5 ms·

Is the friction of establishing trust via TLS on the way to consuming all the bandwidth? One seriously wonders if the cost of zero trust will kill off the open

Is the friction of establishing trust via TLS on the way to consuming all the bandwidth? One seriously wonders if the cost of zero trust will kill off the open internet, reducing us to walled gardens of SSH connections that can only be obtained by invitation. We're falling far short of the vision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, no?

thunkingdeep 1y ago
Most people visit the same half dozen websites over and over anyways. Websites are eventually going to be an artifact of an old medium as we move to like cybernetics and AR glasses and brain implants and whatever else. All that stuff in websites will be forgotten
- walterbell 1y ago
  > All that stuff in websites will be forgotten Why are LLM scraper bots hammering websites globally, if websites will be forgotten?
  - immibis 1y ago
    Because we're a post-competence society. Very little useful data will be gained by the operators of these bots. They don't work, and nobody cares they don't work. We're doing everything cargo-cult now. We're building giant machines that do nothing but spew smoke into the air, because that's what they did in the Industrial Revolution and it brought prosperity, didn't it?
    - walterbell 1y ago
      Hopefully any actual scraper bots are writing data to de-duplicated cloud storage. The rest should be served with Anubis, PoW or other DDOS defenses.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - thunkingdeep 1y ago
    I would argue that’s a driver to my point. How many people are never going to visit the source website when Llama can give me a detailed summary of what I need in a few hundred milliseconds? I would consider that in the same category of forgotten. I could’ve been more clear in my other comment.
    - walterbell 1y ago
      If a website is not financially dependent on search traffic, they can block all scrapers with a paywall, and their content will be missing from generic LLMs. If a website is financially dependent on search traffic, they can go out of business due to loss of traffic to LLMs, and their content will disappear everywhere. If the majority of websites fall into the latter category, LLMs would be left with old/archive longform content, plus micro content from social media. If social media (e.g. X.AI) takes their data private for vertical integration with payments and internal LLM, their content will be missing from generic LLMs.
- chipsrafferty 1y ago
  Eh, I think a huge amount of people would never want anything implanted in any part of their body. Most people don't even want smart glasses.
  - smitty1e 1y ago
    Except a necessary, special purpose device, e.g. a pacemaker, I wouldn't have anything implanted. Now, an artificial ear for the deaf starts to be more compelling.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      I have read that some deaf people do not want cochlear implants because their deafness is part of who they are, their identity. They don't want that taken away.
  - layer8 1y ago
    Most people didn’t want to carry a computer around with them all the time 40 years ago as well. Though I don’t agree that AR would eliminate the usefulness of websites.
thomastjeffery 1y ago
The friction is incompatibility. That's what makes it difficult to interact with the system, and for the system to interact with itself. Tim Berners-Lee's vision is great, but no one has really figured out how to make it feasible. To make matters worse, the interests of capital have taken over the system, and replaced most interpersonal interactions with an advertising market. When a participant in the system is able to monopolize interaction in that system, they end up writing the rules that define compatibility for other participants of the system. The effect is not only that people on different platforms are isolated from the people on other platforms, it's also that they must interact with the system through the rules of their chosen platform. Rules don't just define the bounds of interaction: they define the interface, the logic, the goals, etc. --- It's impossible to build a set of rules that captures the entire potential of digital interaction. Objectivity is impossible, because the moment we write down its meaning, we subject it to a specific isolated context. I'm working on a way to change the perspective that the system has with itself, so that subjectivity can be a first-class feature, and compatibility can be accomplished after-the-fact. What I have so far is still an extremely abstract idea, but I do think it's possible.

thunkingdeep 1y ago

Most people visit the same half dozen websites over and over anyways. Websites are eventually going to be an artifact of an old medium as we move to like cybernetics and AR glasses and brain implants and whatever else. All that stuff in websites will be forgotten

walterbell 1y ago
> All that stuff in websites will be forgotten Why are LLM scraper bots hammering websites globally, if websites will be forgotten?
- immibis 1y ago
  Because we're a post-competence society. Very little useful data will be gained by the operators of these bots. They don't work, and nobody cares they don't work. We're doing everything cargo-cult now. We're building giant machines that do nothing but spew smoke into the air, because that's what they did in the Industrial Revolution and it brought prosperity, didn't it?
  - walterbell 1y ago
    Hopefully any actual scraper bots are writing data to de-duplicated cloud storage. The rest should be served with Anubis, PoW or other DDOS defenses.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- thunkingdeep 1y ago
  I would argue that’s a driver to my point. How many people are never going to visit the source website when Llama can give me a detailed summary of what I need in a few hundred milliseconds? I would consider that in the same category of forgotten. I could’ve been more clear in my other comment.
  - walterbell 1y ago
    If a website is not financially dependent on search traffic, they can block all scrapers with a paywall, and their content will be missing from generic LLMs. If a website is financially dependent on search traffic, they can go out of business due to loss of traffic to LLMs, and their content will disappear everywhere. If the majority of websites fall into the latter category, LLMs would be left with old/archive longform content, plus micro content from social media. If social media (e.g. X.AI) takes their data private for vertical integration with payments and internal LLM, their content will be missing from generic LLMs.
chipsrafferty 1y ago
Eh, I think a huge amount of people would never want anything implanted in any part of their body. Most people don't even want smart glasses.
- smitty1e 1y ago
  Except a necessary, special purpose device, e.g. a pacemaker, I wouldn't have anything implanted. Now, an artificial ear for the deaf starts to be more compelling.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    I have read that some deaf people do not want cochlear implants because their deafness is part of who they are, their identity. They don't want that taken away.
- layer8 1y ago
  Most people didn’t want to carry a computer around with them all the time 40 years ago as well. Though I don’t agree that AR would eliminate the usefulness of websites.

thomastjeffery 1y ago

The friction is incompatibility. That's what makes it difficult to interact with the system, and for the system to interact with itself. Tim Berners-Lee's vision is great, but no one has really figured out how to make it feasible. To make matters worse, the interests of capital have taken over the system, and replaced most interpersonal interactions with an advertising market. When a participant in the system is able to monopolize interaction in that system, they end up writing the rules that define compatibility for other participants of the system. The effect is not only that people on different platforms are isolated from the people on other platforms, it's also that they must interact with the system through the rules of their chosen platform. Rules don't just define the bounds of interaction: they define the interface, the logic, the goals, etc. --- It's impossible to build a set of rules that captures the entire potential of digital interaction. Objectivity is impossible, because the moment we write down its meaning, we subject it to a specific isolated context. I'm working on a way to change the perspective that the system has with itself, so that subjectivity can be a first-class feature, and compatibility can be accomplished after-the-fact. What I have so far is still an extremely abstract idea, but I do think it's possible.