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Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
181–190 of 263 posts
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#182I like the idea. It's basically an encapsulated portable personal "wiki" for a user (persona) with an open data model that can be accessed by external apps based on permissions. What it doesn't solve is the problem how this data is going to be used by those who access it. I wish there was some kind of digital contracts that only allow using personal data in a way permitted by the user.
Have you heard of the concept of "homomorphic encryption"? It allows someone to perform computations on encrypted pieces of data, without actually ever having access to the raw data itself.
I have no idea how realistic or how "possible" this technology is for in the near future, but this seems to be a great match for technologies like these.
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#183[deleted]
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like a lot of people on HN, you appear to be conflating "download a megabyte of minified JavaScript just to read a 500-word article" with the concept of a web application, and implying that embedded applications are somehow a violation of the web's intended purpose. But hypertext is an application, and the web was always about hyperlinked text as well as embedded content. The and tags and now defunct concepts like VR…
I don't know, the older days also had IRC, messaging apps, internet forums and BBS systems too, and my experience is that the people on the last two tended to be more... mature than the kinds on social media sites. Even today the slower and more thoughtful pace of a traditional forum is more conductive to decent discussions than the obsessively upvote/view focused world of social media sites.
How much of that is the eternal September of going from something where a tiny niche of the population using a thing to the vast majority?
I don't think there's much structural about Yahoo Answers being what it is. I think it's mostly the population.
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And webrings were fun, but modern social media offers a much bigger and more varied set of communities than the old web ever had Most of it is undiscoverable, private, or short form. There are very few people putting up public multi page tutorials or project summaries in the way that they used to.
I feel like that's not all that rare—you just do it as a series of blog posts these days. You could make a strong case that a set of independent pages that freely interlink is a better format, but still, the impulse is there, so people have found a way to make that kind of content.
I don't see many independent bloggers these days. Especially outside of the tech community. Most of it feels like it's becoming hidden behind monetized walled gardens.
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#186One advantage is you can build up your data and different apps can re-use that data. Presumably you have to grant permission to use that data but apps could easily ask for access to much more data than it needs? This seems a little dangerous because people just say "Yes" when they want to use something. Or does it have a strategy for dealing with this?
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I don't understand the premise. Tumblr is / was over ten times larger than Geocities. It did what you're describing. It was still wildly popular with young people just as recently as a few years ago.
Tumblr wasn't personal in the way that Geocities was. With Geocities you could see millions of high school art students demonstrating for the entire world that they don't know the first thing about design or color. Tumblr is the epitome of a walled garden. The flowers look pretty, but you still have to plant them in neat, orderly rows. Even Facebook's Pieces of Flair offered more of a creative outlet. You can still m…
> With Geocities you could see millions of high school art students demonstrating for the entire world that they don't know the first thing about design or color.
They've moved to DeviantArt now.
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#188Well I feel like an idiot, I populated my 'pod' with a couple of personal details, and now have no idea how to undo what I've done* and haven't received a confirmatory email to my address so now have some 'thing' on public space I have no control over, no understanding of and no ability to delete.
Not a great start.
* Ostensibly I've over-written with nonsense details, but a cursory check in another browser, not signed in, shows the same original information.
What a mess.
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> than that's a scam, I don't really own it Legally speaking then, you don't own information about yourself like your address or past actions. The government won't let you erase that information. The only way to make your friends and family forget it is to kill them, which is obviously highly illegal. Even with efforts like Right to Be Forgotten, Europe isn't positing that you actually own information about yourself…
> How can you own something that is inside my head? If I put it there, I own it, and I should be able to destroy all proof that it's not purely a fabrication of your imagination. (Sure, you can still know it and use it to guide your decision, but it shouldn't be legally valid any more, and there should be no way for you to convince others it's true.) Yeah, obviously if it's in the heads of other people too, it would…
There's two problems. First, there's a basic argument from the outside that you're fucking with historicity for no good reason other than that you think that you're more important than humanity.
Second, from the inside, this simply isn't how memes work. Memes are designed to propagate and survive on their own. If your ideas are at all good or interesting to society, and they manage to become memetic, then you have zero recourse, just as if you were Patient Zero for some new plague. You shared it, and unsharing is impossible, regardless of how moral you might believe unsharing to be.
Seriously, take some time and think about it: How many of your ideas and concepts are actually original to you? Almost none of them, right? And if you're honest with yourself, pretty much every concept seem inextricably linked to others. Really, what matters is the structure between ideas, and that can't be shared, since it's private to each person's mind.
Anyway, if this doesn't sway you, I'm okay with it; you're purely a fabrication of my imagination.
Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it
#190Well I feel like an idiot, I populated my 'pod' with a couple of personal details, and now have no idea how to undo what I've done* and haven't received a confirmatory email to my address so now have some 'thing' on public space I have no control over, no understanding of and no ability to delete. Not a great start. * Ostensibly I've over-written with nonsense details, but a cursory check in another browser, not sign…
Why do you populate your personal details in the “thing” you don’t understand and have no control over in the first place?