because nobody teaches them. No they can't. They don't have enough upload bandwidth for even a modest web server. Our links are asymmetric, remember? No they can't. Residential IP addresses are blacklisted by most mail services. What good is a mail server that can't get its mail accepted? No they can't. Many I…

"They don't know how, in part because nobody teaches them." Or they don't have software that does it for them. "They don't have enough upload bandwidth for even a modest web server. Our links are asymmetric, remember?" Last I checked, BitTorrent was still a thing. IOW, build a killer app and that will change. "Residential IP addresses are blacklisted by most mail services. What good is a mail server that can't get it…

Well, a usable Freedom Box would indeed solve most problems. Can't wait.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#207

Post by EvanPlaice »

Yay! More click bait-y doom-and-gloom nonsense from Medium.com. /s

Seriously, what's the deal with these poor quality posts and why do they float so high in the Hacker News rankings?

Aside: The same can be said for posts linking to theguardian lately.

The internet dream is far from dead. Despite numerous setbacks surrounding lack of security/privacy, new standards/practices are being introduced to fix the issues.

The whole personal computer ecosystem that used to be dominated by vendor-monopolized platforms have continually become more open and flexible over time.

The flexibility to share data and services across the web in a standardized manner has never been better. 10 years ago, tools like Zapier that thrive in the ecosystem of openness never would have been possible. There are public APIs and microservices for anything and everything nowadays.

The developer tools and platforms are evolving at an ever-increasing rate. Data silos are crumbling. Patent/copyright trolls are getting paid their due. Sources of very high quality educational materials are abundant and free. etc...

We live in truly exceptional times.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#208

Post by marssaxman »

matt_kantor wrote: post #202
marssaxman wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost won ? If you have to talk to the application over HTTP, then it's not your application: you don't control it, and you don't control the data it works on. From my perspective, we're very close to losing the whole thing.

> If you have to talk to the application over HTTP, then it's not your application Huh? Just to give one counter-example, I talk to my Kodi mediacenter over HTTP (using https://github.com/jez500/chorus ) and when I'm at home the packets never leave my apartment or touch a device I don't own. The whole stack is open source to boot. I guess you're talking about Facebook-style walled gardens, but HTTP give you more cont…

I'm talking about the web, of course, and it was a blatant generalization in order to make a point briefly. Congratulations on finding a counterexample, but we're talking about unrelated phenomena belonging to entirely different scales.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#209

Post by stahlkopf »

pspace wrote: post #100

The internet dream is almost here! Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's (continuing to do so) and piracy is easier than ever. More countries are participating in the global conversation than ever before. Enhancements in security and privacy are evident and improving (albeit slowly). The internet is becoming a lot less like TV and will continue to do so. People care more about commenting and creati…

A nice refreshing dose of optimism. Thanks

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#210

Post by simoncion »

natrius wrote: post #203
simoncion wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1) In a decentralized network where you are also the client, you also usually rely on another party: the party that contains the resource you wish to access. Not that many decentralized networks give every node a complete copy of all of the data in the network. 2) In a federated network with open federation (Tor, XMPP, email, etc...), you can choose to become a server in that network and be a part of the…

In a federated network, your identity is tied to your server. If you have a domain name, sometimes you can have portable identities that piggyback on DNS. This is a terrible solution for normal people. The cost of switching servers is high. Decentralized systems have cryptographic identities. If you want to use a different client or a different server that participates in the network while you're offline, just fire u…

> In a federated network, your identity is tied to your server.

Untrue.

TextSecure/Signal is a federated system. [0] IDs have always been and are -currently- tied to a user's phone number. [1] If you demand, I'm sure that I can dig up more examples, but that's the first thing that came to mind at $WAY_TOO_FUCKING_EARLY in the morning.

[0] The server software is open source, but only trusted operators are permitted to federate with the official TS servers. However, anyone is 100% free to stand up their own TS network (even if it's a single server) and distribute their own patched TS/Signal clients that use that unofficial TS network.

[1] There is ongoing work (that's probably nearly completed) to move IDs from a phone number to something that makes multi-device-but-a-single-user accounts work. I get the impression that it's coming along rather nicely, but haven't checked out the Github repo in quite a while.

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