Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

blog.muni.town

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 287 posts

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#181

Post by flufluflufluffy »

sholladay wrote: post #163
InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

The most compelling and plausible solution to this that I have seen is a set of standards called Solid, made by Tim Berners Lee, who invented the web. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_pr... You’d think that if anybody could pull off reshaping how data is stored and shared on the Internet, it would be him. And the technology is, well, solid. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have as much traction as I…

Yeah, that’s... that’s what the whole post was about...

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#182

Post by sowbug »

crazygringo wrote: post #40
majkinetor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is preventing it, but 3rd party operates on a copy. You are still owner of the data and it is on one place which makes it easier for you to access it, share it, backup it, analyze it. So, this doesn't prevent reselling in general but prevents data locking. From there, I guess its not that hard to demonstrate which 3rd party sold your data and sue them. It also mandates nonproprietary data formats. All that is…

> From there, I guess its not that hard to demonstrate which 3rd party sold your data and sue them. But it doesn't? Obviously every site's TOS will say that by providing them with your data they can use it for all sorts of purposes. If you sued, you'd lose. And you're generally going to want to make your data available to the various services requesting it, because otherwise most people won't see your posts and comme…

Your site, the source of the data, could also include a TOS. Plenty of working examples in the commercial world where licensees are allowed to use data but not compile or resell it.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#183

Post by harrall »

mrbombastic wrote: post #100
pavlov wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Applying for a job or apartment or anything today means creating endless pointless copies of your pesonal information in databases across the world that will eventually be neglected, hacked, exploited, sold off etc” This problem is practically fixed in the EU (to the extent that legislation can fix it). Data protection laws have enough teeth that real companies can’t afford to keep or sell customer information ill…

Yes just make user data hoarding and targeted advertising a nonviable business model, and watch the horrible secondary effects start to dissipate. it requires a lot of political will that currently isn’t there but we have become too resigned in the US that things can’t change. I still hate cookie banners though :).

It doesn’t happen because when a company replaces advertising with a subscription, people balk and then switch to a competitor that doesn’t charge anything by using advertising.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#184

Post by Frieren »

InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

> I guess we can keep fantasizing and thinking about it.

Strong regulations is the answer. To think that big corporations are going to do anything for us out of their good heart is naive and dangerous.

If a society wants nice things then they need to fight for it. Get elected officials that care to fix things, that fights against big corporations, and that help to split their monopolies.

The USA thinks that they can get a better Internet by doing nothing, like by magic. The reality is that government and civil society are going to need to put a lot of effort to reign in the big tech monopolies.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#185

Post by anonbuddy »

jstummbillig wrote: post #48
InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

Nothing changes because the ask is silly and disconnected from the reality of normal people's lives. So what happens if Google has all your data? To the best of my observations over the past 20 years: best in class services, cheap, paired with excellent security and data availability.

google has all data > google creates AI from data > google embeds their values into AI > you use the AI > you become what ever the google AI wants

"over the past 20 years" is not the same as next 20 years

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#186

Post by browningstreet »

righthand wrote: post #169
browningstreet wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto wallets are not nearly as arcane as Solid. How many people have Binance accounts? Market share matters, critical mass matters, adoption matters. I'm suggesting that mindshare goes negative over time if these things aren't achieved, and when you have long-tail blog posts trying to pump life into it, it's pivot time. Righteousness alone doesn't win any of those things. It's been a very long time since Solid was…

I do not have a Binance account and think cryptocurrency is a terrible starting point for a Solid application. Not even people who buy cryptocurrency care about where their cryptocurrency is held. Arguably it hasn’t taken off because no one has incentivized using it.

Here is the Solid website list of apps:

https://solidproject.org/apps

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#187

Post by dahart »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #132
dahart wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replied to a comment that was talking about user upload speed. They replied to a comment about other people’s computers. Did I misunderstand? How do you get good infrastructure without using other people’s computers?

If you think such a system would need to load every comment from a different computer when you visit a page and be hundreds of times slower because of that, then yes you did misunderstand something. The person you replied to is assuming a reasonable distributed system.

Please elaborate. If true, and they were imagining some unstated infrastructure, then what is it and what does home upload speed have to do with anything? What exactly did I misunderstand?

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#188

Post by emseetech »

harrall wrote: post #183
mrbombastic wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes just make user data hoarding and targeted advertising a nonviable business model, and watch the horrible secondary effects start to dissipate. it requires a lot of political will that currently isn’t there but we have become too resigned in the US that things can’t change. I still hate cookie banners though :).

It doesn’t happen because when a company replaces advertising with a subscription, people balk and then switch to a competitor that doesn’t charge anything by using advertising.

Converting a service to a subscription is hard. Customers get used to "free" and will always be resentful.

Starting as a subscription service at least doesn't feel like a broken promise.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#189

Post by Forgeties79 »

floundy wrote: post #123
Forgeties79 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always had this like 70% formed idea about Plex and how it’s indicative of how people want to self host more than we realize, but I’ve never quite been able to articulate what I’m thinking here and what the larger implications are. Plex is obviously not true self hosting, but it’s a lot closer to it than a Netflix subscription, and the number of people who I do not consider very tech savvy who have not only been…

Yup that’s why I started self-hosting, when my wife got pregnant and we started to think about what technology access for our future kids would look like. I started with CasaOS and Jellyfin. Quickly outgrew Casa and moved to learning Docker and setting up my own container stack, moving from media self-hosting to adding new containers of stuff like budgeting apps. I’m still working on building out my server but every…

Ha we basically had the same journey though you are certainly further along than I am.

Definitely agree about the elitist attitude problem. The amount of people who dunk on people for using Plex when I think it’s a fantastic jumping off point for true self hosting…it’s just so unnecessary and becomes a missed opportunity.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#190

Post by immibis »

emseetech wrote: post #188
harrall wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t happen because when a company replaces advertising with a subscription, people balk and then switch to a competitor that doesn’t charge anything by using advertising.

Converting a service to a subscription is hard. Customers get used to "free" and will always be resentful. Starting as a subscription service at least doesn't feel like a broken promise.

The problem is that a lot of these services are just worthless. As in their market price is precisely zero dollars and zero cents. The reason you won't get me to subscribe to your random recipe or news website isn't the competition - the site simply provides no value. If it also costs nothing, then I might be indifferent to browsing it when it appears as a search result. If it costs anything, I definitely won't. I also feel the same about your competitors, so I'm not replacing you with them - I'm just browsing this type of content less. And that's a good thing for me and for society overall.
Post reply on HN