> How about Visit my distributed website at http://198.199.80.174/ FTFY. DNS is a centralized service.
DNS is HIGHLY distributed (more so than SMTP)
Distributed Everything
31–40 of 121 posts
Re: Distributed Everything
#32Recently I've been fascinated by the concept of individuals having a "private cloud" service - a server that they own or rent, which has all the data that an individual could hope to have centralized, contains APIs and UI for remote access from client devices, and acts as the middleman for most transactions with the outside world.
The beauty of this is that if it were developed as a unified system, minimal tinkering would be necessary for a layman user. A preinstalled, auto-updating OS would do the heavy lifting - we're aiming for a situation where a bare minimum of configuration becomes necessary. Once configuration is done, all the user needs to know to reach _all_ of their data is a URL and a password. The server itself can (ultimately) become the identity service for all remote accounts.
It has a straightforward progression of development and adoption, too. Create a web app that kludges together some messaging, identity, and storage solutions - the stuff needed to do this at an 80% level already exists, for the most part. Package it into an image installable on a VPS. Subsequently, make native apps for the client devices, or adapt existing ones, to match the experience of Dropbox/GTalk/etc. Last, build a hosting service or sell hardware tailored around simplifying the configuration process, providing backups, etc. As you get further into the adoption process, more and more possibilities to reclaim data open up, since you'll hit the critical masses necessary to push new protocols into the system.
Re: Distributed Everything
#33I find it funny that the author chose to publish this on medium. Had he not, would I have ended up reading it? Which is better, reaching a large audience with mild incitement which is tolerated by the censors, or being able to be as provocative as you wish, but remaining unread?
Non issue, I and most people here I think read the article because we found the link here on the front page. Not because the author used Medium.
Re: Distributed Everything
#34Let me mention https://nightweb.net
Nightweb connects your Android device or PC to an anonymous, peer-to-peer social network. You can write posts and share photos, and your followers will retrieve them using BitTorrent running over the I2P anonymous network. It is still experimental and not well-tested, but the goal is to have uncensorable, untraceable communication and file-sharing on mobile devices and PCs.
Also, posting this on Independence Day just feels right.
Re: Distributed Everything
#35He is missing an important point here that is well illustrated by his coffee metaphor: I don't go to Starbucks, but I don't make my espresso drinks at home either -- I go to smaller coffee shops for two things: convenience, which he acknowledges, and what he ignores -- specialized expertise. I could spend time learning how to make a good latte or mocha at home, but right now I don't want to; I have better things to d…
distribution doesn't necessarily mean doing everything yourself. imagine a world where you picked a service to publish your blog posts on, and your readers could choose what service they read those posts on. the publish and read services could be totally different, just as long as they are interoperable (for the sake of argument, let's call this compatibility layer "RSS"). if you don't want keywords like bitcoin filtered out of your posts, you just have to choose a publishing service that allows it. if your readers want to read posts about bitcoin, they have to choose a reader service that allows that. neither your choice nor theirs impacts anybody but the person making the choice.
if you use a centralized service, your choice of service impacts your readers. you are making decisions for your whole network, not just for yourself. the problem isn't htat some services suck, the problem is that when you choose a service that sucks, you are implicitly promoting that shittiness through the network effect. decentralization solves this.
Re: Distributed Everything
#36Why is Mailchimp filtering 'bitcoin'? That was one of the most shocking parts of the article for me. (Which is a sad point in itself, that I almost expect many of the other things mentioned. But that innocent Chimp filtering out a word that the valley loves right now? Strange.)
Re: Distributed Everything
#37The founding fathers set up America as a distributed system. It's no accident that as the federal government has taken more power from the states that it has gone to shit.
I think there needs to be a strong balance. For example, I think the "centralization" of EU has been great for unifying citizens across the continent, unifying trade, making it easy to travel and work in other countries, and perhaps the most important aspect - stopping European wars. So far it seems like a pretty democratic system, and the laws tend to be much better, and with a lot more common sense than the ones be…
Removing barriers is a good thing. So removal of trade tariffs and border checks and visas within EC is a good thing.
