4 ms·

The obvious question is why should these things be a pain in the ass.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
If you want everything to be decentralized it will always be a pain in the ass and have way more friction compared to a centralized alternative even if it's pretty easy in absolute terms. The problem is psychological, not technical.
- necovek 5y ago
  You could say the same thing about laundry. While US has a plethora of laundromats and buildings get dedicated laundry rooms, in Europe (at least), even the tiniest apartments in apartment buildings have their own washing machine. While there is some overhead (if it breaks, you have to find someone to fix it; you need to clean that filter...), people have happily accepted the decentralization since the benefits outweigh the overhead. Same can be done with any other tech if we focus on streamlining it.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    The fact you compare this to laundry means you don't really understand the problem. Adding any sort of friction to an onboarding flow severely reduces conversion. The tech and it's benefits don't mean anything if there is too much friction before the user realizes the benefits, and it doesn't take much friction to dissuade people. See these tweets from a founder who built a social app startup and sold it to Facebook for 8 figures: - https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1273437328866832384 https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1273437328866832384 - https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1339278829571854336 https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1339278829571854336 - https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1324354709201711104 https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1324354709201711104 Consumers won't adopt a decentralized solution because there is way too much friction. The only reason people use crypto is because there is a monetary incentive, and even then it's pretty damn fringe. This comment explains it beautifully: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709446.
    - necovek 5y ago
      Uhm, but that's exactly what I am saying. We need to get the onboarding flow simpler for people to buy into decentralized solutions, and there are technical hurdles in achieving it, but they are not insurmountable: it's just that nobody is working on them. I don't see why any of that should be impossible, it's just that most of decentralized stuff is free software that was never focused on the starting-up flow and UX.
  - debaserab2 5y ago
    In this case "decentralization" means drastically less overhead in terms of simply taking your dirty clothes to the other room instead of dealing with the hassle of traveling somewhere with it and potentially paying money per load and/or dealing with other tenants that might be using all the machines. People in the US don't use communal laundry because they want to, they use it because they (most likely) have to because they are in a large urban center or can't afford the appliance. This is basically the reverse of the internet centralization/decentralization example, where centralized services on the internet are much easier to use than their decentralized counterparts.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- forthedayrate 5y ago
  Does it have to be that hard though? From a user point of view, RSS readers are easy to come by. From a server point of view, I think a raspberry pi build that scripted most of the setup, is an achievable goal. Not an easy one, but doable. Sadly, even if you made it super easy, most folks would stick with the big names. Still, it could be nice to start a little community of self hosted sites...
  - spurgu 5y ago
    > From a server point of view, I think a raspberry pi build that scripted most of the setup, is an achievable goal. Not an easy one, but doable. Yes! I'm thinking something like standardizing Docker deployments with nginx-proxy[0] (which takes care of automatic Let's Encrypt certificates, it Just Works™[1]). If everyone shipped a docker-compose.yml tailored to nginx-proxy this would make it very easy for anyone to deploy stuff on their home server. Then you'd need a standardized interactive install script that asks for things like hostname, email details, whatever else needed in .env (or whatever config). Perhaps a good ol' Makefile? make setup # interactive install make up # run docker-compose up -d make down # run docker-compose down make uninstall # uninstall, plus clean up volumes and images People would just need to learn how to (after installing Docker, which is trivial) git clone a repo and then run those commands and go to the URL and finish the setup (if relevant). [0] https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy [1] This is how I deploy all my Docker stuff, it usually takes from 1-5 minutes to modify docker-compose.yml to fit
someguydave 5y ago
in most cases, the answer is “it’s a pain in the ass because of the huge stack of poorly written software full of security holes you need to open a TCP port and send HTTP”

If you want everything to be decentralized it will always be a pain in the ass and have way more friction compared to a centralized alternative even if it's pretty easy in absolute terms. The problem is psychological, not technical.

necovek 5y ago
You could say the same thing about laundry. While US has a plethora of laundromats and buildings get dedicated laundry rooms, in Europe (at least), even the tiniest apartments in apartment buildings have their own washing machine. While there is some overhead (if it breaks, you have to find someone to fix it; you need to clean that filter...), people have happily accepted the decentralization since the benefits outweigh the overhead. Same can be done with any other tech if we focus on streamlining it.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  The fact you compare this to laundry means you don't really understand the problem. Adding any sort of friction to an onboarding flow severely reduces conversion. The tech and it's benefits don't mean anything if there is too much friction before the user realizes the benefits, and it doesn't take much friction to dissuade people. See these tweets from a founder who built a social app startup and sold it to Facebook for 8 figures: - https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1273437328866832384 https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1273437328866832384 - https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1339278829571854336 https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1339278829571854336 - https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1324354709201711104 https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1324354709201711104 Consumers won't adopt a decentralized solution because there is way too much friction. The only reason people use crypto is because there is a monetary incentive, and even then it's pretty damn fringe. This comment explains it beautifully: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709446.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Uhm, but that's exactly what I am saying. We need to get the onboarding flow simpler for people to buy into decentralized solutions, and there are technical hurdles in achieving it, but they are not insurmountable: it's just that nobody is working on them. I don't see why any of that should be impossible, it's just that most of decentralized stuff is free software that was never focused on the starting-up flow and UX.
- debaserab2 5y ago
  In this case "decentralization" means drastically less overhead in terms of simply taking your dirty clothes to the other room instead of dealing with the hassle of traveling somewhere with it and potentially paying money per load and/or dealing with other tenants that might be using all the machines. People in the US don't use communal laundry because they want to, they use it because they (most likely) have to because they are in a large urban center or can't afford the appliance. This is basically the reverse of the internet centralization/decentralization example, where centralized services on the internet are much easier to use than their decentralized counterparts.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
forthedayrate 5y ago
Does it have to be that hard though? From a user point of view, RSS readers are easy to come by. From a server point of view, I think a raspberry pi build that scripted most of the setup, is an achievable goal. Not an easy one, but doable. Sadly, even if you made it super easy, most folks would stick with the big names. Still, it could be nice to start a little community of self hosted sites...
- spurgu 5y ago
  > From a server point of view, I think a raspberry pi build that scripted most of the setup, is an achievable goal. Not an easy one, but doable. Yes! I'm thinking something like standardizing Docker deployments with nginx-proxy[0] (which takes care of automatic Let's Encrypt certificates, it Just Works™[1]). If everyone shipped a docker-compose.yml tailored to nginx-proxy this would make it very easy for anyone to deploy stuff on their home server. Then you'd need a standardized interactive install script that asks for things like hostname, email details, whatever else needed in .env (or whatever config). Perhaps a good ol' Makefile? make setup # interactive install make up # run docker-compose up -d make down # run docker-compose down make uninstall # uninstall, plus clean up volumes and images People would just need to learn how to (after installing Docker, which is trivial) git clone a repo and then run those commands and go to the URL and finish the setup (if relevant). [0] https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy [1] This is how I deploy all my Docker stuff, it usually takes from 1-5 minutes to modify docker-compose.yml to fit

someguydave 5y ago

in most cases, the answer is “it’s a pain in the ass because of the huge stack of poorly written software full of security holes you need to open a TCP port and send HTTP”