> 33 years ago today, I submitted a proposal for a system called the World Wide Web.[0]
> I'd normally publish thoughts on the state of the web. But these are not normal times. Instead, Rosemary Leith & I ask you to join us to #StandWithUkraine however you can.
Since they link to a Ukrainian Red Cross site... does anyone whether that's the best organization to donate to for humanitarian aid to people in Ukraine?
And if it is, site looks like they use Stripe, but is it possible to donate directly from stripe.com, not using an odd Web site?
The Red Cross is generally regarded as the best humanitarian aid organization out there, maybe tied with a couple others like Doctors Without Borders
I was told a long time ago that one difference between the two is that the Red Cross will only go into territories where it is legally allowed to do so, whereas Doctors Without Borders will get into conflict zones even when not welcome and risk their lives in the process. My view is we're fortunate to have both.
Note though that humanitarian aid (i.e. aid that's strictly focused on relief towards disaster zones) is generally harder and plausibly gets a lot less bang for the buck than efficiently targeted health- and development-aid. The latter also tends to get a lot less attention, which means even small-scale donors have opportunities to make a huge long-term difference if they direct their funds wisely.
The charity evaluators I'm aware of have pointed out that trying to evaluate the effectiveness of causes like disaster relief is extremely hard, despite how popular that cause is in general.
> Since they link to a Ukrainian Red Cross site... does anyone whether that's the best organization to donate to for humanitarian aid to people in Ukraine?
Well, Ukrainian Red Cross & international Red Cross sometime acted controversial in Ukraine, but its only You who may decide how to help Ukrainians.
JFTR, I'm Ukrainiain living in Ukraine. Here is my statement for HN:[0]
No, they aren't. They raised $500m for Haiti and either embezzled it or incompetently wasted it. [1]
Their website contains claims that can only be described as fraud (claiming to help more people in an area than actually reside there, among other things).
There administration fees were well over 1/3rd in Haiti.
They both work under the banner of the ICRC, which was involved in both the Haiti disaster (I'm talking about the Red Cross' incompetence, not the earthquake) as well as Ukraine operations.
It's hard to see how a corrupt incompetent organization would be different because an affiliated entity is operating in another country (Ukraine also has its own corruption problems).
After this much graft and incompetence, why trust them with more millions?
I wonder what its like to see the proliferation of Russian propaganda via a medium you created, it must be very disheartening. At least he gets to see it used for good like this too.
Putin seems to be rather shutting down web services in Russia. It's probably easier to control a narrative through TV (a medium that already existed 33 years ago) than through messy social media.
So just in terms of the current crisis, I'd say this invention is arguably doing more good than bad on average (allowing refugees to connect to relatives, coordinating help, enabling OSINT, various projects to inform Russian citizens, like the website with advice for how to talk to Russian relatives who are in denial,...).
There is a theory which states that if enough people discover how to use the World Wide Web, it will disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states this has already happened.
There is yet a third theory which suggests that both of the first two theories were concocted by a wily web developer in order to increase the level of universal uncertainty and paranoia and so boost the use of the Web.
Don't worry, if we do get off this rock we'll just bring our problems with us. If we ruined one perfectly good planet odds are whatever state the next one is in it won't last long.
Since there are people working on sending a crewed mission to Mars as we speak, we might see a human colony there in our lifetime. So that would be one place for a start.
Any form of human interaction has and will be used for good and bad things equally and there will always be anger. If you was to stop people doing something that some deem to make them angry, then there would be just as many, even more who would be angry that you stopped it.
Problem is - people communicate - they can get angry, compared with people who don't communicate - they get physical in their communication.
So the web, is good. After all, should we lambast whoever invented paper for the selection of bad printed material in human history. Nope.
I think this line of argument is not complete enough. Of course, everything can be used for good or evil. And I don’t think the internet should go away. Because it does a lot of really cool things.
BUT. The internet spreads disinformation (and other ills) at a scale that is off the charts compared to paper, word of mouth, or various forms of radio transmission. I think we have to honestly accept that its efficiency in both speed and reach is a bit of game changer/transcendental/new level.
