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The eternal struggle. Information wants to be free, and then people use those freedoms to do the most screwed up things imaginable, and people like this pay the

The eternal struggle. Information wants to be free, and then people use those freedoms to do the most screwed up things imaginable, and people like this pay the price. It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas. Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. It’s surprising how much anonymity and the subject at hand are correlated. In my 20s I liked to explore, as I’m sure many of you do too. I once met someone in the Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service, so you can’t just pull up google maps. Nowadays starlink solves that problem, but back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps, and ended up dying to exposure when he went to get help. Never leave your car. I found all of this fascinating. What a project! Make all of google maps accessible right from your phone, with no internet. I briefly fell in love with that community. Ultimately what drove me away was the literal flood of child porn that was always right next to anything to do with tor, whonix, or anonymity in general. I have a pretty high tolerance for “operating in gray areas,” like this guy. But one of the tragedies of the cyberpunk dream is that the entire scene has been coopted by cp. In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame.

throwaway914 3y ago
There are many, many pedophiles out there. I'm also convinced of a conspiracy theory that a lot of dark web traffic and hosts are created/operated by secret parts of the gov to de-legitimize the need for anonymity. I believe this because it would be too easy with the access to that material and no oversight. Just muddy the waters so nothing in there looks worth protecting. </tinfoil-hat>
- ip26 3y ago
  There are many, many… It’s a little puzzling to me still why this is. Physical attraction to almost-adults isn’t some big mystery, but most cp is something else entirely.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - jrflowers 3y ago
      I’m no expert here but I’m going to guess that equivocating gay people and pedophiles is not the best starting point to understanding pedophiles.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        [flagged]
        jrflowers 3y ago
        I like this question because you explicitly ask me to agree with your premise that pedophiles and gay people are equivalent within your framing of this discussion and then follow it up with “my contention is something other than what I’ve clearly explained” Edit: For clarity, the post this is responding to originally started with “Do you agree that 'adult-adult-hetersexual' is the only orientation that has obvious evolutionary benefit?” It has since been edited to a generic copy-pasted response.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        [dupe]
akira2501 3y ago
> Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx." > Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service Here's an idea, maybe he should print those maps out, bind them together into a larger map, and then find a really complicated way to fold them up so he can keep them handy when needed. > In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. And yet.. it is still produced in the physical world where none of these constraints actually exist. It's only promulgated and marketed through anonymous means.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- asveikau 3y ago
  >> [...] you can’t even be anonymous [...] > Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx." I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. I recognize that username as someone who has been posting here for a long time. Not to encourage doxxing or making his identity the focus, but he has lots of contact details on his user profile. Tons of people are identifiable on here, even if the usernames are whimsical.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yankput 3y ago
It was bullshit from the start
failuser 3y ago
Cyberpunk was not about a dream. It was more of a warning to all those people who thought that technology will bring utopia. “High tech, low life” is the guiding principle of cyberpunk — technology will not solve societal problems all the cool tech brings issues that were not foreseen. With corrupt government and corporations not going anywhere just because the computations and communications got faster.
DenisM 3y ago
>back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps That was 2007. I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005. Edit: that was “Mapopolis” in my case. There were plenty more: https://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/GPS_software_-_Pocket_PC https://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/GPS_software_-_Pocket_PC
