5 ms·

I knew I was forgetting a big one but couldn't bring it to mind. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is rather chilling to see that even though the world-wide

by smush 7y ago

I knew I was forgetting a big one but couldn't bring it to mind. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is rather chilling to see that even though the world-wide web started open, so much centralization can have quite the chilling effect on competition. What can we do about it? If I were king of the world, it would be P2P decentralized content provided over mesh-network-powered-by-cognitive-frequency-hopping-radio but since I'm not, what are solutions prospective officials could leverage? Split Alphabet from YouTube, then split YouTube in half between user-posted content and business-posted content?

fjabre 7y ago
The only way forward is p2p. Inet in current form is too susceptible to governments and bad actors like Google who only work for their shareholders. Has google released anything worthwhile the last several years? What has happened to the culture of innovation at Google? We still know them for gmail, maps, and search but what have they done lately? They seem bland by comparison to the Google of the late 90s and 2000s. Why has Google become the new Microsoft?
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Rather, they are becoming the old Microsoft. Are you sure they aren't becoming the new Yahoo? Also, what new thing is the new Microsoft?
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    Microsoft is the new Microsoft lol. It's back on top as the largest market cap just like it was in its heyday
  - fragmede 7y ago
    Nadella's Microsoft is the new Microsoft. Before Nadella, Microsoft looked doomed to a slow demise behind the increasing irrelevance of Windows, with revenue from (local-only) Microsoft Office as the only future source of income. Nadella has changed the course of that staid ship by changing the underlying culture, no small feat! Some specific actions: Microsoft Office on iPad and Android, going all in on cloud (Azure has 22% of the market, ahead of GCP's 7%, at the start of 2019), being friendly with Linux (Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL, exFAT specs were released a few days ago), given up Windows Mobile (he “did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones”). https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-says-this-1-thing-unlocks-employee-greatness-its-why-microsoft-is-winning-again.html https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-... https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-rebuilt-the-company-culture/ https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-...
    - basq 7y ago
      Windows default products have also been improving in quality, like the mail and calender client. The calendar one is quite good actually. Typescript is also a pleasurable experience (as a new web dev, great timing!) vscode is nice to use too.
      - cameronbrown 7y ago
        I'd rather they just go all in on the Outlook desktop app instead.
- adventured 7y ago
  > Why has Google become the new Microsoft? Google hasn't changed, their actions have acquired increased consequences and attention. You'd have to go back to their early days to find a truly different Google, nearly two decades into the past. Gates for example was always ruthless in business, even in the early days, it's just that few people cared about Microsoft's behavior until they became powerful. The same is true of Google and most any corporation. Google is behaving pretty much as you would expect a company in their position to, it's entirely predictable. Amusing Gary Reback quote (he was notorious in those days for opposing Microsoft in Silicon Valley) from the 1990s Microsoft era: "The only thing J. D. Rockefeller did that Bill Gates hasn't done," Reback would wail, "is use dynamite against his competitors!" Wired, Nov 1, 2000 The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth https://outline.com/2DKmtw https://outline.com/2DKmtw
  - bakuninsbart 7y ago
    Here's a pretty long article detailing some of Google's recent history and culture clashes: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery... Google the company shifted towards being purely profit oriented long ago, but google the employees didn't see it that way, and resisted quite a lot, until recently.
- smush 7y ago
