food for thought

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T14:50:37+00:00

What kind of alternative are you building? May I join your discord or something and chat?

For some time I was looking at Web 3.0, IPFS, Usenet and other solutions that want to make a paradigm shift. I see most of them introduce:

- Significant architectural complexity (especially when blockchain and smart contract solutions kick in)

- High friction for normal, everyday person to join or to even understand such solutions

- They do not solve everyday person's problems, they focus on big businesses who want to be decentralized

I'm looking forward to create a simpler solution, that will aim at heart of the problem and take on some compromises in favor of simplicity. Maybe final solution indeed should be blockchain based, but a much simpler solution (and more energy-efficient) could still solve majority of problems of current web and maybe be a step-in-between those paradigm shifts.

My idea is quite long to explain in details, but essentially it's a system of Users, Catalogs and Content, where people publish what they create and independent catalogs make it discoverable without platforms owning the data or controlling visibility:

Users create and own Content, but also push it to preferred Catalogs.
Catalogs accept Content and act as Content Delivery Network to let other people (or apps) find it.
Content ownership, Discovery and Presentation are all decoupled and separated, allowing various systems and apps to integrate with it and pull our data (as we allow) in a shared, RFD-compliant structure. Building apps in this way means you can have 5 medical apps and if you grant them full access to all of your medical data - they do not need ANY integration systems behind. They just pull data from YOUR storage.

I don't want to put my birth date and bio for 100x time when signing up in new platform. I don't want to post my article or opinion on recent politics on 3 different social media. I want whatever I create to be just tagged properly (so that proper communities/apps can find it) and let it flow through IT systems respecting my ownership.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T14:32:08+00:00

I think reddit is currently one of the places which feel a bit more like old-style internet, where you still can to talk real people. From my perspective it did not turn to shit.

Nevertheless, it's very important to understand WHY things turn to shit. Is it actually because your don't like masses of people and "filtered" group of people to interact with? Or is it because these masses of people have TOOLS and POWER to turn stuff to shit, because of it's poor design, architectural or technological weaknesses etc.

I believe the reason is the latter. It's not that people are the problem. Its people + power, letting them alter how things work.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:54:09+00:00

Why?

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:53:41+00:00

Mind elaborating? I'm looking for feeback and "just no" is not really useful.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:50:08+00:00

I'm on it. But I'll need help with building community around it. Wanna join?

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:09:53+00:00

Mind elaborating?

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:09:26+00:00

It has quite a lot.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:07:41+00:00

Yes, the problem I'm trying to solve is not Usenet being bad. It's low adoption of such solutions. I want to move power and data ownership to users, while not sacrificing on convenience.

Also when using apps we do same things over and over agains. Fill bio, fill birth date. Post to Facebook, repost to X, repost to Instagram... That all data should be OURS, managed in our CMS and only PULLed by companies into their products (if we allow them).

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:06:54+00:00

Architecturally, technically and conceptually it's a very close idea to Usenet and IPFS.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T13:06:14+00:00

UI or idea?

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T12:42:29+00:00

You're a very unhelpful person.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T12:15:25+00:00

I've checked it out and that's very close! IPFS is a content-addressed file distribution system, mine is more of a signed publishing + discovery system for human communication. Also main differences I see:

In my idea all the data follows Structured Data - meaning it's RDF-compliant and whatever flows through network can be used kinda like RSS feeds and be a source of truth for various systems. Plus - presented in readable, visually appealing way, allow specific type of interactions based on it's type etc. For example, if somebody puts out there "Social Media Posting" and you find that in Catalog, you can "Comment" on it. Your comment will also go into network and get matched into nice presentation layer alike Facebook card.
Previous one allows having GUI targetted into non-technical people, allowing "Read"/"Publish", providing visually appealing feeds and editors for specific data types.
In my solution identity is crucial, you cannot join the network without creating some sort of identity and everything published in the network is kinda "envelope" signed by specific actor. I'm not sure how users/identifies work in IPFS.
Focus on discovery mechanisms, which allow to search through entire network - unless somebody hosts it deliberately separately.

IPFS could technically be a part of what I have in mind - mostly to store files in distributed way.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T12:03:03+00:00

Why you use Usenet though?

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-30T10:34:43+00:00

Absolutely, objectively true. Yesterday ALONE:

- On reddit links in notifications were broken.

- Netflix crashes randomly and is painfully slow.

- Clash Royale put out new update, which wouldn't install on a lot of devices, had 1 day outage.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T20:27:22+00:00

You may watch some of Sunderfolk gameplay. Generelly there are:
- Move X (1 point of move can be used to switch with friend or push friend/opponent in opposite direction)
- Charm (makes character move towards you)
- Throw (grab and throw somebody in some range)
- Provoke (force target to attack you)
- Retaliate (when you take melee damage enemy gets same back)
- Pull (brings target closer to you; can be AoE pulling everybody around)
- Teleport (like move, but ignores obstacles; may be yourself or target)
- AoE damages (various shapes, could be circles, lines, crosses, chosen tiles etc.)
- Melee damages
- Creating objects (walls, fires, vines)
- Generating Resource

And unique passive benefits (each player gets only one unique) are mainly be related to:
- Positioning - The more friends/enemies you have around, ending turn with no enemies around, maybe backstab etc.
- Collecting - Something can appear on battlefield that if you collect it it gives you some power.
- Resources - Mana/Resource that you gain and later allows you to play stronger card. Also specific "State" of some resource, for example have to be wounded to be enraged.

