Linux desktop is a huge mountain of "why this basic obvious stuff just doesn't work?"
I mean just stop to consider this. It's 2025. You are still not guaranteed to be able to close an application by moving the mouse all the way to the top right and clicking, because sometimes the X button has a margin at the top. This is insane to me. This is like such a basic thing that I have no idea how do you even manage to get it wrong.
If Linux can't even get the X button right, do you seriously expect anything else to ever get fixed?
A lack of awareness does not determine whether something is true or not.
While Linux, like everything else, is not perfect, it is technically just the kernel, and the version of linux you installed was called a "distribution", and they normally package one or more varieties of GUIs (Graphical User Interface), commonly known as a "Desktop Environment".
Linux distributions have dozens of choices of desktop environments. You did choose a desktop to install you just didn’t read the basic information about your choice.
Frankly, if you don’t know this basic fact about Linux you aren’t a reliable source of opinion on whether the Linux desktop is a “huge mountain of obvious stuff that doesn’t work.”
The same reason you did in the first place -- despite a ton people who saw the future saying you shouldn't -- is the reason why the next generation of people will do it despite you trying to warn them.
Any form of URL is at best a point in time reference.
Shortened or not, they change, disappear, get redirected, all the time. There was once an idea that a URL was (or should be) a permanent reference, but to the extent that was ever true it's long in the past.
The closest thing we might have to that is an Internet Archive link.
Otherwise, don't cite URLs. Cite authors, titles, keywords, and dates, and maybe a search engine will turn up the document, if it exists at all.
I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear)
But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a link..
Now the problem is that the link would atleast either be a transaction id which is big or some sort of seed passphrase...
So no, its not as easy as some passphrase but I am pretty sure that nano isn't going to dissolve, last time I checked it has 60 nodes and anyone can host a node and did I mention all of this for completely free.. (I mean, there is no gas fees in nano, which is why I picked it)
I am not associated with the nano team and it would actually be sort of put their system on strain if we do actually use it in this way but I mean their system allows for it .. so why not cheat the system
Tldr: I am pretty sure that I can build one which can really survive a really long time, decentralized based link shortener but the trade off is that the shortened link might actually become larger than original link. I can still think of a way to actually shorten it though
Like I just thought that nano has a way to catalogue transactions in time so its theoretically possible that we can catalogue some transactions from time, and so basically its just the nth number of transaction and that n could be something like 1000232
and so it could be test.org/1000232 could lead to something like youtube rickroll. Could theoretically be possible, If literally anybody is interested, I can create a basic prototype since I am just so proud really that I created some decent "innovation" in some space that I am not even familiar with (I ain't no crypto wizard)
You can't address the risk that whoever owns the domain will stop renewing it, or otherwise stop making the web gateway available. Best-case scenario is that it becomes possible to find out what URL a shortened link used to point to, for as long as the underlying blockchain lasts, but if a regular user clicks on a link after the web gateway shuts down then they'll get an error message or end up on a domain squatting site, neither of which will provide any information about how to get where they want to go.
These days one can register a domain for ten years, and have it auto-renew with prefunded payments that are already sitting in the account. This is what I did for the URL shortener I am developing.
The same would have to be done for the node running the service, and it too has been prefunded with a sitting balance.
Granted, there still exist failure modes, and so the bus factor needs to be more than one, but the above setup can in all probability easily ride out a few decades with the original person forgetting about it. In principle, a prefunded LLM with access to appropriate tooling and a headless browser can even be put in charge to address common administrative concerns.
I mean yes the web gateway can shut, but honestly like atleast with goo.gl if things go down, then there is no way of recovering.
With the system I am presenting, I think that it can be possible to have a website like redirect.com/<some-gibberish> and even if redirect.com goes down then yes that link would stop working but what redirect.com is doing under the hood can be done by anybody so that being said,
it can be possible for someone to archive redirect.com main site which might give instructions which can give a recent list on github or some other place which can give a list of top updated working web gateways
And so anybody can go to archive.org, see that's what they meant and try it or maybe we can have some sort of slug like redirect.com/block/<random-gibberish> and then maybe people can then have it be understood to block meaning this is just a gateway (a better more niche word would help)
But still, at the end of the day there is some way of using that shortened link forever thus being permanent in some sense.
