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What mindset is that, actually trying to build alternatives to FAANG? I honestly think remote attestation is a smaller problem. At least then we can still bui

What mindset is that, actually trying to build alternatives to FAANG? I honestly think remote attestation is a smaller problem. At least then we can still build alternative services. I'd rather have a free web and a locked down browser than a free browser and nothing but an endless digital mall to browse. Remote attestation will only lock you out of that endless mall to begin with. It will find ways of sucking regardless of what Google does.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
The mindset of sacrificing computing freedom for user convenience and corporation profitability. We should be absolutely uncompromising on this one value. The alternative is the destruction of everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. > nothing but an endless digital mall to browse Funny, that's essentially what the web feels like to me in 2023. Escaping it is the number one reason why I visit HN nearly every day. It's like the only sane website left. I don't even open the links posted here anymore, websites are just unbearable these days even with uBlock Origin turned up to the max. I just assume whatever's important enough will be directly quoted in the comments. The "static web" you and the commenter below mentioned? I actually kind of want it.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Dude, my struggle is to be able to operate a non-profit service free of charge with no ads, and the aim is to help users find a way out of exactly the aforementioned digital mall and onto the free and independent, mostly static web. This is harder every day dude to all the bot traffic helping themselves to disproportionate usage of my service via a botnet that is all but indistinguishable from human traffic. But yeah, must be the corporate profits I'm hoarding...?
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Why is it relevant whether the traffic is human or automated? The whole point of the internet is you can put a server out there and anyone anywhere can connect to it with any HTTP client. To me it seems like the only people who care about that are those who want to sell our attention to the highest bidder via advertising. Wouldn't you be having the same difficulties if there were just as much traffic coming from humans?
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      I want to provide as many human beings as possible with value by distributing my processing power fairly between them. If I get DDoS:ed by a botnet, I won't provide anyone with anything other than optimistically an error page. If I had infinite money and computing resources, this would be fine, but I'm just one guy with a not very power computer hosted on domestic broadband, and even though I give away compute freely, it just takes one bag of dicks with a botnet to use it all up for themselves, and without bot mitigation, I'm helpless to prevent it. Oh and I actually do provide an API for free machine access, so it's not like they have to use headless browsers and go through the front door like this. But they still do. Serves me right for trying to provide a useful service I guess?
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        I see. I respect that. The bot detection won't come without cost. It will centralize power in the hands of Cloudflare and other giants. I think it's only a matter of time until they start exercising their powers. Is this really an acceptable tradeoff? If we do accept it, I think the day will come when Cloudflare starts rejecting non-Chrome browsers, to say nothing of non-browser user agents.
        marginalia_nu 3y ago
        I don't see any good options at this point. The situation profoundly sucks for everyone involved. We're stuck between the almost absurdly adversarial open web, or bargaining with the devil at Cloudflare, and now Google's remote attestation which is basically Google taking a stab at the problem. To be clear I don't think remote attestation is a good solution, but it's at least a solution. Any credible argument against Cloudflare or remote attestation needs to address state of the open web and have some sort of plan how to fix it. Or at least acknowledge that's what Google and CF are trying to solve. Dismissing the problem as a bunch of mindless corporate greed just doesn't fly. It affects anyone trying to host anything on the Internet, and is only getting worse. The status quo and where it's heading is completely untenable. It's easy to say well just host static content, but that's ceding all of Internet discovery and navigation and discussion and interactivity to big tech, irreversibly pulling up the ladder on any sort of free and independent competition in these areas. That's, in my opinion, a far greater problem.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

The mindset of sacrificing computing freedom for user convenience and corporation profitability. We should be absolutely uncompromising on this one value. The alternative is the destruction of everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. > nothing but an endless digital mall to browse Funny, that's essentially what the web feels like to me in 2023. Escaping it is the number one reason why I visit HN nearly every day. It's like the only sane website left. I don't even open the links posted here anymore, websites are just unbearable these days even with uBlock Origin turned up to the max. I just assume whatever's important enough will be directly quoted in the comments. The "static web" you and the commenter below mentioned? I actually kind of want it.

marginalia_nu 3y ago
Dude, my struggle is to be able to operate a non-profit service free of charge with no ads, and the aim is to help users find a way out of exactly the aforementioned digital mall and onto the free and independent, mostly static web. This is harder every day dude to all the bot traffic helping themselves to disproportionate usage of my service via a botnet that is all but indistinguishable from human traffic. But yeah, must be the corporate profits I'm hoarding...?
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Why is it relevant whether the traffic is human or automated? The whole point of the internet is you can put a server out there and anyone anywhere can connect to it with any HTTP client. To me it seems like the only people who care about that are those who want to sell our attention to the highest bidder via advertising. Wouldn't you be having the same difficulties if there were just as much traffic coming from humans?
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    I want to provide as many human beings as possible with value by distributing my processing power fairly between them. If I get DDoS:ed by a botnet, I won't provide anyone with anything other than optimistically an error page. If I had infinite money and computing resources, this would be fine, but I'm just one guy with a not very power computer hosted on domestic broadband, and even though I give away compute freely, it just takes one bag of dicks with a botnet to use it all up for themselves, and without bot mitigation, I'm helpless to prevent it. Oh and I actually do provide an API for free machine access, so it's not like they have to use headless browsers and go through the front door like this. But they still do. Serves me right for trying to provide a useful service I guess?
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      I see. I respect that. The bot detection won't come without cost. It will centralize power in the hands of Cloudflare and other giants. I think it's only a matter of time until they start exercising their powers. Is this really an acceptable tradeoff? If we do accept it, I think the day will come when Cloudflare starts rejecting non-Chrome browsers, to say nothing of non-browser user agents.
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
        I don't see any good options at this point. The situation profoundly sucks for everyone involved. We're stuck between the almost absurdly adversarial open web, or bargaining with the devil at Cloudflare, and now Google's remote attestation which is basically Google taking a stab at the problem. To be clear I don't think remote attestation is a good solution, but it's at least a solution. Any credible argument against Cloudflare or remote attestation needs to address state of the open web and have some sort of plan how to fix it. Or at least acknowledge that's what Google and CF are trying to solve. Dismissing the problem as a bunch of mindless corporate greed just doesn't fly. It affects anyone trying to host anything on the Internet, and is only getting worse. The status quo and where it's heading is completely untenable. It's easy to say well just host static content, but that's ceding all of Internet discovery and navigation and discussion and interactivity to big tech, irreversibly pulling up the ladder on any sort of free and independent competition in these areas. That's, in my opinion, a far greater problem.