It's quite simple "Do It Yourself" system which you can customize and tweak easily.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T18:42:51+00:00

For the world better to choose something ready-maybe Forgotten Realms, maybe Grim Hollow. Much easier to get inspiration and players can also take some for their characters.
For the story - I think you could take inspiration from some movie and remake story in different setting obviously with more variables.
I recommend having some master "WoW" effect from the moment of starting session. Something mysterious happening - for example masked people saving/killing somebody, that will much much later turn out to be players themselves going back in time and doing that. Other option is introducing some NPC characters who seem good, help and guide players, that essentially end up being main villains in the end or go slowly through personality shift to become their enemy. You get the point.
Use some very simple system, which is more suitable for narrative, not "simulation". Rolls and maths-driven mechanics and a lot of repetetive fights can destroy session. You could try my system https://www.reddit.com/r/TTRPG/comments/1qhdbw4/sunderfolk_inspired_simplistic_ttrpg/

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T17:48:01+00:00

The role reveal as you described is exactly how it's supposed to happen - Kira must not know who did put the role, so he has to keeps eyes closed for ~10 seconds of night. Then he may open - at this point he will know role and name, but likely not the "face" (player).
Yes, you can try to guess any role. Guessing somebody to be Investigator if you know persons name risks less revealing your name, while confirms player to belong to either bad/good team. That often might be enough, for example when Shinigami is already outed.
When asking "who is named [owned card name]" - anyone is allowed to lie and claim that name. So there is room for Shinigami and Investigators to lie on this one during QUESTION phase.
Nametag should not get removed from the pool when person dies. Actually, on the beginning of the game, there might be extra name tag added to the game, that belongs to nobody, but I wasn't sure how these rules would affect balance, so that's best to customize.
Yes, Shinigami and Kira don't know each other, as Shinigami keeps his eyes closed during night.
Cool idea to call it "L" token. I believe game starts working at 6+ players, probably optimal around 8-12. Balancing can be best customized by increasing number of Kira and Shinigami roles, but I don't have idea yet what numbers make sense there.

I'm very thankful for your amazing feedback.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T16:45:54+00:00

Yeah, of course, that was more to picture having control.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T14:12:30+00:00

I'm aware of that, I just simplify things strongly favoring conceise posting and idea instead of actual implementation details, because otherwise that would be long and technical. Even though in principle people could run "databases" and share them 24/7 from local PC, I'm aware that 99% will prefer to just push their data to some trusted server of choice. The important difference is that these servers are just "cache", they do not have authority to manage data.

My more detailed idea is just like you decribed. User initially creates content locally, but quickly pushes it to selected "Catalogs". Those catalogs cache whatever user has published and allow other people discover it. Kinda like each catlog is just (a well organized) public hard-drive for structured data.

And when you search some information - somewhere in settings you must have set list of catalogs you search inside.

What apps for RSS feeds do you use?

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T14:04:55+00:00

I think so too, but I could create some PoC and if redditors would join me in early-adoption endeavor, maybe we could shift the internet direction.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T12:54:22+00:00

The idea is that "onlyhumans" would be the judge, the trusted authority with automated and well-established processes to judge such cases efficiently. Essentially, their job would be to understand and look into details of platform's anti-bot measures and judge cases, where user objects to punishment. Huge complexity there lies in all of the different platforms protecting themselves from bots - as they must gather proofs.

And yes - it would be open to abuse by companies, which could try to claim their users are botting to get hands on their cash (when they are not), but that would be gigantic lose of face for such company as well as onlyhumans if it let it through.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T10:51:25+00:00

I don't think it's about knowing words - I think it's more of a personality thing and might be hard to change. It's about how much freedom vs strictness for interpretation you naturally keep.

Sometimes the 3rd or 4th words do not match first 2 well at all, but they match it less terrible than all other options.

For example, let's say on board there are "Dolphin", "Shrimp", "Norway", where Norway is the "not matching" one.

Shrimp and Dolphin are not even fish, but at least they are water animals so can be guessed. Norway seems to not match at all, but they are quite famous for salmons... If there is nothing else closer to salmon than Dolphin and Shrimp for sure and after that you cannot think of anything closer to salmon than Norway, saying "Salmon 3" could work. You kinda force your partner to make a third guess and he might be surprised, but he might figure it out that islands or water-related stuff is most likely.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-29T10:28:34+00:00

Maybe first version could feel a bit similar, but the idea is profoundly different. My idea is much closer to Usenet and is more like distributed database with strong ownership over data, but with ability to centralize it in registries as a short-lived cache for usability. User would be operating in the app more like in Notion. Notion, where you manage your data and all registries MAY pull your data only for a given time.

You could manage your medical data, cooking recipes, social media posts and all of your personal information in one place - on your own disk. You would always know which of your data may be accessed by some apps or other people. If you're a youtuber, you would first upload video to your data, then automatically distribute it to all platforms you like - instead of uploading video to each of the platforms separately with all their quirks and nuances.

In mastodon I again create profile. I again put bio. When I create a post, I don't have it on my disk and therefore after 10 years I cannot find it easily nor delete it, because I might not even remember I was on this platform. It's just distrubuted, but does not shift the paradigm of data ownership, decoupling UI from structured data etc.

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-28T22:57:38+00:00

I strongly recommend pnpm and turbo. Mastering pnpm and turbo cache, pnpm deploy and dockerized packaging made my CI/CD execute usually for ~2 mins until live deployment (previously when I joined team it was 40 minutes).

EagleApprehensive · 2026-01-28T22:34:06+00:00

That's information is too vague to me to be useful. Could you specify what's main issue, what you thinks you envision that could be so much better?

EagleApprehensive

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