Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The importance of decentralisation

ungleich.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 137 posts

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#51

Post by olah_1 »

nebulon wrote: post #20
nicey wrote: post #2

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted/

If you want to selfhost many of those apps, we have built a tool (Cloudron) to take away most of the deployment hassle for many of those apps mentioned in the link. Also to work around the provider lock-in with ipv4 addresses while hosting from your home or on-premise we have a built-in dynamic DNS feature https://cloudron.io/documentation/networking/#dynamic-dns So in the end it doesn't matter if you change ISP or i…

Cloudron is missing apps for most use cases I actually care about.

Can you add a google photos type app? Maybe Piwigo (it has a good mobile app) or OwnPhotos[1] (it has face/object recognition). Lychee doesn't have a mobile app or face/object recognition.

Can you add some communication apps like Matrix Synapse or Ejabberd? Mattermost is walled off from the outside world.

Can you add some social apps like Pleroma or Mastodon?

[1]: https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#52

Post by telmich »

kodablah wrote: post #44
telmich wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say if you assume that markets don't regulate themselves to the best, the argument that users should not care, is not valid. Or put it the other way: if users don't care, they will be exposed to changes / forces they don't control nor want. I think this is very similar to political activity: if you don't vote, your life will be more influenced by the opinions of others. If you vote (care), then you can make a…

> the argument that users should not care, is not valid I agree from the user's perspective. The point is nuanced but important - users should care, but the reality is they don't and from an implementer's perspective we should neither expect nor require them to. So to rephrase, I mean "users should not have to care in order to use the product".

Got your point - thanks for clarification!

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#53

Post by zzzcpan »

jasode wrote: post #16

It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…

I think you are confusing anti-competitive control pursuing forces of capital-backed companies and capitalism in general with natural forces. Centralization is unnatural, this is why animals are territorial and people don't all live in the same one country. And why capitalist ideology requires propaganda and force to keep people from revolting. Nobody wants to submit to somebody and give them all the control they want.

And it's not hard to make things decentralized, federation is not that intrusive for example, it's hard to find a way to fund and sustain it when everyone from the system who can fund it also wants centralization, dominance and control.

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#54

Post by cy6erlion »

jasode wrote: post #16

It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…

I see this as a problem with trust. Decentralized systems require less trust for them to work (think consensus mechanisms) but ironically users today don't trust the tech because it is still early IMO, centralized systems need more trust. People these days are using centralized systems because they trust the centralized system (FB, Google) more then the decentralized tech.

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#55

Post by theamk »

telmich wrote: post #21
jasode wrote: post #16

It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…

Love the challenge. Let me start by replying to your DMZ comment: with IPv6, you actually have to rethink and with it you can organise the Internet very different from today. I agree with you that people don't want to maintain complex systems. But then again, running a git server or even cgit, is a matter of little minutes spent, especially if you use ready to deploy toolchains. I also think you have a point in terms…

Re IPv6, I don’t expect connectivity to suddenly appear. The NATs will be gone, but I bet you that every single home router will get a firewall with a default “block incoming” policy. A new network protocol does not make all the security bugs disappear overnight.

And for users, it does not really matter if they have to visit router admin page to set up NAT port forwarding or open up the port in firewall.

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#56

Post by nebulon »

olah_1 wrote: post #51
nebulon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to selfhost many of those apps, we have built a tool (Cloudron) to take away most of the deployment hassle for many of those apps mentioned in the link. Also to work around the provider lock-in with ipv4 addresses while hosting from your home or on-premise we have a built-in dynamic DNS feature https://cloudron.io/documentation/networking/#dynamic-dns So in the end it doesn't matter if you change ISP or i…

Cloudron is missing apps for most use cases I actually care about. Can you add a google photos type app? Maybe Piwigo (it has a good mobile app) or OwnPhotos[1] (it has face/object recognition). Lychee doesn't have a mobile app or face/object recognition. Can you add some communication apps like Matrix Synapse or Ejabberd? Mattermost is walled off from the outside world. Can you add some social apps like Pleroma or M…

I wasn't very much aware of ownphotos looks great and will add it to our backlog. Thanks!

Otherwise, Matrix+Riot is being worked on already. Mastodon is similarly mostly done https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1136/mastodon-microblogging

Our latest addition is now OnlyOffice, currently in testing mode.

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#57

Post by telmich »

idle_zealot wrote: post #49
telmich wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because I'm not always online and you might not be when I'm. That's a good thing, because maybe I don't want to be able to reached all the time. If you want to, you can add your IPv6 address on your phone, which is virtually always online (I actually do this on my phone).

>you can add your IPv6 address on your phone How does one achieve this while a phone is roaming between cell towers and various wifi access points?

With a wireguard based IPv6 VPN for example. It's exactly what you can get on IPv6VPN.ch

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#58

Post by pjc50 »

jasode wrote: post #16

It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…

> See the trend? Centralization is a natural outcome of millions of people not wanting to (1) spend money and (2) not wanting to spend extra time -- to fulfill ideals of decentralization.

Exactly. It's not a technological phenomenon, it's an economic one. It's actually present in all markets, but traditionally there is a "local" effect that allows variation to exist (if it's not free to ship goods to anywhere in the world), or a negative return to scale.

Technological goods, especially SaaS, can be "sold" anywhere in the world for near-zero marginal cost and tend to have positive returns to scale. Conventional economics dictates that this will tend to a monopoly. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-increasing-return-to-scale-inco...

Decentralists also tend to to recognise that, for most users of communications services, having a central authority to discipline bad actors results in an improvement to the service. This didn't exist for email so the Spamhaus and related services had to be invented.

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#59

Post by hippich »

telmich wrote: post #13
hkjhreiou wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just use a domain name instead of an IP address, like everyone else.

So, how does a DNS entry to 10.0.2.2 help to be reachable?

Assuming it is not trolling. Every time you get new IP from the ISP, you update DNS record for that domain. And browsers can connect to it to the exposed 80/443 port.

Re: The importance of decentralisation

#60

Post by naringas »

pjc50 wrote: post #58
jasode wrote: post #16

It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…

> See the trend? Centralization is a natural outcome of millions of people not wanting to (1) spend money and (2) not wanting to spend extra time -- to fulfill ideals of decentralization. Exactly. It's not a technological phenomenon, it's an economic one. It's actually present in all markets, but traditionally there is a "local" effect that allows variation to exist (if it's not free to ship goods to anywhere in the…

> Technological goods, especially SaaS,

I think it's more accurate to call them "digital goods", because IMO what enables the less than near-zero marginal cost (I consider them negligible costs) is the digital nature of the "merchandise"

(a jet engine is a technological good, but it is material, not digital)

other than that, I completely agree. The trend towards centralization comes from the economics of the market (not from the nature of technology)

Post reply on HN