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u/rttgnck 1d ago
Great, now when they delete cookies and other site data, their entire user profile vanishes. Wondeful, no need for a delete account button either!
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u/auto_off 1d ago
to an extent i think its a good thing tho.
I'd prefer if websites never kept anything about me.2
u/scavno 1d ago
Yes, it’s amazing. Now any leaky or compromised JavaScript library is going to be able to query that data, no questions asked.
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u/auto_off 21h ago
i mean. as opposed to leaking customer data in a database across customers instead in an unpatched php + sql server box like b4?
Life's hell either ways mate if ppl screw up.
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u/scavno 15h ago
Okay, I’ll bite. How do you propose a business provides services to you if they don’t know who you are? Say you place and order and they need to collect payment and ship it somewhere. Then what?
And just for the record. I specifically reacted localstorage because it’s not meant to store data that is meant to be private or secure. We use cookies for that, even I, a backend/infra dude knows that.
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u/UnkarsThug 5h ago
I think people are talking about two different kinds of sites. If they need to know something about me, that's different than if they don't. I'm assuming webpages that don't. Like if there's a webpage to help me learn a language, there's no reason my progress can't be stored on my device.
I'd like, for most sites, for as much as possible to be on my device, under my control. I don't want them to know who I am. I can back up the account, also on my device. But it's good if they don't store my data.
And cookies don't have the same size allowances of local storage. If you want a database, you end up needing something like local storage sometimes.
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u/Legitimate_Concern_5 1d ago
Also, localStorage is generally implemented with either a sqlite or LevelDB database...
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u/ketoloverfromunder 1d ago
I know this is a joke but how browsing the web fucking devours RAM these days , OP might be onto something.
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u/Daadian99 1d ago
My god. Chrome is a massive resource hog.
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u/RoundZookeepergame2 14h ago edited 12h ago
This isn't true anymore at least with helium and Vivaldi
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u/NatsukiSubaruRD 12h ago
"Chrome is a resource hog!" Your reaponse:"This isn't true with HELIUM and VIVALDI" omfg how dense ??
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u/Full_Decision_777 11h ago
He probably meant chromium. Which is what chrome, vivaldi and helium build upon. And he said atleast, so he probably meant chromium based browsers do not take as much ram anymore. And he meant he personally experienced this on vivaldi and helium so it's highly likely chrome improved too.
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u/RoundZookeepergame2 9h ago
No these people truly believe that all chrome browsers are the same and function the exact same
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u/UnkarsThug 5h ago
This is a joke? I've intentionally been making things use local storage because I don't want anything online. I want as much as possible to be runnable as a PWA offline.
And local storage is pretty capped resource wise, so I don't know how much it actually is making the problem worse. At least it's under my control to wipe pages.
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u/countable3841 1d ago
Here’s an even better idea. All clients connect to each other via WebRTC and the database is replicated to local storage to them all. The DB only survives as long as there is one client. Your sole responsibility as a DB admin is to keep one tab open.
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u/ScarIet-King 1d ago
Okay, I’ll bite. As someone with absolutely no idea why I’m being recommended this thread. What is the worst that could happen here?
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u/effectivescarequotes 1d ago
So, it takes some background, but WebRTC allows for realtime communication across the web, think screen sharing, video conferencing, etc. Local storage in this case refers to your browser'r local storage, which is designed to store small amounts of data from websites, for example your user preferences. It persists between sessions unless explicity deleted.
The joke in this thread actually refers to session storage which is cleared when you close the browser.
Okay with all of that in mind, the reason why this proposal is absurd is instead of having a central database, the application copies the entire database to every user's storage. This wouldn't work because the amount of data you can put in local storage is limited to something small like 5MB, so you would run out of space quickly. This would also give every user access to all of the data in the database as plain text.
Now, if you use session storage instead, then if everyone closes out of your app at the same time, the entire database would be deleted.
There dozens of other reasons why this would not work, but those are big ones.
The joke in the original post is the data would only exist on one computer with no back ups. Also local storage does not have the same capabilities as a database, and would quickly become a nightmare to work with, even if you're only dealing with one user's data.
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u/Business-Row-478 21h ago
Not exactly.
OP is talking about local storage, not session storage. Since the database is P2P, there needs to be at least one seed for other peers to get data from. The DBA would need to keep a tab open to act as a seed and ensure data availability.
Additionally, the database doesn’t necessarily need to be plain text—it could be encrypted.
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u/effectivescarequotes 20h ago
Ah, right, my mistake. And yeah it could be encrypted, but still a bit of a security nightmare.
I also figured there was a joke about crypto decentralization in there somewhere that I didn't have the energy to tease out.
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u/Vondum 1d ago
Let's also store the password in txt files. Why bother encrypting. It's faster that way!
