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It will keep getting harder to do things independently online. The creative, individual empowerment phase of the internet is winding down. It is being gobbled u

It will keep getting harder to do things independently online. The creative, individual empowerment phase of the internet is winding down. It is being gobbled up and calcified as an apparatus for rent extraction, spying and manipulation.

hannob 5y ago
I don't see how people come to this conclusion. TLS certificates used to cost a lot of money, now they're free. Pretty much all relevant web frameworks and technology stacks are published under FOSS licenses. Nothing stops you from running your own web server with either whatever is the current state of the art web tech or whatever you prefer to build yourself.
- saurik 5y ago
  Well, the web wasn't as encrypted before. And then when it was, the cost of the certificate wasn't a big deal in comparison to the maintenance effort of constantly rotating certificates, as you'd just buy a certificate that lasted for years and years, which isn't even allowed anymore. SSL with its massive set of "authorities" that are all granted way too broad and yet interchangeable powers with keys that both have to be rotated with pre-determined expiration dates and yet also must be shared with the client is just barely a solution to the original problem :(. But of course, the truth is that the web was never easy: it was just naive. Most (NOT ALL: some categorically only are protecting the interests of advertisers or rights holders) of these security bandaids and limitations are fixing actual problems with the web that were always there... developers just didn't know about them or didn't realize the ramifications. It would be better to have solved some of these things with solutions that are more elegant, and the lack of a definitive guide for "what all you should and should not do" sucks, but mostly the web is just banning stuff that never should have existed in the first place :(.
- opk 5y ago
  It's not always possible to get certificates from Let's Encrypt for local network only services. In a big corporate environment jumping through the hoops necessary to deploy keys or get things into a DMZ can be near impossible. Even if you don't have those issues it is still one more thing to learn and setup. All these things pile up. Try setting up a basic e-mail server on the modern Internet and compare that to 20 years ago.
  - easton 5y ago
    If your company has network admins smart enough to deploy segmentation rules, they are also probably smart enough to setup a internal CA and deploy the certs to everyone’s root store. If not, that stinks. Smallstep makes a basic CA for free that is ACME compliant, meaning you just need to change the URL for Let’s Encrypt on your server and restart. Microsoft also has a CA included with Windows Server if you’re using that which works fine (although it uses a different API to get certs).
  - hannob 5y ago
    > In a big corporate environment jumping through the hoops necessary to deploy keys or get things into a DMZ can be near impossible. TBH that sounds like you decided to make things painful and then complain that they are painful.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > It's not always possible to get certificates from Let's Encrypt for local network only services. In a big corporate environment jumping through the hoops necessary to deploy keys or get things into a DMZ can be near impossible. You're not wrong, but if you can go through the paperwork to add a CNAME to external DNS, your team can use DNS validation to verify host record ownership for LE/ACME: * https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mode https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mo... * https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-securing-automation-acme-dns-challenge-validation https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-se... * https://dan.langille.org/2019/02/01/acme-domain-alias-mode/ https://dan.langille.org/2019/02/01/acme-domain-alias-mode/ Seems not many people know about using dns-01 for internal-only hosts.
frazbin 5y ago
only if you live in the technological present. They won't really have us until they can chase us out of the past and/or future
hagbard_c 5y ago
Only if you allow it to become so, there's no rent-seeking on "my" part of the net. Just avoid any and all devices, programs and "services" which exhibit such behaviour, self-host where you can or use decentralised services if you can not, don't use any devices through "cloud" interfaces - and block those devices from the open internet altogether of they'll contact the mothership - and enjoy the 'net the way you want it.
sergiomattei 5y ago
The Web3 community is pretty actively innovating to create a decentralized and creative web, if you ignore the scams going out there.
root_axis 5y ago
From a historical perspective, the complete opposite is true. It has never been easier to do things independently on the web than it is today and by huge orders of magnitude compared to even 20 years ago. The panoply of mature open source software and tooling at the disposal of a would be webmaster is so enormous that it now actually pisses people off when programmers open source their own library or framework code. As far as the rent extraction apparatus, it is enumerated almost entirely by a population that simply did not exist online back in the imagined halcyon days of "the independent internet". The masses didn't come online to tap through homespun webrings, they don't care about that stuff, these shiny hyper-optimized manipulation machines are what keep the masses online in the first place.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Why do you Open Source Evangelists not understand that most humans cannot do this stuff? It's great that you know what a build system and github and dependencies are, but most people don't. And IMO they shouldn't have to.
  - detaro 5y ago
    You can still do all that with any competent shared hosting provider. (I guess "free, supplied by ISP" is rare nowadays, but you'll find other "free at some subdomain" offerings) Just because all these other options exist doesn't mean you need to use them. Plenty people I know still handwrite their HTML. Somehow people got to the point of thinking that the only way to host a website is renting a VPS and setting up everything themselves, and that's just not true. (and even if you do that, there's a range of how complex you need to make it)
  - 542354234235 5y ago
    >I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. >No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. I used to save my notepad files on a floppy drive. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Just because things are different doesn’t mean worse. The exact skills and methods used 20 years ago is not a good metric for something as nebulous as “do things independently online”. The “things” you can do are going to change and evolve.

