
Solid aims to radically change the way web applications work - doener
https://solid.mit.edu/
======
Dangeranger
Wishing that the landing page had a clearer explanation of how Solid provides
a means for the owner of the data to control who can access their data, people
and applications, as well as what the process of moving ones data from a given
store to another.

This project looks like it has huge potential, I just want to be able to
understand at a glance what privacy controls are in place without reading the
source code before committing my personal information.

EDIT:

Found the specifications documentation linked to from some of the example
apps[0][1]. It would be great to have more of this information on the landing
page for the project.

[0] [https://github.com/solid/solid-spec](https://github.com/solid/solid-spec)

[1]
[https://github.com/solid/solid/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/solid/solid/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
VectorLock
Reading the landing page left my scratching my head too. Great lofty goals and
all, but zero informat on _how._ The fact that you had to go to links from the
example kind of makes it a failure.

~~~
Animats
Exactly. "Solid (derived from "social linked data") is a proposed set of
conventions and tools for building decentralized social applications based on
Linked Data principles. Solid is modular and extensible and it relies as much
as possible on existing W3C standards and protocols." That sounds like a pitch
from some ICO. The site has the buzzwords. It's got the neckbeards. What it
doesn't have is a convincing use case. It comes across as some really
complicated scheme for address book synchronization.

They have three sample applications, yet all you can click on is somebody's
blog entry. Clicking on the "publishing" app gets you a _screenshot_ of the
abstract of someone's paper. It's a single page web site, like all the cool
kids have now. Clicking on the top menu items just scrolls the page.

It has MIT and Bernars-Lee behind it, so it can't be totally bogus. If those
names weren't on this, I'd assume it was from someone either clueless or
crooked.

There's a decent description of Solid on Github.[1] From there, you can see
the real problem. It's only useful if the big players adopt it. Which they
won't, because it breaks their walled gardens.

This looks like is another try at Bernars-Lee's "semantic web" \- hammer as
much content as possible into standard formats so it can be machine processed.
This is an old idea, and tends to break down once you get beyond contact lists
and library catalogs.

There have been major efforts to make that work in the business sector, where
it's called "electronic data interchange", and parties want to exchange
purchase orders, invoices, and bills of lading.[2] It's worth looking at that
area to see how hard this is for even simple-seeming problems like that. And
they have cooperation - buyer, seller, and shipper all want that data to flow
smoothly between the parties. Trying to do this in today's world of competing
closed web empires is much tougher.

The medical data records people have it even worse, I hear.

[1] [https://github.com/solid/solid-tutorial-
intro](https://github.com/solid/solid-tutorial-intro)

[2] [https://www.edibasics.com/what-is-edi/](https://www.edibasics.com/what-
is-edi/)

~~~
JabavuAdams
If machines can read, why does data need to be machine-readable? Seems like a
transient.

~~~
icebraining
For the same reason an organization will ask you to fill in a standard form
page (even on paper) rather than writing a long form essay.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Why do they do that, again? I'm not arguing against summaries. Just saying
that if machines can read as well or better than humans, then machine-readable
in the sense of using a simplified ontology, grammar, or alphabet is
unnecessary.

~~~
icebraining
My point is that even humans make fewer mistakes when they're reading an
established form structure with pre-defined fields over long-form text. Hence
you'd expect a machine to process them better as well, even if it could read
like a human.

------
newhere420
Although I agree with the aims of the project, trying to understand it leads
you down a rabbit hole of complexity that ultimately never pays off. Ontology,
vocabulary, RDFa, OWL, FOAF, etc.

I assume this is a continuation of - or somehow related to - the semantic web
project that W3C spent a lot of time spinning its wheels on back in the early
'00s. Back in the day, I bought into the hype that this would be the next big
thing, but it never gained traction. Nobody understood it. It was too meta.

Trying to do anything with semantic web specifications was like writing an
academic treatise on the philosophy of meaning, and ultimately delivered no
more value to users than a hacked up <table> layout.

~~~
sigsergv
Semantic web is not that hard to understand. But facebook/google/etc will
NEVER adopt it. They are not interested in opening (meta)data in highly
precise and machine readable form to 3rd parties. So the only adopters are
geeks/scientists.

~~~
abusque
I can see where you're coming from, and your point of view is certainly not
baseless, but I just thought I'd point out that at least Google has pushed for
the development and adoption of linked data formats like JSON-LD [0] and
standardized vocabularies like schema.org [1]. They make use of it for
"knowledge graph" [2] features, as well as in Gmail for what they call
"actions and highlights" [3] (things like displaying flight reservation
details, for instance).

