15 ms·

Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio]

56 points by jeffmorrisjr 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
echelon 6y ago
> "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" No. No no no no no. This isn't right. The modern Internet is such sellout. It didn't turn out anything like what I'd hoped. Bittorrent, semantic tagging, RSS, decentralized aggregation. Ownership. All dead or dying. These companies are all gobbling up the commons and pushing us into serfdom. Apple, Google, the RIAA. The whole lot of them have poached and polluted the web and protected their profits. Pretty soon we won't be able to "view source". It'll just be binary blobs with DRM. The browser monoculture will collapse into a universal thin client that leaves "standards" in the dust and takes away all the features BigCo developers don't themselves need. Nobody wants URL bars or ad blocking extensions. Those get in the way of the revolutionary UX they've prepared for us to predictably fawn over. If Flash can die, one day 3rd party websites can too. In fifteen years your personal website won't even work. I can hear it now: "What's haitch tea tea pee?" Too confusing. Too dangerous. Your tiny applet will exist within the WeeChat shell that is ChromeOS. The BigCo [1] will take 50% of your profits and make you obey arbitrary rules, lest your app be taken down. This bleak utopia is coming to Microsoft Windows too, because they know best how to Protect You™ and make your computing Trusted™. All interactions will be recorded for training the models. You don't deserve that data yourself. Only BigCo has the resources and expertise to build their own. And they'll use it against^W for you to sell more ads and Farmville Loot Crates. You're just another whale to pump full of dopamine. "Nobody would personally own an oil rig or an airplane, so why would anybody own a computer? What a laughable concept. Only big companies get to have those. Go back to your safe and easy to understand smart tablet that we've prepared for you, and consume your TwitterTok FaceFeed." ... I hate supporting this. Economically or with my brain. Stallman told us it was coming. Brace yourselves. [1] there are several, and that is an important point, because several BigCo competing for your attention cannot possibly constitute a monopoly. That's an outdated concept from last century. Go be angry at your local representative and/or family members so you can drive more engagement for us.
- indigochill 6y ago
  Even as BigCos do their best to ruin the mainstream for everyone, there are plenty of alternatives popping up. Gopher, Gemini, shared Unix terminals, Tor, etc. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your prediction, but I predict if things get so bad, there will definitely be a healthy community of counterculture hackers who will do things differently.
  - tleb_ 6y ago
    Those are cool when you live in the CLI. My mom doesn't though, being part of a small cluster of hackers is cool but not what the internet should be. My goal once I can finance it is to create a virtual island that my family and close friends can rely on for vital services: emails, file hosting, calendar, contacts, a public web space, etc. If every hacker did this for its close circle the impact would be far greater than the current hacker communities we create. Notable mentions: https://chatons.org/en https://chatons.org/en & https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/
    - wyre 6y ago
      > create a virtual island That sounds like a really cool project. What would the costs be to finance that?
      - tleb_ 6y ago
        One or two servers (second one for redundancy, at another location). File storage would be the expensive part. Starting at 10-20TB usable space with slots for more would be nice. The location would either be at my parents', as I move often and they have a rack installed (with nothing in it, the internet link isn't amazing but should be fine) or it could be colocated at a non-profit FAI (https://www.ffdn.org/en https://www.ffdn.org/en). The colocation is probably the most sensible option for the internet link and stability they bring (proper data center context, back-up generators and they have static IPv4). + long-term encrypted backups to some random service like Backblaze even if I have duplicate storage, I don't trust myself enough to do everything properly. The idea isn't new, I have already seen a few online (I remember of two but no links). The focus was more around hacker&friend groups, looking like private tilde clubs. Here the idea is to provide services usable by anyone in my family, with a nice identity (I like seeing it as an island, a village or such).
greggman3 6y ago
Here's a link that doesn't require an Apple device to listen to https://open.spotify.com/show/0FiS79p7OPZjdGVj25e6kS https://open.spotify.com/show/0FiS79p7OPZjdGVj25e6kS (would have preferred to link to some home page for the podcast but too lazy to search further)
- stjo 6y ago
  Posting one proprietary address instead of another is not much better. Apple podcasts at least tries to contribute to the open ecosystem by allowing their index to be used by independent apps for free. Spotify does not. Here’s direct link to the podcast website: https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures Listen directly in the browser without drm, import into your podcast app of choice with rss or download the mp3 locally.
  - greggman3 6y ago
    One lets you listen, the other doesn't. So one is decidedly better than the other
    - strogonoff 6y ago
      Right on. I can listen via Apple Podcasts but not via Spotify, which as usual declares that it’s “not available in your country”. By the way, an Apple device is not required—Apple podcasts work on Windows, and on Linux you can paste an Apple podcast link into a podcast client like GNOME Podcasts. If I don’t have any app, at least I can read what podcast is that and find it elsewhere, while the error page seen after following a Spotify link takes care to not disclose a single bit of information about the podcast that could let one find it elsewhere online, and even podcast URL offers no glimpse due to being mostly a hash. Each time I am given a Spotify link without further context I basically can only respond with “sorry can’t access that, give me at least a name so I can find it elsewhere online”. Of course, a canonical link to podcast page, if such exists, is best.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    mpv (youtube-dl) cannot injest that. It's my one-off net audio player of preference. The direct episode link is ... https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures/episodes/Dustin-Schau-Gatsby--Head-of-Product-Lets-Make-The-Web-Weird-Again-emfotg https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures/episodes/Dustin-Schau-G... ... which still fails the mpv/youtube-dl test.
dredmorbius 6y ago
I'm just going to say that the mix of audio-based content (not skimmable/scannable) and DRM-encumbered / not-readily-directly-accessible streams, for a title apparently espousing he open web, but which is (based on a supplied mp3 link here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135323) ... is a 30-minute product infomercial, draws a big fat flag.
finnthehuman 6y ago
> Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio] (podcasts.apple.com) lol. I'm not saying this is futile, but seeing this call to action next to "podcasts.apple.com" means whoever this is won't be the one to do it. > 3. Making the web weird again: the explosion of retro design ascetics [sic] on the web Oh, so it's not even about making it weird. It's just sloganeering about quaint aesthetics to shovel React tooling? I expected little, and I was still underwhelmed. Oh well, such is life.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  > I expected little, and I was still underwhelmed. Oh well, such is life. Well, your comment about it is really nice, it made me smile, especially this last sentence (I find it... poetic!) and at least this thing produced a little connection between me and you. You never know :)
ThePreacherMan 6y ago
Impossible, I've given up on it.

