Ink & Switch • 2022 • Conference Guide • Handmade Seattle

0:00Abner Coimbre: Hello, internet

0:58AC: Promote our Handmade Seattle conference¹ and the coming (at time of recording) Indexed Episode Guide, illustrated by the one for Handmade Hero²

2:17AC: Introduce Peter van Hardenberg

3:35A wild Peter appears

3:41Peter van Hardenberg: Working on an Americano

3:45AC: Drinking sparkling water

3:51PvH: Woes of espresso channeling

4:02AC: Do you see a renewed interest in independence, ownership and user agency?³

5:33PvH: Ownership analogy between software and furniture

9:19AC: What's your background?

9:35PvH: Getting into computers, working in arctic oceanography, Shakespearean scholarship, network admin, and on Songbird⁴ and Heroku⁵

12:40PvH: The notion of erosion resistance from the time of Heroku

15:32AC: This permeates game development

15:47PvH: Ubisoft's decommissioning of multiplayer games, and alleged removal from Steam

16:25AC: It's such a complication

16:35PvH: Local-first as a reintroduction of ownership and agency, embracing collaborative benefits of the cloud⁶

17:57AC: Ownership of the tech stack

19:09PvH: Conflict-free Replicated Data Types⁷

22:54AC: How does local-first differ from self-hosting of servers, e.g. Standard Notes?⁸

23:37PvH: Power structures: Centralised, Decentralised and Federated

25:32PvH: Local-first is indifferent to the power structure

27:10AC: Do we have examples of local-first software?

27:24PvH: Plug Motif,⁹ Actual,¹⁰ Automerge¹¹ and Ink & Switch's own GitHub¹²

28:10AC: I always thought ownership in software meant self-hosting servers

28:28PvH: Steam Sync as a centralised local-first solution

30:53AC: Wanting to feel ownership¹³

31:50PvH: Variable trustworthiness of organisations

33:15AC: Do they benefit from that control?

33:18PvH: Claims of security and privacy suspiciously lining up with total platform domination goals

33:37AC: So on the one hand they'll claim this is for your benefit…

33:42PvH: Costs and benefits to the user

34:03AC: Ecosystem entrenchment

35:02PvH: The huge problem of organisations permitting integration based on business interests, not user interests

35:29PvH: Interoperability of complex file formats

36:45PvH: Plug Cambria¹⁴

37:28PvH: Malleable software

39:03thephtest Happened with Blizzard custom games too

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39:03thephtest Happened with Blizzard custom games too

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39:03thephtest Happened with Blizzard custom games too

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39:26AC: Massive centralised software tends not to feel nice to use

40:25PvH: Revenue generation yields quality

40:57mikejohnstn How does Ink & Switch make money?

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40:57mikejohnstn How does Ink & Switch make money?

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40:57mikejohnstn How does Ink & Switch make money?

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41:10PvH: Making a living from software, using local-first principles

47:43AC: Is it partly a technical but also cultural–social problem?

47:51PvH: Everything is a cultural–social problem?

48:10PvH: Technical challenges: Synchronisation, performant remoteness¹⁵^,16

50:25asafgartner Tailscale has a good blog¹⁷

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50:25asafgartner Tailscale has a good blog¹⁷

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50:25asafgartner Tailscale has a good blog¹⁷

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50:32AC: Do you have advice for people interested in making local-first software?