Like Imagine that someone uses goo.gl link for some extremely important document and then somehow it becomes inaccessible for whatever use case and now... Its just gone?
I think that a way to recover that could really help. But honestly, I am all in for feedback and since its 0 fees
and as such I would most likely completely open source it and neither am I involved in this crypto project, I most likely will earn nothing like ever even if I do make this, but I just hope that I could help in making the internet a little less like a graveyard with dead links and help in that aspect.
Data stored in a blockchain isn't any more permanent than data stored in a well-seeded SQLite torrent: it's got the same failure modes (including "yes, technically there are a thousand copies… somewhere; but we're unlikely to get hold of one any time in the next 3 years").
But yes, you have correctly used the primitives to construct a system. (It's hardly your fault people undersell the leakiness of the abstraction.)
Honestly, I agree with your point so wholeheartedly.
I was really into p2p technologies like iroh etc. and at a real fundamental level you are still trusting that someone won't just suddenly leave things so things can still very well go down... even in crypto
But I think compared to sqlite torrent, the part about crypto might be the fact that since there's people's real money involved (for the worse or for the better) it then becomes of absolute permanence that data stored in blockchain becomes permanent.. and like I said, I can use that 60 nodes for absolutely free due to absolutely 0 gas fees compared to Sqlite torrent.
1) i think this means every link is essentially public? probably not ideal.
2) you don't actually want things to be permanent - users will inevitably shorten stuff strings didn't mean to / want to, so there needs to be a way to scrub them.
Yes I did address that part but honestly I can use the time of when it was sent into blockchain / transaction id which is generally really short as I said in the comment. I will hack a prototype tomorrow.
Yes I agree about using a dedicated new blockchain but as I noted, that's as good as a sqlite torrent and so I mean, maybe people interested can use this but if it means having nodes out of complete charity (sorta as nano) then I do think that it might fall short.
The funny part is that I was thinking about creating a dedicated new blockchain but I felt "spamming" (honestly fair critique) was easier and more practical and currently more decentralized.
If you make it read-only, maybe. If anyone can generate a link, wait for your hosting provider to shout at you and ask why there is so much spam/illegal content with your domain. The you realize you can't actually manage a service like this.
As we already have a PostgreSQL database server, thecost of running this is extremely low, and we aren't concerned about GDPR (etc) issues with using a third-party site.
Oh boy... I think I found the man that I can yap
about the idea that I got scrolling thorugh HN: link shortener in blockchain with 0 gas fees
Here is the comment since I don't want to spam the same comment twice, Have a nice day
I'm not sure how to ask this without being rude, so I'll just shoot. Is this example satire? https://0x.co/examples.html
What normal person would find this glove and result in it being returned to its owner? Even if "0x.co" was written too, I think most people wouldn't understand it to be a URL.
I feel like it should be a law that you can't provide information to someone about what their their customers/employees are doing out of your own accord. Credit card companies have no business in knowing what their customers are buying. They should just process the payment with the minimum amount of information possible.
Turning private entities into investigator and judge isn't good for anyone. It ends up in a game of who can annoy them the most, and the entity will be wasting time trying to appease both sides.
Leave these things to the government. At least then you need evidence and have due process.
I mean that they told Visa/Mastercard that the client Steam/Steam customers are selling/buying certain types of products. Now that they are aware of it, they can be pressed to do something about it. Conversely, if they weren't made aware about it, they could just go on with their business as usual.
Personally I think it's better for private entities to stay neutral and leave political decisions to the government. It's hard to stay neutral about things when you know things are happening, so when you inform a private entity about what people are doing with their services, you are turning that private entity into a political entity.