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005. How much did that cost? How many folks had it? When did it stop getting updates? Most folks (likely including GP) didn't have easy access to offline electronic maps in their pocket in 2007 and didn't know anyone who had offline electronic maps in their pocket. Does that make them stupid?
  - DenisM 3y ago
    > How much did that cost? $100 for the maps, available to anyone with a pocket pc and access to Google.
  - sgath92 3y ago
    2008 I had a totally offline map of all of North America in my car's aftermarket radio (7" touch screen, AM/FM, DVD player, GPS, analog TV, SD slot, all running a version of WindowsCE that was already outdatted). System cost me about $400. Bought it so I could do backroads road trips/exploring by car, as it didn't need (or even have) a way to connect to the 'net to do it. I can still get updated maps for it, but I don't bother. Handheld gps's with offline maps go back even further. I was using them from '03 to '08. Garmin made a bunch of ones that were no bigger than a early-gen blackberry. Back then it was relatively easy to get pirated updated maps for them.
- tguvot 3y ago
  i traveled across europe in car at same time frame with pocket pc (asus mypal) and igo maps loaded on it (still have it in my drawer). those days you can get igo offline maps on android. also sygic. it was always strange that google maps was accepted as some kind of magic while turn by turn navigation with voice directions was available from mid 2000s nowdays i always have sygic installed on my phone. came handy when google maps decided to freak out while i was driving through death valley to gas station.
pessimizer 3y ago
> Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented. The reason that you didn't have to "rub elbows" with them is because our governments hadn't begun systematically closing off all avenues for anonymity other than the one that they built and maintain for their own spying. If there's only one way to be anonymous, you get to "rub elbows" with everyone who needs to be anonymous for any reason. It has nothing to do with child porn or crypto. Neither were responsible for the size of the distributed files kept on each of us to grow in orders of magnitude. Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk.
- colanderman 3y ago
  > good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases My handheld non-networked GPS unit with map tiles downloaded in bulk from OpenStreetMaps meets this criteria. Not very obscure.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk. Et voila! Maps at your fingertips[0] with no logging/tracking. It's amazing what those ancient (ca. 1995) humans could do. Perhaps they had help from aliens -- as we couldn't possibly do any of that stuff by ourselves. /s [0] https://wwp.randmcnally.com/product/rand-mcnally-road-atlas https://wwp.randmcnally.com/product/rand-mcnally-road-atlas
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented. Sure, emphasis on secretive. I'd hope that 'secretive' on the internet would mean more secretive than mistyping a query on a popular site's search engine. Or simply wandering into a linked, public website. But alas.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. Offline map databases were commom then; it wasn't uncommon for car navigation systems to come with them (expensive to update, though), as well as handheld devices In fact, while they were not common before the 2000s, first-party navigation systems with offline digital maps for cars have been around at least since the 1980s, as have other forms of consumer offline digital maps. Online maps are newer than offline. > This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps The last of many critical errors before the car got stuck might have been avoided by using a map, but they had and used a paper map shortly before, when choosing the alternate route that was, in fact, closed; it wasn't a problem caused by maps not being available (and there is a reason keeping paper road maps, especially of unfamiliar areas, when driving in them was a widespread practice until digital maps with automatic offline downloads tied to GPS became ubiquitous.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas doesn't sound like the best idea depending on what industry we are talking about. medicine, yes. Art, no (we're kinda going through that right now actually). >In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame. This quote constantly rings in my head about topics like this: >The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong. It's the real downside of apathy when you see complaints about those big sites out there and how they screw up. You advertising a new site means the most interested are going to mostly include the worst actors, who eventually put off the best actors. Or at least disproportionately include them. As a simple example: say Twitter has 10 million users and 1000 nazis (utopic, I know). Now your new no BS alternative attracts 0.1% of users but 10% Nazis. Still far from a majority. But by the way these forums work, your site will be 1% nazis, and those nazis will be some of your loudest actors if left unchecked. 