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Home Loss File System

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Re: Home Loss File System

#81

Post by meshweaver »

jijikuya wrote: post #51

I'm on the other side of the planet so it's not my place to comment on the content of any of this. It seems to look like a good resource clearly made with the best of intentions. I understand the people/person behind this wants to quickly and easily impart information, so the best format for the job is whichever one they can distribute info in as quickly as possible -- but I also see this as a sort of indictment of t…

The plot thickens.

At the time of writing this, the linked-to Google Sheet redirects to an html-only view with this message: "Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file." In this html-only view, while the user can still see the entire list of sheets at the top, in-document links to other sheets do not work, and some text overflows its cell and is not visible.

Most important information appears to be visible still, but those who wish to add to or edit the document seem to be out of luck.

What went wrong? Perhaps each Google Sheet has access throttling, not ideal for users of high-traffic docs like this, especially if the users have critical information to share.

And yet, what other tool should they have used?

We need collaborative, easily-shareable, WYSIWYG document editors for situations just like this, except of course, their access should not be throttled, and their content should be discoverable by search engines.

Do we need a new web? A web whose content is able to be directly manipulated? A web that is collaborative by default?

Re: Home Loss File System

#82

Post by wruza »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #73
wruza wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning is the last thing they want to do in a situation like “I want to update a document about losing homes”, and among the end of the to do list in general. One can argue as much as they want how it’s people’s fault, but the next catastrophe will create more google sheets and whatsapp groups and zero wikis and forum threads. I believe that developers could bridge this gap easily, if they weren’t in the denial abo…

I'm speaking more broadly, not this specific instance. In either case, justifying unwillingness to learn is a race to the bottom. I don't want every app to be made targeted at the lowest common denominator -- nor do I think it is healthy for society -- in terms of digital literacy. That's a race to the bottom to every app being like Tiktok. Remember, that Gen Z doesn't understand what a directory or a file is because…

This is a slippery slope style argument with immediate overstretching into tiktok.

There’s a difference between learning google sheets and learning markdown.

And you are misinterpreting the desire to not deal with irrelevant complexity as some race to the bottom, as if it wasn’t constrained by the task itself.

The task of both wiki and google suite (in this case) is to create web documents with formatting and links. We clearly see what wins when there’s no additional constraints that wikipedia as a project imposes. Tiktok is completely incomparable to these and is not the “minimum state” of the same task.

This type of thought process of making everything as streamlined as possible is why that happens.

This is just an incomplete thought. Multiple factors at play here and only one of these is a type of thought process. This is as unreasonable as saying “attention to details is bad cause it’s a type of thought process that allows burglars to enter homes”.

Re: Home Loss File System

#83

Post by jasode »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #74
tempworkac wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

strange comment - this should be a website that would presumably be hosting, where exactly? the average person would not be able to make something even close to this sheet. where are they going to host it? do they have a domain? certs? do they even know how to write html? css? during a spiky event such as a wildfire, will their website even stay up?

I don't think it's strange at all. Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites?

>Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites?

A non-tech user prompting ChatGPT to write out HTML+CSS+Javascript still doesn't cover the other logistical challenges of hosting it on a server somewhere. E.g. Buy a domain? Then buy web hosting package? Or use Netlify? Amazon S3?

Maybe someday OpenAI will have AI agents with authority to pay with customers' credit-cards and opens Cloudflare or DigitalOcean accounts on the users' behalf. That's a long time into the future where such a workflow would be trusted by non-technical end users. And then you still have the irony of using another proprietary entity of AI to empower users to put up web pages.

Whether the internet was 1990s Geocities or something like Github Pages today, a user sharing content on a personal webpage is not a trivial task. So non-techies compensate with commercial services such as MySpace pages, Twitter tweets, Facebook pages, or examples like this thread's Google Docs spreadsheet. A common theme of all those commercial services is: they handled the complexities of web hosting.

EDIT reply: >I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people

No, you misinterpreted. I was trying to get techies to empathize with typical end users and understand the reasons why they don't host their own web pages. If that empathy was fully internalized, we'd already predict that a ChatGPT-CoPilot assisted HTML tool isn't the only issue. The gp you replied to highlighted that in his first paragraph.

I have true admiration and not contempt for the end users at this charity using Google Spreadsheets to empower themselves to share a doc without waiting for a "real programmer or webmaster" to do it for them.

>Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere,

What's the current best answer for "website for free somewhere" that doesn't have the same criticism of being a proprietary entity that this subthread's gp was lamenting?

Re: Home Loss File System

#84

Post by the_sleaze_ »

jasode wrote: post #83
the_sleaze_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's strange at all. Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites?

>Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites? A non-tech user prompting ChatGPT to write out HTML+CSS+Javascript still doesn't cover the other logistical challenges of hosting it on a server somewhere . E.g. Buy a domain? Then buy web hosting package? Or use Netlify? Amazon S3? Maybe someday OpenAI will have AI agents with authority to pay with customers' credit-cards and opens Cloudflare or Di…

I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people and their problem solving ability.

Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere, and do the same for any logistical challenges that arise beyond that?

Re: Home Loss File System

#85

Post by dxdm »

Over2Chars wrote: post #32
dbtc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, you started it.

I mentioned it, true. I declined to participate. Shall we have a meta discussion?

Go for it. I'd be interested to read along your meta discussion, but I would not want to participate in one. :]

Re: Home Loss File System

#86

Post by rlpb »

xelxebar wrote: post #45
nomilk wrote: post #34

Great advice, especially in the second tab (how to deal with insurers). I've always considered insurance false-economy and avoided it wherever possible, especially for events with losses For example, if my flight were cancelled, I might lose $1000. But all the hassle signing up for, monitoring (to ensure conditions don't change significantly in the insurer's favour; often conveyed by an email to a spam folder), and g…

Insurance can actually be a win-win if you keep your money sitting anywhere else other than a literal piggy bank. Basically, it takes just as much time for your investments to go from 10,000 USD to 50,000 USD as it does for 50,000 USD to go to 250,000 USD. So a setback of 5,000 USD has a disproportionate impact on your future financials the less money you start off with. In other words, if your total wealth is low en…

Another advantage of insurance is that if your insurer is responsible for the rectification then you benefit from collective bargaining at a time when you may be unable to do so yourself.

For example, if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere at 3am, I expect I'll end up paying far more for recovery were I self-insured than a breakdown insurer will.

I think the article you linked is flawed because it presents a mathematical solution without taking this into account.

Re: Home Loss File System

#87

Post by lelandbatey »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #84
jasode wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wouldn't this be a near perfect use-case for AI generated websites? A non-tech user prompting ChatGPT to write out HTML+CSS+Javascript still doesn't cover the other logistical challenges of hosting it on a server somewhere . E.g. Buy a domain? Then buy web hosting package? Or use Netlify? Amazon S3? Maybe someday OpenAI will have AI agents with authority to pay with customers' credit-cards and opens Cloudflare or Di…

I feel like this response contains within it a great deal of contempt for average people and their problem solving ability. Could you not just ask an LLM how one could host this website for free somewhere, and do the same for any logistical challenges that arise beyond that?

People could do that. Or they can click "new doc" in Docs, start typing, then copy the URL and send it to a friend. Look at that, they published a page, no problem solving necessary. Thus people, no matter their ability, will probably default to that approach.

I don't think it's a value judgement to say one thing is easier than another and hence people will. Choose the easier thing.

If we want more folks to use and build websites, it needs to be Google-Docs level easy, otherwise people will use Google Docs.

Re: Home Loss File System

#89

Post by entropicdrifter »

meshweaver wrote: post #81
jijikuya wrote: post #51

I'm on the other side of the planet so it's not my place to comment on the content of any of this. It seems to look like a good resource clearly made with the best of intentions. I understand the people/person behind this wants to quickly and easily impart information, so the best format for the job is whichever one they can distribute info in as quickly as possible -- but I also see this as a sort of indictment of t…

The plot thickens. At the time of writing this, the linked-to Google Sheet redirects to an html-only view with this message: "Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file." In this html-only view, while the user can still see the entire list of sheets at the top, in-document links to other sheets do not work, and some text overflows its cell and is not visible. Most important information appears…

Perhaps some sort of Fediverse Google Docs/Sheets equivalent? Where each user can host their own copy (if they want) and the pub/sub algorithm ensures that it's all eventually consistent, if higher latency than something inherently centralized like Google?

Re: Home Loss File System

#90

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

nicbou wrote: post #60
jijikuya wrote: post #51

I'm on the other side of the planet so it's not my place to comment on the content of any of this. It seems to look like a good resource clearly made with the best of intentions. I understand the people/person behind this wants to quickly and easily impart information, so the best format for the job is whichever one they can distribute info in as quickly as possible -- but I also see this as a sort of indictment of t…

The same thing happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Berlin, the entire effort to support refugees was coordinated on WhatsApp and Telegram, backed by Google Docs. It still did a marvelous job until the authorities could catch up and prepare resources. Even then the unofficial resources were far better. I run an information website for a living. There is nothing I could have done that would have beat the…

A potential problem with a website in a wartime scenario is that once you publicize it, it has a huge target painted on its RJ45 (or SFP) ports. Google Docs and whatsapp are huge and resilient.
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