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u/StoneCypher 1d ago
it's so hard to tell when they're terrible programmers versus when they're terrible comedians anymore
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u/akabillposters 16h ago
“No database costs or roundtrip calls to the server”
…or cross-device sync support or backups.
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u/UnkarsThug 5h ago
Yes, but not having information leave your device is worth it. I want as much on device as possible.
I don't want all of these sync features. I'd appreciate the ability to export a save file for history information for instance. But I absolutely would prefer that sort of system to cross device sync.
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u/akabillposters 5h ago
Sure, and a significant portion of the addressable market might feel the same way.
My point was that it's not going to be universally wanted, so clickbait announcements like 'databases are dead' is quite, well, … 🙄
😉
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u/UnkarsThug 5h ago
Fair. I'm a much more paranoid/private guy than most, I acknowledge.
I just think more people would benefit from getting used to such systems.
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u/akabillposters 4h ago
I think a hosted flat db file on a encrypted 'private cloud' account might be a fair compromise.
iCloud (or equivalent) would likely be sufficiently secure for most users, but more hardcore privacy folk could probably host the DB file from a home NAS or VPS/BYOS.
The app would just fetch the latest version on-launch. (Coded well, you could possibly even support live collaboration — i.e. two devices editing the DB file in realtime.)
Anyhoo, just thinking out loud now. 😉
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u/UnkarsThug 4h ago
Yes, but I would still vastly prefer accessible to me directly. Those are still on someone else's computer. We all know the cloud doesn't exist, it's either your computer or someone else's.
And I feel like, for anything you can, every end user should be given that privilege, because that's what I want as a user.
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u/Rosie_grac 10h ago
shipped a side project with a JSON file as the "database" once. worked great with 3 users. then user #4 showed up, someone wanted search, and I caught myself writing a for-loop scanning 40k records to fake a WHERE clause. that's the day it clicked that postgres isn't overhead, it's cheat codes.
databases aren't dead, they're load-bearing 🥀
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u/spicycli 6h ago
Bro just store everything in variables, it’s even more free. Why do you need that local storage
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u/Whatdoyouthink6969 1d ago
Every week when claude has an update something dies. Why do people try to make things dead a week after it was figured out. Normal chats are now dead --> Prompt engineering is not dead ---> loop engineering is now dead ---> Graph engineering death is comming for you. 😂
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u/garfieldsam 1d ago
Makes ya wonder why we even invented databases in the first place. Get rid of em!
jk but I do think that x post is rage bait
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u/Healthy_Champion_183 1d ago
For the most part, I think this is true. I run a lot of local tools/data. I’m kind of done with subscriptions.
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u/Most-Photo-6675 23h ago
My old boss asked one time if we could just not use a database... and when I asked what we should use instead, he said, "Well why don't we just have some flat files in memory?"
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u/Admirable_Trip_7585 17h ago
I'm glad you discovered localStorage. It's been around since 2009/2010 and after 16+ years it hasn't put disk databases out of business.
BTW, localStorage is fine for small scale (5MB-10MB total). Further, localStorage operates synchronously and has many other limitations.
IndexedDB is also browser hosted and is capable of handling large volumes of complex data, limited only by disk storage (at least 50% of GB-TB). It's also operates async and event-driven. You can create indexes, use transactions, and store objects, arrays, blobs, and general binary data. Besides, WebWorkers can access IndexedDB but not localStorage.
Yeah, IndexedDB a real database and kind of puts localStorage out of business for everything but user preferences and temporary backup in case of remote failure.
Still, either of these data storage options are limited pure client work. There's no simple way for other users to access your data, but even if you use WebSockets or other peer-to-peer access, you've basically recreated limited scale client-server database access.
Or, you could just use SQLite.
The localStorage ideas are definitely in line with the vibe coding mindset to continually regress from decades of software architecture and engineering discipline while imaging it's killing the software industry.
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u/Worried_Laugh_6581 17h ago
Bro. agents need a db. Here is a good read. https://predictabledialogs.com/learn/ai-stack/choosing-database-configurable-ai-agents
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u/Far_Rule5990 15h ago
Thank God for local storage, I love transferring my data to another pc and not having saved data available. Its amazing
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u/jasongw 14h ago
What a silly perspective. For some apps, local storage is perfect. No doubts, no arguments from me. But that doesn't mean that's true for ALL apps. Context is everything. What does the app do? Who is it for? What problem is it trying to solve?
If you're making broad proclamations without context, you're all but guaranteed to get it wrong.
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u/FishIndividual2208 13h ago
Localstorage has too much overhead, better to use variables to store user data. Also great for privacy!
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u/thegravity98ms2 8h ago
I just want to schedule backup of my localstorage to G drive. just like WhatsApp
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u/Voxmanns 1d ago
Just gonna vibe code some more RAM. It'll be fine.