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Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

martin.kleppmann.com

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Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#41

Post by southerntofu »

Spivak wrote: post #31
adkadskhj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sort of like saying people are okay with cancer because they buy certain plastics in mass. The reality is people are ignorant of what is good for them in a ton of applications, including this one. Only a handful really grasp the context of what is happening with their data and most importantly how their data could affect them. People routinely do things against their own interest. It's up to the other people…

I don't think you're giving people enough credit. It's not exactly a mystery at this point that Facebook/IG make their money by selling access to your information to advertisers. People really just don't care which doesn't make them ignorant and doesn't mean they're wrong to not care. We're the privacy obsessed weirdos. I've been in conversations where people talk about products they "discovered" through IG ads. The…

We may be interested in the deep details/debates the general public has no knowledge about. However i can assure you many people care about their privacy. They're not all ignorant, but they're usually powerless.

Wanna keep in touch with friends? Gotta use facebook. Wanna watch cool videos? Gotta use Youtube. etc.

But there's a very strong movement of non-tech persons for privacy, decentralization and free software/culture. In France, it's best exemplified by the Framasoft association which started from a network of teachers : https://framasoft.org/en/

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#42

Post by Geee »

You can own your data if you use client-side encryption with cloud. When encrypted, you don't have to trust the cloud provider. This opens up new possibilities such as P2P networks with fair pricing, no provider lock-in, equal access and censorship resistance. I'm excited about Sia / Skynet which enables these kind of apps.

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#43

Post by southerntofu »

eternalban wrote: post #21
eternalban wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have no clue as to how computers and networks work. In fact, you may have even interviewed people for software jobs who don't have a solid grasp on these matters. This is good news, as far as system architecture is concerned, as the opinion that matters is principally concerned with utility, convenience, usability, etc. Secondly, the ship may have sailed, but interestingly these ships apparently are generation…

To be constructive here, if you care about these matters and have technical know-how, invest in the future and mentor the younger generation on how to build decentralized systems. Give them knowledge, blue prints, and tools. They'll crack the generational social code on their end.

YES! Though why teach only the young? ;)

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#44

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

josephg wrote: post #24
jasode wrote: post #2

The headline is about the aspiration but not the implementation . Within the contents of the paper, it talks about CRDTs to technically implement it. I'm not familiar with the technical tradeoffs but I bookmarked some past HN threads mentioning CRDT did not fare as well as OT (Operational Transform): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19886883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19847622

Modern CRDTs like Automerge and Yjs should be able to perform basically just as well as an OT based systems (like my own ShareDB) now. I ran some benchmarks using Kleppmann’s approach a few months ago[1] and I think a well implemented crdt should easily be able to do millions of edits/second. The thing that’s holding us back at the moment is the lack of good high performance native implementations of these systems. B…

I assume you are following

https://github.com/automerge/automerge-rs

I'm hoping this matures a bit more in the next months, seems really promising.

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#45

Post by saurik »

Geee wrote: post #42

You can own your data if you use client-side encryption with cloud. When encrypted, you don't have to trust the cloud provider. This opens up new possibilities such as P2P networks with fair pricing, no provider lock-in, equal access and censorship resistance. I'm excited about Sia / Skynet which enables these kind of apps.

That works fine as long as you don't care that advances in computers and cryptography would one day (maybe after you are dead, and likely only with some notable effort) allow someone to read your data and (much more practically) you are extremely confident you can't lose control of your key somehow.

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#46

Post by southerntofu »

endisneigh wrote: post #13

I wish OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. had a notion of a Personal Database File System, PDFS. With PDFS if they all shared the same API then you could build a database ontop of the PDFS that syncs to popular file systems. If both of those things existed you would be able to build apps like LinkedIn such that LinkedIn could just access your PDFS so your profile is actually hosted directly on your PDFS - so if you delete your…

So if it's just about protocol to exchange files, SSH and webdav are the de-facto standards for that (FTP has declining popularity).

If we're talking about the semantics of building desktop applications, then i think you're looking for freedesktop.org, although it quite POSIX-centered.

Higher-level, federated alternatives include ActivityPub (HTTP signatures + JSON ActivityStreams), XMPP (XML stanzas), Solid (HTTP + Linked Data).

All four of these standards could receive extension proposals for more semantics for specific use-cases. However, Microsoft (who owns linked in) and other evil tech-multinationals will never adopt a standard because that would allow competitors to walk on their turf. Remember when gmail.com chat was federated with Jabber/XMPP until Google pulled the plug?

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#47

Post by tmotwu »

josephg wrote: post #24
jasode wrote: post #2

The headline is about the aspiration but not the implementation . Within the contents of the paper, it talks about CRDTs to technically implement it. I'm not familiar with the technical tradeoffs but I bookmarked some past HN threads mentioning CRDT did not fare as well as OT (Operational Transform): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19886883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19847622

Modern CRDTs like Automerge and Yjs should be able to perform basically just as well as an OT based systems (like my own ShareDB) now. I ran some benchmarks using Kleppmann’s approach a few months ago[1] and I think a well implemented crdt should easily be able to do millions of edits/second. The thing that’s holding us back at the moment is the lack of good high performance native implementations of these systems. B…

If javascript/non-native CRDT implementations are responsive enough compared to existing algorithms for collaborative editing like OT, what incentives or cases exist to demand high performance native implementations?

To be clear, I think this is exciting stuff and your article is great. I'm just curious if there are any open research problems in this area that would make them more appealing in production.

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#48

Post by jkepler »

southerntofu wrote: post #41
Spivak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're giving people enough credit. It's not exactly a mystery at this point that Facebook/IG make their money by selling access to your information to advertisers. People really just don't care which doesn't make them ignorant and doesn't mean they're wrong to not care. We're the privacy obsessed weirdos. I've been in conversations where people talk about products they "discovered" through IG ads. The…

We may be interested in the deep details/debates the general public has no knowledge about. However i can assure you many people care about their privacy. They're not all ignorant, but they're usually powerless. Wanna keep in touch with friends? Gotta use facebook. Wanna watch cool videos? Gotta use Youtube. etc. But there's a very strong movement of non-tech persons for privacy, decentralization and free software/cu…

I'm in France, and have met some of the excellent folks who help framasoft with their project to degooglize the Internet.

I know a number of people who dispair, thinking they can't protect their privacy. But gradually, those who know a geek may be moving towards better software, as privacy respecting options with decent UX get developed, and as their FOSS-geek friend or family member patiently points out tools they can actually use.

Re: Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]

#49

Post by camnora »

Local-first software feels underrated especially in the UX realm. Peer-to-peer applications such as Manyverse load instantly due to not being blocked by network requests. My hope is that more apps are developed with a local-first mindset. CRDTs likely introduce additional complexity around data storage, so this would certainly be a drawback when considering local-first.
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