Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by usbfingers 1599 days ago
Many have tried - very recently - and seemingly stalled or failed at creating something like this with wide adoption, most notably Tim Berners-Lee with the SOLID protocol

https://solidproject.org/

https://solidproject.org/TR/protocol

The roadblock is always getting major tech companies to accept it as a valid means of accessing user data.

The amount of times I've heard about SOLID on NPR or other popular mainstream newscasts only to garner little to no support is astounding. Definitely take note where others have seemingly failed here because it's an uphill battle.
3 comments
sam_goody 1599 days ago
The real difference is the mindshare.

joelonsoftware has bajillion readers, but he is much better known for founding stackoverflow.

When SO endorses something, it will got a lot of mindshare, and becomes something that developers feel connected to.

And with enough mindshare, the same project that would have been dead in the water becomes a given.

link
usbfingers 1599 days ago
this is an excellent point

Sort of tangent, but the fact that Block Protocol is also managing the distribution of the resulting UI components, unlike Solid which encouraged people to consume the data independently through an API, makes it more accessible.

link
anderspitman 1599 days ago
Personally my hesitancy in embracing Solid is the complexity. What I really want is essentially an HTTP filesystem API for my programs. Like a modern WebDAV to replace Google Drive. All the linked data stuff might be useful down the road but I currently don't need it.
link
tmikaeld 1599 days ago
Not the same thing, this "Block protocol" is for HTML widgets basically, re-usable HTML/CSS/JS components for sites/apps.
link
usbfingers 1599 days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105910

At its heart, it is very similar.

Comment above does a good job at describing the distinction. It's more than just re-usable HTML/CSS/JS, that's just how they're making it accessible to others. There are entities associated with the HTML/CSS/JS mapped alongside the component, which is the core benefit here.

https://blockprotocol.org/spec for more info on how they're mapping data as entities

link