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Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

solid.inrupt.com

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Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#91

Post by lstamour »

Moru wrote: post #82
wpietri wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. For me to get a nostalgia rush I need to go down to the Computer History Museum and see yet older stuff. Nostalgia isn't a function of quality, but of age. Douglas Adams expressed this well: “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything t…

Except that a lot of things was instantaneous just 20 years ago. I can't believe how slow even new smartphones are when I'm trying to make a phonecall... Every press of a button feels slow, there have to be animations scrolling screens left and right instead of instantly activating something. Every time I'm using something new and flashy, I feel like I'm stuck in sirup.

The closest thing dialup ever got to instantaneous was text-based terminal interfaces. And I remember agonizingly slow load times in Lynx just as often as agonizingly slow load times in Mosaic, NN and IE. Our expectations change, however, and as tech speeds up, we ask “why aren’t people optimizing for what we care about, performance?” But there’s a multitude of answers, many of which are sadly non-technical. Speed and responsiveness often take a backseat, but improvements do happen. (AMP, CDNs like CloudFlare, use of native apps, etc.)

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#93

Post by Animats »

Who's "Inrupt"? The main Solid site is https://solid.mit.edu/".

Inrupt is not in Crunchbase. They don't have a business address on their site. They try to get people to sign up without giving terms and conditions first. And they want you to give them access to all your personal information. Right.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#94

Post by weavejester »

kstenerud wrote: post #51

I don't get it... What is a pod and what's so great about it? Something about controlling your data... Storage space... Secure USB stick for the web? So I can mount it and add/remove files from it? Like dropbox or something? I clicked "Get a solid pod" and it asked me to register, which I did, after which it dumped me into some kind of "home page". Clicking "get started with solid and data browser" brings up instruct…

My reading of it is that it's a database you control that you can allow third-party web applications to use. So instead of the web application storing your data on their servers, they store it on yours.

From the perspective of the end user it's useful because retain control over your data, so there's no barriers to switching to a competitor, for instance.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#95

Post by tclancy »

Moru wrote: post #82
wpietri wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. For me to get a nostalgia rush I need to go down to the Computer History Museum and see yet older stuff. Nostalgia isn't a function of quality, but of age. Douglas Adams expressed this well: “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything t…

Except that a lot of things was instantaneous just 20 years ago. I can't believe how slow even new smartphones are when I'm trying to make a phonecall... Every press of a button feels slow, there have to be animations scrolling screens left and right instead of instantly activating something. Every time I'm using something new and flashy, I feel like I'm stuck in sirup.

Use a rotary phone for a couple weeks.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#97

Post by lucas_membrane »

adventured wrote: post #70
mtrn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I am just naive, but this all seems terrible. I do have most respect for TBH and I would consider everything he thinks and writes about, but this does not sound too good to me either. The idea of linked data and semantic web has been around for almost two decades now and I have yet to see an application, technique or site that amazes me. On the contrary, most of the things in this space I have seen are bloate…

The failure of the semantic Web is that it's repetitively being built by and for technologists rather than to meet a real need of real end users. It's technologists in a vacuum building approaches that don't actually solve problems that millions of people have. So long as they keep doing that, it will perpetually fail. Freebase as a prominent example, was pointless for an average person. There was no reason for it to…

> The failure of the semantic Web is that it's repetitively being built by and for technologists

The failures of the semantic Web are pretty much the same as the failures of the Web of evil, i.e. the internet: 1. You cannot make people tell the truth. 2. You cannot always determine when someone is not telling the truth. 3. You cannot always make people do things the right way. 4. You cannot always determine when someone is not doing things the right way.

So, you are correct. The true creed of each hard-core technologist is: "Everything would work great if only everyone always did everything my way."

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#98

Post by NeedMoreTea »

chongli wrote: post #8

applications :( Does anyone else feel nostalgia for the pre-"web app" days of the internet? I'm talking about personal sites on Geocities and web rings built on communities of shared interest. The browser was an application for navigating hyperlinked information. Other applications include email clients, news readers, FTP clients, and IRC clients. You never had to download a megabyte of minified JavaScript just to re…

Sort of.

90% of the web apps that are useful to me would be equally useful as native local apps with local data. As a native MacOS or iOS program they would be hugely faster, without latency, and just as useful out of signal area (still common enough that it happens daily for me).

That would leave me to choose which I wanted to sync either internally or via something like dropbox.

Most of the innovations in the browser that enable apps also promote and enable tracking, auto start videos, and JS loaded ads, and use of the browser as surrogate OS. Mostly I find this a serious misstep. I don't miss bad design and sites that were cut up bits of image etc.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#99

Post by NeedMoreTea »

tclancy wrote: post #95
Moru wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that a lot of things was instantaneous just 20 years ago. I can't believe how slow even new smartphones are when I'm trying to make a phonecall... Every press of a button feels slow, there have to be animations scrolling screens left and right instead of instantly activating something. Every time I'm using something new and flashy, I feel like I'm stuck in sirup.

Use a rotary phone for a couple weeks.

You were using a rotary phone 20 years ago?

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#100

Post by tuukkah »

nulbyte wrote: post #87

After reading what little documentation is available and installing a single-user solid server myself, I wonder if this is how people felt when the World Wide Web was first invented. I find myself asking: Okay, now what? Except I think even the World Wide Web, when it was first invented, at least had a demo that worked. Solid doesn't even seem to work. Following instructions for "learn[ing] how to install and run you…

This may be hint regarding how to authenticate:

https://github.com/solid/node-solid-server#testing-solid-loc...

> In order to really get a feel for the Solid platform, and to test out solid, you will need the following:

> 1. A WebID profile and browser certificate from one of the Solid-compliant identity providers, such as solid.community.

EDIT: Seems if you run `solid init` and accept the defaults, it will configure a local WebID provider that you can register to on first use.

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