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> Imagine that you and some friends want to launch a small local business and need to host a website. Instead of paying to host it "up in the cloud", why not plug a few raspberry pi's into the walls at each of your houses?

Setup, updates, maintenance, tech support, and uptime guarantees, just to name a few reasons that "the cloud" is better. A service like Wordpress.com or Wix beats the self-hosted Pi on all of these counts.

I interact with a lot of non-technical small business owners and am "that tech guy" in their minds. A question I'm hearing more and more frequently is _why even bother with a website when a Facebook page is much easier and they can see people interacting with it._

Their reasons are not all that different from why many tech savvy HN readers are using a Mac instead of Linux: convenience; less shit to worry about.

Hosting anything on a Pi plugged into the wall goes in the exact opposite direction from what these people want. The centralized services are winning because they pay attention to what the market wants, they build it, and they make it easy to sign up.

I don't literally mean a Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is the Apple 2 of what I'm imagining. I'm talking about some next generation stuff, picture a Firestick with a much more refined iteration of sandstorm, with distributed apps that have hardly even been conceived of right today in 2017.

If my roommate can plug a Roku into the TV, and knows how to use Ableton Live and Squarespace, there's absolutely no reason he couldn't use something like that.

And there's no reason that those non-technical people couldn't continue to pay you for helping them use stuff like that.

And there's no reason that people can't continue to use stuff like Facebook. But I have a feeling that people are going to be over that way of doing things by the time the next two decades are over.

But you still have all maintenance related problems? How do you upgrade a hard disk or memory, go to their home? What happens if their home net is down or slow, no one can visit the site? Back in the days I was running a few web servers from my office directly, and it's a lot of extra work that is just not worth it.

Why would you need to upgrade a hard disk or memory?

Have you ever worked in a datacenter.

How many datacentres does the average "small local business" have?

For the price of hardware we're talking about, it'd just get replaced.

There's still plenty of room for paid hosting services. But this lowers the bar in a major way.

If their home network is down, hopefully their office network isn't, or their business partners' networks aren't.

Also, these kinds of applications are practically begging for mesh networks. So what it means for a home network to be "down" could change a lot in the coming years.

Who cares?

The Internet is breaking all the time anyway. Every day at least one of the bigger / more important sites I visit has a temporary problem with something. Three days a week HN keeps returning CloudFlare errors to me. Even Facebook has some issues that break it every other week. The world isn't ending because of this, and it isn't going to end because the site I co-host with my other friend is down for the night.

As you grow to the point where close-to-perfect reliability matters, you'll be able to afford to get someone do handle the hosting for you, just like you do today.

Not denying you get these issues or errors with sites. But how come I never seem to have any issues with major sites. I do see cloudflare stuff. But never for a top 1000 site.

Let’s imagine a real path to market: some big 5 company offers a “Facebook accelerator” usb compute stick that you put on your network and it provides local access and resiliency.

You are trying to communicate a wonderful message with an extreme amount of vision to people who sling code and do devops all day. What many of them may hear is you are asking them to do a bunch of work. But if you think 10-20 years in the future, your server was running something like a Phoenix type environment, then scaling wouldn't be as much of an issue. There are ways that updates and other problems can be abstracted away in a non-cloud environment. There are ways of running lean technologies on commodity hardware for servers.

The bottleneck I see is bandwidth and government regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum. If Amit Pai gets his way then what you are talking about will be much more difficult.

You can abstract away the Pi and updates as easily as the cloud abstracts away everything. 90% of AWS users can't even figure or don't care about out how to distribute across multiple availability zones, much less data centers. Two Pis would be fine for 99% of this 90%.

Seems like the future to me, it's just not in any big tech company's best interest right now as they fight over data centers.

I don't know why we keep gravitating to Raspberry Pi's for this. IPFS works just fine on Windows clients. (By which I mean, it's no less stable than on Linux, neither of which runs particularly well at this early stage.)

What if publishing to your blog was as easy as installing a Chrome web extension that now travels with you? Suddenly every computer you have that runs the extension can pin a local copy of the site, and your visitors help out by virtue of the protocol. This doesn't exist of course, but thanks to ipfs-js, it could, very easily. There are obvious drawbacks to this approach of course, but my point is that the "Hello World" of this kind of app could easily be much lower bar than setting up a Raspberry Pi.