[0] [https://json-ld.org/](https://json-ld.org/)

[1] [https://schema.org/](https://schema.org/)

[2] [https://developers.google.com/knowledge-
graph/](https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/)

[3] [https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/getting-
started](https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/getting-started)

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Yes, Google would love for you to mark up your data so that they can better
consume it. But good luck trying to get Google to make any of their data more
interoperable. Google Plus, YouTube, Google Photos... they do have somewhat
limited APIs, but they are not federated and standardized. Semantic web in,
limited proprietary access out. Walled gardens are a business tactic, no
semantic web technology can change that.

~~~
smadge
I think you are correct. Semantic web is a decent technology. It has some
rough edges, but it has solved the technical aspect of the data
interoperability problem. The only barrier is a social/political/business one:
privatizing and monetizing user data is the business model of most of Silicon
Valley. I always say that a federated protocol like email would never be
adopted today, the business incentives just do not exist.

------
mewse
Can anyone explain what this actually is? I get that it's apparently an
exciting new project, but what actually _is_ it? A framework? A programming
library? A data specification? I honestly can't tell.

They refer to "applications built using the Solid stack" at one point, which
implies that it's an application platform. But elsewhere they talk about how
it's "a proposed set of conventions and tools", which implies that it's an
interchange data format.

What am I missing?

~~~
blixt
I'm not sure either what exactly this is, but it reminds me of
[https://blockstack.org/](https://blockstack.org/) when it comes to each user
owning their own data storage which the app runs on.

Blockstack essentially lets you pick for example Dropbox as the datastore and
an app would save files in a directory on your Dropbox instead of a server
controlled by the app developer.

Solid seems to talk about also keeping track of your social connections. So I
suppose it also tracks people's profile data and public keys locally?

~~~
icahnvalyou
I heard a funny story once about an interaction between Tim Berners-Lee and
Ryan Shea. Woulda been about 4 years ago and I can see how it might have
prompted TBL to take a crack at the same problem. Maybe you're right?

------
Dowwie
The reason there isn't a clear explanation is because there probably isn't
even a functioning beta. Hell, there isn't even a drafted design depicting
what it is. This is part of a PR hype machine. Put MIT and Berners Lee on a
project page to drum up interest.

Unvoting this one. Not going to help them achieve their mission.

~~~
olssy
No idea why the website offers so little information but here is the project:
[https://github.com/solid/](https://github.com/solid/)

------
justinpombrio
"As the project director, but also as a web developer, Tim Berners-Lee is
involved in the overall planning and evolution of Solid."

'Web developer' as in 'developer of the web' :-)

~~~
2_listerine_pls
lol

------
jrobn
Google, facebook, and big data will kill any chance of a standardized linked
data format or protocol. Google's main product isn't search, it's you.
Facebook doesn't care about messaging or social apps, they care about mining
as much data about you as possible. If they had to ask for this data upfront
and in a clear way they probably wouldn't exist today.

~~~
djsumdog
Well they will kill any big changes, but as tech people, we need to make small
changes to start with. I've add LetsEncrypt to all my personal websites. I'm
currently working on getting my Masterdon server up. I have a little docker
system to self host things.

You could write some scripts to publish your personal block to ZeroNet, and
add some "also available on Zeronet" links to the regular HTTP version.

It takes little steps and it has to start with us in the tech community. Even
if our distributed tools don't grow, at least we can say we tried.

------
JepZ
I have no idea what they are planing but my simple approach to the problem
would be, to let browsers offer an API to store their users data in the cloud.

That might sound a little abstract, so I will give an example: A year ago I
built an PWA which had the ability to use a WebDAV server as a backend to
store data and sync multiple clients. While some might argue that WebDAV is
not the perfect protocol, most of its disadvantages can be worked around. The
real issue is that the user has to enter his credentials to every app which
wants to store some data for him.

In my opinion, that is something browsers could make a lot easier and just let
the user grant/refuse access to the 'cloud-storage'. That cloud storage would
need a standardized protocol (e.g. WebDAV) to manage its access, but that way
browsers could offer web apps a large storage and the user could select its
own storage provider (in the browser settings).

