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Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#191

Post by topspin »

dragontamer wrote: post #22

As far as I'm concerned, the "new web" (Reddit, Twitter, etc. etc.) #1 ability that was not present in "the old web" (USENET, IRC, etc. etc.) is universal identifiers. If a problematic user on Reddits r/news gets banned (spam or whatever), there are admin-level bans that can ban that user at a global level. Allowing unrelated moderators on one subreddit indirectly-help moderate on other subreddits. Shared global iden…

> what is needed is a DNS-like solution for identities

did:dns perhaps: https://danubetech.github.io/did-method-dns/

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#192

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

graypegg wrote: post #18
gregw134 wrote: post #7

Two years ago this is where someone would chime in with a blockchain-based solution, paying moderators with usenetcoin.

Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an economic model, and then drown out everyone with some half-baked tokenomics concept as a way to “solve it all!”. It really felt like a step backwards in critical thinking for pe…

Even so, I wouldn't dismiss using economic incentives as a means of solving many kinds of problems - for example, proof-of-work started-off as an anti-spam initiative (which I feel still has potential), and outside of CS/SE I feel that cap-and-trade is viable approach to help reduce our aggregate carbon output, and so on.

That the blockchain "brand" has been (irrevocably?) damanaged by fools and charlatans doesn't invalidate the potential of using economic-incentives to solve problems: both technical and societal.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#193

Post by topspin »

floren wrote: post #42

I've sketched a few ideas for what you'd need to make Usenet, ah, usable given modern concerns (primarily spam and spoofing). The biggest takeaway in my explorations is: you could probably never really get mass adoption of a Usenet-esque system these days. Oh well. Anyway: I'd start with the basic idea that identities matter. For any given message, you should know what user posted it and from which server. It doesn't…

> given modern concerns (primarily spam and spoofing)

"modern concerns" go way past spam and spoofing.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#194

Post by mortify »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #157
hattmall wrote: post #107

Why not just independent forum sites like 1998-2008. I was a member of 10 or so very specific forums where I could get expert advice very quickly. That is in the rare event that my problem hadn't already been discussed in great detail with highly detailed walk throughs. Then each of those forums had a marketplace where you could buy pretty much anything relevant to that interest at great values with scams being prett…

Since independent forums never went anywhere, you have to ask yourself why Reddit still "won". In other words, if indie forums are so compelling, why didn't they prevent the success of Reddit? Single sign on across a bunch of forums was always a holy grail. Users don't want to register for 10 forums either. I remember EZBoard (a free forum host in the early 2000s) had an EZBoard Gold membership where you paid monthly…

Single sign on to a host of boards is Reddit's power. The ability to share a variety of interests in one place is fantastic, but it assumes the site owner will be open to your interests forever. They aren't and cannot be.

Federated approaches continue to prove themselves to be the most resilient, if not the easiest to use options available.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#195

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

vram22 wrote: post #110
graypegg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an economic model, and then drown out everyone with some half-baked tokenomics concept as a way to “solve it all!”. It really felt like a step backwards in critical thinking for pe…

>Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an ... Like NoSQL some time before that, and GPT / "AI" nowadays.

Those who have never read Edgar Codd's seminal paper on RDBMS are doomed to repeat the sounds-good-if-you-dont-think-about-it-too-much mistakes that NoSQL makes people sleepwalk into - and this will never end because database-theory is always an unpopular elective for CS undergrads (and a very dry, unappealing, subject-matter at that) - everyone wants to do Graphics or NLP or even Haskell instead - and if that's what CS degree-holders are like think about how even less well-prepared (for formal-modelling, etc) that a self-taught or bootcamp attendee would be: my point being that people with the right knowledge are always in the minority in this industry).

I say this isn't new because on the desktop in the 1990s, both Apple and Microsoft's dev platforms included some form of "object storage" based around their respective OLE/COM systems[1] and before then in the 1970s and 1980s it was people building business-systems on AS/400 (going back to the System 360...) where too many people never had a clue how to persist data on-disk (which was the whole impetus for Codd's paper, after-all) - so I think the 2000-2010 years where PHP+MySQL was dominant - and where most of us cut-our-teeth - was the exception: SQL is hard, relational theory is harder, relational calculus is harder-still (I think I got a B grade in that course...).