100x more concentrated and it will feel some 1000x more nazi.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I’m fascinated by the Nazi question (what to do with them). I think we should allow heterodox beliefs in public forums since at least this reduces the effect of echo chambers. The other alternative is to ban certain ideas from the mainstream, but I think this leads to groups like Nazis just moving to dedicated sites where their ideas are reinforced. Like I’d rather see a Nazi subreddit where those ideas are likely to see more challenges, than some random Nazi site where bad ideas metasticize in the shadows. Maybe the spooks prefer it this way since different sites makes it easier to categorise people.
  - ipsi 3y ago
    Why would Nazis (or flat-earthers or QAnon or any other group likely to receive _substantial_ challenges to their world-view) stay somewhere where they'd be challenged, though? On a Reddit-like platform they'd downvote and/or ban to ensure it's almost entirely an echo-chamber, like every other part of Reddit. If they somehow weren't able to control that, then I suspect they'd move to another platform organically, because why would they put up with a constant flow of opposing viewpoints that these groups believe, with absolute certainty, to be wrong?
barrysteve 3y ago
Free information is worth what you paud for it. Authority figures and scientists don't share the expensive info.
belorn 3y ago
> you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. Statistically there is quite a large number of criminals in my city, and since I visit shops and other parts of the city, I am bound to unknowingly to me been rubbing elbows with those criminals. We are all anonymous to each other, and what can I really know about the person in front of me in the store. Go past a few hundred people and someone will be a person I would not associate myself with, and yet here I am living in the same city as them using the same infrastructure, and in some way enabling the activity by contributing taxes. Not to say I don't understand the emotional reaction people have. I have relatives in the countryside that refuse to visit the city because of all the criminals that they hear about. It is also fairly common to hear people moving out of the city to the calmer suburbs in order to get out of all the shootings and crime. I also do know first hand that if you go and look for it, finding drug dealers and shady activity is not exactly a big secret. Go to specific streets or part of the city and it's operated in plain sight. I've always seen the original cyberpunk dream as being analogous to a city, with all its benefits and drawbacks.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  It would be more analogous to having all the pedos in the city use one coffee shop and everyone knows that pedos use that coffee shop and you decide to go there because you prefer their coffee.
  - belorn 3y ago
    It seems a great overestimate to think that 19 out of 20 people who use tor do so to download CP. I am pretty sure that will be false, and more likely something like one in a few hundred. One in a few hundred is the city. 19 out of 20 is the coffee shop. I should also reiterate that everyone knows what streets and part of the city that criminals visits regularly. People who decide to live or visits those places do make that choice. This lead naturally to city stratification.
sacrosancty 3y ago
[dead]
ineedasername 3y ago
>downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally Before smartphones this was common. Standalone gps units had maps locally stored. Some of the ones mounted in car dashboards stored them on an internal DVD. I used to have to drive a lot for work long before they were commonly built in to cars and I had an aftermarket one mounted on my dashboard, a little 2” monochrome display. Storage was tight, and I’d have to hook it up to my computer to swap out map sets if I was traveling further than usual.
Arn_Thor 3y ago
I haven't run across any Cyberpunk fiction that didn't feature exploitation of other people with the aid of technology. That depressing aspect of it is sort of backed in. If it's utopian, it's not cyberpunk, almost by definition.
wkat4242 3y ago
> It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas. Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. Corporate government is pretty much a staple of. all cyberpunk franchises though.
- EamonnMR 3y ago
  Yeah Cyberpunk wasn't so much a dream as a dystopian reaction to modern life; instead of exploring space, people do crimes to scrape by. I certainly wouldn't want to live in Snow Crash or Neuromancer...
- EGreg 3y ago
