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The “small web” is bigger than you might think

kevinboone.me

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Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#71

Post by adiabatichottub »

GuB-42 wrote: post #44

I don't expect many people to agree but I think that the "small web" should reject encryption, which is the opposite direction that Gemini is taking. I don't deny the importance of encryption, it is really what shaped the modern web, allowing for secure payment, private transfer of personal information, etc... See where I am getting at? Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, ac…

> It also helps technically. If you want to make a tiny web server, like on a microcontroller, encryption is the hardest part.

> Two problems remain with the lack of encryption, first is authenticity. Anyone can man-in-the-middle and change the web page, TLS prevents that. But what I think is an even better solution is to do it at the content level: sign the content, like a GPG signature, not the server, this way you can guarantee the authenticity of the content, no matter where you are getting it from.

If your microcontroller can't do TLS then it probably won't do GPG either. But you can still serve HTTP content on port 80 if you need to support plaintext. I believe a lot of package distribution is still over HTTP.

Edit: Sorry, missed the web server part somehow and was thinking of a microcontroller based client.

> In addition, TLS comes with expiring certificates, requiring regular maintenance, you can't just have your server and leave it alone for years, still working. It can also bring back simple caching proxies, great for poor connectivity.

Yeah, TLS and DNS are the two of the biggest hurdles to a completely distributed Internet. Of course you go down that road and you get IPFS, which sounds cool to me, but doesn't seem to have ever taken off.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#72

Post by 627467 »

I read alot against monetization in the comments. I think because we are used monetization being so exploitative, filled with dark patterns and bad incentives on the Big Web.

But it doesnt need to be thia way: small web can also be about sustainable monetization. In fact there's a whole page on that on https://indieweb.org/business-models

There's nothing wrong with "publishers" aspiring to get paid.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#73

Post by krapp »

GuB-42 wrote: post #44

I don't expect many people to agree but I think that the "small web" should reject encryption, which is the opposite direction that Gemini is taking. I don't deny the importance of encryption, it is really what shaped the modern web, allowing for secure payment, private transfer of personal information, etc... See where I am getting at? Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, ac…

>Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, accounts and access restriction, exchange of private information, etc... You only share what you want to share publicly, with no restrictions. It seriously limits commercial potential which is the point.

People will still do financial transactions on an unencrypted web because the utility outweighs the risk. Removing encryption just guarantees the risk is high.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#75

Post by zahlman »

freediver wrote: post #33

Kagi Small Web has about 32K sites and I'd like to think that we have captured most of (english speaking) personal blogs out there (we are adding about 10 per day and a significant effort went into discovering/fidning them). It is kind of sad that the entire size of this small web is only 30k sites these days.

Does this concept of "personal blog" include people periodically sharing, say, random knowledge on technical topics? Or is it specifically people writing about their day-to-day lives?

How would I check if my site is included?

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#76

Post by zzo38computer »

adiabatichottub wrote: post #71
GuB-42 wrote: post #44

I don't expect many people to agree but I think that the "small web" should reject encryption, which is the opposite direction that Gemini is taking. I don't deny the importance of encryption, it is really what shaped the modern web, allowing for secure payment, private transfer of personal information, etc... See where I am getting at? Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, ac…

> It also helps technically. If you want to make a tiny web server, like on a microcontroller, encryption is the hardest part. > Two problems remain with the lack of encryption, first is authenticity. Anyone can man-in-the-middle and change the web page, TLS prevents that. But what I think is an even better solution is to do it at the content level: sign the content, like a GPG signature, not the server, this way you…

> If your microcontroller can't do TLS then it probably won't do GPG either.

It is not a problem if you are only serving static files.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#77

Post by adiabatichottub »

zzo38computer wrote: post #76
adiabatichottub wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also helps technically. If you want to make a tiny web server, like on a microcontroller, encryption is the hardest part. > Two problems remain with the lack of encryption, first is authenticity. Anyone can man-in-the-middle and change the web page, TLS prevents that. But what I think is an even better solution is to do it at the content level: sign the content, like a GPG signature, not the server, this way you…

> If your microcontroller can't do TLS then it probably won't do GPG either. It is not a problem if you are only serving static files.

I guess I was thinking microcontroller as client, so yes I agree

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#78

Post by zzo38computer »

krapp wrote: post #73
GuB-42 wrote: post #44

I don't expect many people to agree but I think that the "small web" should reject encryption, which is the opposite direction that Gemini is taking. I don't deny the importance of encryption, it is really what shaped the modern web, allowing for secure payment, private transfer of personal information, etc... See where I am getting at? Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, ac…

>Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, accounts and access restriction, exchange of private information, etc... You only share what you want to share publicly, with no restrictions. It seriously limits commercial potential which is the point. People will still do financial transactions on an unencrypted web because the utility outweighs the risk. Removing encryption just guara…

> People will still do financial transactions on an unencrypted web because the utility outweighs the risk. Removing encryption just guarantees the risk is high.

That does not necessarily require TLS to mitigate (although TLS does help, anyways). There are other issues with financial transactions, whether or not TLS is used. (I had idea, and wrote a draft specification of, "computer payment file", to try to improve security of financial transactions and avoid some kinds of dishonesty; it has its own security and does not require TLS (nor does it require any specific protocol), although using TLS with this is still helpful.) (There are potentially other ways to mitigate the problems as well, but this is one way that I think would be helpful.)

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#79

Post by zahlman »

akkartik wrote: post #21
shermantanktop wrote: post #17

This is a specific definition of "small web" which is even narrower than the one I normally think of. But reading about Gemini, it does make me wonder if the original sin is client-side dynamism. We could say: that's Javascript. But some Javascript operates only on the DOM. It's really XHR/fetch and friends that are the problem. We could say: CSS is ok. But CSS can fetch remote resources and if JS isn't there, I wond…

Yeah, CSS is Turing Complete: https://lyra.horse/x86css

I wonder: what's the least that could be removed from CSS to avoid Turing-completeness?

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#80

Post by jopsen »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #47
GuB-42 wrote: post #44

I don't expect many people to agree but I think that the "small web" should reject encryption, which is the opposite direction that Gemini is taking. I don't deny the importance of encryption, it is really what shaped the modern web, allowing for secure payment, private transfer of personal information, etc... See where I am getting at? Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, ac…

Big thing that made encryption required is arguably that ISPs started injecting crap into webpages. Governments can still track you with little issue since SNI is unencrypted. It's also very likely that Cloudflare and the like are sharing what they see as they MITM 80% of your connections.

> It's also very likely that Cloudflare and the like are sharing what they see as they MITM 80% of your connections.

Maybe, I suspect not, but even so if we reduce the number of men in the middle that's pretty nice.

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