We’ve relied on the lack of reach and speed of spread to create a “drag” on bad info in the past. People had time to “sleep on it.” Generational knowledge was accumulated. We’ve lost that, and it’s getting worse. The fact that this has evolved so quickly (just 30 years), has prevented society, which evolves slowly, from keeping up with and generating wisdom and rules to handle this new fire. Policy makers (mostly older) worldwide still don’t understand it and want to map experiences from their earlier formative years onto it.
Compared to what? What if instead (to fill the void) there was a completely dominant internet app/document framework/standard by old-world Microsoft that uses a Word97 compatible binary format and an browser called “IE”, with the only alternative being a copycat open source version of that which is broken on Linux by changes in the IE. We would really want the WWW we have on this universe!
Indeed every great accomplishment can be reduced to a series of simple increments ontop of previous accomplishments. Brick-by-brick we all stand on solders of giants.
Sometimes that's all it takes, man. Although I suspect there was a little more to it. Regardless, we're not celebrating the effort — many things take harder work to accomplish — we're celebrating the effect, which has been world-changing.
> The only revolution was giving the SGML client app away.
No, the revolution was this combination of three relatively simple protocols (HTTP, URL, HTML) which together were incredibly powerful. The SGML crowd never came up with anything like that. They just kept on adding more complexities...
Reducing this to "giving away the client app" misses the point of the above so badly.
Incredibly powerful, but not nearly enough for many applications. We have not comprehensively adopted Linked Data, REST and HATEOAS principles which would extend these protocols to be useful with more than simple hypertext. Many of the public JSON-serving endpoints that currently enable much of the "modern" Web could easily be extended to conformant JSON-LD, which would open up a bunch of interesting use cases.
I'm so tired of TBL self-celebration. Every time I read about him, he's there reminding us that he was the one who created the web, like we owe him something. It's like he wants to take credit for everything the web is, or is built upon.
On the one hand Ukrainians with their exitential struggle against a foe which unprovoked has invaded their country and are killing civilians without scrutiny, on the other hand... consent dialogs. I can see the dilemma of choosing one or the other.
It's amazing to behold how corporate leeches have brainwashed so many developers into thinking that its GDPR that is bad, and not the greedy bastards who want to siphon, buy and sell all personal data on anyone without any reprecussions.
Even if I agreed with your analysis (which I don't, and 'corporate leeches' and 'greedy bastards' is unnecessarily aggressive & uncharitable)- I don't think that littering every website on planet Earth with forced consent boxes is the right solution. They could've passed all of the other elements of GPDR and excluded the mandatory nag screens, they contribute nothing and make the world just a little bit of a worse place
I've seen a lot of people make this claim, but I find it hard to believe that basically every website on Earth is violating GPDR with the nag screens (if they're so willing to break the law, why don't they just not have any popups at all?) And I also I find your explanation difficult to believe because nonprofits, government bodies, and various non-commercial websites (like someone's blog) that are not engaged in data harvesting are all just as aggressive about consent boxes.
I think a more likely explanation is that every website on Earth, including all of the non-commercial ones who aren't doing data harvesting, find the law vague and feel like they need to have a consent screen just to make sure they don't get fined somehow
> I've seen a lot of people make this claim, but I find it hard to believe that basically every website on Earth is violating GPDR with the nag screens
It's not hard. It's enough to look at those screens.
And the reasons are simple:
1. Too many devs believe, like you do, that it's the law that is bad, and not, you know, leeches and parasites who collect and sell personal data left and right.
This is not helped by the fact that most devs outsource this to parasites like OneTrust, and Digital Advertisment Alliance, and Interactive Advertising Bureau, and... who promise you to provide you with "GDPR-compliant dialogs" which is a blatant lie.
Do devs like you care? No. Because "law bad I read it on HN".
Oh, aand don't forget "analysts and experts" like Startechery who argue that GDPR is a disaster because Facebook has a trove of private user data it collected without consent, and potential new social networks in Europe cannot collect private user data wholesale https://stratechery.com/2021/the-webs-missing-interoperabili...
2. Too many devs couldn't be arsed to read anything about the law even though it's now been 6 years since it was introduced.
There are people in this thread who are in all seriousness stating that a 13 chapter law is hard, and vague, and complex, and long. Newsflash: human activity is complex, and vague, and long. And GDPR is one of the simpler and more concise laws out there.
