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Time to rebuild the web?

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Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#401

Post by icc97 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #266
klokoman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there aren't avatars and signatures. Those are essential to recognize users and also find out what they're about (signatures with links to other sites helped everyone). Also even a little personalization will be an incentive to invest a little more time in the community.

I think you're right on avatars. Goofy as they are, they seem to matter. It somewhat hurts HN as well, IMO.

Even Facebook allows avatars.

The ability to express yourself in all it's unprofessional ways is important. It's a way to show you're not Facebook. Each topic is built up from the colours of the people that participate there. Individual expression is allowed. Then it's just up to the forum owners to decide what crosses the line.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#402

Post by kristianc »

talmand wrote: post #332
snug wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What? No. Plenty of new companies are being built off these SaaS providers. Why should a company just starting out build their own infrastructure, host their own CRM, build their own AI models. Companies would move much more slowely if they couldn't rely on…

I imagine the point being made might be more along the lines of owning software versus renting it. If you purchase software that your company relies on, it belongs to you. Regardless if that third-party disappears. You still have use of the software until you can determine if you need to replace it or if it'll still work out for your needs. Now renting the software as a service is a different matter. If the third-par…

Renting software as a service has made it possible for people who could _never_ previously have owned the software to own it in perpetuity, and receive product updates throughout the product lifecycle.

Letraset's ColorStudio cost $1,995 (in 1990 money), and Photoshop 1.0 cost around $1,000. And that didn't even buy you the upgrade, which was quite significant when layers were two point0 upgrades away.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#403

Post by LoSboccacc »

squarefoot wrote: post #286
TeMPOraL wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

"It's the trend of turning software into services." I don't see how any western capitalist society couldn't fall into this trend. It's all about making more profits, no different from say buying some land with natural water sources, close it to the public, bottling the water then sell bottles. All perfectly legal and fine, until the day there's no more competition and whoever owns that land raises the prices so that…

> It's all about making more profitS

This part is blatantly wrong. Saas enable on demand consumption and lowers tco by a great deal, i.e. indesign used to be 700$ each release, that now covers you 3 years of subscription and you don’t have to fear obsolescence.

Same with many many other software. Once you factor in obsolescence and upgrade cycles it’s very hard to keep the position of saas being more expensive.

The other point about losing control of your own stack do remain valid.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#404

Post by tokyo_fame »

I'm curious whether such behavior of the web follows some formal law. Is there a relevant proposition in graph theory, Ramsay theory may be? Is the probability of decentralization bounded by system's complexity?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#405

Post by icc97 »

always_good wrote: post #196
mynewtb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the concept of voting and strictly time-based decaying.

Yeah, without bumping threads on new posts, there's almost no reason to even comment on older topics on HN/Reddit. If it's not on the first two pages, nobody is going to see it. Even worse, the only person who might see it is the one person you responded to since it's in the profile comment feed, and a back-and-forth isn't very interesting. This makes forums much different where each new reply bumps the topic into th…

Stack Overflow has the 'active' sorting. This is similar to bumping a topic with any activity to the top. This is the default as opposed to new.

The mentions there work nicely too, I never get swamped with inbox messages, you can only mention one person in a comment, so there's no @channel nonsense as with Slack.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#406

Post by thevardanian »

2trill2spill wrote: post #289
thevardanian wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology was supposed to leverage human capacity, and not centralize it. The problem is a technology one in the sense that the paradigm for a different business model have been co-opted, and usurped by authoritarian corporations. What in fact should have been a "protocol" based system has become a dictated, and law based one. That is to say the internet should have emerged as a means to distribute data by means of…

> Technology was supposed to leverage human capacity, and not centralize it. Where can one find that definition of technology? > What in fact should have been a "protocol" bases system has become a dictated, and law based one. Do you think laws should not be applied to the Internet?

The lever is a primitive technology but also an apt descriptor of it. I'm not describing technology, but rather describing the application of it.

>Do you think laws should not be applied to the Internet?

Depends. For now I think it depends on what your opinion on communication between people is. Are the laws to regulate, monitor, enforce, and use coercion to prevent or hinder people from communicating with each other, or to allow the freedom of expression with each other?

In long term, since we are in the infancy of such a tool, I think computers/internet will eventually rein supreme over the old laws.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#407

Post by pfraze »

fenwick67 wrote: post #380
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…

Beaker looks rad! Are there any DAT:// homepages or web-rings or whatever that I can start using to browse around? I have it installed but can't find any cool DAT sites to browse.

Check out https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#408

Post by icc97 »

JacobJans wrote: post #358
herbst wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair as Ruby/Rails developer I say the same about discourse VS everything else. It follows a lot of rails standards which makes it incredible easy to hack. While phpbb and friends are hacks in itself to begin with.

I think that gets to the core of it -- It follows standards that you need to know if you want to be able to easily hack it. Which means learning standards. Ruby On Rails is really powerful, but it is not easy to start hacking on without a fair amount of base knowledge. In addition, discourse uses a lot of javascript, which makes it even more difficult to modify. The barrier to entry, in terms of creating a custom tem…

Yeah when it's a pristine beautifully structured code base people are more cautious about weighing in because they can't code as well. When it all looks like shit no-one worries about hacking their own.

WordPress has both it's own forum bbPress and it's social network buddyPress. As far as a hackable system for everyone it's an attractive start. WP is based around the concept of everyone installing their own. Their 5-minute install is still the gold standard as far as I'm concerned.

So as controversial as it is on HN I think the idea of using PHP is still a sound one. But as a geek I'd much rather go down the Python route in some kind of homage to the foundation of reddit.

Python is a great language for beginners to learn and it's designed for them. Plus it's still a very relevant skill to learn.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#409

Post by TACIXAT »

kristianc wrote: post #399
TACIXAT wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetization is easily possible, we just need a reliable way to transfer small amounts of money electronically at a low fee. Right now the large credit card players have a stranglehold on digital transactions, we just need something new that makes it not awful to pay someone a few cents online.

Consider that the people watching the videos have repeatedly shown in no uncertain terms (even when given the option and it is made really really easy for them), that they don't want to pay.

Really? I absolutely will not pay 8$ a month to read the occasional NYT article. I will not pay 4$ per episode of TV shows I watch (I have tried this multiple times and it sucks). I would absolutely pay 5 to 25 cents to read an article. I would absolutely pay 1$ per episode. Unfortunately, no one is offering their content at these realistic price points. Nor could they with credit card processors taking 30 cents per transaction. We need a new model that makes costs realistic. I bet a lot of people would pay 1 dollar a month for social media to avoid ads and tracking.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#410

Post by otakucode »

kristianc wrote: post #399
TACIXAT wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetization is easily possible, we just need a reliable way to transfer small amounts of money electronically at a low fee. Right now the large credit card players have a stranglehold on digital transactions, we just need something new that makes it not awful to pay someone a few cents online.

Consider that the people watching the videos have repeatedly shown in no uncertain terms (even when given the option and it is made really really easy for them), that they don't want to pay.

You are wrong. They won't pay to watch an individual video, and they won't pay to watch Latest Gigacorp Product Placement Hour, but they will pay the creators they care about. Many are making a living supported by their audience via Patreon while posting their videos to YouTube. Which is really the worst case apocalyptic scenario for YouTube... Kinda surprised they haven't made more overt moves to try to destroy that setup. Especially given Eric Schmidt's book 'The New Digital Age' and his views that since Google are rich they can and should take direct control of human culture to save the poor from themselves.
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