Most users would probably stay with Google Drive or Dropbox, but at least
their data would not be stuck in the walled gardens of the various web app
providers and some might even choose to store their data in a Nextcloud (at
least that is what I do with my PWA).

~~~
djsumdog
Really what we need is first-class IPFS support in Firefox/Chromium.

Img tags should have an href and an ipfs option. The browser can than chose to
pull from either source, depending on user preferences or which one is faster.
Users can be prompted if they want to store/serve that data in their own ipfs
cache.

I _think_ the FF59 plans for IPFS just make it easier to interface with your
existing IPFS server (if it's running). Making it first class would be a game
changer, but don't expect to see it in Chromium or Webkit any time soon.

~~~
JepZ
Could you please elaborate on how IPFS would solve the problem? As far as I
understand IPFS it is just like a public cloud. So either you run your own
node (which would be similar to running your own server in terms of owning
your data) or you upload to the network in which case you would not care on
which server the data would live (similar to uploading an ?encrypted? file to
Dropbox?). The real difference is how files are served as soon as you request
one.

So what I don't understand is how it would make app developers give you the
control over your data?

Regarding your img-tag remarks: what should href and ipfs attributes do? I
mean href is an attribute used for linking, not for loading data like the src
attribute and adding attributes for different protocols isn't a good idea
either as for that use case we have URLs. So whats wrong with?

    
    
      <img src="ipfs://example.com/cat.jpg">
    

I never used IPFS so I might completely miss the point as I just read about it
and saw a few videos, so please tell me if I misunderstood something.

~~~
djsumdog
I was thinking more of the lines of the first steps towards distributed
assets. Maybe something like

    
    
        <img src="images/cat.jpg" some-new-attr="ipfs://mdgpreefl215jfeiwef2456/cat.jpg">
    

Or maybe `some-new-attr` could be a 2nd src? In any case, it's only to deal
with asset distribution. One of the challenges with something like YouTube is
simply the infrastructure to host all that content, as well as content/videos
disappearing when YouTube decides they don't want to host it. With IPFS, you
could reduce the server load on the content creator and also give the asset
permanency if it's popular enough to be seen/rehosted by others.

The img tag example isn't that great of an example I'll admit. But it could
eventually be extended to permanence of the entire page/site. Although there
are already better tools suited for that, like ZeroNet.

------
loupeabody
Closest comparison I can draw is with urbit[0], mainly in regard to data
ownership. Beyond that there's not much else that's similar between them. I'm
disappointed by the lack of information on Solid.

[0] [https://urbit.org/](https://urbit.org/)

------
Groxx
Even after reading several of the github linked specs and examples, I still
struggle to understand what this intends to be, how it will work with e.g.
CORS, or how anything will be able to flexibly work with other things playing
in the same data-sandbox.

Like, we already have XML DTDs and schema.org and whatnot. Everything appears
to be in place to build everything that I can see this doing, and has been for
decades. But it hasn't turned into anything because the problem isn't how to
store the data, it's how to _use_ it, and allowing everyone to manipulate all
data seems to repeatedly be demonstrated as a failure.

Is it really just "let websites manipulate _my_ data, stored on _my_
machines"? What would possibly incentivize websites to do so, rather than pull
in data and subtly break it for others (intentionally or by accident)? Users
are absolutely not going to understand why site X broke site Y, only that site
Y is broken.

Or am I missing something fundamental? Entirely possible, I can't figure much
out at all.

------
534b44a
I don't see how the spelling errors in the spec can possibly discredit the
technical merits of it.

There are some parts of the project that I don't like or maybe simply don't
understand. For example, its user stories include an utterly simplistic
privacy system [1].

[1] [https://github.com/solid/solid-
spec/blob/master/UserStories/...](https://github.com/solid/solid-
spec/blob/master/UserStories/README.md)

What if Ian starts spamming everyone on the entire web (let's call this 'root
node') with his "you've got a file from Ian" notices? Some kind of rate
limiting system is required in this case, but is it really possible to
decentralize such a system?

I imagine a system of many communities that can be subscribed to, think of
subreddits, with their own behavioral rules (code of conduct?) requirements,
groups, permissions, blacklists etc. So if Ian and Jane both are subscribed to
the same community that grants them the permission to do the described actions
(thus Ian is not banned nor is over his rate limit to send his notice to Jane,
and Jane's privacy settings permit people like Ian to send their notices to
her), they can be performed. I'd call that a 'third party node'.

Such a system would also solve the problem of discoverability. I expect the
rise of the githubs and gitlabs of Solid if this problem is not accounted for
early on.

Let's say these two users already got to know each other and they want to
decouple from the restrictions of the third party node they were met at, how
can they pair their 'profile nodes' so that there's no more third party
constrains to limit their interactions? Let's say the profile nodes include a
social, facebook-y, functionality in them. Ian sends a direct pairing request
to Jane. She accepts, by including him to a personal custom group named 'new
friends' that will restrict him to be able to see only a few of her photos
(maybe based on the tags that were used on the photos, maybe based on creation
timestamp ranges so he is able to see only her most recent/ probably less
embarrassing ones, who knows, she's the one to decide). On her personal node,
it's her rules. Much better control than the current social media sites
provide.

This calls for a really privilege-centered system. Can Solid provide it?

------
antibland
The most compelling "what's next for the web" proposal I've seen is Douglas
Crockford's Seif Project [1]. Though it has it's flaws, I'm willing to give
the inventor of JSON the benefit of the doubt.

[1] [https://youtu.be/lVezcdfjWis](https://youtu.be/lVezcdfjWis)

------
EGreg
In Dec 2016, I visited Tim Berners-Lee and his team up at MIT with my
cofounder. Our company had a lot of overlap with the Solid project, and we
wanted to explore working together.

That didn't really happen, because our approach was different at the end of
the day. We wanted to raise VC money and get a lot of user adoption, and they
were focusing more on promoting RDF, SPARQL, ontologies and so on:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)

However, I did meet a lot of cool people at the W3C and now some of them are
our advisors!

PS: If you watch that youtube video, let me know what you think. Is it a clear
explanation? Do you feel there is a need for this? It's all available online
already btw.

