I think it needs to not have a dependence on github. This is a microsoft thing, and at best it means this will become another way for a corporation to make money from people.

Speaking of money, it needs to be paid for. (The github part is free from Microsloth and so is NOT free). So how do you pay for this? Micropayments.

So we need a system of micropayments. Then we need it to provide a way to help people economically. These are not barriers, because this is hacker news, instead this is an accurate understanding of more of the problem.

People keep talking about a collaborative internet without using the term. But to be clear we are talking about a fundamentally different kind of internet. That we can build.

The good news is that the community internet - for the community, by the community - is just starting.

What is a community internet? The internet is layered protocols. UDP, ICMP, TCP, HTTP, HTTPS etc. The community internet is just a new layer of protocols. Coming soon.

This is not something you will experience when being alone, locked in a room or a building. Or surrounded by people. You need to be in the wild, in nature. Do it.

In those moments of being alone you learn something that allows you to be more alive. More deeply in the world. And a way to give you a context for not being alone.

So my first suggestion is to go someplace where you are completely alone and on your own for a while. Out in nature.

People can be the most wonderful creatures on earth. And the worst. There is a pretty good way to find them at their best, and it is hilarious. Go on a quest.

What is a quest? It is not an intellectual thing, it is a thing of the heart. It does not have to be a great thing, but it does have to be one that matters to you - you have to care about it.

For example, you might decide to spend the night outside, alone in the winter. Do not read a book about this. Start asking people. Tell them why you are going on your quest and ask them if they know anyone who can help you learn how.

Now the secret to a successful quest is to follow it. If someone says Joe and Josie know, then go ask Joe and Josie. And of course you are honor bound to actually do the quest. People are utterly wonderful about helping someone, so ask for help.

Finally, write. Get a fountain pen and a notebook (or cheat and get a ballpoint pen). Sit down. Set a timer for one hour and write. The goal is to write sentences continuously for one hour. It matters not what you write. If you want (and can actually do it) you can write the same one over and over, but it has to be some sentence - no matter how broken.

We all get stuck in the past. The cure for the past is the future, the new. You have open doors in front. One or more of those has better things than anything in your past. So go there.

My first thought is that it was insane. My second thought was that they must be going broke to make this kind of change. Maybe there is some other reason, but I'm wondering if I need to find an alternative.

Oh and in order to comment on this post you need to put it in your cart first! :-)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47266233

Points: 15

# Comments: 13

1. While the hardware and performance are amazing, the user interface is the opposite. Imagine buying a luxury car with amazing performance only to find that simply opening the door is a royal pain, each and every time.

2. Apple will downgrade the usability over time. A year from now, or two, Apple will downgrade your user experience. Imagine that in your luxury car you can see out the windshield, but the dealer insists that you install a new upgrade with a heads-up-display that cannot be turned off.

3. Apple will degrade the performance of your system over time by constantly introducing more features which require better hardware. Your sleek and fast computer will eventually become unusably slow.

4. Apple profits from preventing you from using the computer you own with other software, for example Linux. When your computer cannot run Mac OS (see #3) above or you get sick of the "features" (see #1 and #2 above), you will not be able to do so. The reason for this is if you could try Linux, there is is a strong possibility you will see just how user unfriendly Mac OS is and never go back.

5. You care about the environmental impact of your purchasing decisions. You understand that because you are not able to upgrade the hardware and operating system, your purchase is very likely to end up in a landfill.

Personally my guess is the core of the problem is their contempt for the users. The willingness to act directly against the best interest of the users, as this article points out so well, is bewildering. You just have to wonder that a company so large, with so much money and so many resources can be so utterly dysfunctional.

The iPhone, the iPod, the early Macs all demonstrated a profound understanding and care for users. And now? Contempt.

Oh well.

1. many people use Letsencrypt for website certificates

2. letsencrypt recently stopped automatically sending "It is time to renew your certificate" emails.

3. People (like me) got used to those emails and did not set up their own reminders.

4. The certificates expire and the owner (again like me) does not notice for several days.

My sense is that the fantasy of Amazon is now falling apart. They provide shipping status that is dishonest. Is this just an unlucky streak for me? Do they not like me anymore? Or is it for everyone?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166112

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

We live in a time where people somehow think they cannot make bread without a $400 (USD) bread making machine. We suffer from learned helplessness, paint-by-number syndrome, follow-the-leader syndrome, and cargo-cult thinking. We use recipes instead of developing skills.

Implementing "a web we own" is a hard and difficult problem. The poster is correct that ISP's are a problem. But if this learned helplessness is the top comment on "HACKER" News then there is something seriously wrong with how HN works.

This is NOT about the commenters. This is about a system of interaction - comments on HN - that seems to promote anything but hacking.

My apologies for the "rant" nature of this post, but there is a point here that I believe is worth stating. Or you know, just unfollow me, vote me down, and I probably misspelld some words along the way.

"By accessing this file more than one time per second you agree to pay a fee of $0.1 per access plus an additional $0.1 for each previous access each day. This fee will be charged on a per access basis."

