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The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

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Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#211

Post by odbol_ »

pfraze wrote: post #40

Ok, a lot of people don't know the context for this. Last week, the Internet Archive ran the Decentralized Web Summit. It was an opportunity for new projects [1] to gather with prominent people in the industry [2]. It was productive and very fun. It also resulted in a bunch of news pieces, like this one, which have been hitting the HN FP for a week. Some of those articles have been better than others; a lot of them f…

The ideas they talked about at this summit were really exciting: my favorite is the Interplanetary File System: a decentralized way to share files without a server. They did a crazy demo of a chat room where you could chat live, drag and drop to share files, even watch streaming videos inline, all without a central server! It was completely peer-to-peer, and all done in JavaScript!

Corey Doctorow also had a really good talk, I encourage everyone to watch the stream. There's a summary and link here: “The Internet is the Only Weapon We Have Left” @odbol https://medium.com/@odbol/the-internet-is-the-only-weapon-we...

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#213

Post by Kadin »

freshhawk wrote: post #156
quadrangle wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a not-so-technical (never run a server) reader myself, what people like me want is not whether or not the data is on our own devices (that's an implementation detail) but the real issue of real reliability, privacy, and basically not having all the centralized bullshit that makes me feel helpless. None of the big systems run by the big corporations are actually reliable long-term. They change stuff all th…

The problem is that I'm not sure anyone has a way for you to get reliability, privacy and not having to deal with centralized bullshit without caring about that implementation detail. Because if you leave it up to someone else, they can make a lot of money by removing all but reliability from what you want. So they do.

Well, you can, but you have to be willing to pay for it. That's the key problem. Users love the idea of a free service that stores all their stuff, and that's pretty clearly not sustainable from a business perspective, but it makes it hard to compete with a real service.

They'll keep their stuff on the "free" service right up until it crashes and takes all their crap with it, or the TOS is abruptly changed to delete everything older than 12 months or that's connected to an inactive login or whatever, and it's gone.

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#214

Post by xtian »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #78
pfraze wrote: post #40

Ok, a lot of people don't know the context for this. Last week, the Internet Archive ran the Decentralized Web Summit. It was an opportunity for new projects [1] to gather with prominent people in the industry [2]. It was productive and very fun. It also resulted in a bunch of news pieces, like this one, which have been hitting the HN FP for a week. Some of those articles have been better than others; a lot of them f…

I also attended the Decentralized Web Summit (the first 6 hours) and it was great. I hope they have this every year. The Summit was inexpensive, the venue at the Internet Archive building was cool, the speakers and panels were uniformly interesting, and the food was tasty. Good job by the organizers! I sometimes I feel like I am by my self on privacy and freedom issues. Very few of my non-tech friends & family get wh…

I think the thing to remember is that people interested in tech are the ones who experience these problems first. For example, most of us experienced ad fatigue, clickbait fatigue, and social media fatigue years ago, but now these are all mainstream frustrations.

It often seems like it's too late for things to change direction, but what I've observed is that when one of these angsts afflicts a sufficient portion of the population, the reaction is decisive and rapid. See: the exodus from MySpace to Facebook.

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#215

Post by abiox »

woodman wrote: post #71
pudo wrote: post #42

The argument to re-decentralise the web wildly confuses economic, technical and political concerns. The reason that Facebook runs a centralised system isn't that it cannot figure out a technical alternative, it does so for economic reasons. To assume that making incremental advances in decentralised technologies will somehow fundamentally alter those economics is wishful thinking. Instead, we need to recognise the fa…

> ...there's an existing mechanism to deal with it: government regulation. Lay your hopes on a monopoly on force to solve an economic monopoly? That doesn't seem like a well founded long term solution.

this seems like equivocation.

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#216

Post by runamok »

hiram112 wrote: post #157
Mon_7i wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think privacy/freedom issues are symptoms not root causes. The Internet today allows/has allowed for the rapid extraction of information/wealth from the masses into the hands of a few. I am totally opposed to the propping up of Mark Zuckerburgs and Larry Pages. Who then get to decide who and how the worlds information shall be accessed. This should not be the point of the internet. There are too many unintended con…

>...Trumps and ISIS.... I know election season can make us all a little crazy towards the 'other team', but are you seriously putting Trump in the same camp as ISIS? Hitler, Nazis, etc. have been used so often in the past 50 years by all sides that it is easy to brush it off as empty rhetoric. But if the left has become so blind in their hatred towards Trump, that these comparisons can be made without a second though…

I think the Hitler comparison is more as a very persuasive orator and the contents of his speeches (blaming the foreigner/other for all your society's ills) rather than his more notable sins like the holocaust.

Here is a holocaust survivor's take: http://www.thewrap.com/are-hitler-trump-comparisons-fair-a-h...

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#217

Post by abiox »

aboveL4w wrote: post #166

security flaws are racking up like crazy. the dom was designed for the 1990s. it will happen. but its going to be one hard transition. we all know how hard small scale migrations can be. now consider that on the scale of the internet. they need to enforce new password schemas, disable capchats , they are irritating and mak eppp leave and bots get by them anyway, and windows needs to fix their api. you can never fix a…

is this like generated from a markov chain or something?

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#218

Post by Natanael_L »

hNewsLover99 wrote: post #93

So... these internet-founding Einsteins actually think that Bitcoin should be a part of "our" future Utopian web? Well what do they (and all the other blockchain fan-kiddies) think of the fact that Bitcoin has now replaced Western Union as the preferred getaway car for ransomware and other extortionists around the world? Businesses, universities, and even hospitals whose critical activities grind to a halt at financi…

Are you equally hostile to cash, the primary preference of criminals since millennia back?

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#219

Post by z3t4 »

corv wrote: post #186
z3t4 wrote: post #28

The web is already decentralized, but lack the convenience of Facebook et al. where you have a virtual identity, a friend list and can choose who get access to your images etc. This can however be accomplished with something like SSH keys, where your "friend" list is basically a list of public keys. And a small daemon that will let "friends" make queries like "is this a friend or a friend", etc. With a identity syste…

You've practically described ZeroNet. The difficulty lies in getting people to replace browsers with new software.

The problem with these platforms is that they try to do too much. While all we need is a client/server handshake. Kinda like IP white-listing but with public keys instead.

Re: The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

#220

Post by woodman »

abiox wrote: post #215
woodman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...there's an existing mechanism to deal with it: government regulation. Lay your hopes on a monopoly on force to solve an economic monopoly? That doesn't seem like a well founded long term solution.

this seems like equivocation.

Is this a funny joke, a possible accusation of equivocation with no further information?
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