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Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

ruben.verborgh.org

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Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#181

Post by eitland »

deevolution wrote: post #171
taohansen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also love my Synology DS-218+. I'm hosting my own Spotify (Airsonic [1]); music tagged to perfection with Beets [2]), an IRC bouncer because Matrix is still not ready, my own Netflix (Synology's Video Station [3]), and my own mailserver (Synology's MailPlus Server [4]). I've been giving out access to this pod to close friends. It's empowering and community-building. This is the kind of social network I desire: clos…

Sick, now turn this into a product that can be adopted by the masses!

I have an older Synology. It is already ready for the masses.

Why: You only need one one for a family and most of the time there's already a person in the family who does "PC stuff". And even if there isn't there's always someone who'll learn it if a friend has one.

The rest of this post is not targeted at you but rather on a whole attitude here at HN:

-------------------------------

Anyone who can operate a web browser, has any education in IT and knows enough English to read instructions in the box should be able to set up one.

In fact I think just being able to read the quick start instructions should be enough to install one with basic features.

Setting up websites in the 90ies - early 2000s were a lot harder. Same goes for using older PCs with DOS.

A major problem today seems to be learned helplessnes. In our well meant and to some degree profitable[0] effort to make sure anyone can use anything we have are creating a situation were people are more helpless .

Seriously: if app stores and walled gardens had been introduced first the web and email had been considered to complicated now. I can imagine HN: """You mean my siblings, parents and grandparents are going to install this "e-mail" thing? Even if they were able to configure "smtp" and whatnot they'd forget the "email address" or even how to start it before tomorrow."""

[0:]: if anyone doesn't catch my drift, your brightest customers might not be the ones who pays most ;-)

Edits: a number of them :-)

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#182

Post by jauco »

anomie31 wrote: post #120
rubenverborgh wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be surprised to hear that developers like Linked Data. People starting with Linked Data development today are not burdened by the Semantic Web legacy and mistakes of the past. We've been working with front-end devs who have never seen RDF, and never will. They enjoy how Linked Data is able to cross borders and leads to more data than a centralized database could ever give you. The confusion in your comment is…

By RDF did you mean RDF/XML specifically? JSON-LD is still RDF, it's just serialized differently, which is fine, I like RDF, but OP may have more specific concerns than the syntax.

Well, it also contains usable ordered lists. Which is not a small addition to rdf (it defines interop with rdf’s version of ordered lists, but the one in json-ld is array based with random access patterns and a .length while the pure rdf version is purely linked list based without any guarantees about having only one link)

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#183

Post by y4mi »

smarx007 wrote: post #100
tmcw wrote: post #79

It puzzles me that the linked data future is still discussed, as if we didn't already try it, and didn't already discover that developers dislike arcane RDF standards and the academic-rooted designers of the specifications have a terrible track record of solving real-world problems. And that now they're presenting linked data as some critical component of the decentralized web while skipping out on the debates that e…

In my opinion, the linked data future is still discussed, because when Tim Berners-Lee first presented the idea of Semantic Web in 1994, he used what I would call an IoT scenario to describe it ([1], scroll to the end; I really hope he is not reading this comment). Now that the IoT is here, maybe more people are ready to listen. And just to make sure we are on the same page here: it's not academics' job to build usab…

No, your link doesn't talk about an iot scenario. Selling and purchasing houses has absolutely nothing to do with iot.

And using semantic web for that is just as bad. A basic json API would be much more stable than parsing a document with navigation and similar just to get that data.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#185

Post by kkarakk »

cordonbleu wrote: post #52
kodablah wrote: post #8

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 is a "deprecated?" server software. i use it daily, its called Pichat, and so far it seems to be deleted from the internet. it is a chat server/webserver/fileserver. it comes in linux, and win version it is on horde as well as the SDK for it. Tell me if you would like to know more. this is not my software, if you [whomever that may be] are the person or part of the team that created this [pichat] please chime i…

https://github.com/zabirauf/pichat is this not it?

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#186

Post by kkarakk »

diminoten wrote: post #167
nothrabannosir wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who participate in something are often best positioned to criticise it, because they: A) know how the sausage is made, and B) stand to actually lose something if people believe them, i.e. they are standing by their point in spite of the negative consequences to themselves. People on the dole who argue against (details / implementation of) social security should be taken seriously. Rich people arguing against t…

So only murderers should judge other murderers? Hmm.

technically the whole criminal judicial system is a licensed murderer

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#187

Post by kkarakk »

cortesoft wrote: post #112
ken wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How am I supposed to know that any particular domain is used for analytics, versus core functionality? How am I supposed to know what scripts a webpage loads, before viewing it? > "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

I am curious to how this could be solved. I mean, i guess you could have your browser ask before every request generated for a page, but that seems very cumbersome.

apps do it on first install, why shouldn't browsers do it on a website's first launch?

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#188

Post by MarsAscendant »

staticvar wrote: post #46

Beaker Browser is a cool experiment showing how you can decentralize the web that is both easy for end user's and fun for developers because it pushes web standards. https://beakerbrowser.com *disclaimer: I help develop Bunsen Browser, the mobile companion for Beaker Browser.

Could you explain to me, a newbie, what Beaker promotes and what its advantage is against browsers that use HTTP?

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#189

Post by hinkley »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #164
SpaceManiac wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that it's the practice and not the principle of auto-updates which is unsound. Automatic security patches make a lot of sense in the current security climate, but once that infrastructure exists it is irresistible to use it for random feature creep and marketing.

> I'd argue that it's the practice and not the principle of auto-updates which is unsound. I disagree. I've yet to encounter a system where automatic updates didn't sometimes break things. It's a nice theory, but in practice things break when you change things they depend on even when you're trying not to, and a lot of developers don't try that hard. Not to mention, sometimes you're dealing with design flaws that cau…

I don’t think it would be that hard to build an update system where not everyone gets updates at once, and you wait for consensus among early adopters before forcing it on the remaining users.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#190

Post by hinkley »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #64
kodablah wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/me goes to sandstorm.io, click install, skip past the paid version on to self-host, see it only works on Linux, close tab ^ That is your expected reaction by normal desktop users. I mean literally download an exe and up pops up your feed ready to add your friends, or favorite businesses, news sites, link aggregators, etc given their onion ID (yes, onion ID is annoyingly large, especially v3, but discovery/identity c…

I think the ideal use case for Sandstorm is either the service model or best-case the "your family computer guy runs it for a ton of people you know". If I stand up a Sandstorm server at home this year (which is likely), I'll probably allow any friends or family to use it. The "normal desktop user" should probably not be running their own self-hosting setup, because they will fail at backups and reliability and perfo…

Or, one proposes a system with redundancy built into it, so that a machine going down or getting soda poured on it doesn’t take out the whole network.
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