14 thoughts on “Disrupting The Disruptors”

    2. ‘Net Neutrality’ is where Twitter can block you from their site, but your ISP can’t block Twitter from the Internet in response. Which is why the left pushed so hard for it.

      On the plus side, now Twitter is just a left-wing echo chamber, they’ll rapidly spiral into eating each other until there’s only one Twit left.

  3. There is no reason, ABSOLUTELY NONE, that what is done on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you name it, requires a central server. None. Zip. Zero. The only reason to have an ‘account’ and a ‘login’ is because someone, somewhere (not on your computer) is storing your data and needs a way to discriminate (in this case identify) you from others. Monetization follows from continuous monitoring of your account, providing pseudo-anonymous matching of your account to those paying the bills. I say pseudo, because as soon as you click on a monetized link, the folks paying the bills will be able to identify you. So, in the bad old days of on-line file sharing aka music ‘piracy’ peer-to-peer operations like Limewire etc were set up to skirt the mishaps of operations like Napster. Eventually tho, the music industry got wise, started demanding ISPs shut down Limewire as a frontal port, ID’d participants and sent Grandma threatening cease and desist letters, and then eventually figured out that the best way to shut it down was to create fake peering sites that distributed broken files and ads as to where to get the real deal via payment. But peer to peer was demonstrated as a workable technology. And for original content, like your FB wall, there is no reason on Earth why this won’t work. And if the client software is released under the terms of the GPLv3 all the better.

    This should be done. Like yesterday….

    1. I’m currently building up a network library. I’d like to write some peer-to-peer software (as opposed to client/server). People s machines can talk directly to each other, you know -they don’t necessarily have to dial a mothership somewhere.

      Most peer-to-peer protocols end up being very complicated balls of yarn because they’re also trying to acheive too many other things like anonymous zero-trust, persistence, etc. I just want software that can take an IP address phone book and dial your friends, use simple RSA encryption, etc.

      Slow going though – writing anything nontrivial is like assembling a mural with tweezers.

      1. “People s machines can talk directly to each other, you know -they don’t necessarily have to dial a mothership somewhere.”

        I’m not a network expert – only asking this for info:

        But if I am in one state and you are in another, I still need an ISP right?

        No matter what, I need the infrastructure to be able to see web sites and converse with you via email or blogs. The only time I don’t need infrastructure is if I can run a cable from my computer to yours.

        So without Big Tech infrastructure, how can People’s machines talk to each other directly?

        Aren’t Internet Service Providers part of Big Tech?

    1. It makes sense now that the internet has become such a powerful tool of fascism, that was Algore’s goal all along. How insidious, and here I was thinking he was just a climate change nutjob.

  5. Perhaps it gives people greater control but you can already revoke or grant app’s permissions. There are so many ways people are tracked, I’m not sure a “pod” will help and having one might make you more trackable.

    1. Wasted some time wandering around their site https://www.inrupt.com as if I wanted to install something like it on my home server, or use it at a small company, and see what I’d need to do and what it would get me. Specifically, I was looking for an example of how this would work in the real world and what problems it would solve. I couldn’t find that information.

      At this point, the installation process is convoluted and requires way too much knowledge of the of your OS and it depends on too many secondary products. I know someone who did database admin full time, and she had less than complimentary things to say about some of those products. And they offer it on AWS. After this weekend, there’s no way anyone should consider depending on anything with AWS since contracts using that service are worthless.

      The whole “pod” stuff seems to be little more than an encrypted cloud drive. I “secure” my data by not participating in cloud servers, prefering to keep my data in my home. Yet I can be tracked by which sites I visit, despite having adblockers turned way up. This doesn’t seem to manage that problem

      I’d like to be wrong, as I think there needs to be more decentralization, but at this point this is looking way too much like another centralized once-removed solutionthat doesn’t really solve the problems, and requires full time “high priest” admins to maintain at any scale.

      I’m thinking this is another product like Gerlertner’s “Lifestreams”. (Hey, he did get Apple to settle for stealing his interface ideas…)

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