I have thought about this a bit lately. Social media can be a very convenient way to keep up to date with people, and to allow people to keep up to date with you. But it has real costs.

I abandoned my Facebook account many years ago and refuse to set up a new one. As a result, it is difficult for my children to interact with me. They post their lives on Facebook, but they don't open that up to the public. So only specific Facebook accounts get to see what they share. That excludes me.

I have to open myself to Facebook to see their content. Alternatively, they could set up non-Facebook websites and "blog" their lives there. But that is harder than just using Facebook, and gets really hard if you want to keep it viewable only by select people. And then I would have to set up an account on their server to be able to see their content. Multiply that by all the people I would have to set up an account with and it's obviously unworkable pretty quickly.

I still hate Facebook, and refuse to set up an account with them. But I recognize that the alternatives are not pretty.

Edit: typos

This is why to solve the Facebook / social media silo problem, we really need to solve the web identity problem.

The solution needs to allow identities which are "register once, use anywhere" across the web, and portable so that you can migrate to a different identity host/provider/implementation without losing all your accounts. Ideally these identities would also allow you to reveal as much or as little information about yourself as you want, and not force you to reveal some unique property which is correlatable between colluding sites.

Obviously that's not an easy thing to create, and may actually be harder than creating a viable rival to Facebook, but if we don't solve the web ID problem, then governments and corporations are going to "solve" it force us, and we'll all be the worse as a result.

I liked Mozilla's Persona (BrowserID) for the fact that it protected privacy from the 3rd party provider. You're asking for privacy protections from the site seeking identity authentication.

It's a fascinating idea to have some means of identity authentication where the party seeking to authenticate your identity doesn't have enough identity information to connect the dots, and the party providing authentication doesn't even know about the party seeking authentication.

Uptime guarantees? Would that be those 25% rebate for a single month if your business is down for 7hrs or more? I have never seen people talk about it other than as a joke.

Setup, updates, maintenance, and tech support is however a thing, but there is always the fine print. The cloud generally do not maintain and update a website, and attacks generally succeed today by targeting poorly updated websites rather than servers. That leaves setup and teach support, two things which the website developer will often provide while they create and maintain the website.

Distributed systems are suited to static content or "append-only" mutable data - canonical examples include Magnet links, distributed hashtables, git, and the Bitcoin blockchain - they're all reliant on content-addressable storage. Not all web-applications can support this model, for example a banking app or online shopping cart site, which depend, respectively, on secrecy instead of complete transparency and mutable ephemeral state. What is the "Raspberry Pis in the walls" solution to those problems?

See the comment below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15376665. It is not true that distributed systems are only good for static content or "append-only" data. "Mutable systems" can be built on top of immutable systems.

I agree with you, but your argument is deeply flawed. There's quite a far stretch between "Y can be built on top of X" and "X is good for Y".

To provide an argument that might fill this gap:

Most systems don't actually have a huge amount of data. Look at the data size and data growth of CRMs, special-purpose wikis, and so on: These are mostly smaller than 500 MB (excluding static content like images), and grow by less than 1MB even on a busy day. And that's the uncompressed size.

Also, most systems, despite being mutable, actually want (or need) an audit trail. So these are really append-only systems which merely have a "mutable look and feel" to the user.

Agreed that many CRMs etc. don't have a lot of data. And that's actually good, it makes the database size very manageable in the context of trustless, distributed networks.

I'm not following the logic of the argument here though, jumping from "X is good for Y" to "...don't actually have huge amount of data", perhaps you can elaborate?

With a merkelized append-only log (immutable DAG), there's always an audit trail. I agree with your point about "mutable look and feel", in a lot of use cases there's only a limited set of "writers" and updates happen infrequently.

Perhaps I should rephrase my previous comment, then, as "immutable systems are good for building mutable systems on top". Does that help to provide a better counter argument?

Here's my complete line of reasoning:

You can build mutable systems on top of immutable (append-only) systems. But is that a good idea? Yes, it is, for systems which don't have huge amounts of (non-static) data, and/or system which need an audit-trail anyway. And these are more systems than one may initially think.

I don't really get it. Sure it's fine if one p2P app uses 3GB (1GB for the append only log, 2GB for a database with indices that can actually be queried) of data. What if you have several apps? Let's say 10. Then you need 30GB and because people only have 32GB to 64GB of storage on their phones the discussion ends right here.

I didn't downvote you. But your data sizes are arbitrary.