~~~
fiatjaf
I've watched many minutes, but it is too long. A good video, but I couldn't
get to the part where you explain the product.

------
monksy
Well crap, he beat me to the punch. I was going to write an article on data
ownership and how we should be able to maintain our own data and only let
networks curate and syndicate.

~~~
emilfihlman
You think any app writer would allow you to do that? Just take yourself away
from the platform like that?

Lol.

Bigger and more influential apps will always roll you into their corner. It's
what every single vendor would do. It's what you would do.

~~~
fron
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. This whole concept is a tin-foil pipe
dream. It will never see mainstream adoption because data can be really
profitable. What business would choose to eliminate a revenue stream for no
reason like this?

Plus, as a user, I don't like analytic data being collected. As a software
provider, analytics drive nearly every decision.

I like the spirit of what Solid is trying to do, but as long as targeted
advertising works better than randomizing every ad you see (it always will),
there's zero reason for any profit-seeking entity to choose it.

------
fiatjaf
If you like this idea, maybe you'll like
[https://remotestorage.io/](https://remotestorage.io/).

------
woodandsteel
Sounds a bit like IPFS. Which makes me wonder what TBL thinks of it. Has he
said anything on the topic?

I mean, IPFS is designed to replace http, which is TBL's baby, but lately he
is really into web decentralization, and IPFS is farther along on that than
any other technology, from what I understand. Maybe http was a kluge and he
would be happy to have it replaced. Maybe Solid could run on top of IPFS, or
is that not possible.

~~~
meh2frdf
Hmm ipfs has many issues for solving that problem, and the whole filecoin
nonsense adds an additional layer of problems.

~~~
woodandsteel
But ipfs is charging forward. Very often the technology that gets adopted is
not perfect, but succeeded because it attracted more support than any other
one.

And web decentralization is not going to have any real impact unless there is
a standard set of technologies that can be the basis for all the main use-
cases, and that the average, computer-illiterate user can adopt by clicking a
link or two, or better yet comes built into their browser. IPFS is much
further along here than anyone else, so it seems like the Solid people should
be looking at integrating with it, if that is technologically possible.

------
dpweb
Can't speak for the rest of the world, but in the U.S. people would completely
panic if the Govt had a extensive registry with everyone's info, and that's
exactly what we have except a couple corporations have it.

Nobody really cares cause the email is free.

The bright side.. Greed usually tends to overreach at some point, after which
may come more public outcry.

~~~
brett40324
> in the U.S. people would completely panic if the Govt had a extensive
> registry with everyone's info

Not in the same vein as google having my internet based data, but the us govt
very clearly and publicly has many such extensive registries that are widely
known and relied on parts of the country's basic infrastructure.

------
larl
How is this different from Kenton's sandstorm?

~~~
kentonv
TL;DR: Solid focuses on storage and data formats, Sandstorm focuses on compute
and protocols.

