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Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

podcasts.apple.com

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Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#41

Post by tharne »

wyre wrote: post #21
TonyTrapp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder how much time it will take for the scenario you described to collapse. Once computer systems become completely closed and programming becomes unavailable to the lowly user, how are new skilled people going to find their way into the system? Will it die when the last developers of the system retire?

It’ll be something you’ll need to go to university for. You wouldn’t be able to learn it for free at home.

The 'ole "student license". I remember that one from my days learning SAS. Getting out of the clutches of that awful SAS licensing was how I discovered the world of open source and R and Python.

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#42

Post by thesuitonym »

tleb_ wrote: post #19
mozey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually, but it could live on for a long time. Reminds me of a story in the Dying Earth series, can't quite remember which one. Cugel visits a city where no one knows how the technology works anymore. Some of it still works, other stuff is breaking down, and the populace thinks that's because the magic is fading away. Or maybe I'm confusing different stories. Anyway, something along this line probably.

Having systems working without maintenance would be a true breakthrough.

Most machines will work for a while without maintenance. See: All the cars on the road that have never had so much as an oil change.

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#43

Post by userbinator »

echelon wrote: post #3

> "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" No. No no no no no. This isn't right. The modern Internet is such sellout. It didn't turn out anything like what I'd hoped. Bittorrent, semantic tagging, RSS, decentralized aggregation. Ownership . All dead or dying. These companies are all gobbling up the commons and pushing us into serfdom. Apple, Google, the RIAA. The whole lot of them have poached a…

The browser monoculture will collapse into a universal thin client that leaves "standards" in the dust and takes away all the features BigCo developers don't themselves need.

They will still be standard and "open" for everyone to see, but that doesn't matter because they are too complex and change too often for anyone but BigCo to implement.

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#45

Post by thesuitonym »

indigochill wrote: post #27
tleb_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are cool when you live in the CLI. My mom doesn't though, being part of a small cluster of hackers is cool but not what the internet should be. My goal once I can finance it is to create a virtual island that my family and close friends can rely on for vital services: emails, file hosting, calendar, contacts, a public web space, etc. If every hacker did this for its close circle the impact would be far greater…

Is financing this sort of thing for a small circle expensive? I would (naively) think it's ~$5/month for a DigitalOcean droplet (adjust for your preferred hosting service) and maybe a bit more if you want a domain name (probably, if it's for non-technical family). But I haven't looked into it in much depth myself. Still a great goal, though, and I'd like to do the same at some point.

Running email on a DO droplet (or any shared vps) would be pretty terrible. Even if you manage to find one that doesn't have all of its IPs blacklisted from the mainstream email providers, it's only a matter of time before your email just stops being accepted.

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#46

Post by simonebrunozzi »

finnthehuman wrote: post #38

> Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio] (podcasts.apple.com) lol. I'm not saying this is futile, but seeing this call to action next to "podcasts.apple.com" means whoever this is won't be the one to do it. > 3. Making the web weird again: the explosion of retro design ascetics [sic] on the web Oh, so it's not even about making it weird. It's just sloganeering about quaint aesthetics to shovel React tooling? I expect…

> I expected little, and I was still underwhelmed. Oh well, such is life.

Well, your comment about it is really nice, it made me smile, especially this last sentence (I find it... poetic!) and at least this thing produced a little connection between me and you.

You never know :)

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#47

Post by tleb_ »

wyre wrote: post #20
tleb_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are cool when you live in the CLI. My mom doesn't though, being part of a small cluster of hackers is cool but not what the internet should be. My goal once I can finance it is to create a virtual island that my family and close friends can rely on for vital services: emails, file hosting, calendar, contacts, a public web space, etc. If every hacker did this for its close circle the impact would be far greater…

> create a virtual island That sounds like a really cool project. What would the costs be to finance that?

One or two servers (second one for redundancy, at another location). File storage would be the expensive part. Starting at 10-20TB usable space with slots for more would be nice.

The location would either be at my parents', as I move often and they have a rack installed (with nothing in it, the internet link isn't amazing but should be fine) or it could be colocated at a non-profit FAI (https://www.ffdn.org/en). The colocation is probably the most sensible option for the internet link and stability they bring (proper data center context, back-up generators and they have static IPv4).

+ long-term encrypted backups to some random service like Backblaze even if I have duplicate storage, I don't trust myself enough to do everything properly.

The idea isn't new, I have already seen a few online (I remember of two but no links). The focus was more around hacker&friend groups, looking like private tilde clubs. Here the idea is to provide services usable by anyone in my family, with a nice identity (I like seeing it as an island, a village or such).

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#48

Post by tleb_ »

indigochill wrote: post #27
tleb_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are cool when you live in the CLI. My mom doesn't though, being part of a small cluster of hackers is cool but not what the internet should be. My goal once I can finance it is to create a virtual island that my family and close friends can rely on for vital services: emails, file hosting, calendar, contacts, a public web space, etc. If every hacker did this for its close circle the impact would be far greater…

Is financing this sort of thing for a small circle expensive? I would (naively) think it's ~$5/month for a DigitalOcean droplet (adjust for your preferred hosting service) and maybe a bit more if you want a domain name (probably, if it's for non-technical family). But I haven't looked into it in much depth myself. Still a great goal, though, and I'd like to do the same at some point.

My answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137787

The big things to consider are file storage, redundancy and long-term stability (availability for emails).

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#49

Post by Pelic4n »

andy_ppp wrote: post #40
echelon wrote: post #3

> "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" No. No no no no no. This isn't right. The modern Internet is such sellout. It didn't turn out anything like what I'd hoped. Bittorrent, semantic tagging, RSS, decentralized aggregation. Ownership . All dead or dying. These companies are all gobbling up the commons and pushing us into serfdom. Apple, Google, the RIAA. The whole lot of them have poached a…

It's a good point about 50% of profits; that 30% revenue share is crazy - even the government don't attempt to tax businesses on their revenue... Depending on the business 30% could make the whole enterprise operate at a loss, for example selling audiobooks or media or other real world products.

>even the government don't attempt to tax businesses on their revenue...

Everywhere around the world countries have figured out that was a good idea and have implemented a VAT. Amazon pays more taxes in my country than in the US lmao.

Re: Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

#50

Post by echelon »

mettamage wrote: post #23
echelon wrote: post #3

> "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" No. No no no no no. This isn't right. The modern Internet is such sellout. It didn't turn out anything like what I'd hoped. Bittorrent, semantic tagging, RSS, decentralized aggregation. Ownership . All dead or dying. These companies are all gobbling up the commons and pushing us into serfdom. Apple, Google, the RIAA. The whole lot of them have poached a…

You made me realize there's such a thing as "internet citizenship". Thank you. It's partially my responsibility as an informed "computer citizen" that I play a role in the internet I'd like to see.

> "internet citizenship"

> "computer citizen"

I like these phrases a lot.

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