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I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

justinjackson.ca

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Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#211

Post by pcthrowaway »

bccdee wrote: post #185
k__ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an educator and right now, I'm evaluating the crypto space. A huge problem here is that it's very fast moving. Take the fast moving Web of the 90s and multiply it by how much more people use the Web today. At Eth Amsterdam I talked to many engineers from that space and didn't get a satisfying answer to many questions devs usually ask about new tech. "Where should you store your data?" - "It depends!" Back in the…

No cryptocurrency or Web3 platforms actually store their data on the blockchain. That would be ludicrously expensive; it'd cost tens of thousands per gig at least. Relational databases, cloud object buckets, and CDNs are pretty much all you should need, storage-wise, unless you're solving an especially interesting problem.

Isn't the data technically stored on-chain with proof-of-space chains?

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#212

Post by WaffleIronMaker »

fartcannon wrote: post #190
eli wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because someone did the work of setting up a server for you, configuring the services, and issuing FTP credentials. That part is now a whole lot cheaper and easier and more secure. It doesn't get much easier than signing up for e.g. Glitch.

Setting up a server is so unbelievably simple that anyone capable of writing software shouldn't blink at the task. The fact that there's a lot of blinking strikes me as profoundly funny.

I mean, it isn't?

Even the simple matter of port forwarding assumes you have access to the router you're using, and that's a major barrier for a lot of people.

I run the programming club at my high school (I'm a high schooler), and we use Github pages to host all of our stuff for this very reason.

I've used some old laptops to run servers within the network, but my school doesn't want us hosting anything public, and running everything through a free tunneling service like localtunnel is possible, but it scales so much better when students can just follow some friendly instructions to host a static site themselves.

It's not hard for the people with the privileges of (1) having a budget > $0 and (2) not having the adults tell you 'no' every time you want to try learn something.

Am I missing something? Even hosting static content on a server seems like a layer of complexity that is frequently unnecessary for basic use-cases.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#213

Post by eli »

fartcannon wrote: post #190
eli wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because someone did the work of setting up a server for you, configuring the services, and issuing FTP credentials. That part is now a whole lot cheaper and easier and more secure. It doesn't get much easier than signing up for e.g. Glitch.

Setting up a server is so unbelievably simple that anyone capable of writing software shouldn't blink at the task. The fact that there's a lot of blinking strikes me as profoundly funny.

In 1999? I mean, I did it, but I didn't think it was easy. Every single step was harder then than it is now.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#214

Post by abrookewood »

Clubber wrote: post #123
abrookewood wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5.25" disks? I can remember waiting ~30 minutes for a game to load on my Commodore 64 from tape, only to have it crash at the last minute. Disks were amazing.

The first program I ever got I typed in from a book. It made a spinning pyramid on a VIC-20. It took hours and hours only for it to disappear when I shut off the computer. Tapes were amazing!

Yes, I recall borrowing books from the library in order to type in the programs. Can't say I recall punch cards, but I'm sure someone around here does.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#215

Post by fartcannon »

WaffleIronMaker wrote: post #212
fartcannon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting up a server is so unbelievably simple that anyone capable of writing software shouldn't blink at the task. The fact that there's a lot of blinking strikes me as profoundly funny.

I mean, it isn't? Even the simple matter of port forwarding assumes you have access to the router you're using, and that's a major barrier for a lot of people. I run the programming club at my high school (I'm a high schooler), and we use Github pages to host all of our stuff for this very reason. I've used some old laptops to run servers within the network, but my school doesn't want us hosting anything public, and…

You just, as you say, follow friendly instructions. It's as easy as reading a page of a manual.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#216

Post by fartcannon »

sporedro wrote: post #149
jerf wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does indeed work fine. The major problem is still finding somewhere to host it, and incurring the still non-trivial risks thereto, since among the many things students want to do with free web space, hosting warez and other things that will get you in trouble quickly is still pretty far up the list. Plus someone has to pay for a domain name or something. If you can get a modern text editor that can use SSH or so…

I think there’s quite a lot of options for static webpages now though. Would GitHub pages not be perfect for this?

Yeah github pages is basically GeoCities with a little extra data farming by Microsoft. Works fine, if you don't mind that.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#217

Post by bccdee »

andai wrote: post #206
bccdee wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No cryptocurrency or Web3 platforms actually store their data on the blockchain. That would be ludicrously expensive; it'd cost tens of thousands per gig at least. Relational databases, cloud object buckets, and CDNs are pretty much all you should need, storage-wise, unless you're solving an especially interesting problem.

So... what's the Web3 part for then?

Branding.

I'm not even joking; everything they do with blockchain can be done cheaper, easier, and just as well without it. They do the minimum they need to to hype themselves up as being "Web3" and that's it.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#218

Post by bccdee »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #211
bccdee wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No cryptocurrency or Web3 platforms actually store their data on the blockchain. That would be ludicrously expensive; it'd cost tens of thousands per gig at least. Relational databases, cloud object buckets, and CDNs are pretty much all you should need, storage-wise, unless you're solving an especially interesting problem.

Isn't the data technically stored on-chain with proof-of-space chains?

Arguably, perhaps, but nobody actually uses those.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#219

Post by piva00 »

0_____0 wrote: post #157
SkipperCat wrote: post #71

Back in the early 2000's, I taught "computers" to a bunch of kids in DC. I first started off with how a computer work; IO, CPU, storage and their eyes glazed over. I quickly ditched that topic and went right to building a web page. Taught them a few HTML tags and they instantly became "webmasters". They were so thrilled. They could create blinking text, could make all the fonts pink. All just by moving around some si…

My first experience of programming was walking up to an Apple II in grade school (this was in the 2000s, those were some old machines) and punching in code listing from a book. The machines didn't do anything when you powered them on, just waited for you to enter code or commands. It was so simple, and it just begged you to start writing programs. Now people talk about getting their kids started with programming, and…

Same way I got interested in programming, except instead of an Apple II (which was prohibitively expensive and rare in Brazil with import substitution in the 90s) I had access to my dad's Gradiente MSX and manuals for BASIC.

When you boot up a MSX it was the same: a straight command line waiting for inputs, learning to command that was quite magical for 8 year-old me and my intro to programming in general.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#220

Post by blueflow »

legutierr wrote: post #186
blueflow wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is a signature, and i use gpg --sign for that.

A digital signature can validate that data has been added by an authorized participant, but it cannot tell you if data has been deleted.

It can, if you sign a hash of the previous node(s) with the contents of the new message. git with signed commits is like this.
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