Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me • Hacker News Board

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#111

Post by mceachen » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #40

koevet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people accept their data to be harvested? I guess money could be an incentive, which is quite interesting because it would fundamentally revert the power dynamics between the big data abuser and the people. Lots of food for thought.

>Why would people accept their data to be harvested? Same as always, to get services free of charge. If I want my photos to be searchable, I'm going to have to let someone run their AI on them. As an iPhone user, I have my photos in iCloud. I'm paying for it through high device prices and storage fees. But as Apple's business model is to sell expensive devices, they won't let me securely share my photos with my wife…

> If I want my photos to be searchable, I'm going to have to let someone run their AI on them.

In the next month or so, that won't be true anymore if you use PhotoStructure to host your photos and videos. Disclaimer: I'm the author.

PhotoStructure is software you run, on hardware you own. It runs on desktops, docker, or headless servers, like your NAS. Your library is stored in a cross-platform, open format, so you're free to change how you host your library. I'm still enrolling beta users to try it for free in exchange for their feedback. Later this year, rather than being ad-supported, a subscription will enable advanced features (like automatic tagging based on image content).

(and as the Solid framework becomes more useable, I'll definitely try to support it).

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#112

Post by pbkhrv » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

max_ wrote: post #101

Lots of comments about how "no one wants this". But we already have things like Dropbox, Mega, Drive, iCloud where it makes complete sense for users.

Grassroots-level adoption was key for things like Dropbox, IMHO - it solved a real need for individual people and it worked well and was easy to use. Same for Docker - developers adopted it in droves, and then enterprises followed.

Inrupt is trying to bootstrap a two-sided marketplace of sorts: product builders won't care until enough potential customers demand support for the "data pods", and regular people won't care until "data pods" solve real everyday problems for them.

Hopefully Inrupt's team has enough business-savvy people on it to find ways to gain traction to slog through some of the tough early stages of the product adoption cycle.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#113

Post by cmiles74 » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

I would like to see some time-based permission scheme, for instance the ability to share my credit card information with Amazon for the next five minutes as well as the ability to share my address with Amazon for the next year.

My hope is that this could eventually be built out to support discrete identities, perhaps one for personal use and another for work and a third that is meant to remain anonymous.

A PKI based infrastructure comes to mind, that would provide the ability to revoke access. Technically I don't see a way to force systems to stop using revoked data but maybe the revocations could be used to provide legal proof that a specific company no longer has access to specific data.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#114

Post by miki123211 » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

My problem with all those pro-privacy apps is that privacy has a price[0], and a price most consumers (me included) are not willing to pay.

There are, essentially, two business models on the web. One is to provide the services for free and sell ads, the other is to charge for the services directly. To earn substantial amounts on ads, you need to track consumers massively.

As a consumer, I definitely prefer being tracked than paying for all the services I use. That's the stance of most consumers. If there's a free alternative with a lot of tracking and a paid alternative with good privacy, the free alternative will win. That's how the free market works. Privacy has a price, and a price most consumers are not willing to pay. Forcing them to pay it for some antiquated notion of privacy is just... wrong.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#115

Post by fulafel » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #15

As much as I like the ideas behind SOLID, I just don't seeing it panning out. The semantic data model is exactly the same as the one 10 years ago when it didn't catch on. One of my biggest pet peeves there is that the default mode of operation is using a de-facto centralized ontology that is mutable and non-versioned. How is someone supposed to build up a semantic database when the semantics can be changed any time f…

Ideas rarely take off on the first round, and graph dbs are well known & everyday tech now.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#116

Post by olah_1 » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

All I care about is that decentralized data projects somehow utilize our existing, real life, social networks.

I want a family to all be able to "friend" each other and seed each others' data. And just because you're seeding each others' data, that doesn't mean you necessarily have read or write permissions on that data.

People want to know whose data they are re-hosting and they should have an incentive to host it. Linking seeding to our existing relationships solves for both.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#117

Post by ampdepolymerase » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #114

My problem with all those pro-privacy apps is that privacy has a price[0], and a price most consumers (me included) are not willing to pay. There are, essentially, two business models on the web. One is to provide the services for free and sell ads, the other is to charge for the services directly. To earn substantial amounts on ads, you need to track consumers massively. As a consumer, I definitely prefer being trac…

Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for anything. If a paid product gains enough momentum to crush free products, then it is the free market in action yet again. Short of rough men threatening to do violence upon you, nobody is being "forced" to pay for anything.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#118

Post by Reebz » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #47

atoav wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not legal in Germany and Austria at least. The UK is one of the most surveilled places in Europe.

Some of the new JCDecaux digital signage I've seen in Berlin definitely seems to have a camera lens on its top. There's no posted notice concerning video recording, but I wonder if it's just a lens with no camera, a camera but not attached to the rest of the device, or only disabled in software.

Another theory that could place it in a loophole: It may be performing object detection without recording what we think of as normal video. Similar to self-driving technology and object recognition, useful data can be derived without actually recording the traditional thought of “HD video in color”.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#119

Post by sbuttgereit » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #117

miki123211 wrote: post #114

My problem with all those pro-privacy apps is that privacy has a price[0], and a price most consumers (me included) are not willing to pay. There are, essentially, two business models on the web. One is to provide the services for free and sell ads, the other is to charge for the services directly. To earn substantial amounts on ads, you need to track consumers massively. As a consumer, I definitely prefer being trac…

Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for anything. If a paid product gains enough momentum to crush free products, then it is the free market in action yet again. Short of rough men threatening to do violence upon you, nobody is being "forced" to pay for anything.

I think your point is largely valid today, but there is push for a regulatory regime to force some of those privacy invading, but "free" options to either be greatly curtailed or eliminated. Without getting into whether such a push is valid or not, should it succeed... the rough men threatening violence won't be coming to force you to buy something... but they will come to stop those from offering you a product that you might choose to use. In that event, we shouldn't confuse the outcomes as being free market outcomes.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#120

Post by Vinnl » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

jdsalaro wrote: post #108

bluesign wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand data is not moving but if data structures are different there has to be some kinda merge or cloning of the data. So basically I am at Wikipedia and Superwiki's mercy for interoperability. What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. "unilaterally imitate the other's data model" sounds good at the beginning, but what will happen when superwiki is constantly evolving its data structur…

> What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. The value of having your own data is, precisely, that you have your own data; nothing more and no less. Furthermore, and although I'm no expert in Solid's and other implementations, it's quite likely that you, or other technologists, can more easily help you achieve the interoperability you so desire if your data is not locked away behind thousand A…

I think that is spot on. As for:

> I'm not sure how solid plans to keep applications from stealthily generating derivatives of the data they manipulate. I can imagine some sort of separation would have to happen at the browser level where the "app" provides a scaffold and the browser replaces in your data.

I don't believe Solid will be able to "enforce" anything - worst case, apps can just not use Solid. I see Solid as the technology that enables apps to respect your control of the data, but the incentives for implementing that has to come from elsewhere, e.g. customer demand or legislation.

(Again, personal views, not necessarily Inrupt's.)