21–30 of 136 posts
TODO: build a local-first livestream remote conference zoom alternative software
I skimmed the desired qualities, the review of current tools, and finally the software centric approach to achieving the stated goals. While we can reasonably expect software elements in any proposed solution, the hardware and physical elements of distributed computing may provide a far simpler pathway and likely will permit much greater reuse of existing proven software approaches. For example, all future multi-unit…
My landlord can barely run the water and A/C; no way they can run IT.
The improved quality and reliability is worth it for the trivial latency cost.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Netflix is always the perfect example against this weird logic. They commited to AWS, and stuck with it even after Amazon itself is one of their prime competitors. They clearly decided that infra and devops is not their core competency and have absolved themselves of that responsibility and are ready to pay a premium for it. On the other side we have people who keep patting themselves in their back about their Emacs…
> doubt azure or AWS are going to go down with a probability that should worry any business Were you asleep when S3 East failed to the point that half of the internet was offline or did you just not get a notification? https://aws.amazon.com/message/41926/ > The only danger with cloud providers is that if your engineering team is not exactly smart you can rack up a million dollar bill for a dog walking app The public…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone starts with p2p and realizes it doesn't work. OG skype predates fast internet and expectations of extremely smooth conferencing between arbitrary number of users. A centralised server is basically a requirement for acceptable performance.
There is a step between peer to peer and centralized, and that is federated. For most services, that should be the sweet spot.
Federation isn't needed because you don't need to have servers that communicate with each other, you just need some server that can host a given video call. So any open source solution works, no federation architecture is required.
Unfortunately local-first software is incompatible with you being a slave to your preferred technology company of choice (Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft). If it wasn't for GDPR, most of these companies wouldn't even offer exports of your data.
Netflix is always the perfect example against this weird logic. They commited to AWS, and stuck with it even after Amazon itself is one of their prime competitors. They clearly decided that infra and devops is not their core competency and have absolved themselves of that responsibility and are ready to pay a premium for it. On the other side we have people who keep patting themselves in their back about their Emacs…
> ... cloud apps depend on the service continuing to be available: if the service is unavailable, you cannot use the software, and you can no longer access your data created with that software. This means you are betting that the creators of the software will continue supporting it for a long time — at least as long as you care about the data. Although there does not seem to be a great danger of Google shutting down…
Cloud Computing (and SASS even more so) is little more than just another attempt to recreate access/info monopolies, essentially the same profit proposition as existed with closed source software, while pretending to be one of the cool kids and use politically more acceptable (but in this context rather meaningless) terms like Open Source and Open Standards. It may be a different generation of companies, with slightly different cultures, but they are all equally predatory in nature as the old ones.
It's going to be a rude awakening, when some of the bigger service providers will eventually fall over (which they will). Of course, everyone will blame anything and everything but their own willful ignorance, when that happens.
I skimmed the desired qualities, the review of current tools, and finally the software centric approach to achieving the stated goals. While we can reasonably expect software elements in any proposed solution, the hardware and physical elements of distributed computing may provide a far simpler pathway and likely will permit much greater reuse of existing proven software approaches. For example, all future multi-unit…
There is whole bunch of reasons and that bunch of reasons has name IoT. I mean that security of such utility units would be roughly what we already see with current breed of IoT devices. To keep some kind of quality level of such devices there would have to be one big company that produces them, which does not solve the problem. If you look at IoT devices manufacturers now there is so much crap floating around becaus…
IoT is designed to work in extreme edge conditions: low power; intermittent connectivity; constrained local storage; limitations on embedded code, etc.
Further, there is currently NO financial incentive for anyone to tackle the issues necessary to take these bits of technology and make it 'home' techonlogy. We've done this for all sorts of things, including controlled combustion in the basement for heating.
You also have two strawmen here that you attack:
1 - I did not say anything about the "evil" of corporations. Simply that it is not acceptable.
2 - A "normal" person in a modern multi-residence is hardly bothered with "fixing the boiler", or "the network connection", or "the fire alarm system", any other utility tech. If you are asserting that this is "impossible" for "networking and hosting" (!!) please make the case.
The solution space is fairly permissive, with various business models to consider. It should definitely be explored.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone starts with p2p and realizes it doesn't work. OG skype predates fast internet and expectations of extremely smooth conferencing between arbitrary number of users. A centralised server is basically a requirement for acceptable performance.
What does the server do that the callers can't? Compress video?
> ... cloud apps depend on the service continuing to be available: if the service is unavailable, you cannot use the software, and you can no longer access your data created with that software. This means you are betting that the creators of the software will continue supporting it for a long time — at least as long as you care about the data. Although there does not seem to be a great danger of Google shutting down…
Many far smarter people have said this before, far more eloquently than I can, but in short: Cloud Computing (and SASS even more so) is little more than just another attempt to recreate access/info monopolies, essentially the same profit proposition as existed with closed source software, while pretending to be one of the cool kids and use politically more acceptable (but in this context rather meaningless) terms lik…
Unfortunately local-first software is incompatible with you being a slave to your preferred technology company of choice (Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft). If it wasn't for GDPR, most of these companies wouldn't even offer exports of your data.