Moreover, data protection laws have existed in European countries for literally decades. Where were you and other bemoaners? Oh, right, you either didn't know or ignored or broke those laws. Well, EU countries got together and said, "okay, our national laws are clearly not enough, we'll create an all-encompassing law that is applicable to the whole of the EU and specify what you get for breaking it."
Another half-decade passes and cue in developers who still couldn't be assed to not siphon and sell personal data, and who blame the law.
> find the law vague and feel like they
like they couldn't be bothered to read even the smallest bit of info on the law, didn't do it before GDPR (when other data protection laws existed, and those laws still exits today), and haven't bother to read and understand anything about the law in the 6 years since. Does your business even pay taxes, or "nah, the law is too complex"?
All laws are vague. Because human activities are too complex to properly define and describe. Is GDPR vague? Yes, for some activities. Is it so vague as to be unimplementable? No, for the absolite vast majority of cases. Does the ad and tracking industry care? No. Do you care? No, you believe what the ad and tracking industry tells you.
1. All of your language around this is unnecessarily emotional & aggressive
2. Developers don't make all of these decisions about website content, compliance, privacy & legal requirements- business owners & attorneys do. We don't have nag screens because all of the frontend developers in the world just simultaneously decided on their own accord that they're a requirement- these compliance decisions are made higher up the organizational chain. I simply don't believe that all of the businesses, inhouse attorneys and other decision makers on planet Earth haven't read GPDR and have it wrong, but you alone have the right interpretation. Seems unlikely eh?
> They could've passed all of the other elements of GPDR and excluded the mandatory nag screens
GDPR doesn’t specify “mandatory nag screens”. It only requires that you ask permission to collect and process other peoples data, if processing that data isn’t absolutely necessary to access the service they’ve requested.
If you just give people what ask for, and don’t try and surreptitiously collect, process and monetise their data, then you don’t need ask for consent, so no need for consent boxes.
Wanna see a real life example of a GDPR compliant site with no consent boxes? Head here: http://GitHub.com
It’s more amazing that even though history has shown otherwise, every law that the government has ever passed has unintended consequences because 70 year old politicians don’t understand technology.
They passed a 14 chapter 99 section law and all I got for it was fucking cookie banners all over the internet.
> What would be your solution to make companies from collecting your personal data without your consent?
I don’t have a solution to the drug problem either. But a “solution” that makes things worse for people is not a “solution”. The first goal of government should be “do no harm”.
> I don’t have a solution to the drug problem either.
Because GDPR is war on drugs and not, say food inspection, right?
> The first goal of government should be “do no harm”.
Ah yes. Because it's the government that forces those web sites to collect and sell your data to literally hundreds of trackers and advertisers, right?
It’s the government law that made my web browsing experience worse just like it’s the government policy that makes it harder for me to get enough psuedophredrine for my family.
we already had “do not track”. if they enforced it, the dialogs would not have been necessary . dialogs we’re kept to draw attention to the law . billions of hours a day wasted
> we already had “do not track”. if they enforced it, the dialogs would not have been necessary
There's more to data harvesting than "do not track".
And yes, DNT header was used... for browser fingerprinting.
> dialogs we’re kept to draw attention to the law
No. Dialogs are there to skirt the law (and the absolute vast majority of them are illegal), and to paint the law as this bad thing by clueless politicians that force the poor-poor websites to implement them. No, it doesn't, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30656321
> There's more to data harvesting than "do not track".
P3P has been around forever and gives us the information that's today in consent dialogs, except machine readable in a standard format so that user agents can compare it with the user's stated privacy preferences and behave accordingly. GDPR could've easily standardized on an extension to P3P.
> GDPR could've easily standardized on an extension to P3P.
GDPR isn't just about websites. It covers collection of personally identifiable information in general. So it applies to apps, games, your physical interactions with various companies etc.
The page you mentioned is perfectly readable here in the US unlike much of the Propaganda on YouTube.
Propaganda is effective else it wouldn't be of any use. People judge veracity in large part via ubiquity and truthiness not intelligent analysis therefore it is useful to block it as any other munitions heading your way. People can still get the other side of the argument by going directly to the source without organically encountering lies on YouTube and being influenced.
