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Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#131

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

hutrdvnj wrote: post #114
erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

There’s still no good way for me to write an open source web application and have its users bear the cost of running it. This is a major regression from open source desktop software, and IMO is the reason open source web applications haven’t taken off more.

I think we need something like micro payments. Take lichess for example it's the biggest open source chess website completely ad free and runs by donations. If you divide the total monthly costs to run the servers by the number of games and you get a tiny fraction of a dollar cent. I don't remember the exact number, but it has been in the order of 1k chess games equals 1$. If you could charge 0.1 cent per game, then…

A model that is similar to donations that I feel has not been fully explored is charging for cosmetic items. Reddit essentially does this now by allowing people to buy reddit gold, silver, or other awards.

This revenue model has turned out to be quite profitable in gaming and creates an experience where most people can use the software for free but a long tail of users spend lots of money to have icons next to their name or elsewhere on the site.

For chess you can imagine how this might work, for other software it is not always as clear.

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#132

Post by nopenopenopeno »

bick_nyers wrote: post #26
whistl034 wrote: post #15

I think solving the "last mile" problem in the US is our greatest problem, especially in rural areas. Too many state and local governments have been paid off by lobbyists to pass laws to block any competition from offering cheaper and better options. Too many people are stuck with slow, expensive, and unreliable cable and/or DSL ISPs. Some have no choice whatsoever. Some others get to choose only from two equally awf…

What I don't quite understand is how these rural areas got electricity. If it's so expensive to run something to a rural area, who ate the cost of providing grid access? Or is cable/fiber just significantly more expensive per mile compared to electricity?

The New Deal electrified America.

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#133

Post by matkoniecz »

thorgutierrez wrote: post #107
erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

There’s still no good way for me to write an open source web application and have its users bear the cost of running it. This is a major regression from open source desktop software, and IMO is the reason open source web applications haven’t taken off more.

One of my big realization of 2021 is that this is exactly what blockchains can provide. You can have permanent hosting of your website on Arweave[1] and interactions with the website could save your state on Ethereum or similar. You pay once to host the website, and then it's free to browse and users pay whenever they want to change the state (e.g. post something on your website). Ethereum is like this big world comp…

How large is ETH overhead? I expect it to be atrociously massive.

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#134

Post by jrockway »

whistl034 wrote: post #15

I think solving the "last mile" problem in the US is our greatest problem, especially in rural areas. Too many state and local governments have been paid off by lobbyists to pass laws to block any competition from offering cheaper and better options. Too many people are stuck with slow, expensive, and unreliable cable and/or DSL ISPs. Some have no choice whatsoever. Some others get to choose only from two equally awf…

I think it's a problem even in urban areas. A friend of mine is working on something called Flume: https://www.flumeinternet.com/ Their funding model (at least right now) is basically to serve customers where the government will pay for it. Many of their customers are getting home broadband for the first time in their life. (They remark that it's fun when their friends come over and they can give them the wifi password.) This is all happening in New York City; some people are getting Internet access for the first time in their lives, in the largest city in the richest country in the world.

I can only imagine how fucked rural America is.

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#135

Post by BlueTemplar »

discardedrefuse wrote: post #125
layer8 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Routers work because ISPs require them. ISPs however aren’t fond of supporting the home server use case. I wish for a world where battery tech wasn’t so limited. Imagine if everyone could just run a full-fledged server 24/7 on their phone, as a simple app, with a reasonable data plan.

> Routers work because ISPs require them. ISPs however aren’t fond of supporting the home server use case. This is the obvious and simplest solution. A built-in self-hosting platform right in the router, extensible with an external USB drive if the user needs it. But ISP's are notoriously terrible at everything and certainly can't be trusted with something like this.

Why not ? Free (for instance) went pretty far in this direction 11 years ago (v6) :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebox

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#136

Post by cheriot »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

There’s still no good way for me to write an open source web application and have its users bear the cost of running it. This is a major regression from open source desktop software, and IMO is the reason open source web applications haven’t taken off more.

A theory: When declarative IaaS gets to a certain point, we can distribute the cloud hosting version of a one-click install. Then use federated auth so people can choose any instance of the app to host their identity.

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#137

Post by dijit »

imiric wrote: post #115
erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

There’s still no good way for me to write an open source web application and have its users bear the cost of running it. This is a major regression from open source desktop software, and IMO is the reason open source web applications haven’t taken off more.

Forget open source—there never was a simple way for users to self-host web ~servers~ applications that gained any traction whatsoever. Opera gave it a go more than a decade ago with Opera Unite, but that went nowhere. Like a sibling comment mentioned, Sandstorm was a push in the right direction, but it also eventually failed. Docker and current container solutions are still way too complicated for the average user. T…

This is a weird take on history and divorced from the reality we live in even now.

The first ever web browser written by Tim Berners Lee at CERN on a NeXt computer was a web editor as well.

He envisioned that every web user would be a web creator. He is quoted many times as saying this.

Today: you can still stand up a web server at your house and forward the ports on your router. Unless you’re behind a carrier grade NAT (as those are becoming much more common now that IPv4 is exhausted).

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#138

Post by zzzzzzzza »

hutrdvnj wrote: post #114
erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

There’s still no good way for me to write an open source web application and have its users bear the cost of running it. This is a major regression from open source desktop software, and IMO is the reason open source web applications haven’t taken off more.

I think we need something like micro payments. Take lichess for example it's the biggest open source chess website completely ad free and runs by donations. If you divide the total monthly costs to run the servers by the number of games and you get a tiny fraction of a dollar cent. I don't remember the exact number, but it has been in the order of 1k chess games equals 1$. If you could charge 0.1 cent per game, then…

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220127005808/en/Fed...

still has a 5.5 cent overhead but that's a lot better than whats currently on offer

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#139

Post by JaimeThompson »

jsz0 wrote: post #29
bick_nyers wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't quite understand is how these rural areas got electricity. If it's so expensive to run something to a rural area, who ate the cost of providing grid access? Or is cable/fiber just significantly more expensive per mile compared to electricity?

As a society we had a much higher tolerance for risk when the electrical grid was being built. We were perfectly fine with the idea some people would die building it and some people would get electrocuted using it. The world we live in now has much lower tolerance for risk. You can't even screw a wall mount bracket in without carrying liability insurance.

A major reason for needing to have so much liability insurance in the United States is the insane cost of our medical care.

Re: Ask HN: What are the next internet infra problems?

#140

Post by MrDresden »

hutrdvnj wrote: post #114
erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

There’s still no good way for me to write an open source web application and have its users bear the cost of running it. This is a major regression from open source desktop software, and IMO is the reason open source web applications haven’t taken off more.

I think we need something like micro payments. Take lichess for example it's the biggest open source chess website completely ad free and runs by donations. If you divide the total monthly costs to run the servers by the number of games and you get a tiny fraction of a dollar cent. I don't remember the exact number, but it has been in the order of 1k chess games equals 1$. If you could charge 0.1 cent per game, then…

The micro donations idea kind of exists for the use case you mention in the form of the service Flattr.
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