Time to rebuild the web? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#431

Post by ILikeConemowk » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

jen729w wrote: post #389

KajMagnus wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Open source StackExchange :- ) There's Talkyard, which looks a bit like StackExchange. ... Minus the single-sign-on part though. I'm developing it. Here's an example StackExchange discussion, copied to Talkyard: (CC-By-SA license) https://insightful.demo.talkyard.io/-7/how-do-i-get-myself-o... 2. Single sign-on, and (as you wrote), "using the credentials of the original forum" : What about using Scuttlebut's ident…

And now that guy on the fishing charter can’t use it because he has no idea what that means.

He learned to sail and fish, he can learn to use a key pair.

I despise cynics who in the process of underestimating others crash the party, our party.

If the man wants his damn forum back give him his forum, in as many possible flavours and sizes as we possibly can. Then let him deliverate, hopefully learn and ultimately adapt.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#432

Post by annabellish » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 8:48 AM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #429

annabellish wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a compelling thought, but the evidence doesn't seem to back it up. What we actually see in the real world seems to be the opposite - people absolutely _will_ pay for things they could get for free so long as it isn't less convenient than not paying. Given that the act of making a payment is an inconvenience in and of itself, this does suggest it's _harder_ to get people to pay for a service, but the success o…

I've heard that in western countries there are people who track torrent users and threaten them with blackmailing letters. So people are afraid to use torrents to download pirated movies. If that's true, it can be a reason of Neflix success: fear, not convenience. In my country nobody cares about torrents and I don't know anyone who's using Netflix. There are some people, who don't know how to properly use computer,…

I think it's more complicated than that. At least in my (rich, western) country there aren't any actual concequences for that kind of piracy. I believe there is a system in place for sending emails, but not threatening ones, and not ones with any teeth at all.

The bigger factor might be that for a more well off audience, the cost of these services is low enough that it isn't meaningfully more expensive than piracy anyway, and can be much more convenient. `Search -> Stream` is a much smoother workflow than `Search -> Select well seeded torrent -> Initiate download -> Wait -> Play`.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#433

Post by martin_drapeau » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 11:25 AM UTC

skummetmaelk wrote: post #274

martin_drapeau wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good point. If any type of legislation should come out of this, it should be about usage of social media data by companies. They should not be able to discriminate people because of things they do in their private lives. In fact, they shouldn't have the right to investigate it unless it relates to the job (i.e. checking that a community manager does in fact use Twitter and Facebook in an efficient way). The…

It's just very hard to make laws against that. There are laws forbidding discrimination based on gender and race, yet we still know that this is commonplace. I personally think it is better to tackle the issue by making it harder/impossible for companies to obtain this data and allowing users to force companies to delete ANY data they have on them by request.

It is hard but needs to exist. Discrmination will always exist and its no reason to give up and not have a law. The law is important.

Information should be freely available. Making it impossible to obtain would lead towards information control like China and Russia. Its the wrong approach.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#434

Post by erikb » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #294

erikb wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want to give away responsibility. That's imo the core problem. So even another business model will either fail (it's not like there aren't hundreds of other social networks out there) or will turn centralized as well.

> People want to give away responsibility. What do you mean by that? What is the point of technology, if you don't save time or effort by using it? Can you explain what should people do?

No, I will not take responsibility for your decisions from you. But thanks for the example and evidence.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#435

Post by candu » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #316

candu wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not strictness being the problem, it's the uncertainty. GDPR seems like a framework to take out anybody at will, because nobody can really conform to the laws due to that uncertainty. If you do anything really disruptive/innovative, you're probably gonna get problems.

I really dislike this use of the term "disruptive / innovative" - it's almost a circular definition in this context, since it's effectively being used to mean "anything new that has a high chance of running afoul of the law". English has better words for this sort of thing: criminal, negligent, etc.

Launching a new product / service does not give a company carte blanche to do whatever they like, no matter what Uber et al. may prefer to believe. Suppose I want to create a "gun-share" app, because, you know, sharing economy and stuff. I should fully expect that, where laws exist that make this infeasible (e.g. background checks, transfer of ownership laws, etc.), those laws will be enforced. I should also fully expect that those laws might change.

