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A simple web we own

rsdoiel.github.io

181–190 of 240 posts

Re: A simple web we own

#181
post #4

> I publish this site via GitHub Pages service for public Internet access A whole post about not needing big corporations to publish things online, and then they use Microsoft to publish this thing online...

But Github's publishing is at least _highly_ portable. You could move the same web site to a vanilla nginx setup on some random domain. The nice part here is that you can update your site via git version control, and have easy rollback etc... assuming you can deal with git. I don't think it's such a problem to have big corporations involved in your publishing efforts; the problem is when they lock users in with propr…

You can publish anywhere with git, it doesn't even need to be Github or a Git host, it can be a shared hosting account or your own server. There is literally no value add that Github offers in this regard other than visibility and implied cred with the tech community. No big corporations need to be involved.

Re: A simple web we own

#182

one note. Even when we all wrote html most people still used a bigco to host it. Maybe if you go back far enough you can say you don't think regional ISPs are "big" but those companies are all gone now

> Even when we all wrote html most people still used a bigco to host it.

If you consider Geocities, Tripod or Angelfire (or your local ISP) "bigcos" I guess. It is true that most people didn't host from their own servers and at one point all of those free hosts forced ad banners on your pages but it still doesn't seem like the same thing.

Re: A simple web we own

#183
What's the article is missing: this is directly related to the complexity of file formats and protocols.

There are 2 webs:

- the web site, to serve noscript/basic (x)html, namely basic HTML forms which can be augmented with and nowadays, namely it serves web _pages_. It was made super modular, you have browsers not handling CSS, and it is fine for _pages_ with a semantic 2D table (implicit navigation even for braille browsers). Web engines there, are more than reasonable to write an alternative of, even a plain CSS renderer (look at netsurf browser), only text (lynx/edbrowse/etc), graphic (links2/elinks/etc). In the end, 'HTML' is not perfect (like CSS), a bit of a mess actually, that's why they tried an XML representation, a failure because it was literaly sabotaged by... "Big Co" or in the web realm, the 'whatng cartel': I remember their web engines were a pain to use xhtml to develop even a simple page... but not with html... curiously. That said, mistakes were made also on the "w3c" side: the 'semantic web', a real abomination of delirious complexity, which I think is what actually made people jump on the "whatng" train, what a disaster. Now, HTML has been back with its weird(shabby?) parsing, but this was kind of 'cleaned up' and much more rigorously defined.

- the web app: the abomination. Basically, only gigantic and insanely complex software can make a web app work (including their SDK), aka only the web engines from Big Co, here 'the whatng cartel'. It is getting worse, it is said web apps are more and more requiring only one web engine to 'properly work' (often gogol blink), and suspicions are very strong at this is made _on purpose_ (I remember the day when gmail.com did disable their noscript/basic (x)html web interface... then POP3 not a long time ago... I guess you all see where this is going). In this realm, there is near ZERO possibility to create a _real-life_ alternative without a bunch a developers laser focused on that for one billion years. I have been wishing for an alternative web engine I could build from source with a simple SDK, does not exist, and even the few attempts here and there are _not_ doing that: they lean towards super complex syntax computer languages (c++ and similar), hence a failure right from the start.

The 'web3'? A lean javascript engine (for instance quickjs, but there are others), with a small set of OS basic abstraction APIs, and a few 'accelerated' specialized APIs (vector drawing, pixel drawing blitter, video decoding, glyph drawing, etc). First problem: nobody will agree an those interfaces (they would have to be as simple as possible), and the 'whatng cartel' will make sure their are useless...

Or a even simpler "HTML" (probably the same with CSS)? "markdown" like the article suggest? Would it have enough expressive power? Again, nobody will agree on the format and will want to make its own.

A good middle ground is to work with a 'subset' of HTML: rought on the edge, but would do a good enough job for nearly all online services out-there, whatever the platform. Nearly 100% of the online services were running on that a few years back, and with and , it could be even closer than 100% nowadays.

And there is the danger of the 'mobile app only': there, the only way out is to regulate and enforce the availability of a small, stable in time, set of as simple as possible protocols and file formats to allow reasonable efforts at developping an 'app' for an alternative platform (elf/linux, *BSD, fooOS, etc).

Re: A simple web we own

#184
My concern is that when we succeed making "our own web" popular, the Big Cos will lobby for legislation that would put burden on all operators, such that it would be unreasonably costly for small operators but easy for themselves to meet. Probably under disguise of "think of the children". Besides technology we'd need a strong organization advocating for "our own web".

Re: A simple web we own

#185
> think when a significant number of individuals and cooperatives own the hardware and uses simpler software we can impact the Web and Internet in a positive way. That's my hypothesis.

this man lives away with the fairies. i need read not a single word more

Re: A simple web we own

#186
post #72

As someone who is roughly in the same age group as the author and who was running a BBS, has witnessed the rise of IP4 networks, HTTP, Mosaic etc. let me provide a counter-point. The democratization ends at your router. Unless you are willing to lay down your own wires - which for legal reasons you most likely won't be able to do, we will hopelessly be dependent on the ISP. (Radio on free frequencies is possible and…

> In short: there's no hope of getting a world-wide, free, uncensored, unlimited IP4/6 network back. We never had it in the first place. We can build such a society. I am not sure why you think this is never possible. People can work for a better world. That sometimes works, too.

who pays for it then?

Re: A simple web we own

#187
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kumbaya is never a motivator. Now, self-interest, on the other hand...

Kumbaya is also a form of self-interest. We're still very much self-interested, it's just that we can see a tiny bit further into the future and realize that we need to better our surroundings in order to live the life we want.

> it's just that we can see a tiny bit further into the future and realize that we need to better our surroundings in order to live the life we want.

except we cant agree exactly HOW the new utopia should be and we end up splintering into two groups at loggerheads, fighting each other and back to square one, talking about how if we just followed someone else idea of a utopia we would have to fight all the time. dream on

Re: A simple web we own

#188
post #4

> I publish this site via GitHub Pages service for public Internet access A whole post about not needing big corporations to publish things online, and then they use Microsoft to publish this thing online...

I think the point the author is trying to make is more so about these mini networks on their own LAN, which their family uses. (And maybe dreaming of a neighbourhood utility LAN as a middle ground between LAN in your house and WAN as just a trunk to a big ISP node) The full quote is - A Raspberry Pi 3B+ with a 3 gigabyte hard drive setup as a "server" (makes this site available on my home network[9]) - I publish this…

hes like these off-gridders that use iphones.... larping some kind of self-sufficieny, whilst being firmly tied to industrialised society and completely unwilling to sever the link

Re: A simple web we own

#189

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?

> Why did ISPs stop with this service? Was it to curb illegal file sharing?

why dont you replace it with petabytes of free hosting for people, along with the bandwidth to serve it? moneys obviously no obstacle to you

Re: A simple web we own

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is hope. It's not only possible, but it is likely and is already underway. DNS can be replaced. IPv4/v6 can be replaced. We just need to build a layer on top that ignores the access controls of the underlying layer (the Internet), then replace the underlying layer altogether with new infrastructure. There will be more efforts like this: https://yggdrasil-network.github.io Those who want control over other peopl…

First step to have a protocol that depends on mass adoption to be useful: choose an unpronounceable name

[yɡˌdrasilː]
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