  > The only way forward is p2p. Then we as the tech community need to figure out tooling so that grandma and grandpa can use p2p / mesh networks. We have several challenges in that way that I'd like to see solved, but don't know how to make that happen. 2 immediate challenges is that If you can't get today's iweather over ipfs or bittorrent (with a better UI clearly, not everything has to be file transfer), p2p can't fully replace HTTP. Email is arguably pretty federated if not quite p2p, but the spam problem is real. The below example is an account of my grandma's attempt to get p2p chat going. Grandma doesn't even know what a p2p / mesh network is, but we will assume she read about it in the paper from the HK protests and being the enterprising unafraid-to-try-new-tech-things user most users aren't, she tries it out. She is in a large concrete gym, no cell service unless she stepped out of the building for a moment. Remembering the paper article, she decided to try the Bridgefy app so she can text with someone else. How do you spell Bridgefy? Oh right, I have the paper here, let me painstakingly hunt and peck to find the name of the app in the Play Store, ah there it is. She stepped out of the gym, got signal, installed the app on both devices, then stepped back in and opened the app. Her friend gave her her own phone so she could install both at once so they can be apart, yet chat. Being forewarned by her techie grandson, she managed a feat denied to nearly all the cell-phone using public and skip the dark patterns of denying Bridgefy contacts, reluctantly giving it location access 'for Bluetooth', and attempting to stop it reading her phone number. Already, 95% of users would be long stopped by now. But she persisted. The app would not move forward, giving error toast messages of error 7::0 cannot do that. She had to step back outside where she had signal for it to work for an unknown reason. She got back in the gym, was not able to get either phone to talk to each other, either in 'public broadcast mode' or by trying to add a contact straight from the app. She uninstalled both copies and moved on without having p2p messaging, not because our devices' bluetooth radios couldn't handle ad hoc communication, but because the client doesn't exist that doesn't want to surveil or otherwise profile you. PS -> that user was not an enterprising Grandma, but myself. If someone knows how to get Bridgefy / a p2p mesh chat app going without selling the privacy farm, I'd love to hear it.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    Was astonished by your grandma's technical proficiency until the end
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Because of the people that they hire and the culture they promote.
- nemothekid 7y ago
  >The only way forward is p2p. This is the tech utopia's cop-out. What does p2p even mean? How is the current internet as it is not p2p? p2p doesn't solve discovery.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Google started down the evil path when they had their IPO. Before that their incentives were aligned with those of every citizen of the net. After that they were only incentivized to make money and grow, by whatever means necessary. It may be possible for them to change, but I doubt they'll do it on their own. The real driver that changes a company's culture is competition. And that's why I applaud this antitrust investigation.
- throwaway743 7y ago
  Likely focusing on government contracts/DARPA programs... :/
- chongli 7y ago
  A centralized system may be susceptible to large bad actors such as Google but a p2p decentralized system is susceptible to large numbers of small bad actors. We simply haven't cracked the hard problem of trust and so we're stuck delegating to large authorities. In some ways this is reminiscent of the history of civilization, where people band together for protection against marauders. In exchange for protection, we become vulnerable to tyranny.
  - jborichevskiy 7y ago
    > We simply haven't cracked the hard problem of trust and so we're stuck delegating to large authorities. Just to clarify- what sort of trust are you referring to in the context of a service like YouTube?
    - chongli 7y ago
      Moderation. YouTube filters out all manner of content which we would prefer not to see (extreme violence, child abuse) and it presents both recommendations as well as search results we rely on to help us find the videos we're interested in. These problems, moderation and search (and some would say curation), are just two examples manifested by the hard problem of trust in decentralized systems.
      - jborichevskiy 7y ago
        Both make sense, thanks. Curious if you've run across good writing or research that explores this problem in depth, definitely interested in reading more.
        chongli 7y ago
        I wish I had, I would definitely share it with you. I've only been able to say what I said as a result of accumulated observations over the years. I've seen many decentralized systems wax and wane in that time. I tried to find some pieces but it's honestly very difficult these days, due to the sheer quantity of garbage on the internet. My trust in centralized search engines is collapsing under the weight of so much spam. I'm legitimately worried there will be nothing to replace them.
- newshorts 7y ago
  The rise of the vendor contractor... This is what happens when you develop an entire industry to avoid claiming the true number of employees your company has. In the process you stifle creativity and innovation. But hey, if your big enough you can just buy potential disrupters.
dmix 7y ago
I don't see how breaking up Google is going to help us decentralize the internet though. But I don't like how they selective demonetize certain groups of people and mess with small businesses with zero transparency.