2. Run a program that logs the number for Facebook requests and prints a summary and bill.

2. Then get a stamp, envelope and write out a bill for the first day, call it a demand for payment and send it to:

Facebook, Inc. Attn: Security Department/Custodian of Records 1601 S. California Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 U.S.A.

You can optionally send this registered mail, where someone has to sign for it.

Corporations such as FaceBook are used to getting their way in court because they can afford lawyers and you cannot. So they have gotten lazy and do not worry about what is fair or legal.

So take them to court when you have a legitimate legal issue. The courts are there to provide redress when you are aggrieved. Right? Use the courts. You can file a small claims action easily. Just make sure you have 1) a legitimate case, 2) evidence 3) have sent them a demand for payment.

We need a way to fix this. A lookup site to find and disambiguate entities on the internet. For example what if I could type in to Firefox the name of my old friend fred jones and find not fredjones.com but some way to first find the right fred, then creating a personal for-me-only mapping of the site and "fredjones"

Do you have any thoughts about this?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47101258

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

1. they are selling you as a target.

2. some people, governments, groups, whatever are willing to pay a lot of money to obtain information about you.

3. why would someone pay good money to target you unless they were going to profit from doing so. are they stupid? no.

4. where does that profit come from? If some one is willing to pay $100 to target you, how are they going to recoup that money?

5. From you.

There is simply no other way this can have worked for this long without this being true.

It is a long causal change, so it is fair to ask whether there is any empirical evidence. If this is true we would expect to see ...? Well how about prices going up? Well how about in general people are less able to afford housing, food, cars, etc.

I'm speculating here, but perhaps it is predictability. There is a common time warp fantasy about being able to go back and guess the future. You go back and bet on a sports game. If I can predict what you are going to do then I can place much more profitable bets.

Do the corporations that participate in this scheme provide mutual economic benefit? Do they contribute to the common wealth or are they parasitical?

No one likes to think they have parasites. But we all do these days.

Why do we still have schools then? Why do people still fund these outmoded institutions? Because now both parents need to work in order to earn enough live. As a result schools (junior and high) are simply glorified day care or prisons. And yes they serve some purpose and do some good for some, maybe even many people. But for many of our young they simply instill unproductive ideas and behaviors.

If we are interested in our children having good productive lives, our high school are for many kids of zero value or negative value.

We do not need more followers/drones. We need doers.

A science fair can be one of the few opportunities a young person has to do, as opposed to follow. Lets enhance that and provide more.

And the insight about meetings brought back memories of some horrendous meetings. At software companies. OMG. But very funny very long after the fact. Good points all. Trust, respect, reputation.

Here are some question for you: can you think of any things you cannot think of in your language? Hints. Beethoven, Van Gogh, 7. Can a democracy evolve from FaceBook? What kind of political system can evolve from FaceBook? Is there a language for Democracies? The important thing is not the answer, but the thinking.

What then is an effective model for a community? In "Twitter And Teargas", Zeynep Tufecki argued that the community afforded by Twitter was unable to effect long term, substantial change and therefore Arab Spring is now a footnote. Twitter affords flash mobs.

That concept - affordance - provides a hint for a model of communities. The obvious question to a hacker is "what kind of social system would afford long term substantial change?".

Another insight is that the afforded mechanisms determine the community. This is really a restatement of the Sapir-Whorf hyptothesis. From "your language determines what you can think" to "your social mechanisms determine your community". Roughly.

Another insight (corollary?) for Sapir-Whorf is that your language prevents you from thinking some things. So one could try to understand what "following" as a social mechanism prevents prevents?

Out of this kind of analysis emerges a different take on communities all together. For the hacker in us, John Holland's "Hidden Order" provides a generalized model that can be used to at least create a pseudo model for creating a simulation of the community mechanism.

Although John Holland talks about Complex Adaptive Systems, I personally find "Gestalt" a less cumbersome and effective term. A gestalt is something greater than the sum of it's parts and that can only be true(ish) when the parts interact. So entities + rules + message bus => Gestalt. For ants this is {ants + ant behavior + pheromone trails } => ant colonies. One could conjecture that for humans this could be {people + behavior + money } => economies. Or more cynically => corporations.

The complexity and emergent behavior of the {rules + message/bus part} part is probably best revealed by Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".

This is an incredibly important talking for our time. What is the most effective way to get rid of ants? To destroy their ability to use a pheromone trail. Perhaps we could just put advertising in it?

[edit: forgot the Wolfram reference. Apologies to SW for missing this wonderful work.]

[Edit: spelling sigh]

The situation is more complex. The forces about housing right now are incredibly destructive. Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. In this case NIMBY is the correct solution. In other cases Rich People want to prevent affordable housing. In this case YIMBY is the correct solution. But blindly applying these terms provides a cover for a complicated situation. We have cults of personality, and now we have cults of Jargonism. Neither helps us.

Being outraged because lawyers don't want you to speak is great. The issues legal and housing issues are far more complex and important.

Even if you don't really like programming, the takeover by Artificiality will mean that the value of Actuality will increase dramatically. So go for actual value in what you do.