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> Redecentralize the web! Redecentralize all internet services! Shameless plug ahead, I believe in this idea so much I co-founded a company to help spread the

by staunch 11y ago

> Redecentralize the web! Redecentralize all internet services! Shameless plug ahead, I believe in this idea so much I co-founded a company to help spread the idea and see it through. Every person should have their own domain name and have the ability to run arbitrary services in the cloud. The price of computing power and bandwidth has come down so much that it's completely practical to do this now. Would love feedback/thoughts: https://portal.cloud?invite=hn https://portal.cloud?invite=hn (invite code is just there so free domain discount is applied). The most important thing is that no company (including mine) should ever have the ability to dominate the internet the way Google, Facebook, and Twitter do today. We should be able to move from cloud provider to cloud provider with very little friction. If we truly control our own domain names, apps, and data this isn't even hard to do. Google, Facebook, and Twitter could be just apps we run (webmail, web search, photo sharing, status updates). We shouldn't have to give up our privacy and be locked into a service that feeds us a hundred ads a day just to be able to check our email, search the web, share photos, or post 140 characters to the web.

acconrad 11y ago
I like the headline! I was initially intrigued because I just started a side project, bought the domain, and set up Google Apps for email. Then I'll probably set up a Medium blog for the project. I thought "oh neat, it's all contained in here, and a free domain that's cool!" Then I saw the price point: $8/mo. Yeah sorry, you need to be more competitive for groups that only want a few services. Google Apps is $5/mo and Medium is free...is it worth an extra $3/mo for me to decentralize project/business type emails and documents? Not really, because I don't have any sensitive documents that I don't care for Google to have access to. Maybe if I were a journalist starting a secretive blog and needing to communicate between journalists over sensitive information - yeah, I could see that. I think those are the kinds of people you're going to want to market to. Reasonably priced for sensitive documents and files, but more than conventional app solutions who don't really need the extra decentralized security.
- jlgaddis 11y ago
  I think I must be misunderstanding. You talk about "decentralizing" but you mention Google Apps for e-mail and Medium for a blog. If you want to decentralize, you should be running these things on your own server(s) that you control. What am I missing?
  - narrowrail 11y ago
    I think acconrad is just saying: Decentralized is for sensitive things with a need for "extra decentralized security," and that most conventional needs can be met more adequately, and cheaply, with the services 'everyone' already uses. Basically, it's a philosophical difference, but the ideas expressed may give proponents of decentralization some insight into why we are currently in another centralizing phase of the internet.
- staunch 11y ago
  It's definitely not competitive with free yet but we'll get there :P Google Apps is $60/yr ($70/yr including a domain) but is pretty much just Google Docs and Gmail. Right now with Portal, for $96 a year you have your own secure and private place in the cloud to run stuff. A domain name, IP address, SSL certificate, SSD storage, and 4-8 VMs running apps from any developer (not just the few apps Google offers). Medium is free but doesn't let you use your own domain name. Most blog services that do have custom domains with SSL charge more than $100 a year for this alone (and they don't run your blog in a private VM). On Portal, a blog is just another app and may require ~20% of your $8 / mo server plan.
drinchev 11y ago
Cool. I don't wanna spoil your idea, but having an army of developers behind gmail spam-protection is a really big "no-go" for moving my mail to my own IMAP service on a let's say digital ocean vm. I've paid the price for that ... the privacy of my e-mails, but whatever, I managed to live with that since a decade. Also, although I'm a web-dev and have "insights" on most of the tech news/trends I would never recommend to host a blog on your own VM. It would be much better if it's a paid hosting service, specialised let's say in WordPress, than having this on your own VM shared with your e-mail service. And what is your main difference, between having a DigitalOcean + Installed app versus Portal?
- staunch 11y ago
  Great feedback, thank you. Preventing spam is a lot easier than it was a decade ago. The software is far better, and there are now things like SPF records that make it much easier. Email on Portal is a very basic Dovecot+Postfix server with Roundcube for webmail. It's not as good as Gmail but it works quite well. Not so long from now we'll have something better than Gmail. There are a lot more developers outside of the Gmail team than inside of it. What's been missing is a platform for them to develop on. DigitalOcean has "one-click" apps but they're really just installers that can be run once. Configuration and upgrades are completely manual after the first step. You still have to be a sysadmin to do almost anything. Portal doesn't require any sysadmin tinkering. Upgrades and configuration are automatic. Every Portal app runs in a separate VM and they're are all mapped to your domain name. Every user has an SSL certificate and a dedicated IP address. Completely non-technical people can use it to run the kinds of things that only hackers run today. We would like to see a world where companies like Automattic support self-hosted versions of their products. Kind of like desktop software companies support paid version of their products. That's not the case today, but there's no reason people in the future can't run their own server software, and have it be very reliable and 100% supported by the app developer.