AIUI (disclaimer: haven't spent a huge amount of time studying it), Solid
focuses on data and storage, not on compute. It proposes that each user's data
should be stored in that user's own storage, under their control, in formats
that are standardized so that they are compatible across multiple
applications. The applications themselves, though, still execute as they do
today, probably on servers owned by the developer. Applications interact with
each other by virtue of supporting common formats. A big part of Solid is
defining these standardized data formats.

Sandstorm is focused on compute: it says that applications running on your
behalf should run on your own server, in isolated sandboxes. An application's
storage format is a private implementation detail, and applications never
directly access each other's storage. Instead, applications communicate via
standardized _protocols_.

Abstractly, you can think of Sandstorm as object-oriented, in that it combines
data and compute into an "object" that implements an "interface".

In my opinion (as the architect of Sandstorm), protocols are the correct place
to find interoperability; data is the wrong place. The data format inherently
defines the feature set which can be implemented on top of it, and thus
forcing apps to use a standard data format tends to prevent them from
implementing new features. It is much easier to create protocol compatibility
because a complex app with a larger feature set can implement compatibility
shims for other protocols using code.

Also, of course, Sandstorm's sandboxing model has huge security benefits.
Solid doesn't seem to provide any security benefits since the apps still run
remotely on the developers' servers where they could do anything they want
with your data.

------
addicted
I couldn't find a link to the GitHub on the page, but that appears to have a
lot of useful info as well.

[https://github.com/solid/solid](https://github.com/solid/solid)

------
roselan
"This site can’t be reached"

ironic...

------
debt
The phrase World Wide Web is great because while it remained ambiguous it
still perfectly summarized the ambitious nature of the project. Also you can’t
beat that alliteration.

Calling this project “Solid” reeks of “unsinkable ship.”

------
jeffdavis
I am optimistic that something like this could work. I know there will never
be "one true database schema" that everyone agrees on, but I don't think there
has to be.

Does a site that sells widgets really have _nothing_ in common with a site
that sells gizmos? Surely that's not right.

So the question is: do they share most of an application, or a protocol, or
data? I think data is the best answer here. It requires more coordination, but
the ultimate benefits are much greater, both to users and to new businesses
trying to innovate (less friction to bring in new customers).

~~~
smadge
There doesn't have to be one database schema, or even one data interchange
format. There only has to be an agreed upon semantics that can be mapped on to
different data interchange formats. Here is where linked data/semantic web
comes in. For instance json-ld allows you to use json as you normally would,
but add a schema that allows others to know what all your fields _actually_
mean.

------
askafriend
Radical change often happens unnoticed, it doesn't come pre-announced.

------
Invictus0
I'm not sure if this can really help users protect their data. Tons of
personal data is already out there, and companies that want it can buy it
fairly readily and cheaply. Users have shown a willingness to exchange
personal data for useful applications. Tons of data isn't even individual; who
owns your personal social graph?

PII is the most circulated currency on the internet and anything that stands
between companies and their cashflow (privacy/data ownership projects like
this) seems like it would be a nonstarter.

~~~
gervase
I don't think those are invalid points, but one consideration is that if a
standardized format for encapsulating and controlling PII did emerge and was
adopted, the value of the previously-released personal data would decay over
time.

That is, if your current PII suggests that you are a fan of (Brand X) right
now, it is more valuable than if it shows you were a fan of (Brand X) 5, 10,
20 years ago. There will still be correlations that can be drawn from
historical data, and some data's value doesn't decay as a function of time
(DOB, for example), but it would still be an incremental improvement over the
current system.

As technologists, I don't think throwing up our hands and saying "It's too
[late|difficult|expensive] to solve this problem!" is the right solution in
most cases.

~~~
lovemenot
Furthermore unsanctioned data would lose its value even quicker in the face of
systematic data poisoning.

Such a campaign against unsanctioned data would be a likely consequence of the
success of solid or a similar protocol.

------
emilfihlman
The landing page is horrible.

It seems like like a scam.

------
snikch
There's spelling mistakes everywhere, and the top navigation doesn't appear to
work. How are we supposed to take this seriously?

~~~
mtgentry
Because the inventor of the web helped make it.

------
exodust
Perhaps their server is overloaded, the page is not loading for me. Surprising
considering the mit.edu domain.

This sounds interesting, I will check back. I would love to own my own social
media profile, where I get to install it on any server or service I wish to,
and have full control over it. I'm guessing that's what this is.

------
fiatjaf
The problem is that people should agree beforehand on the data format and
schema for every new app. That's impossible.