by smush 7y ago

fjabre 7y ago

The only way forward is p2p. Inet in current form is too susceptible to governments and bad actors like Google who only work for their shareholders. Has google released anything worthwhile the last several years? What has happened to the culture of innovation at Google? We still know them for gmail, maps, and search but what have they done lately? They seem bland by comparison to the Google of the late 90s and 2000s. Why has Google become the new Microsoft?

stcredzero 7y ago
Rather, they are becoming the old Microsoft. Are you sure they aren't becoming the new Yahoo? Also, what new thing is the new Microsoft?
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Microsoft is the new Microsoft lol. It's back on top as the largest market cap just like it was in its heyday
- fragmede 7y ago
  Nadella's Microsoft is the new Microsoft. Before Nadella, Microsoft looked doomed to a slow demise behind the increasing irrelevance of Windows, with revenue from (local-only) Microsoft Office as the only future source of income. Nadella has changed the course of that staid ship by changing the underlying culture, no small feat! Some specific actions: Microsoft Office on iPad and Android, going all in on cloud (Azure has 22% of the market, ahead of GCP's 7%, at the start of 2019), being friendly with Linux (Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL, exFAT specs were released a few days ago), given up Windows Mobile (he “did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones”). https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-says-this-1-thing-unlocks-employee-greatness-its-why-microsoft-is-winning-again.html https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-... https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-rebuilt-the-company-culture/ https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-...
  - basq 7y ago
    Windows default products have also been improving in quality, like the mail and calender client. The calendar one is quite good actually. Typescript is also a pleasurable experience (as a new web dev, great timing!) vscode is nice to use too.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      I'd rather they just go all in on the Outlook desktop app instead.
adventured 7y ago
> Why has Google become the new Microsoft? Google hasn't changed, their actions have acquired increased consequences and attention. You'd have to go back to their early days to find a truly different Google, nearly two decades into the past. Gates for example was always ruthless in business, even in the early days, it's just that few people cared about Microsoft's behavior until they became powerful. The same is true of Google and most any corporation. Google is behaving pretty much as you would expect a company in their position to, it's entirely predictable. Amusing Gary Reback quote (he was notorious in those days for opposing Microsoft in Silicon Valley) from the 1990s Microsoft era: "The only thing J. D. Rockefeller did that Bill Gates hasn't done," Reback would wail, "is use dynamite against his competitors!" Wired, Nov 1, 2000 The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth https://outline.com/2DKmtw https://outline.com/2DKmtw
- bakuninsbart 7y ago
  Here's a pretty long article detailing some of Google's recent history and culture clashes: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery... Google the company shifted towards being purely profit oriented long ago, but google the employees didn't see it that way, and resisted quite a lot, until recently.
smush 7y ago
> The only way forward is p2p. Then we as the tech community need to figure out tooling so that grandma and grandpa can use p2p / mesh networks. We have several challenges in that way that I'd like to see solved, but don't know how to make that happen. 2 immediate challenges is that If you can't get today's iweather over ipfs or bittorrent (with a better UI clearly, not everything has to be file transfer), p2p can't fully replace HTTP. Email is arguably pretty federated if not quite p2p, but the spam problem is real. The below example is an account of my grandma's attempt to get p2p chat going. Grandma doesn't even know what a p2p / mesh network is, but we will assume she read about it in the paper from the HK protests and being the enterprising unafraid-to-try-new-tech-things user most users aren't, she tries it out. She is in a large concrete gym, no cell service unless she stepped out of the building for a moment. Remembering the paper article, she decided to try the Bridgefy app so she can text with someone else. How do you spell Bridgefy? Oh right, I have the paper here, let me painstakingly hunt and peck to find the name of the app in the Play Store, ah there it is. She stepped out of the gym, got signal, installed the app on both devices, then stepped back in and opened the app. Her friend gave her her own phone so she could install both at once so they can be apart, yet chat. Being forewarned by her techie grandson, she managed a feat denied to nearly all the cell-phone using public and skip the dark patterns of denying Bridgefy contacts, reluctantly giving it location access 'for Bluetooth', and attempting to stop it reading her phone number. Already, 95% of users would be long stopped by now. But she persisted. The app would not move forward, giving error toast messages of error 7::0 cannot do that. She had to step back outside where she had signal for it to work for an unknown reason. She got back in the gym, was not able to get either phone to talk to each other, either in 'public broadcast mode' or by trying to add a contact straight from the app. She uninstalled both copies and moved on without having p2p messaging, not because our devices' bluetooth radios couldn't handle ad hoc communication, but because the client doesn't exist that doesn't want to surveil or otherwise profile you. PS -> that user was not an enterprising Grandma, but myself. If someone knows how to get Bridgefy / a p2p mesh chat app going without selling the privacy farm, I'd love to hear it.
- MiroF 7y ago
  Was astonished by your grandma's technical proficiency until the end
blackflame7000 7y ago
Because of the people that they hire and the culture they promote.
nemothekid 7y ago
>The only way forward is p2p. This is the tech utopia's cop-out. What does p2p even mean? How is the current internet as it is not p2p? p2p doesn't solve discovery.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Google started down the evil path when they had their IPO. Before that their incentives were aligned with those of every citizen of the net. After that they were only incentivized to make money and grow, by whatever means necessary. It may be possible for them to change, but I doubt they'll do it on their own. The real driver that changes a company's culture is competition. And that's why I applaud this antitrust investigation.
throwaway743 7y ago
Likely focusing on government contracts/DARPA programs... :/
chongli 7y ago
A centralized system may be susceptible to large bad actors such as Google but a p2p decentralized system is susceptible to large numbers of small bad actors. We simply haven't cracked the hard problem of trust and so we're stuck delegating to large authorities. In some ways this is reminiscent of the history of civilization, where people band together for protection against marauders. In exchange for protection, we become vulnerable to tyranny.
- jborichevskiy 7y ago
  > We simply haven't cracked the hard problem of trust and so we're stuck delegating to large authorities. Just to clarify- what sort of trust are you referring to in the context of a service like YouTube?
  - chongli 7y ago
    Moderation. YouTube filters out all manner of content which we would prefer not to see (extreme violence, child abuse) and it presents both recommendations as well as search results we rely on to help us find the videos we're interested in. These problems, moderation and search (and some would say curation), are just two examples manifested by the hard problem of trust in decentralized systems.
    - jborichevskiy 7y ago
      Both make sense, thanks. Curious if you've run across good writing or research that explores this problem in depth, definitely interested in reading more.
      - chongli 7y ago
        I wish I had, I would definitely share it with you. I've only been able to say what I said as a result of accumulated observations over the years. I've seen many decentralized systems wax and wane in that time. I tried to find some pieces but it's honestly very difficult these days, due to the sheer quantity of garbage on the internet. My trust in centralized search engines is collapsing under the weight of so much spam. I'm legitimately worried there will be nothing to replace them.
newshorts 7y ago
The rise of the vendor contractor... This is what happens when you develop an entire industry to avoid claiming the true number of employees your company has. In the process you stifle creativity and innovation. But hey, if your big enough you can just buy potential disrupters.

dmix 7y ago

I don't see how breaking up Google is going to help us decentralize the internet though. But I don't like how they selective demonetize certain groups of people and mess with small businesses with zero transparency.