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Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

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Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#181

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

yyyk wrote: post #152
Azsy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $20/mo would have got you enough to get started. What? Have you forgotten what your first time was like? There is a huge difference between thinking: > "I build my first shitty website, if i leave my PC on everybody in the world can use it. Who knows what will happen?" And instead being required to go: > "I'll spend 20$ a month to maybe entertain a couple of people for a couple of minutes by using someone else's ha…

There's a huge difference alright. It was never a good idea to host a public site on one's personal computer with all the sensitive personal data on it where it could be hacked or DDOSed. Even when IPv4 addresses were easy to get it was a very bad idea. When you factor buying a separate server, 20$ a month doesn't sound too bad.

I have a friend who was running a successful dating site over ADSL from a spare PC in a spare bedroom in London. This was in the early 2000s. She sold it a few years later for £££££££s.

This was considered a sophisticated operation because in the late 90s and early 00s basic hosting and email were often included with consumer Internet packages.

Server hacking and DDOSing weren't quite the organised thing they are today.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#182

Post by austincheney »

The web was once diverse, but now it is not.

I would eliminate third party requests for page assets. If you need images, css, js, or such it would come from the same origin as the page that requests it.

1. This would eliminate third party tracking

2. This would eliminate abuse of advertising

3. This would eliminate CDNs and thus force page owners to become directly liable for the bandwidth they waste

4. It would make walled gardens more expensive

—-

I would also ensure that section 230 is more precisely defined such that content portals are differentiated from the technology mechanisms on which such traverse. The idea here is that Section 230 continues to protect network operators, web servers, and storage providers from lawsuits about content but not the website operators that publish such.

1. Sites like Facebook and Twitter would become liable for their users submissions regardless of moderation or not

2. Terms of service agreements would largely become irrelevant and meaningless

3. This would radically increase operational risks for content portals and thus reinforce content self-hosting and thus a more diverse internet

——

I would ensure that identity certificates were free and common from the start.

1. The web would start with TLS everywhere.

2. This would make available models other than client/server for the secure and private distribution of content

3. This would, in joint consideration of the adoption of IPv6, also eliminate reliance upon cloud providers and web servers to distribute personal or social content

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#183

Post by spc476 »

psion wrote: post #40

IPv6 gets mentioned plenty, and I will take the side that it should have been rolled out WAY sooner than it did, and it should have been rolled out in a way that made it easier to do what I call the Apple Method: Just get it out there and the people will adapt to it. DNS is a horrid mess that should have been designed with ease of reading in mind. And I know that DNS was designed way before it, but I think a data tra…

If you read the early RFCs (say, RFC-1000 or earlier) you'll find that FTP was the go-to protocol of the day, much like HTTP has become today.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#184

Post by rvdginste »

psion wrote: post #40

IPv6 gets mentioned plenty, and I will take the side that it should have been rolled out WAY sooner than it did, and it should have been rolled out in a way that made it easier to do what I call the Apple Method: Just get it out there and the people will adapt to it. DNS is a horrid mess that should have been designed with ease of reading in mind. And I know that DNS was designed way before it, but I think a data tra…

> And if we had a new spec for irc, would we need Slack/Discord/MS Teams/etc? They could then all talk to each other. We shouldn't be trying to reinvent the wheel, we should be using these older services in our platforms.

The reason we have all those separate systems is not that there are no alternatives: irc could have evolved with a new spec, but there is also XMPP (Jabber)... The reason is that all those systems like Slack/Discord/MS Teams do not interoperate with each other is that they are developed by companies that need to make money, and they want to force and keep users on their systems.

I think email is the only communication protocol that is still very popular and works across providers. I don't think it will disappear anytime soon. At this point, email providers cannot lock their users into their own system: no one can imagine that you'd be only able to email other gmail accounts from a gmail account or other microsoft accounts from a microsoft account.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#185

Post by DeathArrow »

nlitened wrote: post #136
tbabb wrote: post #128

The "browser" is a blank execution sandbox with a rendering context. The remote server sends programs (using something like WASM) with a standardized ABI. The program can use the rendering context to put stuff on the screen or receive user input. Indexing and page interoperability is done by exposing standard functions which yield the necessary metadata. For example, if you want your site to be indexable by a search…

We already have that. It’s called Java

Java, Silverlight, Flash, Web Assembly.

But the problem is that HTTP is more suited to deliver HTML and browsers were designed primarily to render HTML.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#187

Post by mikewarot »

bruce511 wrote: post #115
mikewarot wrote: post #67

First, you have to secure all the computers. Capability Based Security for everyone. This lets us all run mobile code without danger. (No more virus or worm issues) Next, we use 128 bit IP addresses, 32 bit port and protocol numbers, and absolutely forbid NAT as a way of getting more addresses. (no ip address shortage) Next, all email has to be cryptographically signed by the sending domain using public key encryptio…

>> next, all email has to be cryptographically signed by the sending domain using public key encryption. (No more spam) How does this work? Would every email address need to get a public/private key? From where? Does someone get to control who can use email? How much does it cost? Do the certs expire? How do we manage the system for billions of email addresses? I ask this with genuine interest - I'm not sure how a ce…

If I wanted to send email from mike@warot.com, I'd simply use my DNS specified MX server, and it would sign the outbound email (I'd have to log in, for the email to be forwarded). Any forwarding server could check the signature against the MX specified server and get the public key for the domain. If the signature didn't match, the email would get rejected.

We'd have to agree on standard protocols, but all domains would manage their own keys, nothing would be centralized past the already centralized DNS system.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#188

Post by effie »

kazen44 wrote: post #156
donatj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean why not dream bigger. IPv6 is a mess, the absolute definition of second system syndrome. If I could fix anything, it would be IPv6 itself. The biggest thing preventing it's widespread adoption is it's complicated nature. An IPv4 with an extra octet or two would have seen complete adoption years ago.

how is ipv6 more complicated then ipv4? the friction comes from having to manage two different network stacks at once, not the so called complexity of ipv6. ipv4 is a mess in many ways, ARP for instance, is a disaster once you reach a certain scale and many of the ipv4 header fields are unneeded leading to inefficiencies. multicast on ipv4 is a mess, rfc1918 is a neat idea but ipv6 fixes it in a far better way and ge…

Most people don't care about ipv4 problems, it works. Does ipv6 solves ipv4 problems such as impossibility to extend it in backwards compatible way? Say, I want 256 bit address space... can IPv6 be extended in that way?

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#189

Post by DeathArrow »

zarzavat wrote: post #25
ohCh6zos wrote: post #15

Get rid of most of JS to prevent 'appification' and keep the focus document centered. Edit: I think this would result in protocols over walled gardens. The problem is JS makes HTTP/HTML everything to everyone.

Be careful what you wish for. JS and HTML5 is why we don't have Adobe Flash anymore. There was a whole period in the noughties when web interactivity sucked and so external plugins like Flash, Silverlight and Java applets took up the slack. The alternative to JS is not "no scripting", it's websites that only function with proprietary plugins installed.

It's not about proprietary vs open, it's about not mixing document rendering with code execution.

Should MS Word and Adobe PDF also execute code? Should I only be able to run an application only by executing it in MS Word and Adobe PDF reader?

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#190

Post by DeathArrow »

* A better IRC with security, anonimity, scalability so people don't actually need Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Whatsapp, iChat and tens of other apps just to be able to talk with each other.

* A protocol for running distributed binary apps. Transforming the browser in an operating system sucks for both users and developers.

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