4 ms·

But, does Cloudflare gives back control to the user? (like Sandstorm does) I think the spiritual successor of Sandstorm is Tim Berners-Lee's Solid https://soli

But, does Cloudflare gives back control to the user? (like Sandstorm does) I think the spiritual successor of Sandstorm is Tim Berners-Lee's Solid https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/ that was recently cited in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903601 But, while Sandstorm is all about compartmentalizing access to data in a single server, having the document (grain) as its unit, Solid does this with multiple servers (called pods)

jpgvm 5y ago
Fair. Sandstorms technical ideas are well represented in Cloudflares product lineup now but not yet it's philosophy. Maybe some of that will change some day. I wasn't aware of Solid, going to check it out!
kentonv 5y ago
Solid is a very different approach from Sandstorm. I wouldn't call it a successor. Sandstorm gives the user control over both data and compute -- users install apps on their personal server, like installing apps on their phone. Solid focuses on data, specifying standardized storage interfaces and formats, but still expects compute will take place on machines controlled by the developer. I think Solid's approach is unrealistic. Developers want to choose their storage formats and technologies. Even developers that fully support users controlling their data are not going to want to bind their hands to standardized formats that don't support the unique features that the developer wants to implement, or standardized database interfaces that don't meet the app's specific usage model. Also, no developer wants to have to access data across the internet from potentially-unreliable servers on the other side of the world. So I think realistically the code and data have to stay together; the developer has to be able to specify both the code and the data format.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Not only that, Solid goes all-in on ACLs vs. Sandstorm's capability model. It adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.

jpgvm 5y ago

Fair. Sandstorms technical ideas are well represented in Cloudflares product lineup now but not yet it's philosophy. Maybe some of that will change some day. I wasn't aware of Solid, going to check it out!

kentonv 5y ago

Solid is a very different approach from Sandstorm. I wouldn't call it a successor. Sandstorm gives the user control over both data and compute -- users install apps on their personal server, like installing apps on their phone. Solid focuses on data, specifying standardized storage interfaces and formats, but still expects compute will take place on machines controlled by the developer. I think Solid's approach is unrealistic. Developers want to choose their storage formats and technologies. Even developers that fully support users controlling their data are not going to want to bind their hands to standardized formats that don't support the unique features that the developer wants to implement, or standardized database interfaces that don't meet the app's specific usage model. Also, no developer wants to have to access data across the internet from potentially-unreliable servers on the other side of the world. So I think realistically the code and data have to stay together; the developer has to be able to specify both the code and the data format.

ryukafalz 5y ago
Not only that, Solid goes all-in on ACLs vs. Sandstorm's capability model. It adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.