Not blocking the Kremlin but blocking YouTube channels seems like a very balanced correct response.
You're playing a very dangerous game, even if wartime changes the calculus. Though what you're saying about judgement is true, all of the worst cases of authoritarian repression were similarly justified. "We can't allow capitalist propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll sabotage us", "we can't allow jewish propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll destroy the race", "we can't allow communist propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll destroy our freedom", etc. Viewing information as munition rather than a raw resource meant to be democratically parsed is something all repressive systems share in common.
What distinguishes our society is our ability to self correct and our decentralized method of truth discovery. That can and does get used against us, as will our hypocrisy if we alter our approach. The solution to abuse of that decentralization is not to bureaucratize truth and create a mechanism for centralized information control, however well intended or carefully crafted to attempt balance. The system level solution is to make sure that those speaking the truth within our systems are protected and discovered. The societal level solution is to make sure that those people have enough credibility and leadership capital to be listened to and take that responsibility seriously.
Our major news organizations have been burning their credibility and leadership capital for at least a decade. The willingness of people to defer to random online youtube personalities over more established sources is a failure of those established sources. That loss of credibility cannot be solved by blocking worse sources. Those more established sources need to be more honest, engage in more long form discussion and less narrative crafting, and most importantly, speak with more humility and without patronizing the masses that are falling for the propaganda. If the only people genuinely acknowledging certain grievances and speaking to an audience like equals are bad actors or influenced by bad actors, those falling for propaganda have no reason to switch sources.
That's not to say there aren't other more immediately actionable solutions to online chaos and disinformation. From the technical side, there should be less algorithmic emotional hijacking/feed manipulation. If this industry hadn't pursued click maximization so aggressively and took viewpoint diversity more seriously as an essential design goal these platforms would be much more difficult to take advantage of by propagandists. I understand why things evolved as they did and understand a lot of people have been and are trying very hard to promote societal health, but there's a certain culture of arrogance and desire to tweak human behavior that's won out over a culture of viewpoint diversity that I think would have much more effectively inoculated people against the kind of destructive propaganda state actors we're seeing now.
There is no slippery slope whatsoever. The government isn't blocking content nor requiring it to be blocked. Individual companies are choosing to block some of the most obvious propaganda. The obvious pressure relief value for unpopular truths is trivially obtained by sharing such "truths" on their own sites and peer to peer which is as it stands incredibly trivial if not as effective as using existing social media networks to blast information directly at the stupidest and most vulnerable to manipulation but its certainly there.
> The willingness of people to defer to random online youtube personalities over more established sources is a failure of those established sources.
Bubkis. I know people who prefer conspiracy theory websites to public health info. It's not a failure of any variety of those public health authorities that stupid people prefer exciting and often comforting bullshit to dismal truth. The people who prefer such are largely the same demographics which have always talked about stupid crazy crap like chemtrails and a young earth. There is nothing new about this contingent save its weaponization.
> Ironic that the best things on the internet, sci-hub and libgen, are brought to you by our Russian friends, isn't it?
My understanding is that the creator of Sci-Hub is a Kazakh national, a country that is emphatically not part of the Russian Federation and is not particularly keen on joining it.
She lives in Russia. But regardless, I don't think she's connected with the Russian government in any way. If Alexandra is a Putin operative, she plays a very convincing role as a genuine rebel. Either way what she says and does is 100% right, science should be open and accessible for everyone.
> 33 years ago today, I submitted a proposal for a system called the World Wide Web.[0]
> I'd normally publish thoughts on the state of the web. But these are not normal times. Instead, Rosemary Leith & I ask you to join us to #StandWithUkraine however you can.
> https://webfoundation.org/2022/03/standing-with-ukraine-a-me...
This tweet also quotes Rosemary Leith's yesterday's tweet:
> To mark the web's birthday this year, Tim Berners-Lee and I have donated to causes supporting women, children & journalists in Ukraine.[1]
> Join us, if you can, to contribute and #StandWithUkraine.
> https://webfoundation.org/2022/03/standing-with-ukraine-a-me...
[0] https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/150259484604495463...
[1] https://twitter.com/rosemaryleith/status/1502224095001382913