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

Time to rebuild the web?

oreilly.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 449 posts

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#241

Post by kodablah »

candu wrote: post #208
kodablah wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU is about to enforce GDPR [...] if European legislation is more supportive for small agile companies Surely you see the contradiction there. > Currently internet is very U.S. centric because most of the big players are located there. That could change if [...] That's not just a coincidence and I don't believe it's any kind of first-mover advantage. It's about the environment in which you operate and passing more…

Not necessarily a contradiction - GDPR could have many possible effects; it's too early to claim that these effects will disproportionately harm small companies. One possibility, of course, is that larger companies will have more resources to tackle GDPR compliance, and thus be better able to respond effectively than small companies. However, it's also possible that, by taking privacy / security seriously from day on…

> it's too early to claim that these effects will disproportionately harm small companies.

It's not too early to claim that the risks are disproportionate. Those of us with small companies really just count on subjective enforcement. Sadly, it seems everyone says "do nothing wrong, nothing to worry about" with these kinds of laws and don't understand risk management or the cost of conformance.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#242

Post by blunte »

One big problem is search. Search determines what we see (outside of what we learn of from our peers or primary sources of info).

A "cacophony of different sites and voices" may be more fair, but it isn't very useful. Most people shouldn't have a public voice, because most people don't have anything valuable (or accurate) to say.

This includes me, of course, on many subjects. But here on HN, if many people think that my comments are garbage, they vote me down and at least new readers will be somewhat forewarned that my content may be of questionable value.

Search was first supposed to help us find things. But when there were too many things to find, it should have helped us identify the good stuff. Instead, search is now 90% bogus results that are generated to help steer people to a particular product or service.

So honestly, some walled gardens where people reasonably knowledgeable about the local subject can affect the visibility of the content within the silo, at least visitors less able to discern good from bad will probably see more good than bad.

Of course, sites need money to operate, so then comes the corruption of the system. Even sites that try to be neutral still end up making some concessions in order to get funded by some source (and the corporations or political groups have the money, so they end up with influence).

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#243

Post by vezycash »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #220
randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

Ads are only so prolific because they can be tracked. If we eliminate avenues for sites to track us their popularity will drop tremendously.

TV, Newspaper ads exists with its limited trackability. Banner ads existed long before tracking. So your point is mute.

In fact, I think tracking has reduced ads. If not, ads would be a throw at the wall regardless of what works affair.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#244

Post by xendipity »

jsilence wrote: post #109
Hedja wrote: post #23

It feels like this is already a work in progress using Beaker Browser and Dat. - Beaker lets you browse entire websites (dat archives) and fork them. - It lets you create and serve your own sites directly from the browser and seed it from a server (like a torrent). - It lets other sites create templated sites under your name for user generated content. - Visitors by default temporarily seed your website which may red…

In the near future I will be in a project that generates sensor data in PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB and/or InfluxDB which I'd like to open to the public. Any recommendation on how to make time series data available via Dat or IPFS is highly appreciated. There will be base data of different systems and experiment data from experiments running in those environments. So far I have no concrete idea on how to segmentize and ma…

I know IPFS is happy to help with implementation advice on discuss.ipfs.io or #ipfs on IRC, they did for me.

It does depend on the scale of your data and whether you want upload data in a streaming or discrete fashion. If by segmentize you mean to like chunk your data into smaller sections, then that is handled automatically by both DAT and IPFS.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#245

Post by erikb »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #30

When I ask friends and family who use Facebook daily, privacy and security never come up as pain points. Media is blowing everything out of proportion. Replacing Facebook with RSS or Feedly is nonsense. My friends and family have no idea what those are. Facebook makes it easy for people to connect with old friends and family members through active human interactions: like this, follow her, read that. By doing so you…

The goal of course is that technology like RSS is presented in a way to non-technical users so that they are happy to use it without needing too learn all about it.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#246

Post by klez »

eksemplar wrote: post #217

I find these articles a little ironic. I absolutely agree with the message, but they are always published in walled gardens themselves. Maybe that’s how you get reader counts and views but there is is really nothing that stops anyone from building their own. It’s easier to use Wordpress than building your own, even easier to write a blog entry for O’Reilly.com but if your message is a decentralized network of enthusi…

Uh? In this case I'd say it's published in the correct place. The guy works for O'Reilly, the post is about his work, it's published on O'Reilly's website.

I would have agreed with you if it was published on Medium or Blogger or whatever.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#247

Post by gmueckl »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #220
randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

Ads are only so prolific because they can be tracked. If we eliminate avenues for sites to track us their popularity will drop tremendously.

There will always be ways to track and identify people. If all else fails, you build your profiles from the stream of keyboard and mouse events the user generates on your website.

Okay, it's maybe a bit cynic, but stuff like this will happen if the web browsers are twisted further to provide the appearance of privacy and security to the user.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#248

Post by kodablah »

lucideer wrote: post #212
kodablah wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU is about to enforce GDPR [...] if European legislation is more supportive for small agile companies Surely you see the contradiction there. > Currently internet is very U.S. centric because most of the big players are located there. That could change if [...] That's not just a coincidence and I don't believe it's any kind of first-mover advantage. It's about the environment in which you operate and passing more…

> That's not just a coincidence and I don't believe it's any kind of first-mover advantage. It's about the environment in which you operate and passing more and more laws and rules, regardless of the intentions, is the opposite direction You're presenting the situation as a failure of the EU, but I think you've missed the point here. The big players are located in the US because the environment there rewards big play…

> The EU system rewards small-player innovation and limits the creation of very large, dominant, monopolistic big players.

I disagree. Do you believe this is the case today or is it the goal? From what I understand, the gap is quite large between number of small companies based on environment. Many of us with smaller companies stand on the shoulder of giants. Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good, and that can mean the financial incentive to become large spurs those of us who are small. Artificial ceilings, however altruistic people tell themselves they are by limiting the big, bad, scary companies, often are just a low tide lowering all boats in a trickle-down way.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#249

Post by TeMPOraL »

randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

It's not just social media, and it's not just ads, about which other people responded to you.

The root of the problem - or at least the trunk very close to the root - is Software as a Service. It's the trend of turning software into services. Sure, it's nice for the vendors, and it's nice for corporate clients who can write off responsibility to a third party. But it also makes you no longer in control of your data, and the code that runs on it. The availability of your work becomes completely dependent on business decisions of third parties, which can - and frequently do - disappear suddenly. It's what leads to proliferation of ads, surveillance and growth strategies like dumbing down software to the point of almost complete uselessness.

If technology is meant to be - or at least is capable of being - empowering to individuals, then turning everything into a service is an exact opposite of that.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#250

Post by vlehto »

BorisEm wrote: post #184
vlehto wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is about to enforce GDPR. Net neutrality seems to be American problem, while rest of the world is moving to the opposite direction. Which economy has better prospects in the long run? Currently internet is very U.S. centric because most of the big players are located there. That could change if European legislation is more supportive for small agile companies to evolve.

GDPR and Net neutrality are two different things. Net neutrality is very much a problem in Europe. It's not talked about as much as in the US unfortunately. Also, GDPR applies to companies of all size - which can hurts small companies more than bigger ones.

Interesting how badly I was misunderstood.

My point was not that they would be about the same thing. My point is that GDPR is pretty clearly about the rights of the little guy. Lack of net neutrality is clearly about the rights of big businesses. Neither alone does not seem to do that much good or harm. But if those attitudes are permanent in the legislating systems, that will have an effect.

So do you believe companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook are going hire the best people, make the best money and offer the best content? It could be. Or there could be something disruptive. Where is that disruptive going to happen?

Post reply on HN