51:16PvH: Advice: 1) Develop and nurture your sense of values

52:11PvH: Advice: 2) Do hard things, with Nintendo DS programming anecdote

53:32PvH: Advice: 3) Keep the definitive copy locally

54:18PvH: Advice: 4) Look into CRDTs, e.g. Automerge¹⁸ and Yjs¹⁹

54:40PvH: Advice: 5) Steer away from p2p

55:51AC: Prepare for Q&A

56:45AC: Plug Allen Webster's 'The Power of Computation'²⁰ and Ryan Fleury's 'Computers, Ownership, Agency'²¹

57:33AC: 5-minute break

57:43AC: Q&A

57:54skytrias Q: Is there any CRDT example using C / C++

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57:54skytrias Q: Is there any CRDT example using C / C++

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57:54skytrias Q: Is there any CRDT example using C / C++

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58:13PvH: Automerge²² rewrite in Rust

58:47AC: I thought CRDTs had been prototyped in higher-level environments

59:00PvH: Going where developers are

1:00:03bvisness Q: I've noticed that in addition to the research, you're also producing apps for creative work. Do those apps exist to dogfood your research, or just to try other ideas about how software can work?

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1:00:03bvisness Q: I've noticed that in addition to the research, you're also producing apps for creative work. Do those apps exist to dogfood your research, or just to try other ideas about how software can work?

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1:00:03bvisness Q: I've noticed that in addition to the research, you're also producing apps for creative work. Do those apps exist to dogfood your research, or just to try other ideas about how software can work?

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1:00:23PvH: Making Muse²³^,24 as a revenue generator for Ink & Switch's lab research

1:02:51mikejohnstn Might be worth mentioning how Ink & Switch got started and reached where it is today (funding from Heroku founders, I believe?)

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1:02:51mikejohnstn Might be worth mentioning how Ink & Switch got started and reached where it is today (funding from Heroku founders, I believe?)

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1:02:51mikejohnstn Might be worth mentioning how Ink & Switch got started and reached where it is today (funding from Heroku founders, I believe?)

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1:03:00PvH: The original conception of the Ink & Switch lab

1:04:08caz_gamez Q: Is there some natural law that the number of successful games is limited and therefore reduced to luck because many great games will get passed by no matter how good or how much you market them?

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1:04:08caz_gamez Q: Is there some natural law that the number of successful games is limited and therefore reduced to luck because many great games will get passed by no matter how good or how much you market them?

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1:04:08caz_gamez Q: Is there some natural law that the number of successful games is limited and therefore reduced to luck because many great games will get passed by no matter how good or how much you market them?

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1:04:28PvH: Research into market penetration, and eligibility to be lucky

1:07:08AC: Ecosystem entrenchment in the realm of cultural artifacts like music and books

1:07:14PvH: Value from societal uptake

1:07:49bvisness Gonna have a lot of angry Lord of the Rings fans now

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1:07:49bvisness Gonna have a lot of angry Lord of the Rings fans now

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1:07:49bvisness Gonna have a lot of angry Lord of the Rings fans now

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1:07:55yunglain Q: Where did the name Ink & Switch come from?

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1:07:55yunglain Q: Where did the name Ink & Switch come from?

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1:07:55yunglain Q: Where did the name Ink & Switch come from?

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1:08:00PvH: Naming Ink & Switch as a subversion of techy, fancy and intangible language

1:08:43AC: Loving tactile feedback

1:09:14zeanith64 Q: You mentioned the SaaS conversion rate being comparable to piracy, the difference being a company has metrics on free users. Is this not beneficial from the company perspective rather than blind users? Example being performance or traction metrics that can affect things like funding avenues

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1:09:14zeanith64 Q: You mentioned the SaaS conversion rate being comparable to piracy, the difference being a company has metrics on free users. Is this not beneficial from the company perspective rather than blind users? Example being performance or traction metrics that can affect things like funding avenues

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1:09:14zeanith64 Q: You mentioned the SaaS conversion rate being comparable to piracy, the difference being a company has metrics on free users. Is this not beneficial from the company perspective rather than blind users? Example being performance or traction metrics that can affect things like funding avenues

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1:09:34PvH: The possible benefit of interaction logging to help improve the product for the user

1:10:51AC: Thanks for being here

1:10:55PvH: It's been a pleasure

1:11:05AC: Closing tease of Ink & Switch and Handmade possibly collaborating in the future

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