  Maybe open source generative AI can help solve cp. Cater to all these pedophile fetishes, and no need to exploit children? Remember how we phased out ivory for piano keys, and other poaching? With diamonds, there is still a push to source “the real thing” kept alive by De Beers, and other cartels like that. But for a lot of poaching, we found replacements. I think that’s how plastic got started too btw! Also PETA has approved fake lab-grown meat, perhaps it can reduce demand for torturing so many animals in factory farms. PS: Japan has a culture of infantile hentai or something in its animation - which may alleviate a lot of demand for actual cp — how much cp is in Japan? (There seems to be a lot of unusual/unnatural sexual norms in Japan… from Hikkikomori to dating vending machines to total celibacy for a large proportion of the population.) https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-pornography https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-po...
  - tenpies 3y ago
    > generative AI can help solve cp On a side note, there was a very good film about this last year called The Artifice Girl. Think indie, very theatrical with only three settings and three very clear acts, but thought-provoking and with some unstated implications. I would recommend watching it without checking IMDB or any review site first.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
mindslight 3y ago
Tangential to your much larger lament - OpenStreetMap, and specifically OSMAnd which is libre and free on F-droid, works great for offline maps that are downloaded ahead of time. (I think the version on Google Play limits the number of regions you can download unless you make a small donation).
- tetris11 3y ago
  Organic Maps on F-Droid, is a literal godsend in offline raster maps. I used OSMand a lot on my old phone, buy since I downgraded it just could not load the vectors fast enough
  - aembleton 3y ago
    Give mapy.cz in the play store a try. Seems to be much snappier than organic maps. Uses osm data
    - xigoi 3y ago
      But it's proprietary, and built by a company which loves tracking.
- ragequitta 3y ago
  Google maps offers this functionality. I've had my local map and maps of any place I regularly go to downloaded for many years.
  - grepfru_it 3y ago
    It will eventually cease to exist. I went to Grenada in 2014 and used offline maps to drive around the island. In 2015 the tablet suffered an accident and I powered it off to deal with it later. 5 years later I power it back on without internet connectivity. Turns out the maps expired. So much for many years
    - ragequitta 3y ago
jmkni 3y ago
> he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally Isn't that, like, a map? lol we've had maps long before the internet
- zo1 3y ago
  Have you tried to buy a paper map lately? It's next to impossible, at least here where I am atm.
  - toby- 3y ago
    Where are you that it's "next to impossible"? That really surprises me. I'm in the UK, and you can walk into any Post Office, WHSmith, bookshop, most newsagents, etc., and pick up maps of the local area or country, usually Ordnance Survey[0] maps. And (at least when I was in secondary school, about a decade ago) map reading was still taught as a valuable skill, using OS maps. [0]: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
- andybak 3y ago
  Paper gets heavy real quick and personal microfiche readers never caught on.
  - itronitron 3y ago
    I imagine it's really hard to drive a car and use a microfiche reader at the same time.
    - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      The Electro Gyrocator essentially worked that way. You placed transparencies over the CRT for the map section you were currently in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-features/ph-origins-navigation-systems/37314 https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-features/ph-origins-navi...
  - 3y ago
kedean 3y ago
Just regarding your overall concern around maps and cellular service, Google Maps lets you download maps within very custom sized tiles for offline use. I'm partial to using them when hiking, so I can orient myself in areas where the actual trail markers become questionable. Routing doesn't really work offline, but that's a different/harder problem.
- daemontus 3y ago
  No disrespect, I use offline Google maps almost daily, but there are far far better offline hiking apps out there. Google will probably work ok for the most popular trails, and I guess you can use it as a supercharged compass. But at least in Europe, if you actually plan a route in any mountains based on Google, you're in for an adventure :)
  - Zpalmtree 3y ago
    What apps would you recommend?
    - daemontus 3y ago
      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy Bit focused on eastern Europe, but has a hiking mode with very good coverage of the official routes (not only in eastern Europe ;)). And everything is free, including offline maps. Terrific value for casual trips. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bergfex.tour https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bergfex.to... This one is not free (there is a free tier though) but seems to have more details in some areas, so the pro tier may be worth it if you hike a lot.
