41–50 of 295 posts
"In order to regain freedom and control over the digital aspects of our lives" Nothing proves his point more than:
Yes, I track how popular what content is on my site. Motivates me to write more. Please feel free to block trackers; I do that as well.
Maybe I missed it somewhere, but I didn't quite follow how this is going to gain a foothold. Solid has the same problem any new social media platform has - before people want to use it, people have to be using it. Facebook and Google certainly have no incentive to promote it.
Facebook, probably not so much. Their business model is data harvesting.
Regarding Solid, note that we don't want to overthrow or replace any existing social networks. We start with offering experiences they cannot offer due to their siloed nature.
I think the part ignored by so many is the need to decentralize the computers into the home. I'm not talking meshes or shared resources. For the majority of use cases, we don't need distributed storage, compute, etc. Just start making these self-hosted "servers", "data pods", etc as easy to install as desktop software and make it clear that they are inaccessible when the computer is off. People that aren't already wi…
There should be a marketplace for apps running on home routers. It would change the Internet as we know it. Developers should be able to create router apps and submit them to marketplaces and users should be able to install router apps of their choice with just a few taps. Routers have a few key advantages over most other computing devices owned by the public: routers normally have a public (non-NAT) IP address, they…
> From the above, it is clear that our primary obstacles are not technological [5]; hence Tim Berners-Lee’s call [6] to "assemble the brightest minds from business, technology, government, civil society, the arts, and academia to tackle the threats to the Web’s future". Yet at the same time, computer scientists and engineers need to deliver the technological burden of proof that decentralized personal data networks c…
*disclaimer: I help develop Bunsen Browser, the mobile companion for Beaker Browser.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One problem is still asymmetric upload/download speeds for many (most) home connections. Often upload is 10x slower than download.
Data caps on upload as well not to mention many ISP's have terms that prevent you from running services on your account. If you want that from them you need a business account which typically costs quite a bit more. At least that's how Comcast and Verizon are in my neighborhood...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First someone has to make a server that is perfectly secure and lasts for 50 years without any updates. It needs to be like a thermostat from the 1950s - maybe it lacks the latest features but it still works just the same as new. I'll accept maybe it only needs to last 10 years, but that is the minimum time. I have family to think about: I don't have time to update my servers every time some new zero-day is fixed. I'…
> First someone has to make a server that is perfectly secure and lasts for 50 years without any updates. Nah, your auto-updating desktop is fine. The software itself might evolve to an hands-off, evergreen-type of approach, but for now just a desktop daemon is fine. The reason keeping servers updated seems so non-trivial is that we visualize it in an ops sense like we're at work.
As confirmed by the lack of complaints about auto update in Windows 10. I mean, its not like updates ever break anything anyways.
The web cannot be decentralized without putting an end to SSL. As long as certificate-issuers are the arbiters of commerce and browsers push users to trust unsecured websites more and more, malicious governments will be able to silence people by revoking their certs. There are stronger alternatives. We need to make a push to begin using them.
I can't escape the feeling that SOLID will be at best neutral but likely will make things worse. Some of the diagrams show more companies having access to your data where it will continue to be mined, sold, etc. If you control storage but not execution it seems like you control nothing.