As the author of a content management system I made with the idea to democratize internet content creation, I've had a lot of the same thoughts that the author brings up here. I've always thought that even learning Markdown was a bridge to far when it comes to empowering non-technical users however. In my experience it's best just to supply tooling similar to Word where you have buttons for things like lists and bolding. Using Markdown as the format itself is something I will agree with though.
Another thought I had is that local AI could most definitely play a part in helping non-technical users create the kind of content they want. If your CMS gives you a GPT-like chat window that allows a non-technical user to restyle the page as they like, or do things like make mass edits - then I think that is something that could help some of the issues mentioned here.
hellcow 58 minutes ago [-]
> I publish this site via GitHub Pages service for public Internet access
A whole post about not needing big corporations to publish things online, and then they use Microsoft to publish this thing online...
graypegg 40 minutes ago [-]
I think the point the author is trying to make is more so about these mini networks on their own LAN, which their family uses. (And maybe dreaming of a neighbourhood utility LAN as a middle ground between LAN in your house and WAN as a just a trunk to a big ISP node) The full quote is
- A Raspberry Pi 3B+ with a 3 gigabyte hard drive setup as a "server" (makes this site available on my home network[9])
- I publish this site via GitHub Pages service for public Internet access (I have the least expensive subscription for this)
...
[9] I can view my personal web on my home network from my phone, tablet and computers. So can the rest of my family.
nicbou 17 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but that person owns their website, its content, and the address it lives at. They can publish anything they want, in any format they want.
Hosting on GitHub is merely a convenience; they can up and leave anytime.
liveoneggs 20 minutes ago [-]
This guy has been around long enough to know about NNTP, which is the original distributed people-focused web, but talks about how HTML is some kind of barrier to entry.
I kind of resonate with a lot of things in the article. My own personal view is that we should make hosting stuff vastly simpler; that's one of the goals of my project, at least my attempt (self promo)
Potatoverse is a great name :))
BTW do you remember Sandstorm.io?
born-jre 27 minutes ago [-]
Thanks cap'n-py. Yeah, I love Sandstorm. My goal is to be more portable, lighter, and a 'download binary and run' kind of tool. There are also other attempts around what I call the 'packaging with Docker' approach (Coolify, etc.), which are more attempts at packaging existing apps. But my approach—the platform—gives a bunch of stuff you can use to make apps faster, but you have to bend to its idiosyncrasies. In turn, you do not need a beefy home lab to run it (not everyone is a tinkerer). It's more focused, so it will be easier for the end user running it than for the developer.
inigyou 30 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
ted537 60 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately the transparency of the IP stack means that unless u want whole world to know where u live via one DNS query, you'd need to use a service to proxy back to urself. And if ur paying for remote compute anyways, you could probably just host ur stuff there. Any machine that can proxy traffic back to you is just as capable of hosting ur static stuff there.
nickorlow 41 minutes ago [-]
It only gives a pretty rough estimation, not a street address. I don't think many self-hosters have run into issue w/ this.
thefounder 1 hours ago [-]
I think the main issue with federated apps is the identity and moderation. Without identity verification is hard to moderate so you end up with closed systems where some big CO does the moderation at an acceptable level
sowbug 22 minutes ago [-]
This is only half a thought.
The current wave of AI agents is diminishing the value of identity as a DDOS or content-moderation signal. The formula until now included bot = bad, but unless your service wants to exclude everyone using OpenClaw and friends, that's no longer a valid heuristic.
If identity is no longer a strong signal, then the internet must move away from CAPTCHAs and logins and reputation, and focus more on the proposed content or action instead. Which might not be so bad. After all, if I read a thought-provoking, original, enriching comment on HN, do I really care if it was actually written by a dog?
One more half thought: what if the solution to the Sybil problem is deciding that it's not a problem? Go ahead and spin up your bot network, join the party. If we can design systems that assign zero value to uniqueness and require originality or creativity for a contribution to matter, then successful Sybil "attacks" are no longer attacks, but free work donated by the attacker.
podgorniy 47 minutes ago [-]
Co-ownership of the hardware is a social not technical problem. Think of questions of trust, responsibility, who has power, who and how contributes, how decisions are made, etc, etc
canadiantim 26 minutes ago [-]
I personally think the trend we witnessed with clawdbot where people ran to buy mac minis or other ways of self hosting ai agents is going to be a huge wind in the sails for generally hosting things at home.
zer00eyz 41 minutes ago [-]
> Simple to use software that empowers us to both read and write hypertext4 and syndicated content
Simple to use software... this would be grand!
> Raspberry Pi OS (a Linux distribution based on Debian GNU Linux)
Is this simple? I would contend that it is not. Why do I tell people "buy apple products" as a matter of course? Because they have decent security, great ease of use, and support is an Apple Store away.
They still manage to screw things up.
Look at the emergence of docker as an install method for software on linux. We sing the praises of this as means of software distribution and installation... and yet it's functionally un-usable by normal (read: non technical) people.
Usability needs to make a comeback.
otabdeveloper4 18 minutes ago [-]
> great ease of use
Apple stuff is a nightmare of dark patterns and user-hostile idiocy.
Maybe it's easy if you have Stockholm syndrome and have internalized all the arcane gestures, icons and bug avoidance patterns.
The average normie has no clue, though. (This is borne from experience, I have like 8 iPhones in the immediate family among children and seniors.)
selridge 45 minutes ago [-]
Who is this we, kemosabe?
Rendered at 17:16:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Another thought I had is that local AI could most definitely play a part in helping non-technical users create the kind of content they want. If your CMS gives you a GPT-like chat window that allows a non-technical user to restyle the page as they like, or do things like make mass edits - then I think that is something that could help some of the issues mentioned here.
A whole post about not needing big corporations to publish things online, and then they use Microsoft to publish this thing online...
Hosting on GitHub is merely a convenience; they can up and leave anytime.
HTTP requires always-on + always-discoverable infrastructure
It's all over the place.
https://github.com/blue-monads/potatoverse
The current wave of AI agents is diminishing the value of identity as a DDOS or content-moderation signal. The formula until now included bot = bad, but unless your service wants to exclude everyone using OpenClaw and friends, that's no longer a valid heuristic.
If identity is no longer a strong signal, then the internet must move away from CAPTCHAs and logins and reputation, and focus more on the proposed content or action instead. Which might not be so bad. After all, if I read a thought-provoking, original, enriching comment on HN, do I really care if it was actually written by a dog?
We might finally be getting close to https://xkcd.com/810/.
One more half thought: what if the solution to the Sybil problem is deciding that it's not a problem? Go ahead and spin up your bot network, join the party. If we can design systems that assign zero value to uniqueness and require originality or creativity for a contribution to matter, then successful Sybil "attacks" are no longer attacks, but free work donated by the attacker.
Simple to use software... this would be grand!
> Raspberry Pi OS (a Linux distribution based on Debian GNU Linux)
Is this simple? I would contend that it is not. Why do I tell people "buy apple products" as a matter of course? Because they have decent security, great ease of use, and support is an Apple Store away.
They still manage to screw things up.
Look at the emergence of docker as an install method for software on linux. We sing the praises of this as means of software distribution and installation... and yet it's functionally un-usable by normal (read: non technical) people.
Usability needs to make a comeback.
Apple stuff is a nightmare of dark patterns and user-hostile idiocy.
Maybe it's easy if you have Stockholm syndrome and have internalized all the arcane gestures, icons and bug avoidance patterns.
The average normie has no clue, though. (This is borne from experience, I have like 8 iPhones in the immediate family among children and seniors.)