61–70 of 240 posts
The irony of this being fully hosted on GitHub should not be lost. A toaster is sufficient to host a mostly static site, a VPS would be far more than sufficient.
You think you "own" a VPS?
The problem is in the environment but also the user behavior. Unless you can provide a convincing argument to change both by presenting an actual improvement then its farting in the wind
I remember a web when practically every ISP allowed you to have a "home page" hosted with them. Your home page was situated in the "public_html" directory of your home directory on their server — hence the name. Then the URL was http://www. /~ I haven't see an URL with a tilde ('~') in it in a long time. Why did ISPs stop with this service? Was it to curb illegal file sharing?
There use to be lots and lots of ISPs and so they were small enough to have a single webserver with all their customers setup as users and Apache serving content. They'd also setup FTP on the same server so you could get your html files into your www folder. Software like Dreamweaver had a ftp client built in, so you'd click like a "publish" button and it wold login to FTP and transfer your files.
i would imagine this went away because it got expensive as the customer base grew and ISPs consolidated and it made no money. Other options with php, mysql, and other services cropped up and could offer more and charge for it so I think ISPs just preferred to concentrate on network access and not hosting websites.
But I do think we’re reaching a turning point on the software side. The barrier to building custom, personalized apps is trending toward 0. I’m not naive enough to think every grandma will suddenly start asking ChatGPT to “build me an app to do XYZ,” but with the right UX it can be implicit. Imagine you tell an assistant: “My doctor says my blood sugar is high. Research tips to reduce it.” -> it not only replies with tips, it also proactively builds a custom app (that you own and control) for tracking your blood sugar (measurements, meals, reminders, charts, etc.). You can edit it by describing changes (“add a weekly trend graph,” “don’t nag me after 8pm,” etc.).
This doesn’t fully solve your Big Co control issue (they own the flagship models today), but open-weight + local options keep improving. I'm hopeful we have a chance to tip the scales back toward co-owner and participant.
The real barrier was never technical. It was convenience and discovery. Running a Pi at home is trivial for anyone on HN, but the moment you want people to actually find your stuff, you need DNS, a stable IP, and some way to not get buried under the noise. Tailscale and similar overlay networks have made the "accessible from anywhere" part way easier than it used to be. The missing piece is still discovery. RSS was t…
What does “bringing (RSS) back properly” entail in your eyes? It’s still alive. Many sites still use it. Many people still subscribe to those sites. RSS reader apps are still being created to this day.
I enjoyed the article, but I’m skeptical of the “democratize via hardware + networking” path. Most people won’t run a Pi, manage updates/backups, or debug home networking, and that’s fine (as you note). But I do think we’re reaching a turning point on the software side. The barrier to building custom, personalized apps is trending toward 0. I’m not naive enough to think every grandma will suddenly start asking ChatGP…
Does it deploy it as well?
I enjoyed the article, but I’m skeptical of the “democratize via hardware + networking” path. Most people won’t run a Pi, manage updates/backups, or debug home networking, and that’s fine (as you note). But I do think we’re reaching a turning point on the software side. The barrier to building custom, personalized apps is trending toward 0. I’m not naive enough to think every grandma will suddenly start asking ChatGP…
Even this is hard. Most people don't know what they want, and/or they don't know how to describe it/imagine it. They don't even know what a trend graph is.
They just want someone else to do the mental effort of creating a nice product. Hence iOS > android for most people. They don't want to customise basically anything other than colours.
That's why i predict Lovable/replit etc will not go mainstream. And why chatgpt will just offer you their UIs mainly. Artifacts weren't a big hit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it is portable. It is essentially markdown files. You can download your repo, compile the Jekyll to static pages and publish them anywhere. When you publish to Facebook, WordPress etc you can't easily get your stuff out. You will have to process them even if they allow you to download your content as a zip folder. The images will be broken. Links between pages won't work etc.
Facebook provides a data export service which gives you a zip file with a web version of all your content. I’m not sure what the difference is then between that and a Github hosted repository of all your content as a webpage.
I enjoyed the article, but I’m skeptical of the “democratize via hardware + networking” path. Most people won’t run a Pi, manage updates/backups, or debug home networking, and that’s fine (as you note). But I do think we’re reaching a turning point on the software side. The barrier to building custom, personalized apps is trending toward 0. I’m not naive enough to think every grandma will suddenly start asking ChatGP…
> You can edit it by describing changes Even this is hard. Most people don't know what they want, and/or they don't know how to describe it/imagine it. They don't even know what a trend graph is. They just want someone else to do the mental effort of creating a nice product. Hence iOS > android for most people. They don't want to customise basically anything other than colours. That's why i predict Lovable/replit etc…
...And how much brainpower goes into understanding what people like this are getting at when they speak about things. There's a lot of context and human element to this; I'm skeptical AI will be any good at it in the near future.
I enjoyed the article, but I’m skeptical of the “democratize via hardware + networking” path. Most people won’t run a Pi, manage updates/backups, or debug home networking, and that’s fine (as you note). But I do think we’re reaching a turning point on the software side. The barrier to building custom, personalized apps is trending toward 0. I’m not naive enough to think every grandma will suddenly start asking ChatGP…