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Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

blog.acolyer.org

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Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#211

Post by dane-pgp »

jandrese wrote: post #201
bdcravens wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before that there was Microsoft Passport. Federated login for the web is a “problem” various parties have been working on for 20 years.

There's a fundamental problem of "I want my credentials to be validated by some central service, but I don't want to give some big faceless company my information." The centralized login service can be used to track your activity all across the net. It's a lot of power to give to some people you don't know. Worse, people's fears in this area are completely justified. Precious few companies have proven themselves to b…

Actually, the problem of centralized login services tracking users across the net was considered and partially solved in 2010 by a team from Google and MIT. This was at a time when OpenID was the most popular federated login system, so the proposal was called PseudoID.

Unfortunately this idea didn't gain more traction, and there are only a few references to it online now, such as this research paper and a YouTube video by one of the authors:

https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub36553

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCBPuGsO_I4

Also, it didn't address all the methods by which a malicious identity provider could track the user, so it would probably have to be extended by having support added in the browser.

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#212

Post by kingosticks »

oh_sigh wrote: post #187
procombo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I was definitely very AdHoc. A typical grocery store here in the US has about like, what, 20k SKUs? But I personally only really deal with maybe 200 of those, so at the time I just managed the data manually. (Plugged that USB scanner into a laptop and scanned every item into Excel --Scan, type. Scan, type. Then imported that into MySQL.) I looked into data providers mostly because I wanted item photos. (Ultimat…

I like systems I've seen in Europe(eg Carrefour) much more, where you get a handheld scanner and scan your items as you put them in the cart. When it comes time to pay you just put your scanner back and swipe your credit card.

They are trialing a phone app version of this in my local store, I've not tried it yet. https://smartshop.sainsburys.co.uk/

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#213

Post by ryandrake »

jwr wrote: post #45
atoav wrote: post #30

When I select software these are among the list of things I am looking for generally: - file formats that won’t lock you in or are even openly hackable (allows you to automate things) - no clouds that will break the software once it is gone - local storage with custom syncing or backup options - strictly no weird data collection or “We own the rights to your data”-Type of terms So if I get the slightest feeling of a…

While I fully agree with your selection criteria, please consider the other side of the equation, because engineering (and the world) is all about compromises. I am the author of a SaaS app ( https://partsbox.io/ ). I export in open formats (JSON), there is no lock-in, it's easy to get all of your data at any time. But the app is online and will remain so. Why? Economics. Maintaining a self-hosted solution is an enor…

A lot of software doesn’t have to be “hosted” anywhere. The first question I usually have when trying out some web-based software is: “Why on earth can’t this be a native application that I just download and run? Why are they shoving a web browser and server into this thing?” With a cross-platform native application, you bypass the whole on-prem vs hosted question entirely.

I wonder how often the answer is simply “We know lots of JavaScript programmers and not a lot of Qt programmers.” Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

As a user, I strongly favor software I buy once, download, and run as-is, forever, untethered to the Internet.

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#214

Post by 3xblah »

herf wrote: post #139

I spent a lot of time with photos (Picasa) trying to do this peer to peer - this is what we built in the 2002 era. Here are a few issues: 1. Identity is hard to do on the LAN, so any sharing ends up using the cloud to figure out who has access. Similarly, identity is hard to move around, so representing your Facebook comments feed outside Facebook is difficult to do. 2. Any time you have a "special" server that handl…

"I spent a lot of time with photos (Picasa) trying to do peer to peer..."

As I recall, one of Google's many "failed" projects was a means for transferring large numbers of photos person to person called "HELLO". I reckon this existed for a short time post-2004, then AFAIK disappeared from public view (or morphed into something else). I could be remembering the details incorrectly.

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#215

Post by muttdog »

jandrese wrote: post #201
bdcravens wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before that there was Microsoft Passport. Federated login for the web is a “problem” various parties have been working on for 20 years.

There's a fundamental problem of "I want my credentials to be validated by some central service, but I don't want to give some big faceless company my information." The centralized login service can be used to track your activity all across the net. It's a lot of power to give to some people you don't know. Worse, people's fears in this area are completely justified. Precious few companies have proven themselves to b…

This is being actively developed by Microsoft and others. Check out https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/technology/own-your... and https://identity.foundation/

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#216

Post by mappu »

Multicomp wrote: post #88
mackrevinack wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's also resilio sync that gives you the option have the node/folder on your vps be encrypted. hopefully syncthing will add that feature at some point in the future

I have been considering spending more money than I should finding someone on a freelancer site to add the untrusted node / encrypted file transfer but don't give a certain node the key to decrypt the file support, that is the number one missing feature for syncthing for me. It would unlock scenarios like share your files with me and I'll share files with you and neither of us will know the others files unless your ho…

You can kind of work around this by sharing an ecryptfs folder.

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#217

Post by hwwang2005 »

I'm creator of BLOON (https://www.bloon.io). If BLOON had been put in the Table 1 in the paper, the values could be:

O O - - O - O

I think BLOON is closer than Git+GitHub.

And great article & paper! They do give us many inspiration about improving BLOON. Thank you!

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#218

Post by emilburzo »

jmathai wrote: post #209
emilburzo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use the Google Drive interface to backup all my photos to my local linux storage I thought this was killed recently[1] (this = google photos appearing in google drive) Does it still work for you? If yes, how? :) [1] https://www.blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-google-p...

Uploading to both services is still supported through the Backup and Sync app. But once uploaded they are independent copies and deleting from one doesn't delete from the other. I also expect that this support will be deprecated at some point in the future. Not keeping Drive and Photos in sync really killed it for me. I ended up switching from Google Drive to Dropbox but I still use Google Photos. I have photos added…

I see. I was hoping there was still some way to quickly backup from google photos directly to linux.

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#219

Post by bouk »

josefx wrote: post #178

I wrote documentation for configuration files in xsd with the idea that I could use xslt to display them in a browser on any system and use the same files for validation. This worked a year ago. Now browsers consider local files that access other local files suspect and will refuse to load anything unless beaten. So I now use a python script to run a simple local http server to view my local files from a single "orig…

http over localhost is considered secure by browsers

Re: Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

#220

Post by thu2111 »

jdnenej wrote: post #94
thu2111 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious answer: it's the only IDE-like thing that's both well supported and caters to the huge population of JavaScript-only developers, who generally don't want to use IntelliJ or similar products because they can't customise it using only web-stack skills. That is, if JetBrains had made JS plugins first class citizens of their products, possibly VS Code wouldn't be as popular as it is.

I use vscode even though I don't particularly like it. Imo rubymine is a better editor but vscode does 90% of the job while not costing $300/year.

I'm curious where you live. Is $300/year a big expense for you? Computers and developer salaries are usually much higher.
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