4 ms·

I hope that as people notice that the centralized data-gathering walled-gardens that track our every move are not all they are cracked up to be, we will head ba

by jwr 8y ago

I hope that as people notice that the centralized data-gathering walled-gardens that track our every move are not all they are cracked up to be, we will head back to decentralized solutions which do more of what we actually want. This applies not only to messaging, but also to blog postings and RSS. Pendulums swing back.

fumar 8y ago
I agree. How do we start the movement back to a more decentralized software daily life. This is solely a feeling: I remember my youth being filled with an ever-changing and growing amount web portals, communication tools, and methods of of sharing data (music). Today, a few big entities control all of those experiences. I don't think my life is any better for having a Google controlled cloud service (gdrive) vs another open source or vendor solution. I found it enthralling to be online and discovering new experiences as a kid. Somehow that is gone today. Could just be my age.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  For me, part of that involves quitting the old circles (FB for example) and getting used to not being in touch with every old acquaintance. Once you’ve accepted that, you’ll try any new service. I recall how switching to Mac and getting over not having windows apps helped me ultimately switch to Linux.
- asdff 8y ago
  These services never went away. I browse reddit and HN through their RSS feeds almost exclusively.
- jethro_tell 8y ago
  A big thing here is a huge chunk of the internet is getting content discovery from just a couple places with ulterior motives. We used to seek out people who made good content and add it to a hand managed rss feed, I used to peruse 1000 articles and posts a week from friends, people that I trusted, people that I distrusted, scientific journals, and niche hobbies. I talked to someone this week that wasy saying they wouldn't even know how to find new music without youtube. 10 years younger than me and discovery is a lost art. I'm not sure what resets this, and I fear the very idea of it will be completely lost in the near future.
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    Ironically people still send e-mail newsletters, and I got to this link through my RSS feed.
  - asdff 8y ago
    You can follow virtually anything on RSS still. Blogs, every biology journal that I know of, pubmed or google scholar search term RSS feeds (super useful, can be a topic, journal, even author), subreddits, HN, youtube channels, twitter, email newsletters (kill the newsletter), the list goes on and on and there are even services to turn things that don't have RSS feeds into an RSS feed (like kill the newsletter). My workflow is have things categorized in inoreader and push interesting articles to pocket (or just open the HN/reddit thread). No paywall, and no ads. There's never been a better time to follow RSS feeds. Your discovery would be from either your own search engine cleverness derived from spotting a topic in your articles, or directly shared to you by what you follow, like good topics in HN. NYT and LA times are both really good at sharing content from other newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other sources in their newsletters (which I follow via an atom feed from kill the newsletter). Facebook, twitter, youtube, and the ilk are all pretty poor at discovery, to be honest. Discovery to the decision makers at these platforms is more towards manipulating into more and more advertising engagement than any knowledge dissemination.
- mirkules 8y ago
  > How do we start the movement back toward decentralized software daily life? The difference between now and “back then” is that service providers were not optimizing for eyeballs or subscribers or clicks. Chat software was created to actually create communication between people. Subscription software didn’t exist and was balked-at. So, to answer the question - to swing the pendulum back we need to start building software for its utility again, on open, non-subscription platforms.
phubbard 8y ago
I’ve started blogging again and encourage others to do so as well. The HN crowd can lead by example.
- taude 8y ago
  I've been thinking about this. Creating a new website/blog where I post photos, write, and generally have a way for people to get in touch with me, etc... My last version of my blog was moved over to Tumblr awhile ago. I moved it to tumblr when Posterous shut down after acquisition. What are people using these days? I'd prefer: 1) something simple to host, and hosted somewhere. 2) ways to easily upload photos and share something that works almost as easily as a social media app....
  - elamje 8y ago
    Not really a blog per say, but repl.it has a simple html, css, js hosted solution that is free and easy to to edit code on. I hear they are working on a template, but for now you can just drop some simple code in their online IDE to get a WEB 1.0 blog up and running. Serves over https, and custom domains if you have one to use. Can edit from mobile or browser as the ide is browser based. I have a blog example at johnelam.io for reference.
  - pyrale 8y ago
    If you don't want to lose your blog in the future like you did already, you should own the url. That may significantly complicate your task, but this is the price for future-proofing your means of contact.
    - taude 8y ago
      Good point on the URL. I had a custom URL on posterous. And even had it on Tumblr.Com. I let my old URL expire...maybe it's time to revisit that
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I've had a reasonably decent experience with pointing my domain at a Jekyll instance running on GitHub pages. It's a bit of effort, but I think it works reasonably well (and the only thing you're paying for is your domain registration costs!).
dredmorbius 8y ago
Take a look at IndieWeb: https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started
zackmorris 8y ago
Ya I've been thinking a lot lately that part of a real web 3.0 might be a realization that protocols are just protocols and that we can wrap anything we want inside of a VM. So instead of XMPP or whatever as glue between various interfaces, we'll just embed those interfaces inside something else with a standard interface. This could be similar to how GraphQL works, although more generalized. In today's terms, that would be something like a Docker container for Slack, one for Facebook Messenger, one for Skype, and SMS, and so on all the way down. Then communicating between those containers with pipes sending some kind of standardized compressed binary JSON format, or similar. This will work with other things besides chat - like websites, mobile apps, whatever you want. That would be the prerequisite for a web that works more like a shell. So we'll someday be able to pipe data around by wiring up URLs and treating them like executables. And that will be the prerequisite for software agents that can run on the web and do all the things we have to do by hand today. So maybe this is the darkness before dawn. Maybe the best is yet to come.

