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Local-first software (2019)

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Re: Local-first software (2019)

#301

Post by Timwi »

_heimdall wrote: post #293
Timwi wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for every UBI supporter, but singling out food, and talking about “the food they want me to have”, suggests an authoritarian top-down structure that nobody wants. The whole point of UBI is to enable autonomy. People should be free to explore and understand what their own needs are and not have it be dictated. I'll admit that I was unclear because I used the word “starve” in my message. Obviously this ch…

The amount if UBI paid to people must be based on some determination of the estimated cost of a list of basic goods though, right? Surely it wouldn't just be food, but regardless the government would be coming up with a list of items and basing the UBI on that. If those items are deemed necessary enough that everyone should have access, why not make them freely available rather than abstracting through money first?

It would indeed be nice if everything were just freely available to everyone, but barring that, a good first step is to let everyone partake in a fair share of everything, which is what UBI enables. Again, you're still thinking in terms of top-down authoritarianism: you're thinking somebody needs to make a list of things that we need and then dictate that to us. Instead, we want to make our own decisions. The amount of UBI should depend on what's available, not on what someone up high thinks we need.

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#302

Post by _heimdall »

Timwi wrote: post #301
_heimdall wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount if UBI paid to people must be based on some determination of the estimated cost of a list of basic goods though, right? Surely it wouldn't just be food, but regardless the government would be coming up with a list of items and basing the UBI on that. If those items are deemed necessary enough that everyone should have access, why not make them freely available rather than abstracting through money first?

It would indeed be nice if everything were just freely available to everyone, but barring that, a good first step is to let everyone partake in a fair share of everything, which is what UBI enables. Again, you're still thinking in terms of top-down authoritarianism: you're thinking somebody needs to make a list of things that we need and then dictate that to us. Instead, we want to make our own decisions. The amount…

A UBI is dependent on a top down approach by design, that seems like a given here.

For a UBI to exist the government has to define some kind of system for how to set the basic income level, I assume they would define a basket of goods (and services) similar to how CPI is calculated and define a formula for how the UBI is calculated from there. One way or another, someone in the government would be coming up with a list of what is "essential" and deciding how much to subsidize.

They would also need to similarly define how the UBI is adjusted over time. Prices change over time, and there would likely be a pretty quick jump in prices when the UBI is first put into effect.

All that to say, we will never have a UBI without it being centrally planned from the top. Whether it is authoritarian or not would be up for debate, it can be centrally planned and pushed from the top down without being authoritarian - unless one thinks we're already authoritarian, most of our current federal programs would fit into that category.

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#303

Post by abrahms »

nerdyadventurer wrote: post #209
DataDaoDe wrote: post #29

Yes a thousand percent! I'm working on this too. I'm sick of everyone trying to come up with a use case to get all my data in everyone's cloud so I have to pay a subscription fee to just make things work. I'm working on a fitness tracking app right now that will use the sublime model - just buy it, get updates for X years, sync with all your devices and use it forever. If you want updates after X years buy the newest…

> get updates for X years, sync with all your devices and use it forever. If you want updates after X years buy the newest version again. If its good enough as is - and that's the goal - just keep using it forever. While this sounds good deal, with this approach - You have to charge total cost of subscription at once (1y or 2y), - Still have to keep servers running for syncing, also you have think about cases where u…

You don't have to keep servers running if there aren't servers (p2p) or you offload it onto some other cloud.

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#304

Post by trinsic2 »

dtkav wrote: post #285
trinsic2 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's that particular auth for again? Is it to distribute permissions to the shared folder user you add?

Yes, it is for shared folder permissions, as well as identity for collaboration.

Im more of an obsidian dataview/templater guy so I don't know that much about back end stuff like this but is this helpful: https://geekflare.com/cybersecurity/open-source-oauth-soluti...

My understanding is maybe use an open source provider to mitigate vendor lock in?

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#305

Post by mixmastamyk »

OjotCewIo wrote: post #100
hkt wrote: post #23

Self hosting (which is often adjacent to local-first software) is fine. I've done it for years. But it is a nightmare when it goes wrong: the conclusion I've reached is that it is out of reach to regular people who don't want the Byzantine support load that could accompany something going wrong. They want turnkey. They want simple. They aren't interested in operating services, they're interested in using them. The FL…

> What is needed, imo, is to leverage the power of centralised, professional operations and development, but to govern it democratically. This means cooperatives where users are active participants in governance alongside employees. Utopia. Unattainable. Self-determination of the individual has been consistently persecuted under all societal arrangements; communism and capitalism equally hate a citizen that wants to…

This comment ends just when it was getting good.

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#306

Post by ashdev »

AstroBen wrote: post #195
ashdev wrote: post #56

This was refreshing to read! More apps should be local-first. If the user does not want to sync their data to cloud, they should have that option. I’ve been building the offline-first (or local-first) app Brisqi[0] for a while now, it was designed from the ground up with the offline-first philosophy. In my view, a local-first app is designed to function completely offline for an indefinite period. The local experienc…

How has it been going? I've been thinking of trying this model but a bit worried about how much harder it would be to make it sustainable as a business

If I were to do it all over again, I’d simplify things even further. I’d start by testing the idea with just the offline version. For syncing, I’d focus on syncing the data itself, just the database records and not the user actions. Instead of replaying every action, I’d track which records were modified and sync only those. No need to capture what changed, just that record got changed. Hopefully that makes sense.

The business is doing alright, but what really keeps me going is that the app is something I genuinely wanted for myself. I use it all the time, it's always open in the background, so that keeps me motivated.

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#307

Post by ternaus »

"it is desirable for the software to run as a locally installed executable on your device, rather than a tab in a web browser."

An OS agnostic apps, meaning web apps is such a killer feature. You can use the same app on: Linux, Mac OS, Windows, Android, iOS

Even more, developing for web is typically faster. You made the change in the code => you see the result on the screen. For example: phone apps written in swift could be faster than ones written in react-native, but it is so annoying waiting for the compilation to finish after every small change.

----

When I worked on imagery data in an autonomous vehicles company product managers pushed us to explore the data in the cloud and it was soooo inconvenient.

As the result, PMs were ignored and everyone had a personal desktop with GPUs and fast SSDs that had the local copy of the data, so that debugging, prototyping would be fast.

As lag that one gets working with a heavy data remotely reminded moving back from SSD to slow HDD, where you needed to wait some time to see the result on the screen.

It was only half a second every time, but felt ultra annoying.

Re: Local-first software (2019)

#308

Post by Timwi »

_heimdall wrote: post #302
Timwi wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would indeed be nice if everything were just freely available to everyone, but barring that, a good first step is to let everyone partake in a fair share of everything, which is what UBI enables. Again, you're still thinking in terms of top-down authoritarianism: you're thinking somebody needs to make a list of things that we need and then dictate that to us. Instead, we want to make our own decisions. The amount…

A UBI is dependent on a top down approach by design, that seems like a given here. For a UBI to exist the government has to define some kind of system for how to set the basic income level, I assume they would define a basket of goods (and services) similar to how CPI is calculated and define a formula for how the UBI is calculated from there. One way or another, someone in the government would be coming up with a li…

The government already decides how much to invest into public infrastructure such as water pipes and water reclamation plants; roads, bridges, traffic lights etc.; air traffic control; the emergency services and coast guard... the list goes on. All these things are indeed already centrally planned.

It's not about telling you what you should need or live without. It's about providing a service.

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