Why would something like a chat or email app need to hang onto that much history?

Imagine a distributed "email" app that uses networks of mutually trusted peers to deliver encrypted messages ("emails") asynchronously. My device doesn't need to hang onto your emails indefinitely. It only needs to hang onto them until they've been received. This could be done via explicitly sending receipts, or probably in most cases by giving stuff simple expiration dates. The sender would have the most incentive to hang onto the original message until its been delivered.

How this scales in terms of MB and GB is hugely dependent on how your application is configured, how frequently new data is emerging, the limits set by peers for how much they're willing to share, etc. But text is pretty cheap. I can't imagine storing 3 GB of yours or someone else's text emails on your phone, short term or long term. The raspberry pi plugged into the wall at your house can has much more storage anyway ;)

"Here's my complete line of reasoning: You can build mutable systems on top of immutable (append-only) systems. But is that a good idea? Yes, it is, for systems which don't have huge amounts of (non-static) data, and/or system which need an audit-trail anyway. And these are more systems than one may initially think."

I disagree that immutability is a negatively defining factor here re. data size or capabilities of the database.

If you look how many Big Data systems process data, you'll find that at the core of many, is an append-only log. For example: Kafka is a log (https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-wha...), and looking at Apache Samza's architecture, we can see how a log is at the core of it (https://www.confluent.io/blog/turning-the-database-inside-ou...). In less Big Data orientated databases, there's always a log of operations (sometimes also called a transaction log or replication log) to keep the track of changes.

I think git is a great example of bridging the mutable/immutable gap. The "mutable" stuff happens locally in the ram, or on a local filesystem, as someone edits their files, debugs, whatever. A commit represents a save checkpoint. Somebody has decided that this state is worth snapshotting, that it would be a useful reference down the line. At this point an immutable version is made, ready to be shared.

As with git, even if a version (commit) is immutable, it doesn't mean it's worth saving. Lots of times, you might make a temporary branch locally to do some work. Then you'll merge it and push the merged version upstream. Later you might check out a new copy from upstream, not caring that your temporary working branch isn't there.

User friendly versioning is a major challenge for dynamic, distributed applications. How do we gracefully bridge the gap between long term (distributed) memory and short term (local) memory? Each specific application has its own needs and tradeoffs.

And how do applications communicate about which versions are compatible with the applications' needs? About which versions are worth holding onto?

I don't really see why a CRM needs to be decentralised. You need to host it yourself to avoid a cloud vendor going out of business but other than that what problem do you solve by decentralising it?

Delivery. A cloud provides worldwide availability at the cost of trust. A distributed site can survive any one entity failing, which includes you, and it can serve from anywhere your users want it to.

You're right - you can model any data as append-only though. Granted, in many cases it will require you to seriously sit down and remodel your data. Nobody's claiming it's going to be SQL and ACID transactions :) It's more likely going to be collaborative append-only logs based on CRDTs.

There are examples of the use cases you mention being built with decentralized technologies. [1][2]

[1] The various cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges

[2] https://openbazaar.org

Well of course it depends a lot on your specific application.

Applications like Tox or Matrix (which uses servers, but not necessarily "centralized" servers) are great examples of dynamic p2p applications.

Or for example applications that use statically distributed javascript to facilitate dynamic p2p communications. Stuff like together.js, gun.js, freedom.js, etc.

Syncthing and Resilio Sync are also wonderful examples, and Resilio Sync has amazing encryption features: you can give out seed-only links to your data. People who use these links won't have permission to decrypt the content. They will only have permission to echo it. That's a "raspberry pi plugged into the wall at the coffee shop" solution to private, mutable content distribution.

As for the shopping cart example, this is something that could be conducive to a more centralized approach, especially if your physical distribution model is centralized and your payment system is centralized (traditional banks). In that of case, you'd want to have a more direct connection with the physical distributor. If you want a direct, instantaneous connection with the shopping cart company's servers, then that's what you need.

But it's possible to have a situation where your product is not physical (like music or video), and you are using a decentralized currency (like bitcoin). There's absolutely no reason you couldn't facilitate that in a completely distributed way.

By the way, Bitcoin is a banking app... Have you ever used a browser based cryptocurrency wallet? Imagine a browser based cryptocurrency wallet that's hosted on IPFS. That's a pretty distributed banking app. If you want privacy too, use zcash or monero.