56 points by jeffmorrisjr 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

> "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" No. No no no no no. This isn't right. The modern Internet is such sellout. It didn't turn out anything like what I'd hoped. Bittorrent, semantic tagging, RSS, decentralized aggregation. Ownership. All dead or dying. These companies are all gobbling up the commons and pushing us into serfdom. Apple, Google, the RIAA. The whole lot of them have poached and polluted the web and protected their profits. Pretty soon we won't be able to "view source". It'll just be binary blobs with DRM. The browser monoculture will collapse into a universal thin client that leaves "standards" in the dust and takes away all the features BigCo developers don't themselves need. Nobody wants URL bars or ad blocking extensions. Those get in the way of the revolutionary UX they've prepared for us to predictably fawn over. If Flash can die, one day 3rd party websites can too. In fifteen years your personal website won't even work. I can hear it now: "What's haitch tea tea pee?" Too confusing. Too dangerous. Your tiny applet will exist within the WeeChat shell that is ChromeOS. The BigCo [1] will take 50% of your profits and make you obey arbitrary rules, lest your app be taken down. This bleak utopia is coming to Microsoft Windows too, because they know best how to Protect You™ and make your computing Trusted™. All interactions will be recorded for training the models. You don't deserve that data yourself. Only BigCo has the resources and expertise to build their own. And they'll use it against^W for you to sell more ads and Farmville Loot Crates. You're just another whale to pump full of dopamine. "Nobody would personally own an oil rig or an airplane, so why would anybody own a computer? What a laughable concept. Only big companies get to have those. Go back to your safe and easy to understand smart tablet that we've prepared for you, and consume your TwitterTok FaceFeed." ... I hate supporting this. Economically or with my brain. Stallman told us it was coming. Brace yourselves. [1] there are several, and that is an important point, because several BigCo competing for your attention cannot possibly constitute a monopoly. That's an outdated concept from last century. Go be angry at your local representative and/or family members so you can drive more engagement for us.