Fair, although it would be better if the banks had some equivalent of section 230 protection from having to do anything about what they're processing, maybe.
Or do something to make it so that payment processors must process payments for anything legal, without any say in the matter.
Probably get sued up to the Supreme Court like pharmacists that don't want to accept birth control prescriptions. Which may not work out that great with how much the current court hates freedom.
but, really, if the product or service is legal, payment processors should have to accept the payment. Same for all the other categories of product they are blocking with similar methodos.
What if it is unclear. I cannot tell 100% if a girl between 12 and 32 is over 18. maybe I can be right 75% of the time but I can think of two girls at the extreems that I was way off (that is a girl I guessed was 12 turned out to be 27 and a different girl I guessed at 32 won an under 16 race). Fake ids are all over (because 18-20 year olds want to drink at college).
ontil we legally give payment processors a pass for enabling money for crime they will be very careful about grey areas.
Why would it be on the payment processor at all to determine if something is legal or not? I think that is a massive issue on it's own as I don't want Visa/MC deciding whether they think what I'm doing with my money is legal, that's for a legal system to do, not a private company.
> Credit card companies have no business in knowing what their customers are buying.
The US Treasury says otherwise: this seems to all have started from them trying to blame Visa/MC for "directly handling the proceeds of these illicit transactions", despite the payment processors not having any idea what was actually being purchased.
The only social media app I can stomach is Tumblr, because people share lots of cool photos and art there.
It's weird because on Tumblr you can post posts of any size, place images anywhere you want, edit posts, edit tags afterwards, and all this cool stuff... but no, people WANT to use the character-limited immutable post with embedded hashtags thing for some reason. I don't get it.
Funny. I want the opposite. I want people to stop posting their opinions on the Internet.
Every time I go to Youtube and I see "the X situation is insane!" I'm like "what is even X? Why are you showing me this?"
The whole social media landscape is engineered toward drama and people arguing over pointless things they have no control over, being controversial all for "engagement." It's pretty depressing.
Ironically this comment is doing the exact thing the comic is criticizing because it is a subtle bastardization of what the comic says.
The comic is about not criticizing people who want to see improvement in something in which they participate. It isn't saying hypocrisy can't be criticized, just that we shouldn't misidentify hypocrisy. Notice the characters aren't saying that no one should buy an Apple product/car or participate in society. The replies are tangential to their original complaints. In order to see hypocrisy, the replier needs to view any participation as a full fledge endorsement, which is a silly thing to do.
Meanwhile, OP genuinely is acting hypocritically because they are doing the exact thing they are criticizing, posting an option to the Internet. The original replier is therefore not the one embodying this comic, it's you.
There is an interesting other layer here where the posting of an opinion is triggered by the way the content is presented. “The medium is the message.” The opinion posted didn’t itself exist before the content was consumed, making it all self-fulfilling and a positive feedback loop.
The interesting thing about HN in that context is it doesn’t fine-tune its algorithm per-user, it presents a consistent view to all users. Content should be much less positive-feedback-loop because of that.
And so OP might not be hypocritical if that consistent-view is the change we need to better our society.
There is zero irony for anyone not engaged in black and white thinking, Mr Gotcha.
OP is talking about very specific kinds of opinions here, not forum posts. Other than that, a librarian often has to talk out loud in order to tell people to keep quiet.
I'm pretty sure that the real reason is spam. Nobody is composing e-mail with complex designs to send their colleagues.
I feel like the major problem with almost everything that has a feed these days is the feed. Real state is a finite resource victim of the tragedy of commons: to be visible, you must post, but if others post, you are less visible, so to be even more visible, you post more, which prompts others to post even more, and anyone who doesn't play this game loses.
This happens with all feeds: chronological feeds on Tumblr, e-mail, RSS, etc.
One project I've seen that has tried a novel approach to this was https://fraidyc.at/ Essentially instead of putting all posts in a line, it's an RSS client that just tells you who has posted recently but not what they have posted.
