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Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

ruben.verborgh.org

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Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#101

Post by TheOperator »

thsealienbstrds wrote: post #62
sliken wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when mobile devices were rare, skype used p2p and was very popular and novel. But then an increasing percentage of nodes were mobile with limited power, limited bandwidth, and much less storage. Even being a member of a DHT (a nice way for distributed peers to keep track of each other) is a prohibitive from a battery life and bandwidth perspective for phones. So Microsoft moved skype to a centralized service and…

I don't know, if people could buy a 'personal cloud box' that is as user friendly as an iphone, for less than a 100 dollars, a substantial number of them might possibly do that.

The issue such devices have in practice is upfront cost, compatibility, the need for port forwarding, and the lack of redundancy so you don't lose your data. Among other problems but these come to mind. Centralization solves those problems because you can connect to a server instead of port forwarding, your data might be stored across 3 servers, the cloud storage might be as cheap as free, and applications are designed to work seamlessly with a small number of big cloud providers.

In the depths of my soul I would love to re-decentralize the web. I truly believe data centralization will cause people to suffer a lot. decentralized tech needs to solve so many problems before alternatives to centralization become viable. Centralized approaches also improve over time and are a moving target to keep up with.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#102

Post by ken »

cortesoft wrote: post #74
StreamBright wrote: post #5

"In order to regain freedom and control over the digital aspects of our lives" Nothing proves his point more than:

How is that not freedom? Each site owner has the freedom to use google analytics or not, no one forces them to. And each user has the ability to block requests to google analytics if they want, or avoid sites that use it.

How am I supposed to know that any particular domain is used for analytics, versus core functionality? How am I supposed to know what scripts a webpage loads, before viewing it?

> "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#103

Post by svachalek »

tmcw wrote: post #79

It puzzles me that the linked data future is still discussed, as if we didn't already try it, and didn't already discover that developers dislike arcane RDF standards and the academic-rooted designers of the specifications have a terrible track record of solving real-world problems. And that now they're presenting linked data as some critical component of the decentralized web while skipping out on the debates that e…

I really, really sympathize with the goals here but when I read through these proposals a few months ago I literally facepalmed. They seem about as realistic as praying for some kind of deus ex machina.

Ultimately I think there are technical solutions to making the decentralized web more attractive than the walled gardens, but at this point they will need to be ridiculously polished and shiny to even get a look, and this stuff... is not. Going forward it gets even worse, they're going to be opposed at every step by corporations with more money than most nations.

The internet was originally decentralized because the government wanted to make it that way, and I think the only way to get back there is going to require a gigantic, economically unattractive investment. There are at least a few governments that may have the capability but I can't name one that would have the motivation. Hopefully some billionaire's charity will decide saving the internet is a worthy legacy.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#104

Post by kjetilk »

orthecreedence wrote: post #4

I've read a bit about Solid in the past, but never quite understood how it will handle different data models. Does it force social data to all look the same (as in, have a predefined set of fields)? If not, how do apps built on it interoperate? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for projects like this. I think it's wonderful. I just never really got how the apps will work with the same data without being forced into a parti…

Great question, because it is basically the most ignored problem in the Semantic Web community and thus the one that we are spending quite a lot of time on.

So, basically, there is one data model, RDF, but RDF does not require the same set of fields, to the contrary you are free to write your own. Obviously, you wouldn't get good interoperability if you do. So, there are several things you can do:

1) Adopt what others are using 2) Map your "fields" (we're more for calling it vocabularies), to the stuff others are doing, and rely on apps to figure out interop using reasoners. 3) Don't care, your app will work fine for you.

I mean, 3) is fine, it is just that you'd be missing out. 2) also works, kinda, but reasoners aren't all that easy to use, so I'd mostly like to see people go for 1).

So, we need to make it really easy to find existing stuff. You could go for the big one, i.e. https://schema.org/ or you could go more in detail and look at https://lov.linkeddata.es/dataset/lov/ . The former has a lot of traction, the latter is real decentralized, so I kinda prefer that.

