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A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

staltz.com

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Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#161

Post by gregknicholson »

freeflight wrote: post #99
gregknicholson wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FB has such deep roots into their lives, giving it up would have a huge effect on their lives Then our task is to persuade them that the huge effect would be positive! This reads like an episode of Black Mirror, only scarier because it's not science fiction: https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical...

> Then our task is to persuade them that the huge effect would be positive! How so? What makes Facebook so appealing is the fact that pretty much everybody is on there, just like a telephone book. As such an alternative, with a huge positive effect, has to deliver at least this "centralization" to fulfill the same needs Facebook has been serving until now. This is a pretty common theme around IT savvy communities: Pe…

What if a lot of your friends and family are on it, and some interesting people you don't know yet are on it, and your favourite brands… aren't?

What if our secret advantage is that not everyone is on it?

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#162

Post by wvenable »

niftich wrote: post #160
wvenable wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still horrible usability; you've taken me away from what I was doing to show me an error page.

There is no rule in HTTP that mandates the user-agent must navigate away from what it's currently displaying to show you the payload of an HTTP error. It simply says [1] that the error "SHOULD" (in the RFC 2219 meaning of SHOULD [2]) be displayed to the user. Because of this, most browsers display the payload, but some show a built-in "friendly" error page if the payload is under a certain size. Because of the langua…

None of this is necessary if you have JavaScript to control the error handling exactly the way you want. If it's a critical problem, you can display an error message. You can retry behind the scenes and succeed without even having to inform the user of a failure.

Again, I make the point that a pure declarative solution only works if you know every possible use-case. You can add all kinds of new tags and attributes that could possibly exist to solve the one problem you imagine right now and that still won't be enough.

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#163

Post by ytjohn »

tobbyb wrote: post #119

The first choke point is the ISP. You are completely dependent on the ISP or mobile provider to get on the network. Once on the network there are multiple choke points around IP addresses, dns, ca authorities, registries and more. As long as you are dependent on anyone to get on the network it by definition can't be decentralized. Consumer wireless tech is heavily regulated and governments are extremely paranoid abou…

He takes a while to get there, and doesn't quite drive the point home, but this is actually what André Staltz is proposing. Mesh-first devices. If we start at the bottom of his article, here's basically the plan:

1. Work on polishing IPFS, CJDNS, SSB[1], Beaker Bowser and some others into a "mesh-first" setup. 2. Sell, subsidize, or outright gift mobile devices to offline users in Africa (I'm going to assume these are android smartphones) setup to automatically join a mesh network, with these apps installed. 3. Users will transport these phones around, adding and creating content. Their phones will automatically sync content with other devices as they come in range. In general, only content that the user is interested in (that they follow) will be synchronized, though some may act as hubs syncing all manner of content for later redistribution. 4. As usage grows, there will be various regional and national mesh networks that build up.

I think a good comparison is to Cuba's weekly sneakernet[2] distribution, just with wireless mesh.

[1]: Secure Scuttlebut is one of the author's creations: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ [2]: https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revo...

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#164

Post by justaaron »

dash2 wrote: post #53

Here’s the problem with IP addresses: there aren’t enough of them.... As a consequence, the Internet has allowed intermediate computers to rule. These are like parasites that have grown too large to remove without killing the host. The technical flaw that favored intermediate computers prefigured a world where middlemen business models thrive. The handwave is the word "prefigure". How did IPv4 and NAT play any role i…

I get a completely different image from that passage in the article. I imagine both certificate authorities, and the domain system as great examples of mistakenly necessitating middlement in a systemically flawed manner.

With regards to the second passage, I suggest you address the literal wording instead of putting your own (strange?) spin on it. The author is pointing out that the value in the facebook post is from the user, your friend, aka a human. The fact that Berliners renting rooms out to a visiting Parisian will be using an AirBNB middleman versus the model a Craigslist entails, being essentially free classified ads. One can discuss WHY things are the way they are, but do try to get the basic gist of what the author is trying to communicate.

