Amazon Cognito • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Cognito

#161

Post by kentonv » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

tdaltonc wrote: post #93

amirmc wrote: post #34

The interesting thing about all these services is that they're trying to abstract away the same types of problems that all developers come across: Identity, connectivity, sync/backup (and to some extent, deployment). A different (and more disruptive?) approach to this would be to put more control of these things into the hands of end-users such that they provide the 'backend' into which you (the developer) load your…

I'm really intrigued by this model of internet infrastructure. Would you mind helping me understand the relevant difference between what you, Sandstorm[1], and OpenPDS[2] are doing? [1] https://sandstorm.io/ [2] http://openpds.media.mit.edu/

(Sandstorm author here.)

Based on a brief skim of the Mirage docs, it looks like a really big difference between Mirage and Sandstorm is that Mirage wants apps to be written in OCaml based on a custom API whereas Sandstorm builds of Linux. Any server app that runs on Linux should be easy to port into Sandstorm, but it seems like a lot of things will need to be written from scratch on Mirage.

In fact it appears Mirage intends to replace the kernel entirely. I can certainly see the appeal of dumping legacy baggage, but it's going to take quite a bit of work to reach the point of practicality.

Re: Amazon Cognito

#162

Post by orandolabs » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 10:34 PM UTC

In response to this announcement, Orando Labs (https://orandolabs.com) has decided to offer EnduroSync and Identio with open source licenses and as paid AMI instances. We believe we have a unique solution to some difficult problems (identity and syncing), and want to see our solutions widely adopted. Read more at http://orandolabs.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/amazon-cognito

Re: Amazon Cognito

#163

Post by rpdillon » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 4:46 PM UTC

amirmc wrote: post #34

The interesting thing about all these services is that they're trying to abstract away the same types of problems that all developers come across: Identity, connectivity, sync/backup (and to some extent, deployment). A different (and more disruptive?) approach to this would be to put more control of these things into the hands of end-users such that they provide the 'backend' into which you (the developer) load your…

This sounds quite similar to what the (now more-or-less defunct) Singly was trying to accomplish. Having talked to a former employee about it at some length, the TL;DR is that 1) the technology and ideas are cool and 2) uptake was disappointing. That said, execution matters more than ideas when it comes to success.

Re: Amazon Cognito

#164

Post by amirmc » Thu, Jul 17, 2014, 11:47 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #161

tdaltonc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really intrigued by this model of internet infrastructure. Would you mind helping me understand the relevant difference between what you, Sandstorm[1], and OpenPDS[2] are doing? [1] https://sandstorm.io/ [2] http://openpds.media.mit.edu/

(Sandstorm author here.) Based on a brief skim of the Mirage docs, it looks like a really big difference between Mirage and Sandstorm is that Mirage wants apps to be written in OCaml based on a custom API whereas Sandstorm builds of Linux. Any server app that runs on Linux should be easy to port into Sandstorm, but it seems like a lot of things will need to be written from scratch on Mirage. In fact it appears Mirage…

You can look through the ACM article to get a good overview [1]. Yes, it's taken a lot of work to get to this point and there's more to go. In order to enable a fully decentralised system, we need to understand and tackle the basic problems that all developers face, which is more involved than just Mirage (as described in my comment above).

All the code is also fully open source under a permissive license [2].

[1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628

[2] https://github.com/mirage/

Re: Amazon Cognito

#165

Post by amirmc » Thu, Jul 17, 2014, 11:53 PM UTC

elliottpayne wrote: post #146

quadrangle wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> time and again we've shown that those are not things consumers want or are willing to pay for CITATION please. I think we have never seen such things. We've not had studies that control for all other factors and then conclude that users don't want control and privacy. I think your claim is flat out wrong. You're taking the fact that most users won't sacrifice by using a lower-quality, obscure thing for privacy and…

I would look towards the trajectory of Path, and the fate of app.net for your evidence of the preferences of end users vis-a-vis paying a premium for privacy and security relative to free alternatives that make no such claims (Facebook and Twitter, respectively).

Please don't assume that a lock-in based on network effects must mean users are happy with (or even aware of) that trade. I don't like FB's practices, or the way LinkedIn deals with me, yet I maintain profiles on both sites.

Twitter was unambiguously non-private from the start so there were no broken expectations.

Re: Amazon Cognito

#166

Post by amirmc » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 12:00 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #89

amirmc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, users care about this but like most things you have to segment the market appropriately. I meet more and more people who are wary of putting all their trust/data/etc into only one provider, be that Google, Apple or anyone else. It's not just a privacy thing but a growing awareness of the sheer dependency on that one company. (Aside: I have to say FB is being pretty clever by buying up apps and letting them stay…

> I meet more and more people who are wary of putting all their trust/data/etc into only one provider, be that Google, Apple or anyone else. I'd be wary of assuming from this data point that people are willing to be even slightly inconvenienced for it. Just take a look at Facebook: the entire history of the company has been one of disrespecting and subsequently pissing off users, and yet out of the huge amount of peo…

This is what I meant further up thread when I mentioned segmenting the market. I don't believe everyone will move to a new solution but I do believe that some will. I also believe that the first users will be the technical ones who already understand the trade-offs and that there's a continuum of inconvenience that they'd be willing to endure (I'm lazy, so I won't tolerate much).

For example, think of the number of people who maintain their own static websites, either on GitHub or EC2 or elsewhere. All those people could just use Tumblr or Wordpress.com, yet they chose not to.