Hacker News Reader

+1. Why even pay the penny? Spinning a onion service is trivial...and...more secure than the clearwebz.

I've made a few easy to spin up services. Heck, you can even run it off your phone.

Nanogram https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/nanogram

Spreadsheet Server https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/spreadsheet

Library Server https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/libraryserver

Torum (HN Clone) https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/torum

I wonder if the fact that you linked to clear web source code links rather than onion links demonstrates why people might pay the penny…

Making something as easy as possible to try demonstrates why you need to pay a penny? I don't follow.

Yes, exactly. Because if you’d paid that penny for a server on the regular internet you would just link to the real site

I just happen to not self-host my own code base. But your acting like I paid a penny for that, and self hosting git isn't possible, and we aren't on a forum which exists on the commercial internet.

What a silly deflection. The point is obvious: if it is as trivial as you are saying, why aren't you self-hosting?

I am? Just not my codebase lol. I don't see why the two ideas need conflated.

It's a classic "Show, don't tell" example.

If you want to make the point that self-hosting is trivial, then show a site that you are hosting with your setup instead of just pointing to gitlab.

Ok, well here is an example of how easy it would be to set up your own torum for instance. 3 or 4 commands and it's up.

https://nonogra.ph/running-a-website-inside-a-website-07-15-...

I don't feel the need or want to share my services with the world to demonstrate that.

Why did you still not post an onion link? It's as if you feel people don't like onion links. Which is true, and it's why people don't post onion links.

Does it not demonstrate the trivialness of it which was the case I'm making?

I simply do not want to announce my address here, it's ancillary to the discussion...you shed a layer of security by deciding to make your address public, non of which would benefit the whole point of any of the services I linked.

Circling back to the main discussion of indie web, tor is a great alternative if your circle of visitors is of reasonable size and you want a place outside of the commercialized internet. It's available to anyone.

Paying the penny will certainly give you robustness and reliability...but honestly that's part of the fun of indie web.

It demonstrates that you don't actually believe onion links are viable.

GP said:

>you shed a layer of security by deciding to make your address public, non of which would benefit the whole point

It's possible to host something with no intention of making it internet-public. I also have services like that, that I only use myself or with friends. GP argument is that they don't want to share the onion link to their website, because (bluntly) we are not invited. Onion domains are actually relatively private (i mean unguessable - unlike clearnet domains), so it's possible to host private websites without any additional authorization.

Having said that, onion links carry a implicit baggage, so while I think they're great for sharing things with (technical) friends or a private VPN, they're probably not the best way to host services intended for public.

> It's possible to host something with no intention of making it internet-public.

But this is completely opposite of what most people hosting pages online are doing. Ask a thousand people why they are using Github pages, or Vercel, or netlify... how many of them are not looking for a cheap/free way to have something in the public internet?

Yes, it is, but why or what for?

Perhaps. Perhaps not…

A source repo link often gets more traction here than a link to what might turn out to be a closed, probably subscription based, service. The repo's main readme likely links direct to the product/ service/other main location [if the forge isn't being used as that] or demo location [if a public demo instance exists] should that be where I want to go immediately.

Though maybe posting both the repo link and a "live" link would be better still.

> You could even go to your domain provider and have one of your domains redirect to your .onion address so people don't need to memorize it.

Apparently [1] there are also ways that Tor Browser supports, for directing visitors to the onion address via the “normal” internet:

- Onion-Location

> The Onion-Location method was introduced on Tor Browser 9.5 as a way for service operators announce their Onion Services in their regular HTTPS sites. It's specified under tor-browser-spec's Proposal 100 - "Onion redirects using Onion-Location HTTP header".

- Alt-Svc

> Similar to Onion-Location, the Alt-Svc method also uses an HTTP Header (the Alt-Svc Header, specified by RFC 7838), which means that the user first need to access the regular site before their browser discovers the alternate Onion Service address.

> But contrary to Onion-Location, the Alt-Svc method:

> - Does not support an HTML tag, as it relies entirely in the Alt-Svc Header.

> - Is fully transparent: all the discovery and upgrade happens automatically, without user intervention.

- Additionally, they also speak of future possibilities for DNS or DNSSEC-based Onion Association.

[1]: https://onionservices.torproject.org/research/proposals/usab...

You can see it in action by visiting e.g. https://www.qubes-os.org/ in tor browser

Perfect is enemy of the good. Like you said, the only way to be truly independent if people ran their own infrastructure, and if all the hardware was as 100% FOSS.

Of all the compromises we have to do (relying on Telco providers, equipment manufacurers, etc), using Nearlyfreespeech is the less risky one. They have no history of abusing the trust users have placed on them, and service costs virtually nothing.

The internet isn't even capable of handling 8 billion people each with their own infrastructure. Even if everyone got IPv6 and their own PI address block, most DFZ routers can't handle that many routing table entries. Pooling resources is mandatory for the internet to work. However, there needs to be (and are) plenty of choices of who to pool with, so that you can find a trustworthy one.

Note: you don’t need to “download the browser” to use Tor. Tor is a service, not a browser. The “Tor Browser” bundles a privacy-friendly browser with the Tor service, for your convenience. You can run a Tor site on your headless server without installing any browser at all.

Few people host their websites as hidden services because it's just asking too much from anyone who uses your site.

Imagine you are in a conversation with a stranger. You want to show him your personal website. Consider the following two sentences. Which has the highest probability of actually helping him getting on your website?

"Go to myfirstnamelastname.com. Yeah, it's spelled with a K."

"Go to $FIFTYSIXRANDOMCHRACTERS.onion. Oh you need to use the onion browser. Let me help you install it on your phone. Can't find the service? Oh my bad it's actually $FIFTYSIXRANDOMCHARACTERS.onion. There you go."

With port forwarding, somebody else still owns the identifier that points to your website, whether that's a domain name or an IP address.

Nah, then you're still dependent on Tor. The most independent way is to publish your blog on your own p2p network ;)

Tor is not a single point of failure: It is a p2p network.

That's what I meant. How can you claim to be independent if you aren't even running your own network?

There is no need to be completely independent. This is just not feasible. What you need is as much decentralization as possible.

How many directory authorities does Tor have and how many are needed for a consensus?

i host myself with 2 fixed IPs from telekom germany business, its not as expensive as one might expect, under 90€ for a fiber and vdsl line, so next to hosting your own auth ns servers and mail you get failover at home which is nice.

Deutsche Telekom is well known as one of the worst ISPs due to their peering policy. Basically all traffic in or out of DT to/from another ISP is either paid by that ISP at extortionate rates, or takes circuitous routes to avoid paying extortionate rates. For this reason I believe they should be boycotted.

This is a common pattern for ex-national carriers in many countries btw - they believe they should be paid by both sides for all traffic that traverses their network, not just by one side, because they feel like they are God of the Internet in that country.

> port forwarding from your home

Not 100% independent then. You still depend on your isp.

Indeed. I also depend on my power company, the entire global supply chain to provide me with computers to purchase, copper mines for the networking cables I use, oil fields all over the globe for the plastic, etc etc etc.

Something, something, if you want to make an apple pie from scratch you first have to invent the universe.

Incorrect, you need to invent the inventor of the universe.