[sansnomme]

A better question that we should be asking is, how the hell did we get to the point where we need a third party proprietary platform to serve a static file efficiently? I remember a time when mainframes would automatically place orders for their own parts when they broke down and when personal computers empowered people to easily create and remix. Somewhere between then and now we forgot how to make things simple and easy to use. Somehow despite the advances of HTTP/2, WebRTC, the upcoming WebTransport, web hosting is now harder than ever even though things are supposed to be more efficient. Apache and NGINX are far from accessible to your average user. Countless sites depend on proprietary "as a service" oligopolies like Cloudflare and Netlify. Hosting an email server these days are almost an exercise in frustration; what happened to the mythical unikernel? Where is my secure, turnkey email server image? Unikernels were supposed to make ops easier and things more secure. Somehow they never showed up despite all the hype on HN. Zero config self hosting projects like Sandstorm are half dead. It's easy to complain about tech giants, but we are not exactly providing end user alternatives. The world does not need yet another Lisp interpreter, the world needs high quality zero maintenance software that is easy and accessible.

[api]

We are so much better at adding complexity than removing it. There are tons of incentives that drive that: the difficulty of upgrading old stuff, the need for companies to invent reasons to exist, bureaucracy, job safety and creating reasons for employment (the personal version of corporate self promotion), featurism and comparison on features, etc. There are almost no incentives pointing the other way.

[hathawsh]

This is all a sign of growth, most of it for the better.

There are now billions of people accessing the web, so sometimes a web site needs the resources of a company like Cloudflare to handle traffic spikes.

Decentralized email has been a victim of its own success: because there is no central email authority, spammers and bots can easily flood email boxes. If you don't mind the spam, it's actually not hard at all to set up an email server, but most people hate spam, so most people don't want to set up an email server. There is no pure technological solution to spam, so we fall back on companies to help manage it.

Thanks for the reminder about Sandstorm. I intend to try it out sometime. I hope it's not dying.

[edraferi]

Sandstorm kind of still there. They discontinued the free tier for their hosted platform because they ran out of money. The founders went to work elsewhere but maintained the project on the side last time I checked.

I think it’s a shame, it’s a lovely concept. The Capability-based security alone is game-changing.

Details here: https://sandstorm.io/news/2018-08-27-discontinuing-free-plan

[inimino]

It's not a sign of growth. Among other things, it's a sign that we have grown complacent about complexity and are not doing our job of keeping it under control.

[WhiteOwlLion]

HashCash.org anyone? Proof of work e-mail.

[cosmojg]

It's such a shame that Hashcash never took off. It solved many of the problems with decentralized messaging a long time ago.