charlieyu1 3y ago
Do jurisdictions really care about child porn before internet? I always feel like it is just a convenient excuse for them to get away with their bullshit, for a largely non-existent problem.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  No, they didn't. They still don't. Not having a victim on the other side of the case (possession of child porn, not production of child porn) gives judges an easy excuse (and no opposition) to sympathizing with the accused and suspending the sentence. Child porn is just leverage to pry. We used to care as much about sending information about birth control through the mail. And with the modern movement to sexualize children as soon as possible, they might have to use another excuse in 20 years. "Terrorism" will always work, because it doesn't mean anything.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    I believe this is the case, as unfortunate as it is. The loudness of their voices in "protecting the children" when politicians are introducing new communications surveillance measures, with no mention of local, boots-on-the-ground, child protection services funding increases, just screams to me that they care about surveillance a lot and about protecting children not at all.
    - didntcheck 3y ago
      In that way the government represents the people. For every 9 people you meet screeching about how much they want to hunt a pedo and torture them, there's 1 person talking about actually helping children experiencing abuse (which is not always sexual, to the former group's disappointment)
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    These tactics have been called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp....
- 3y ago
noAnswer 3y ago
> Ultimately what drove me away was the literal flood of cp that was always right next to anything to do with tor, whonix, or anonymity in general. As a teen around 2003 I hosted a freenet-node (freenetproject.org). It generated 1TByte/month which I believe was a lot for the time. I shot it down and never came back, because the only things that ever loaded was cp and Chechnya rape and torture videos. Its not a network for "dissidents"... I gave up on humanity.
- jowea 3y ago
  It's the same thing with the old reddit alternatives. Very few people are actually going to bother purely for the sake of principles, so the alternatives end up flooded with the ones that are forced to alternatives for good reasons. If the mainstream Internet banned "dissidents" I believe such things would have more uptake by other types of users.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    The threadiverse (Lemmy/Kbin), which recently became popular due to the Reddit API protests, is pretty healthy. Of course, there are some servers catering to 'dissidents' (e.g. Lemmygrad, Exploding Heads), but it's easy enough to avoid those communities.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Humanity is mostly good, it just isn't universally good. Providing services that rely on "universally good" to avoid being dominated by the tiny but horrible minority is always a disaster.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ThrowAway1922A 3y ago
    > Humanity is mostly good I don't believe there is any evidence to back this up whatsoever. People are compelled to be "good" by society and laws, nothing more. Humanity is fundamentally bad, but reined in by a handful of powerful people and organizations.
sanderjd 3y ago
> It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. Isn't it more, "This is why the original cyberpunk dream was always a naive and bad idea"? Like, it appealed to me too when I was young, but then I learned more about humans and our history and ...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- AnonymousPlanet 3y ago
  Since when was cyberpunk a dream to be pursued? It's the opposite of a naive dream. It's a nightmare full of high tech and people living on scraps, constantly trying to keep up with the tech fallout from big corporations. One of the most iconic places in cyberpunk was literally described as being "like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept the thumb permantently on the fast-forward button." How is this appealing? It's a warning, not a cosy idea to aspire to!
  - antod 3y ago
    I think this is the difference between cyberpunk as a fiction genre and the views of the people calling themselves cyberpunks back in the day (or reading the Wired articles about them).
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    really depends on your literature. Star Trek's interpretation of the future is very different from Dune's. Much of cyberpunk tends to be cynical but there are some more utopic interpretations out there as well.
    - rainonmoon 3y ago
      Neither Star Trek nor Dune are cyberpunk.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
Euphorbium 3y ago
But google maps provide offline maps, and have done it for years. You just have to save them in advance.