by staunch 11y ago

acconrad 11y ago

I like the headline! I was initially intrigued because I just started a side project, bought the domain, and set up Google Apps for email. Then I'll probably set up a Medium blog for the project. I thought "oh neat, it's all contained in here, and a free domain that's cool!" Then I saw the price point: $8/mo. Yeah sorry, you need to be more competitive for groups that only want a few services. Google Apps is $5/mo and Medium is free...is it worth an extra $3/mo for me to decentralize project/business type emails and documents? Not really, because I don't have any sensitive documents that I don't care for Google to have access to. Maybe if I were a journalist starting a secretive blog and needing to communicate between journalists over sensitive information - yeah, I could see that. I think those are the kinds of people you're going to want to market to. Reasonably priced for sensitive documents and files, but more than conventional app solutions who don't really need the extra decentralized security.

jlgaddis 11y ago
I think I must be misunderstanding. You talk about "decentralizing" but you mention Google Apps for e-mail and Medium for a blog. If you want to decentralize, you should be running these things on your own server(s) that you control. What am I missing?
- narrowrail 11y ago
  I think acconrad is just saying: Decentralized is for sensitive things with a need for "extra decentralized security," and that most conventional needs can be met more adequately, and cheaply, with the services 'everyone' already uses. Basically, it's a philosophical difference, but the ideas expressed may give proponents of decentralization some insight into why we are currently in another centralizing phase of the internet.
staunch 11y ago
It's definitely not competitive with free yet but we'll get there :P Google Apps is $60/yr ($70/yr including a domain) but is pretty much just Google Docs and Gmail. Right now with Portal, for $96 a year you have your own secure and private place in the cloud to run stuff. A domain name, IP address, SSL certificate, SSD storage, and 4-8 VMs running apps from any developer (not just the few apps Google offers). Medium is free but doesn't let you use your own domain name. Most blog services that do have custom domains with SSL charge more than $100 a year for this alone (and they don't run your blog in a private VM). On Portal, a blog is just another app and may require ~20% of your $8 / mo server plan.

drinchev 11y ago

Cool. I don't wanna spoil your idea, but having an army of developers behind gmail spam-protection is a really big "no-go" for moving my mail to my own IMAP service on a let's say digital ocean vm. I've paid the price for that ... the privacy of my e-mails, but whatever, I managed to live with that since a decade. Also, although I'm a web-dev and have "insights" on most of the tech news/trends I would never recommend to host a blog on your own VM. It would be much better if it's a paid hosting service, specialised let's say in WordPress, than having this on your own VM shared with your e-mail service. And what is your main difference, between having a DigitalOcean + Installed app versus Portal?

staunch 11y ago
Great feedback, thank you. Preventing spam is a lot easier than it was a decade ago. The software is far better, and there are now things like SPF records that make it much easier. Email on Portal is a very basic Dovecot+Postfix server with Roundcube for webmail. It's not as good as Gmail but it works quite well. Not so long from now we'll have something better than Gmail. There are a lot more developers outside of the Gmail team than inside of it. What's been missing is a platform for them to develop on. DigitalOcean has "one-click" apps but they're really just installers that can be run once. Configuration and upgrades are completely manual after the first step. You still have to be a sysadmin to do almost anything. Portal doesn't require any sysadmin tinkering. Upgrades and configuration are automatic. Every Portal app runs in a separate VM and they're are all mapped to your domain name. Every user has an SSL certificate and a dedicated IP address. Completely non-technical people can use it to run the kinds of things that only hackers run today. We would like to see a world where companies like Automattic support self-hosted versions of their products. Kind of like desktop software companies support paid version of their products. That's not the case today, but there's no reason people in the future can't run their own server software, and have it be very reliable and 100% supported by the app developer.