If I've been paying attention to the broader world - something that Silicon Valley isn't historically that great at - I should probably have seen this coming for years, since that's how long it takes to build support for legislation. GDPR didn't come out of nowhere; data privacy, security, and ownership concerns have been building for a while now.

In the case of the GDPR: my personal position is that it gives EU citizens rights we should all have had from the start with respect to our data. Good on them for passing it, and for giving it teeth. If that tramples on some service that can't be bothered to respect those rights, I couldn't care less - and I say this as a small business owner who's fully aware that, yes, someday I too may face a GDPR compliance request. Maybe I'll be prepared, maybe I won't, maybe it'll never happen; that's part of doing business.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#436

Post by felipeccastro » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #255

WhiteNoiz3 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always felt that we need some kind of ubiquitous and low friction micro transactions for small time websites to succeed and to move away from the ad driven model. A niche blog could be successful with a small audience if each of them donates a penny or two to read new stories. That way people are directly supporting content that they find useful, rather than having to create controversy to drive ads and clicks.

The problem with metered schemes is that they inhibit users who feel they are burning money every time they touch a page. It's kind of like having to pay by the megabyte every time you use your phone on the Internet. What about a general subscription model that gets you access to a wide range of websites? The point is to have a fixed price for consumers so they can read as much as you want. Distributing the money to…

That's what the Brave browser is doing: "Set up automatic micro-donations. Brave will automatically divide a monthly donation among the top sites you visit." (brave.com)

The downside is the high entry bar of installing a new browser and setting up a cryptocurrency wallet (payments are made with Basic Attention Tokens).

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#437

Post by captainbland » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #343

mac01021 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Youtube does things that localized technology installed in the home doesn't solve and can't solve. Are you talking about search and content discovery? Are you talking about replicating the most popular videos over many servers so that the system can efficiently serve all the demand to watch those videos? Maybe existing, fully-distributed products don't solve these problems. But it isn't obvious to me that they can'…

He is talking about monetization. It’s not even that counterintuitive with some capitalist forethought.

At this point it becomes clear to anyone interested in open but connected technologies that respect your privacy is that monetisation itself is the problem.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#438

Post by hodgesrm » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 12:06 AM UTC

felipeccastro wrote: post #436

hodgesrm wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with metered schemes is that they inhibit users who feel they are burning money every time they touch a page. It's kind of like having to pay by the megabyte every time you use your phone on the Internet. What about a general subscription model that gets you access to a wide range of websites? The point is to have a fixed price for consumers so they can read as much as you want. Distributing the money to…

That's what the Brave browser is doing: "Set up automatic micro-donations. Brave will automatically divide a monthly donation among the top sites you visit." (brave.com) The downside is the high entry bar of installing a new browser and setting up a cryptocurrency wallet (payments are made with Basic Attention Tokens).

I would look at implementing this using some sort of SSO (single sign-on) scheme. That gets around the problem of having to install new client software.

One obvious problem with all such schemes is how to prevent actors from gaming the system, e.g., to get free logins for self + a bunch of friends. I

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#439

Post by 8bitsrule » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 1:34 AM UTC

tbv wrote: post #367

8bitsrule wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short Beaker browser review: Interesting idea and project. The browser's UI is very different... and lacks some (most) customization options... I spent a long time looking for a way to increase the font-size, for example. (Not all of us are accustomed to squinting at phones.) Preferences to set: I thought that was hiding, but it seems to be missing. Say what? After an hour toying with the interface: technically it lo…

Beaker dev here, quick question: did you try our beta release? We've done a ton of work in the past few months to make it less opaque and to freshen up our UIs. Would love to hear your thoughts on the beta if you have the time! https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/releases

Won't promise anything but having a look.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#440

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #314

hueving wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. I strongly disagree. These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. All of this crap tied up in walled gardens means we just have to cry on the outside with #DeleteFacebook hash tags and hope stuff changes. You claim we nee…

> These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. NPR basically has a monopoly on public radio, and yet we don't constantly hear about all the evil stuff they're doing. Why? Because they're not being run as a loss leader to sell missiles and landmines or whatever. Centralization isn't b…

[deleted]