Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by josefx » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

bouk wrote: post #219

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

Is there a documented guarantee of that somewhere? Because I am half tempted to make a browser based UI for a few tools, but would rather use Java if there is even a tiny risk that I get the rug pulled from under my feet again.

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

#242

Post by infinite8s » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

cannonedhamster wrote: post #161

have_faith wrote: post #135

> you OWN YOUR data Like most people here I'm fairly hard line when it comes to personal data abuses but I still struggle with the concepts of owning data about yourself. It's a confusion I see amongst less technically literate people when a well meaning person explains to them the importance of some latest data breach and they try to understand the concept that they owned this data, it was theirs but now it has been…

The problem fundamentally is yes it's your data. It's what makes you, you. The reason this is important is because if you can't control this data it can be used against you. At some point in the near future if not already you'll have job applications rejected based on third party data you didn't sign up for and can't opt out of. It will impact your healthcare, your loans, what prices you see when you shop and what it…

The issue then isn't the data, but the fact that it could be used in those ways. Because if it's legal for companies to use that data (even if it's owned/controlled by the user), they will incentivize people to share it in order to give them better prices/service, and the end result will be the same.

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

#243

Post by folex » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:54 AM UTC

masukomi wrote: post #231

jwr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Maintaining a self-hosted solution is an enormous cost, which most people forget about. You need to create, document, maintain and support an entirely different version of your software (single-user, no billing/invoicing, different email sending, different rights system, etc). I think you're not looking at this from a local-first perspective. From that perspective you can have the same app locally as on the server.…

Very exciting. Could you please elaborate on what technology stack you're planning to use? Language, frameworks, etc.

And how do you plan to achieve that? What will be running on a server side? Will it be headless or server-rendered?

Do you have a GitHub repo with that project?

Sorry for lots of questions and thanks in advance!