Actually, any interchangeability is impossible. Apps are different, thus they
have different data schemas. If they had the same schema they would be the
same app, just with a different color.

~~~
smadge
Yes and no. Think of something like a travel reservation. The schema for
travel reservations I argue have remained unchanged for centuries from horse
drawn carriages, to passenger ships, to trains, to buses, to planes: departure
location, departure date-time, destination, arrival date-time, etc. Thousands
of firms have come and gone offering similar services all operating under the
same basic schema. Or take the modern day example of social media feeds:
twitter, Facebook, instagram, tumblr, all share at their base the same schema.
Maybe they add a propriety concept here or there.

~~~
fiatjaf
Indeed, I believe this was conceived with
Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Mastodon/all open source copies in mind, but
this is the SINGLE USE CASE of the entire standard. And it makes it worse, I
think. I didn't want all "social networks" to be the same like they are today,
there are other alternatives.

About reservations, I don't see why would you want to move your data.
Reservations are tied to companies in a way no standard can solve. And by
design.

~~~
smadge
> About reservations, I don't see why would you want to move your data.
> Reservations are tied to companies in a way no standard can solve. And by
> design.

Maybe company A has a history of all your travel reservations with them, and
company B has a history of all your travel reservations with them. Then
company C offers a service where they collect travel reservations from various
services to create an business expense report. You, the supposed owner of the
data would like to authorized C to import your data from A and B.

------
scandox
The site seems to be completely down? I ran a few external checks and it is
completely inaccessible right now.

------
tingletech
I heard about this from a CNI keynote
[https://youtu.be/o4nUe-6Ln-8](https://youtu.be/o4nUe-6Ln-8) \-- seems like
linked data's take on decentralized web / diy facebook replacement.

------
duedl0r
I get so angry about this shit. It's not possible to make a landing page, and
actually describe what's going on.

Why do I have to search for information?

Why is it, that all those shitty, shiny looking new homepages are the same. NO
CONTENT.

Ok, I'm done. Not interested anymore.

------
superkuh
There's a really simple solution that everyone is overlooking. Stop trying to
make applications in browser and actually make applications that run native on
an OS. And no, I don't mean running on some trimmed down JS engine.

~~~
monkmartinez
in a world of unlimited resources... sure. However, I, as an independent
software maker, want to target as many screens as possible with the least
amount of friction. I am not overlooking anything nor are the companies and
other indies that target the web... that is called choosing pragmatically.

~~~
superkuh
Yup. Now all your client's data can be stolen at once and isn't protected from
government intrusion due to third party doctorine and network problems cause
application problems. All these things that make it worse for the end user and
more.

But it's easy for devs so none of it matters.

------
simplify
This is incredibly eerie, I literally just started working on this idea this
weekend [https://github.com/byod/byod-home](https://github.com/byod/byod-home)

~~~
colordrops
I had a similar idea way back when:

[https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2284292&cid=36623386](https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2284292&cid=36623386)

It's likely a pretty common thought process with open source internet devs.

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invalidOrTaken
My impression is that this is basically Urbit. Am I wrong?

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oblib
Cool project. Thank you for sharing this here.

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pjkundert
Goals sound similar to [https://holochain.org](https://holochain.org)

~~~
sukitrebek
<3 holochain

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zatkin
Does anyone else find it slightly awkward that they include past contributors
on their website?

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Terretta
> _autehntication ... autentication ..._

That’s why you don’t roll your own authentication.

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nour_m
Tim Berners-Lee as a web developer! THE web developer is more accurate
actually

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ychen11
It sounds like a real world blockchain project.

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ychen11
thought it is actually a blockchain application in the real world

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frozenport
I can't figure out what this is from the about page...

>> The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today,
resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy.

What is the product? How does it achieve its means?

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intrasight
Lots of people and organizations, myself included, built "web browsers" in the
late '80s. Unfortunately, it was the design of TBL that caught on.

~~~
dredmorbius
What was your web browser?

What were the features of your, and/or others' web browsers, that
distinguished them from TBL's work?

Mind: there were several other alternatives out there, with Viola being
amongst the more interesting -- it aimed at becoming a suite of web-related
tools and capabilities, based on what I've seen.

[http://www.viola.org/](http://www.viola.org/)

~~~
intrasight
I am referring to things that had no name and never escaped the confines of
the corporate environment where they were built. Mine was for browsing nuclear
power plants. Had full vector graphics rendering engine and a limited but
capable scripting engine.