indigochill 6y ago
Even as BigCos do their best to ruin the mainstream for everyone, there are plenty of alternatives popping up. Gopher, Gemini, shared Unix terminals, Tor, etc. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your prediction, but I predict if things get so bad, there will definitely be a healthy community of counterculture hackers who will do things differently.
- tleb_ 6y ago
  Those are cool when you live in the CLI. My mom doesn't though, being part of a small cluster of hackers is cool but not what the internet should be. My goal once I can finance it is to create a virtual island that my family and close friends can rely on for vital services: emails, file hosting, calendar, contacts, a public web space, etc. If every hacker did this for its close circle the impact would be far greater than the current hacker communities we create. Notable mentions: https://chatons.org/en https://chatons.org/en & https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/
  - wyre 6y ago
    > create a virtual island That sounds like a really cool project. What would the costs be to finance that?
    - tleb_ 6y ago
      One or two servers (second one for redundancy, at another location). File storage would be the expensive part. Starting at 10-20TB usable space with slots for more would be nice. The location would either be at my parents', as I move often and they have a rack installed (with nothing in it, the internet link isn't amazing but should be fine) or it could be colocated at a non-profit FAI (https://www.ffdn.org/en https://www.ffdn.org/en). The colocation is probably the most sensible option for the internet link and stability they bring (proper data center context, back-up generators and they have static IPv4). + long-term encrypted backups to some random service like Backblaze even if I have duplicate storage, I don't trust myself enough to do everything properly. The idea isn't new, I have already seen a few online (I remember of two but no links). The focus was more around hacker&friend groups, looking like private tilde clubs. Here the idea is to provide services usable by anyone in my family, with a nice identity (I like seeing it as an island, a village or such).

greggman3 6y ago

Here's a link that doesn't require an Apple device to listen to https://open.spotify.com/show/0FiS79p7OPZjdGVj25e6kS https://open.spotify.com/show/0FiS79p7OPZjdGVj25e6kS (would have preferred to link to some home page for the podcast but too lazy to search further)

stjo 6y ago
Posting one proprietary address instead of another is not much better. Apple podcasts at least tries to contribute to the open ecosystem by allowing their index to be used by independent apps for free. Spotify does not. Here’s direct link to the podcast website: https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures Listen directly in the browser without drm, import into your podcast app of choice with rss or download the mp3 locally.
- greggman3 6y ago
  One lets you listen, the other doesn't. So one is decidedly better than the other
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    Right on. I can listen via Apple Podcasts but not via Spotify, which as usual declares that it’s “not available in your country”. By the way, an Apple device is not required—Apple podcasts work on Windows, and on Linux you can paste an Apple podcast link into a podcast client like GNOME Podcasts. If I don’t have any app, at least I can read what podcast is that and find it elsewhere, while the error page seen after following a Spotify link takes care to not disclose a single bit of information about the podcast that could let one find it elsewhere online, and even podcast URL offers no glimpse due to being mostly a hash. Each time I am given a Spotify link without further context I basically can only respond with “sorry can’t access that, give me at least a name so I can find it elsewhere online”. Of course, a canonical link to podcast page, if such exists, is best.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  mpv (youtube-dl) cannot injest that. It's my one-off net audio player of preference. The direct episode link is ... https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures/episodes/Dustin-Schau-Gatsby--Head-of-Product-Lets-Make-The-Web-Weird-Again-emfotg https://anchor.fm/chapteroneventures/episodes/Dustin-Schau-G... ... which still fails the mpv/youtube-dl test.

dredmorbius 6y ago

I'm just going to say that the mix of audio-based content (not skimmable/scannable) and DRM-encumbered / not-readily-directly-accessible streams, for a title apparently espousing he open web, but which is (based on a supplied mp3 link here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135323) ... is a 30-minute product infomercial, draws a big fat flag.

finnthehuman 6y ago

> Let's Make the Web Weird Again [audio] (podcasts.apple.com) lol. I'm not saying this is futile, but seeing this call to action next to "podcasts.apple.com" means whoever this is won't be the one to do it. > 3. Making the web weird again: the explosion of retro design ascetics [sic] on the web Oh, so it's not even about making it weird. It's just sloganeering about quaint aesthetics to shovel React tooling? I expected little, and I was still underwhelmed. Oh well, such is life.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> I expected little, and I was still underwhelmed. Oh well, such is life. Well, your comment about it is really nice, it made me smile, especially this last sentence (I find it... poetic!) and at least this thing produced a little connection between me and you. You never know :)

ThePreacherMan 6y ago

Impossible, I've given up on it.