Non-experts have a very reasonable expectation that platforms should make it straightforward to save and load structured data without needing to spend a year of CS spending hours on exercises about functional-composition, surrogate keys, and decomposing tables to their 6th Normal Form - the embarrassment here isn't the non-experts you might think I'm dunking on, but it's the opposite: I'm very disappointed in the experts: the database-vendors and the platform-vendors, that they haven't solved the object-graph persistence library design problem.

------------

[1]: OLE/COM was for more than just composition, embeddeding Excel worksheets in Word documents and GUI design-tools: COM/OLE also featured a binary object structured storage API ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_Structured_Storage )

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#196

Post by criticall »

mistermann wrote: post #180
ok123456 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about critcoin: a block chain based smart contract that incentivizes critical thinking.

Now you have a new problem: how to accurately identify critical thinking?

Using AI LLM NoSQL low code 4G 6S chain based solution. Use LLM for summary. Then add a critical comment. Then generate summary again. If summary is influenced by comment, and comment is on topic, then comment is critical.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#197

Post by FroshKiller »

Eisenstein wrote: post #163
lelanthran wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reframe the problem as an economic model, Every social problem can be legitimately solved by throwing more money at it[1]. That is, effectively, an economics model. Corollary: Every economic solution can be improved by removing blockchain from it :-) [1] Sometimes you have to throw the money at people who will spread your solution, sometimes you have to throw the money at media to spread the solution, sometimes you…

> Every social problem can be legitimately solved by throwing more money at it[1] What? That famously didn't work with covid.

I don't know what country you live in, but they definitely didn't try that in mine.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#198

Post by slamdoors »

mannyv wrote: post #111

When AOL came to the Internet it was seen as the apocalypse. But really what killed the internet is spam and scammers. They followed the public because that's where the money is. The problem that's fundamental to the Internet is something nobody wants to say, So I will: the people suck. Not everyone deserves a voice. The comment sections on WaPo, the NYT, and DailyKos are just as bad as the worst parts of 4chan. And…

I think you nailed it. There’s two parts: 1) educated users and 2) self-/mod-enforced culture. So far, HN hits both. However, even HN is starting to upvote puns, engage in group-think, etc.

To fix this you must moderate strongly or only allow material that attracts educated individuals.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#199

Post by ChuckMcM »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #172
ChuckMcM wrote: post #79

Yes. But you have to do it in the way that Usenet was built and you may not like that. I was intelca!cem on Usenet. Modem charges (phone calls) weren't free outside the local calling zone, and places like Berkeley (ucbvax) were often "hubs" that could use university resources to move data over longer distances. Every node had all the data, so system administrators had to come up with schemes for what to delete and wh…

> This would be IPV6 based (lots of available addresses) and end to end encrypted. FYI Yggdrasil https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/ already gives you a unique, stable IPv6 with mesh layer encryption for your packets. Likewise a DHT for "subreddit" or topic identity (or even a blockchain for that as naming is one of the few things that can be solved with a blockchain, though as always there are tradeoffs) shouldn't…

> I suspect the hardest part will be building the product experience around this whole system.

I think this is exactly right. Not surprisingly, I wrote up a business plan for this can called out this point. The approach I have advocated in the plan was to appliancize the end node to minimize the back end configuration. Having done this at FreeGate and NetApp I definitely saw the benefit of "install this box, turn it on, and now you have access to this service." as a huge win, both for adoption and for support.

The key then is you install the app, or apt-get the application and securely attach with a button press on the local network. Pick a handle to give to your friends and you're off to the races.

Most of the business plan was around the economics of an open protocol and the ability to make money selling the service installed in a ready-made platform (selling software wrapped in hardware) ala current NAS offerings. Good returns on growth, less so on saturation.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#200

Post by pitched »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #195
vram22 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an ... Like NoSQL some time before that, and GPT / "AI" nowadays.

Those who have never read Edgar Codd's seminal paper on RDBMS are doomed to repeat the sounds-good-if-you-dont-think-about-it-too-much mistakes that NoSQL makes people sleepwalk into - and this will never end because database-theory is always an unpopular elective for CS undergrads (and a very dry, unappealing, subject-matter at that) - everyone wants to do Graphics or NLP or even Haskell instead - and if that's what…

Because I was curious and you didn’t link to it, here is A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks by EF Codd: https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/03f/cis550/codd.pdf
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