hannob 5y ago

I don't see how people come to this conclusion. TLS certificates used to cost a lot of money, now they're free. Pretty much all relevant web frameworks and technology stacks are published under FOSS licenses. Nothing stops you from running your own web server with either whatever is the current state of the art web tech or whatever you prefer to build yourself.

saurik 5y ago
Well, the web wasn't as encrypted before. And then when it was, the cost of the certificate wasn't a big deal in comparison to the maintenance effort of constantly rotating certificates, as you'd just buy a certificate that lasted for years and years, which isn't even allowed anymore. SSL with its massive set of "authorities" that are all granted way too broad and yet interchangeable powers with keys that both have to be rotated with pre-determined expiration dates and yet also must be shared with the client is just barely a solution to the original problem :(. But of course, the truth is that the web was never easy: it was just naive. Most (NOT ALL: some categorically only are protecting the interests of advertisers or rights holders) of these security bandaids and limitations are fixing actual problems with the web that were always there... developers just didn't know about them or didn't realize the ramifications. It would be better to have solved some of these things with solutions that are more elegant, and the lack of a definitive guide for "what all you should and should not do" sucks, but mostly the web is just banning stuff that never should have existed in the first place :(.
opk 5y ago
It's not always possible to get certificates from Let's Encrypt for local network only services. In a big corporate environment jumping through the hoops necessary to deploy keys or get things into a DMZ can be near impossible. Even if you don't have those issues it is still one more thing to learn and setup. All these things pile up. Try setting up a basic e-mail server on the modern Internet and compare that to 20 years ago.
- easton 5y ago
  If your company has network admins smart enough to deploy segmentation rules, they are also probably smart enough to setup a internal CA and deploy the certs to everyone’s root store. If not, that stinks. Smallstep makes a basic CA for free that is ACME compliant, meaning you just need to change the URL for Let’s Encrypt on your server and restart. Microsoft also has a CA included with Windows Server if you’re using that which works fine (although it uses a different API to get certs).
- hannob 5y ago
  > In a big corporate environment jumping through the hoops necessary to deploy keys or get things into a DMZ can be near impossible. TBH that sounds like you decided to make things painful and then complain that they are painful.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > It's not always possible to get certificates from Let's Encrypt for local network only services. In a big corporate environment jumping through the hoops necessary to deploy keys or get things into a DMZ can be near impossible. You're not wrong, but if you can go through the paperwork to add a CNAME to external DNS, your team can use DNS validation to verify host record ownership for LE/ACME: * https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mode https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mo... * https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-securing-automation-acme-dns-challenge-validation https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-se... * https://dan.langille.org/2019/02/01/acme-domain-alias-mode/ https://dan.langille.org/2019/02/01/acme-domain-alias-mode/ Seems not many people know about using dns-01 for internal-only hosts.

frazbin 5y ago

only if you live in the technological present. They won't really have us until they can chase us out of the past and/or future

hagbard_c 5y ago

Only if you allow it to become so, there's no rent-seeking on "my" part of the net. Just avoid any and all devices, programs and "services" which exhibit such behaviour, self-host where you can or use decentralised services if you can not, don't use any devices through "cloud" interfaces - and block those devices from the open internet altogether of they'll contact the mothership - and enjoy the 'net the way you want it.

sergiomattei 5y ago

The Web3 community is pretty actively innovating to create a decentralized and creative web, if you ignore the scams going out there.

root_axis 5y ago

From a historical perspective, the complete opposite is true. It has never been easier to do things independently on the web than it is today and by huge orders of magnitude compared to even 20 years ago. The panoply of mature open source software and tooling at the disposal of a would be webmaster is so enormous that it now actually pisses people off when programmers open source their own library or framework code. As far as the rent extraction apparatus, it is enumerated almost entirely by a population that simply did not exist online back in the imagined halcyon days of "the independent internet". The masses didn't come online to tap through homespun webrings, they don't care about that stuff, these shiny hyper-optimized manipulation machines are what keep the masses online in the first place.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Why do you Open Source Evangelists not understand that most humans cannot do this stuff? It's great that you know what a build system and github and dependencies are, but most people don't. And IMO they shouldn't have to.
- detaro 5y ago
  You can still do all that with any competent shared hosting provider. (I guess "free, supplied by ISP" is rare nowadays, but you'll find other "free at some subdomain" offerings) Just because all these other options exist doesn't mean you need to use them. Plenty people I know still handwrite their HTML. Somehow people got to the point of thinking that the only way to host a website is renting a VPS and setting up everything themselves, and that's just not true. (and even if you do that, there's a range of how complex you need to make it)
- 542354234235 5y ago
  >I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. >No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. I used to save my notepad files on a floppy drive. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Just because things are different doesn’t mean worse. The exact skills and methods used 20 years ago is not a good metric for something as nebulous as “do things independently online”. The “things” you can do are going to change and evolve.