thejohnhenry
Joined 9 years ago
Karma
32
Submissions
21
Member since
Mar 14
ckjohnson7 at gmail dooooot coom
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 9 years ago
It seems weird to assume that people will continue not caring about this 50 years from now, given the power conferred and stakes at hand for democracies to function.
Comment · 9 years ago
One harsh truth that must be swallowed before we (the Hacker News community) makes progress on this problem:
We live in the land of Startups. All good technology innovation we're used to over the last 20 years has come from the Startup/VC world, when the internet was fresh and nobody knew what would work. Over the coming decades, we'll need vehicles for technology innovation that go beyond the "take over the world & prayer" model, assuming that silicon valley's vehicle of ultragrowth monoliths will eventually align with civic values. They won't.
To illustrate this, let's say you want to improve some problem with Facebook/Google/etc. To even begin, you need $50 million and a minimum of 3-5 years building a userbase. By then, you have payroll, growth obligations, & investor pressure & are forced to monetize, usually in a way that compromises longer-term values.
We can solve this with smarter internet infrastructure. If you could share social graphs between applications, for instance, you eliminate an incredible amount of overhead in developing and experimenting with new social applications. There's a number of great initiatives trying versions of this (IPFS, Urbit, Blockstack -- I'm tracking a number of popular ones over at http://decentralize.tech).
The community needs more organization and more funding around these problems, especially in the field of developing new business models that work for software that don't involve selling out user priorities to global ad networks. I'm in San Francisco and working on this problem full-time if anyone wants to meet up and discuss solutions; Email's in profile.
Comment · 9 years ago
US debt to GDP is more than double China's. Where are you getting your data?
Comment · 9 years ago
IPFS is certainly one of the top initiatives, and Juan Benet in particular will be involved in whatever future internet architcture takes shape. I need to investigate them more myself before I endorse the full vision, though.
Comment · 9 years ago
Background: I'm a decentralization researcher, I quit my job at Twitch to report on decentralized web initiatives full-time, and I'm tracking 200+ projects and protocols like this attempting to remake the web. Urbit is near the top of the list of ones I think will work.
Urbit has the most coherent vision for why decentralized computing is necessary across all other initiatives in this space. They understand the history behind topics of trust, identity, and governance in building new software platforms, in ways that other initiatives (especially blockchain-based communities) sorely lack, or are unable to communicate effectively.
Compare to Ethereum, which has a similar scale of ambition, but with a far less trustworthy and transparent leadership team, who has (despite these problems) still managed to raise huge interest in a currency with a several-billion-dollar market cap. If you just spend time reading Urbit docs vs Ethereum docs, I believe the difference in clarity of vision will become apparent to you.
I bought two stars and am considering buying a third.
Comment · 9 years ago
The first kind. Is the second kind also a big problem? I'm unaware of it.
Comment · 9 years ago
It's crazy to me how nobody, even the (usually remarkably candid) Youtube stars themselves, acknowledge that this story is mostly about ad fraud. I would expect people to be hush-hush about this in a normal industry, but Youtube creators are usually really good about incisive analysis and being open with their audience. Do they themselves not know?
Comment · 9 years ago
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/177
Although core devs don't seem to be interested in implementing this, as it's not supported in the Ostatus spec.
Comment · 9 years ago
Do you have a link to the history here? Would love to hear about it.
Comment · 9 years ago
Do you have a link or further information on this?
Comment · 9 years ago
Oh, certainly, I didn't meant to say that non-profits didn't create software, just that they're not primarily software companies, or working in domains that compete with traditional big vendors. Love the work you do at Watsi!
Comment · 9 years ago
Haha, interesting, I didn't know they went through YC at some point.
I'm making a strong bet that people do want to switch to fully-open social clones, because it's hard for me to imagine citizens of 2024 or 2028 conducting an effective political system using today's monolithic social technology. But the current ecosystem sucks for it.
Comment · 9 years ago
thanks.
Comment · 9 years ago
Sure, and I'm aware of the non-profit initiatives. I don't think many people have considered producing actual software under a not-for-profit (except for Khan Academy?), probably because it's insanely expensive. Would YCombinator help facilitate funding a fully open Facebook or Twitter clone, for instance? It sounds outlandish to consider, but it seems equally outlandish to consider the 2020 election happening over essentially the same social stack & people will just be okay with that.
(Obviously, a clone itself wouldn't suffice, you'd need to start with federated identity, and....)