4 ms·

There's allegedly been a thriving industry of in-person data transfers in Cuba, where people get their portable media loaded up every week with the latest pirat

There's allegedly been a thriving industry of in-person data transfers in Cuba, where people get their portable media loaded up every week with the latest pirated/banned media [1]. I wonder if more isolationist or censorship-oriented embodiments of this sort of policy could lead to that model (and loosely similar ideas like USB/Wi-Fi dead drops [2]) becoming more widespread. [1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24778222.html https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article2... [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2597815/dead-drops-offline-p2p-file-sharing-network-goes-global.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2597815/dead-drops-off...

HillRat 8y ago
Maybe Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” was somewhat more prescient than it seemed...
nsomaru 8y ago
We’re doing it all the time already https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
kilpikaarna 8y ago
The part where the disks contain ads from local businesses reminds me of diskmags: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_magazine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_magazine As for the second link, wow, we were that naive about plugging in unknown USB devices only six years ago?
iamnothere 8y ago
I have thought about this; it would be good to have a common "protocol" established for searching, requesting, and (eventually) retrieving documents over sneakernet. Perhaps some sort of updateable index passed along with the documents, and an anonymous register of what files are being requested. I envision sort of a physical version of Tor, where nobody knows who has what files or who is requesting what files; the only thing you know is who you just exchanged info with, but you don't know if the new requests/files came from them or from the next hop on the network. This could serve as a backup if the network becomes unavalable in the long term (due to a war, for instance) or if severe repression is put in place, restricting access to information.
- tenebrisalietum 8y ago
  Recoll works great to maintain a local searchable database of text documents. If you create a text record for each media item it could work.

HillRat 8y ago

Maybe Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” was somewhat more prescient than it seemed...

nsomaru 8y ago

We’re doing it all the time already https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

kilpikaarna 8y ago

The part where the disks contain ads from local businesses reminds me of diskmags: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_magazine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_magazine As for the second link, wow, we were that naive about plugging in unknown USB devices only six years ago?

iamnothere 8y ago

I have thought about this; it would be good to have a common "protocol" established for searching, requesting, and (eventually) retrieving documents over sneakernet. Perhaps some sort of updateable index passed along with the documents, and an anonymous register of what files are being requested. I envision sort of a physical version of Tor, where nobody knows who has what files or who is requesting what files; the only thing you know is who you just exchanged info with, but you don't know if the new requests/files came from them or from the next hop on the network. This could serve as a backup if the network becomes unavalable in the long term (due to a war, for instance) or if severe repression is put in place, restricting access to information.

tenebrisalietum 8y ago
Recoll works great to maintain a local searchable database of text documents. If you create a text record for each media item it could work.