by jwr 8y ago

fumar 8y ago

I agree. How do we start the movement back to a more decentralized software daily life. This is solely a feeling: I remember my youth being filled with an ever-changing and growing amount web portals, communication tools, and methods of of sharing data (music). Today, a few big entities control all of those experiences. I don't think my life is any better for having a Google controlled cloud service (gdrive) vs another open source or vendor solution. I found it enthralling to be online and discovering new experiences as a kid. Somehow that is gone today. Could just be my age.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
For me, part of that involves quitting the old circles (FB for example) and getting used to not being in touch with every old acquaintance. Once you’ve accepted that, you’ll try any new service. I recall how switching to Mac and getting over not having windows apps helped me ultimately switch to Linux.
asdff 8y ago
These services never went away. I browse reddit and HN through their RSS feeds almost exclusively.
jethro_tell 8y ago
A big thing here is a huge chunk of the internet is getting content discovery from just a couple places with ulterior motives. We used to seek out people who made good content and add it to a hand managed rss feed, I used to peruse 1000 articles and posts a week from friends, people that I trusted, people that I distrusted, scientific journals, and niche hobbies. I talked to someone this week that wasy saying they wouldn't even know how to find new music without youtube. 10 years younger than me and discovery is a lost art. I'm not sure what resets this, and I fear the very idea of it will be completely lost in the near future.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Ironically people still send e-mail newsletters, and I got to this link through my RSS feed.
- asdff 8y ago
  You can follow virtually anything on RSS still. Blogs, every biology journal that I know of, pubmed or google scholar search term RSS feeds (super useful, can be a topic, journal, even author), subreddits, HN, youtube channels, twitter, email newsletters (kill the newsletter), the list goes on and on and there are even services to turn things that don't have RSS feeds into an RSS feed (like kill the newsletter). My workflow is have things categorized in inoreader and push interesting articles to pocket (or just open the HN/reddit thread). No paywall, and no ads. There's never been a better time to follow RSS feeds. Your discovery would be from either your own search engine cleverness derived from spotting a topic in your articles, or directly shared to you by what you follow, like good topics in HN. NYT and LA times are both really good at sharing content from other newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other sources in their newsletters (which I follow via an atom feed from kill the newsletter). Facebook, twitter, youtube, and the ilk are all pretty poor at discovery, to be honest. Discovery to the decision makers at these platforms is more towards manipulating into more and more advertising engagement than any knowledge dissemination.
mirkules 8y ago
> How do we start the movement back toward decentralized software daily life? The difference between now and “back then” is that service providers were not optimizing for eyeballs or subscribers or clicks. Chat software was created to actually create communication between people. Subscription software didn’t exist and was balked-at. So, to answer the question - to swing the pendulum back we need to start building software for its utility again, on open, non-subscription platforms.

phubbard 8y ago

I’ve started blogging again and encourage others to do so as well. The HN crowd can lead by example.

taude 8y ago
I've been thinking about this. Creating a new website/blog where I post photos, write, and generally have a way for people to get in touch with me, etc... My last version of my blog was moved over to Tumblr awhile ago. I moved it to tumblr when Posterous shut down after acquisition. What are people using these days? I'd prefer: 1) something simple to host, and hosted somewhere. 2) ways to easily upload photos and share something that works almost as easily as a social media app....
- elamje 8y ago
  Not really a blog per say, but repl.it has a simple html, css, js hosted solution that is free and easy to to edit code on. I hear they are working on a template, but for now you can just drop some simple code in their online IDE to get a WEB 1.0 blog up and running. Serves over https, and custom domains if you have one to use. Can edit from mobile or browser as the ide is browser based. I have a blog example at johnelam.io for reference.
- pyrale 8y ago
  If you don't want to lose your blog in the future like you did already, you should own the url. That may significantly complicate your task, but this is the price for future-proofing your means of contact.
  - taude 8y ago
    Good point on the URL. I had a custom URL on posterous. And even had it on Tumblr.Com. I let my old URL expire...maybe it's time to revisit that
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I've had a reasonably decent experience with pointing my domain at a Jekyll instance running on GitHub pages. It's a bit of effort, but I think it works reasonably well (and the only thing you're paying for is your domain registration costs!).

dredmorbius 8y ago

Take a look at IndieWeb: https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started

zackmorris 8y ago

Ya I've been thinking a lot lately that part of a real web 3.0 might be a realization that protocols are just protocols and that we can wrap anything we want inside of a VM. So instead of XMPP or whatever as glue between various interfaces, we'll just embed those interfaces inside something else with a standard interface. This could be similar to how GraphQL works, although more generalized. In today's terms, that would be something like a Docker container for Slack, one for Facebook Messenger, one for Skype, and SMS, and so on all the way down. Then communicating between those containers with pipes sending some kind of standardized compressed binary JSON format, or similar. This will work with other things besides chat - like websites, mobile apps, whatever you want. That would be the prerequisite for a web that works more like a shell. So we'll someday be able to pipe data around by wiring up URLs and treating them like executables. And that will be the prerequisite for software agents that can run on the web and do all the things we have to do by hand today. So maybe this is the darkness before dawn. Maybe the best is yet to come.