Then, we have to make it real easy to author new stuff when you can't find existing stuff, because that will happen. Then, we need to make it easy for others to find yours, so that they can start using it too for similar applications. And, I'm thinking that it will be kind of a graduation process, where you first look for existing stuff, and when failing to find anything, you just mint your own without thinking about others, just to get something that works up and running. Once your app starts gaining traction, you tighten it up, and if then something other gets popular, you can migrate to that with little disruption.

So, we're not there yet, but we're thinking and working on it a lot.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#105

Post by wmf »

jshen wrote: post #26

I’m all for the principles here, but one worry I have is the loss of efficiencies afforded by economies of scale which could dramatically increase the carbon footprint compared to the centralized versions.

This is why carbon needs to be priced so you could have facts about the magnitude of the problem (spoiler: probably pretty small) instead of trying to make qualitative tradeoffs (is it worth destroying society to save the environment?)

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#106

Post by kjetilk »

Sargos wrote: post #2

Solid looks to be trying to reimplement what platforms like Ethereum are already building. The same ethos is there and this is very well written but I wonder if the Solid project just missed that when doing their research. Hopefully all of their efforts don't go to waste and they can extend some of their work to the broader decentralized web community.

Not really, it is pretty much the other way around. :-) We're basically building the simplest thing that could possibly work, they are rebuilding a lot of infrastructure that they have to use, but we can use where it makes sense. So, they are kinda trying to implement the Web, which is a much bigger task than adding access control and identity... :-) There's also been quite a lot of overlap between people working on Solid and working on Blockchains in the past, so we know it well. But we're not really in competition, we'd be fine coexisting.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#107

Post by rubenverborgh »

diminoten wrote: post #90
rubenverborgh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does running analytics on my site impair my ability to talk about what Tim Berners-Lee wants to do for freedom and control? ;-) Yes, I track how popular what content is on my site. Motivates me to write more. Please feel free to block trackers; I do that as well.

It undermines your argument, is what it does. You can talk about it all you want, but as long as you continue to participate in the very thing you rail against, you're going to struggle to be taken seriously.

That's not at all how argumentation works :-)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886753

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#108

Post by rubenverborgh »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #70
rubenverborgh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does running analytics on my site impair my ability to talk about what Tim Berners-Lee wants to do for freedom and control? ;-) Yes, I track how popular what content is on my site. Motivates me to write more. Please feel free to block trackers; I do that as well.

Have you considered Piwik or a similar self hosted analytics solution? I don't care if people run Analytics, its just when they go sharing all that data with a third party that it gets troubling.

Yes, I urgently need to migrate; same with Disqus, needs to become Solid.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#109

Post by kjetilk »

kornork wrote: post #39

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but I didn't quite follow how this is going to gain a foothold. Solid has the same problem any new social media platform has - before people want to use it, people have to be using it. Facebook and Google certainly have no incentive to promote it.

Oh, but Solid isn't just a social network. True, social networks have really powerful network effects, so it is a key to success, but not the only key. We're separating data from apps, which enables permissionless innovation. That means a lot of people can start writing cool things that they just can't now, because they are constrained by those platform companies. We're doing that too. And once people start doing that, every useful app that comes to Solid will grow the platform, first probably as small communities here and there, and then those communities get new connections, and boom, disruption! :-)

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#110

Post by cgh »

kodablah wrote: post #31
bluGill wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First someone has to make a server that is perfectly secure and lasts for 50 years without any updates. It needs to be like a thermostat from the 1950s - maybe it lacks the latest features but it still works just the same as new. I'll accept maybe it only needs to last 10 years, but that is the minimum time. I have family to think about: I don't have time to update my servers every time some new zero-day is fixed. I'…

> First someone has to make a server that is perfectly secure and lasts for 50 years without any updates. Nah, your auto-updating desktop is fine. The software itself might evolve to an hands-off, evergreen-type of approach, but for now just a desktop daemon is fine. The reason keeping servers updated seems so non-trivial is that we visualize it in an ops sense like we're at work.

Worldwide, most people access the internet via mobile devices. They don't own or use desktops. Beyond that, many don't have internet to the home. They just use their phones.
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