Centralized rule is usually less beneficial, to say the least. Besides adding another layer of bureaucrats that need to be fed, it removes diversity. If, for instance, you think that legalization of marijuana in Netherlands is a good thing, imagine a EC directive that overrlues this decision.
The most historically successful of surviving democracies, Switzerland (850 years of largely uninterrupted democracy) is hugely decentralized, with most decisions made by voting or referenda on municipal or cantonal level. Not coincidentally, it sports huge differences in local laws: e.g. such a basic thing as women suffrage took 25 years to be gradually accepted in all cantons.
If you want a strongly centralized, standardized government, take a look at USSR (late) or China (quite alive).
Re: Distributed Everything
#38The founding fathers set up America as a distributed system. It's no accident that as the federal government has taken more power from the states that it has gone to shit.
I think there needs to be a strong balance. For example, I think the "centralization" of EU has been great for unifying citizens across the continent, unifying trade, making it easy to travel and work in other countries, and perhaps the most important aspect - stopping European wars. So far it seems like a pretty democratic system, and the laws tend to be much better, and with a lot more common sense than the ones be…
A lot of the US have an idealic view of the EU. Funnily enough a lot of people in the UK and current politics have suggested the EU has gone too far and has got parts of it wrong. I tend to agree with them, although unlike them I'd rather not leave.
Don't get caught up with the grass always being greener, we can both be doing better.
Re: Distributed Everything
#39Recently I've been fascinated by the concept of individuals having a "private cloud" service - a server that they own or rent, which has all the data that an individual could hope to have centralized, contains APIs and UI for remote access from client devices, and acts as the middleman for most transactions with the outside world. The beauty of this is that if it were developed as a unified system, minimal tinkering…
Yup, this is the kind of thing I'm working on at the moment and I'm finding that other folks are thinking along similar lines (but taking different approaches). The first application we want to build on top of the underlying 'private cloud' is email.
My viewpoint is that to do this properly, we need to think through things from the ground up with privacy and security built in, otherwise I don't see it as that much better than current systems (you'd just be getting the illusion of security/ownership/etc). It's really not the kind of system that lends itself to the mantra of 'move fast and break things'. Such software would also have to be open-source (to a large extent) so that others can verify security or people can deploy it to their own machines (I'd personally prefer a hosted version, knowing that I can migrate off if I want to).
The question is what kinds of business model can one build around such a product. Would you be willing to pay for such a service? If so, how much and what features would you expect from an early version? Would an app-store model make sense to you?
In any case, if you or anyone else is interested in finding out more about the work (esp alpha releases), feel free to drop me an email (in my profile).
Re: Distributed Everything
#40The real problem with little distributed websites is attention. The same problem websites had since the 90's. How to get indexed by search engines. How to be go to places. Poogle Glus, F *book, Shitter are tools for managing attention. Who is paying attention to you? Random visitors or people from your address/contact book? How easy is it to get? On Facebook everyone can get a few likes. On old websites you dig throu…
Who exactly needs attention, and from whom?
* Businesses. Well, when I want to contact a business, I type its-name-dot-com and get there, usually without fail. Such sites get indexed pretty well, too, so googling for a relevant thing shows them.
* "Top bloggers". They usually maintain their own websites anyway. If not, services like blogger.com and medium.com are OK for them, unless what they post is highly controversial. I suppose they don't get most of their traffic from search engines, but rather from links posted by other people.
* Small-time bloggers aspiring to become top bloggers. I think the reasoning above holds for them.
* People wanting to socialize. Well, yes, they'd like some attention, but probably not from random people who found them on 5th page of search results by a keyword. Here "friend of a friend" contacts usually shine; a P2P network can easily provide them, as social sites try to do (but only friendfeed.com and nightweb.net seem to do enough of that). Otherwise you usually just give a link to your feed to friends and/or relatives.
Commercial advantage is not the only possible engine of creation. E.g. Linux had little commercial advantage in its early years. Eventually, of course, an open technology might be embraced and used for commercial advantage, which is good (lower prices, more openness).
But many people will and do use it for their own advantage and enjoyment of non-commercial nature. Talking with friends (securely and without fear of censorship) may be one of such things.