You're not describing a problem that users need fixing. You're describing how nice it would be for corporations to unload their own infrastructure requirements onto unsuspecting users to try to piggyback on their hardware. That's not a solution to any problem. That's in fact a problem being created for users. Consumers purchase hardware to fill their needs, and there's nothing to be gained for wasting their resources and energy to power someone else's business.

well... discounts...

Isn't this the reason why they introduced Filecoin? To incentivize consumers to share their resources.

> Isn't this the reason why they introduced Filecoin?

That assumes that all users are morons. If they want to pay anything to use else's hardware and energy then they only need to pick up their wallet and offer real cash. Offering another Dogecoin competitor to convince people to give away their energy bill and hardware is just a fancy way to officially assert that the people who fall for these gimmicks are complete morons who give away their resources in exchange for glorified arcade tokens.

The "arcade tokens" can be reliably traded for cash since other people need them to access real resources.

It is a problem for sites facing censorship (gov't or corporate or social).

Since I've started using syncthing, I've also had similar thoughts. Say you want to start a private, static blog for a small group of friends ... why host it publicly, then lock it down? Why not just use sync a shared a repo?

The "problem" in this article's premise is coupling links with physical servers, for which DNS and CDNs have solved.

Distributed computing certainly has it's role, but the added complexity of cache invalidation, versioning, and content synchronization are undeniable.

DNS and CDNs may have solved this problem in a limited context, but they're hardly accessible, and are too dependent on centralized infrastructure for a lot of peoples' needs.

I hear you on the added complexity of it all, and I think that's why its taken so long for this stuff to be developed. It's been stewing for a long time. LANs have been around since before the internet, but a lot of stuff that's relatively easy on the internet is much, much harder in distributed and mesh networks. I think we're currently witnessing an epiphany.

Having the ability to recognize the same resource, and to request it, from multiple, disparate devices in just about any network setting is a totally different level.

And on a human level, I believe it could foster healthier social interactions around the sharing of digital content. When content is in its infancy, these kinds of applications create incentives, however slight they may be, to share it in closer physical proximity to people. It gives us back the awesome joy of the LAN party. Facebook says "you need to share your content via ISP and it must be stored on our servers at all times." Whereas distributed network applications invite us to imagine more humane, local, trusted environments for sharing digital content. If you want to share old family videos, get together for dinner, watch them on the TV and then share them privately over the WIFI. If you're in a band, make arrangements with local cafes to host your album. People who come for coffee will have the best bandwidth on it. If you're an artist, host your portfolio on your phone. Share it with people like you'd share a business card. If they like it, they may choose to help seed it, even without your asking. We're talking about the internet for LANs.

This stuff has the potential to refresh the art of digital collection and curation, something that's been co-opted by centralized content providers.

IPFS lets users contribute to the hosting too. I've had a lot of favorite sites go down in the past that I wish I and others could easily help host in a way that all the old links still worked.

Hey, is there a reason that you use both Resilio and Syncthing, instead of just the one?

I originally started using syncthing for own stuff. It works well for my backup needs

But the Android interface kinda stinks, so when I wanted to use it with "non-tech" people, I decided to just use Resilio instead. It's quite a bit more refined. I wish it was open source, but you can't have everything.

That's a fantastic answer, thank you. :)

"there's nothing in this text that says the web won't need servers"

That's, flatly, a lie. There's a whole passage in the middle about how needing servers is a weakness of HTTP that this gets beyond.

Instead, we could put Raspberry Pis in our walls? We can do that now.

The article says that http is dependent on one server per resource, and that this is a weakness.

In a distributed web you need seeds. Whether they are called "servers", "peers", "devices", or "clients" is dependent on implementation and semantics. For the purpose of my comments I chose to call dedicated seeds "servers", because it made sense to me.

And yeah, we can do that now! I've even used an old cell phone with a busted touchscreen as a low power syncthing device. Mostly it was meant to relay notes between my phone and laptop if one or the other was sleeping or dead. It worked great. Eventually, I stopped depending on it, because I have a headless machine running now (a "server") that does the same thing.

All I had to do to migrate was share my syncthing directories with the server. It was a breeze. I didn't have to worry about configuring addresses or anything.

Also, the server is useful as a relay, but if my phone and laptop are both on, say if I'm working at the library or something, they just communicate directly. So I don't depend on the server in the same way.