4 ms·

A newsgroup works. Its just that no one under 30 seems to realize that you don't need js to have a web application.

by konjin 6y ago

mrtksn 6y ago
That’s why it works. If it had significant impact to worth their compensation the lawyers would have been on it.
- konjin 6y ago
  No, js is fundamentally a technology with an anti-competitive ethos enforced by the fact you need an army of engineers employed full time to keep even a trivial site up and running, and on top of that it has surveillance built into it's core. You can't be anonymous using it by design. Apps built on top of tcp that don't have persistent state, like signed emails, don't suffer from either of those problems and are fundamentally decentralized, anonymous and more user friendly once you try and use them 5 years after they were created.
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    See, anything about sharing needs centralisation. It's not about JS or whatever language or framework or whatever makes this thing tik. The need for centralisation is an inherit weakness that can't be solved by technology. Sure you can share something among friends, then your centralisation point would be your school or workplace or something too touch heavy to attack and scale, so no one cares.
    - konjin 6y ago
      Block chain, bit torrent, freenet. There are plenty of alternatives that don't require centralization, they are just unpolished because there is no money in them. Again, github only exists because for some reason my generation of developers has decided that js is the only way to use the internet and a pretty interface makes up for not knowing the tools you are using.
      - notriddle 6y ago
        Block chain is the only one in your list that is actually decentralized, and it winds up de-facto centralized anyway because it's too slow. BitTorrent is centralized around the search engines, because a content-addressable storage system can't help with content discovery. You need someone to delete torrents that claim to be video games but are actually ransomeware. FreeNet is the same as BitTorrent, except that it has built-in support for updatable "freepsites," so the content directories are built into the protocol instead of being run as regular websites. Also, it's anonymous, and kinda slow. It's actually really cool, and horribly underrated, but it doesn't actually solve the schelling point problem. Which freepsite do you trust to have factually correct information?
        konjin 6y ago
        Which is why you don't use js. Freenet is more than enough to distribute source code with a mailing list and signed files using plain text.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Usenet was killed once in the name of child pornography by the current governor of New York: https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-to-curb-usenet-access/ https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-t...
- konjin 6y ago
  Yes, the 4 horseman of the infopocalypse. To put it bluntly, if your system can't protect criminals it can't protect regular users either. Heaven forbid we expect the police to actually do their job without having to spy on all of us all the time. Is expecting competence from them so much to ask?

A newsgroup works. Its just that no one under 30 seems to realize that you don't need js to have a web application.

by konjin 6y ago

A newsgroup works. Its just that no one under 30 seems to realize that you don't need js to have a web application.

mrtksn 6y ago

That’s why it works. If it had significant impact to worth their compensation the lawyers would have been on it.

konjin 6y ago
No, js is fundamentally a technology with an anti-competitive ethos enforced by the fact you need an army of engineers employed full time to keep even a trivial site up and running, and on top of that it has surveillance built into it's core. You can't be anonymous using it by design. Apps built on top of tcp that don't have persistent state, like signed emails, don't suffer from either of those problems and are fundamentally decentralized, anonymous and more user friendly once you try and use them 5 years after they were created.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  See, anything about sharing needs centralisation. It's not about JS or whatever language or framework or whatever makes this thing tik. The need for centralisation is an inherit weakness that can't be solved by technology. Sure you can share something among friends, then your centralisation point would be your school or workplace or something too touch heavy to attack and scale, so no one cares.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Block chain, bit torrent, freenet. There are plenty of alternatives that don't require centralization, they are just unpolished because there is no money in them. Again, github only exists because for some reason my generation of developers has decided that js is the only way to use the internet and a pretty interface makes up for not knowing the tools you are using.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      Block chain is the only one in your list that is actually decentralized, and it winds up de-facto centralized anyway because it's too slow. BitTorrent is centralized around the search engines, because a content-addressable storage system can't help with content discovery. You need someone to delete torrents that claim to be video games but are actually ransomeware. FreeNet is the same as BitTorrent, except that it has built-in support for updatable "freepsites," so the content directories are built into the protocol instead of being run as regular websites. Also, it's anonymous, and kinda slow. It's actually really cool, and horribly underrated, but it doesn't actually solve the schelling point problem. Which freepsite do you trust to have factually correct information?
      - konjin 6y ago
        Which is why you don't use js. Freenet is more than enough to distribute source code with a mailing list and signed files using plain text.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Usenet was killed once in the name of child pornography by the current governor of New York: https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-to-curb-usenet-access/ https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-t...

konjin 6y ago
Yes, the 4 horseman of the infopocalypse. To put it bluntly, if your system can't protect criminals it can't protect regular users either. Heaven forbid we expect the police to actually do their job without having to spy on all of us all the time. Is expecting competence from them so much to ask?