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HN loves decentralized solutions. Talk about blogs, RSS, the old web, mashups and you get a lot of positive feedback. Also mastodon and matrix got a lot of cove

by onli 3y ago

HN loves decentralized solutions. Talk about blogs, RSS, the old web, mashups and you get a lot of positive feedback. Also mastodon and matrix got a lot of coverage here, everything in the category of peertube. And encrypted alternatives to potential monopolies as well, Signal vs Whatsapp for example. But you are simply mistaken if you believe a bunch of obvious scams with not a single usecase bundled to one illegitimate buzzword is a decentralized solution, and of course the crowd here will see right through such bullshit. That web 3.0 scambubble never had a chance here.

notpushkin 3y ago
Nitpick: WhatsApp uses litetally the same encryption algorithm that Signal does. That said, I trust Signal a lot more, just because it isn't owned by Facebook.
- uoaei 3y ago
  To clarify the point made above: Do you trust Meta not to change your key to one they control without notifying you? Do you think they haven't implemented this functionality already?
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    I don't. I think we can decompile WhatsApp and look if something suspicious has been implemented (e. g. some backdoor that hides the key change message), but I'm not sure if somebody does this on a regular basis. That's a bit simpler with the open source Signal, although we still need to verify they haven't slipped a backdoor to their official build. And this backdoor might not be needed though, as UX for key change is (was?) atrocious in both Signal and WhatsApp: https://keybase.io/blog/chat-apps-softer-than-tofu https://keybase.io/blog/chat-apps-softer-than-tofu (2019)
yebyen 3y ago
I still think Urbit has a chance.
- onli 3y ago
  Urbit stems from a politically unacceptable author, and is far too much ideology, not usecase. I'm convinced it has no chance at all.
  - yebyen 3y ago
    I'm glad you've heard of it! There are lots more authors now. I'm not sure why you're so hung up on this one. (He was literally forced out of town. So don't hold him against us.) I was also pretty sure that story would be a good one to explain why it does have a chance. Ever heard of Elinor Ostrom? (I'll assume you didn't hear of her, but you might have heard of Garrett Hardin who came up with Tragedy of the Commons, which I learned was one of the most widely cited "wrong arguments" in the history of publishing papers...) I'm not a scholar in the field, but it was my understanding that retaining the capability for "driving someone especially bad out of town" was literally the thing that made it possible for "tragedy of the commons" to have been found an invalid construct as foregone conclusion or an inevitable outcome of working with communal shared resources. They did studies of the tight-knit communities in Africa where they had managed to avoid the tragedy of the commons for many generations, and I'm sure I'm drastically over-simplifying the conclusion, someone here can explain it better than I can... But so, we've got that going for us, as well. We can kick people out without "losing their shit for them" on the way.
    - onli 3y ago
      It's a weakly motivated opinion I strongly stated :) Urbit back then was strange, it wasn't understandable what it wanted to be, and then there was all the political ramifications from the author's ideology. So in my mind it's still marked as dead, and if things really changed, I'll add "sadly". Because I won't be alone with that. I had just a very short look at the project now, it does look different than what I saw back then. I'm just not convinced "inventing the stack completely anew" and "needing to pay for identities" can result in something that wins users, but hey, who knows. The thing that was attractive back then and still is, is the part about "one programmer should be capable to understand the whole stack." But that's only attractive for devs. In the end all the background doesn't matter, only how the layer behaves that users can interact with. On the one hand that's good for Urbit, its history doesn't matter much. One the other it's not as good, since I don't see how Urbit could be a foundation for a service that wins against regular apps or websites. Publishing, reading, shopping, listing to music and watching videos, how can Urbit improve any of that?

by onli 3y ago

notpushkin 3y ago

Nitpick: WhatsApp uses litetally the same encryption algorithm that Signal does. That said, I trust Signal a lot more, just because it isn't owned by Facebook.

uoaei 3y ago
To clarify the point made above: Do you trust Meta not to change your key to one they control without notifying you? Do you think they haven't implemented this functionality already?
- notpushkin 3y ago
  I don't. I think we can decompile WhatsApp and look if something suspicious has been implemented (e. g. some backdoor that hides the key change message), but I'm not sure if somebody does this on a regular basis. That's a bit simpler with the open source Signal, although we still need to verify they haven't slipped a backdoor to their official build. And this backdoor might not be needed though, as UX for key change is (was?) atrocious in both Signal and WhatsApp: https://keybase.io/blog/chat-apps-softer-than-tofu https://keybase.io/blog/chat-apps-softer-than-tofu (2019)

yebyen 3y ago

I still think Urbit has a chance.

onli 3y ago
Urbit stems from a politically unacceptable author, and is far too much ideology, not usecase. I'm convinced it has no chance at all.
- yebyen 3y ago
  I'm glad you've heard of it! There are lots more authors now. I'm not sure why you're so hung up on this one. (He was literally forced out of town. So don't hold him against us.) I was also pretty sure that story would be a good one to explain why it does have a chance. Ever heard of Elinor Ostrom? (I'll assume you didn't hear of her, but you might have heard of Garrett Hardin who came up with Tragedy of the Commons, which I learned was one of the most widely cited "wrong arguments" in the history of publishing papers...) I'm not a scholar in the field, but it was my understanding that retaining the capability for "driving someone especially bad out of town" was literally the thing that made it possible for "tragedy of the commons" to have been found an invalid construct as foregone conclusion or an inevitable outcome of working with communal shared resources. They did studies of the tight-knit communities in Africa where they had managed to avoid the tragedy of the commons for many generations, and I'm sure I'm drastically over-simplifying the conclusion, someone here can explain it better than I can... But so, we've got that going for us, as well. We can kick people out without "losing their shit for them" on the way.
  - onli 3y ago
    It's a weakly motivated opinion I strongly stated :) Urbit back then was strange, it wasn't understandable what it wanted to be, and then there was all the political ramifications from the author's ideology. So in my mind it's still marked as dead, and if things really changed, I'll add "sadly". Because I won't be alone with that. I had just a very short look at the project now, it does look different than what I saw back then. I'm just not convinced "inventing the stack completely anew" and "needing to pay for identities" can result in something that wins users, but hey, who knows. The thing that was attractive back then and still is, is the part about "one programmer should be capable to understand the whole stack." But that's only attractive for devs. In the end all the background doesn't matter, only how the layer behaves that users can interact with. On the one hand that's good for Urbit, its history doesn't matter much. One the other it's not as good, since I don't see how Urbit could be a foundation for a service that wins against regular apps or websites. Publishing, reading, shopping, listing to music and watching videos, how can Urbit improve any of that?