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#165

Post by freeflight »

gregknicholson wrote: post #161
freeflight wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then our task is to persuade them that the huge effect would be positive! How so? What makes Facebook so appealing is the fact that pretty much everybody is on there, just like a telephone book. As such an alternative, with a huge positive effect, has to deliver at least this "centralization" to fulfill the same needs Facebook has been serving until now. This is a pretty common theme around IT savvy communities: Pe…

What if a lot of your friends and family are on it, and some interesting people you don't know yet are on it, and your favourite brands… aren't ? What if our secret advantage is that not everyone is on it?

> What if our secret advantage is that not everyone is on it?

Facebook might have started out that way, but don't think that angle is gonna help you build a new, even bigger, Facebook.

How long did Facebook actually stick to its "Only students" rule? Imho that was more marketing than anything else.

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#166

Post by krapp »

gregknicholson wrote: post #83
at-fates-hands wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was struck with the same thing. There is a reason we moved from newsgroups, to HTML and browsers to search engines. Each step became a better, more powerful tool to find content faster, more efficiently. These days so many of the tools we're using are so entrenched, even with some of the changes the author talks about, it would still be a monumental task for people to change. I mean, look at how bad FB is (on sever…

> FB has such deep roots into their lives, giving it up would have a huge effect on their lives Then our task is to persuade them that the huge effect would be positive! This reads like an episode of Black Mirror, only scarier because it's not science fiction: https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical...

>Then our task is to persuade them that the huge effect would be positive!

No, the task is to first create alternatives which are just as accessible and user-friendly as Facebook, and then sell them to the mainstream on terms they actually care about. Why would my 60-odd year old mother who uses Facebook to talk to her COPD support group even care about Diaspora? I don't know what the answer is, but I do know the answer has nothing to do with open source, anonymity or censorship-resistance.

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#167

Post by tomcooks »

pfraze wrote: post #34

I worked on Secure Scuttlebutt and then founded Beaker. Happy to answer questions.

Please find a way to change the Google search option in the right click menu into something configurable.

Amazing tool, albeit slow on my machine (old Vista era 4GB ram laptop)

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#168

Post by [deleted] »

ashark wrote: post #30
harel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I wouldn't like to lose the ability to build fully custom solutions. I don't want to rely on defaults. One person's sensible default is another's insane one. JavaScript is what it is today because it serves a purpose and frankly, I think it does it well enough for now. And without CSS we'll end up with Beige boxed web, all looking the same, behaving the same, and stuck in someone's idea of a sensible defau…

> And without CSS we'll end up with Beige boxed web, all looking the same, behaving the same, and stuck in someone's idea of a sensible default. That'd be amazing. I wouldn't have to manually kill awful anti-user elements on half the pages I visit, learn how some special snowflake interface works yet again, and so on. I'd know exactly when server communication was going to happen. I could set custom user styles to wh…

[deleted]

Re: A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet

#169

Post by elihu »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #32

Does anyone here have any experience with MANETs? I really like the idea, but is there any way to defend against malicious actors? Are there any protocols that are clear winners? Is the reason it hasn't caught on solely because the big ISPs are against the idea?

In general, if you allow anyone to be a router then anyone can advertise a low-cost route to anywhere, and then drop the packets. You might be able to combat that with some kind of decentralizes reputation system or policies that prefer existing routes that have been in use for awhile and are known to work, or that sends a few test packets over any new "suspicious" link before using it send real data.

I don't know what current research says about this problem, or whether any current routing protocols attempt to deal with it at all.

In practice, I expect that real wireless meshes can still be somewhat secure by operating as managed clusters of routers that don't peer with other clusters of routers without the administrator explicitly enabling peering. So for instance, you might have one neighborhood with a dozen houses with routers managed by some guy, and a nearby HOA with another cluster of routers managed by someone else, and they might find out about each others' networks and agree to create a bigger network by peering. So, your network's trust model can piggyback on the trust model of the real world -- if you know someone in real life, it's a lot less likely they're going to try to take down your network than some random person you don't know.

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