throwaway914 3y ago

There are many, many pedophiles out there. I'm also convinced of a conspiracy theory that a lot of dark web traffic and hosts are created/operated by secret parts of the gov to de-legitimize the need for anonymity. I believe this because it would be too easy with the access to that material and no oversight. Just muddy the waters so nothing in there looks worth protecting. </tinfoil-hat>

ip26 3y ago
There are many, many… It’s a little puzzling to me still why this is. Physical attraction to almost-adults isn’t some big mystery, but most cp is something else entirely.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    I’m no expert here but I’m going to guess that equivocating gay people and pedophiles is not the best starting point to understanding pedophiles.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - jrflowers 3y ago
        I like this question because you explicitly ask me to agree with your premise that pedophiles and gay people are equivalent within your framing of this discussion and then follow it up with “my contention is something other than what I’ve clearly explained” Edit: For clarity, the post this is responding to originally started with “Do you agree that 'adult-adult-hetersexual' is the only orientation that has obvious evolutionary benefit?” It has since been edited to a generic copy-pasted response.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        [dupe]

akira2501 3y ago

> Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx." > Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service Here's an idea, maybe he should print those maps out, bind them together into a larger map, and then find a really complicated way to fold them up so he can keep them handy when needed. > In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. And yet.. it is still produced in the physical world where none of these constraints actually exist. It's only promulgated and marketed through anonymous means.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asveikau 3y ago
>> [...] you can’t even be anonymous [...] > Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx." I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. I recognize that username as someone who has been posting here for a long time. Not to encourage doxxing or making his identity the focus, but he has lots of contact details on his user profile. Tons of people are identifiable on here, even if the usernames are whimsical.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

yankput 3y ago

It was bullshit from the start

failuser 3y ago

Cyberpunk was not about a dream. It was more of a warning to all those people who thought that technology will bring utopia. “High tech, low life” is the guiding principle of cyberpunk — technology will not solve societal problems all the cool tech brings issues that were not foreseen. With corrupt government and corporations not going anywhere just because the computations and communications got faster.

DenisM 3y ago

>back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps That was 2007. I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005. Edit: that was “Mapopolis” in my case. There were plenty more: https://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/GPS_software_-_Pocket_PC https://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/GPS_software_-_Pocket_PC

brightlancer 3y ago
> I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005. How much did that cost? How many folks had it? When did it stop getting updates? Most folks (likely including GP) didn't have easy access to offline electronic maps in their pocket in 2007 and didn't know anyone who had offline electronic maps in their pocket. Does that make them stupid?
- DenisM 3y ago
  > How much did that cost? $100 for the maps, available to anyone with a pocket pc and access to Google.
- sgath92 3y ago
  2008 I had a totally offline map of all of North America in my car's aftermarket radio (7" touch screen, AM/FM, DVD player, GPS, analog TV, SD slot, all running a version of WindowsCE that was already outdatted). System cost me about $400. Bought it so I could do backroads road trips/exploring by car, as it didn't need (or even have) a way to connect to the 'net to do it. I can still get updated maps for it, but I don't bother. Handheld gps's with offline maps go back even further. I was using them from '03 to '08. Garmin made a bunch of ones that were no bigger than a early-gen blackberry. Back then it was relatively easy to get pirated updated maps for them.
tguvot 3y ago
i traveled across europe in car at same time frame with pocket pc (asus mypal) and igo maps loaded on it (still have it in my drawer). those days you can get igo offline maps on android. also sygic. it was always strange that google maps was accepted as some kind of magic while turn by turn navigation with voice directions was available from mid 2000s nowdays i always have sygic installed on my phone. came handy when google maps decided to freak out while i was driving through death valley to gas station.

pessimizer 3y ago

> Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented. The reason that you didn't have to "rub elbows" with them is because our governments hadn't begun systematically closing off all avenues for anonymity other than the one that they built and maintain for their own spying. If there's only one way to be anonymous, you get to "rub elbows" with everyone who needs to be anonymous for any reason. It has nothing to do with child porn or crypto. Neither were responsible for the size of the distributed files kept on each of us to grow in orders of magnitude. Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk.

colanderman 3y ago
> good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases My handheld non-networked GPS unit with map tiles downloaded in bulk from OpenStreetMaps meets this criteria. Not very obscure.
nobody9999 3y ago
>Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk. Et voila! Maps at your fingertips[0] with no logging/tracking. It's amazing what those ancient (ca. 1995) humans could do. Perhaps they had help from aliens -- as we couldn't possibly do any of that stuff by ourselves. /s [0] https://wwp.randmcnally.com/product/rand-mcnally-road-atlas https://wwp.randmcnally.com/product/rand-mcnally-road-atlas
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented. Sure, emphasis on secretive. I'd hope that 'secretive' on the internet would mean more secretive than mistyping a query on a popular site's search engine. Or simply wandering into a linked, public website. But alas.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. Offline map databases were commom then; it wasn't uncommon for car navigation systems to come with them (expensive to update, though), as well as handheld devices In fact, while they were not common before the 2000s, first-party navigation systems with offline digital maps for cars have been around at least since the 1980s, as have other forms of consumer offline digital maps. Online maps are newer than offline. > This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps The last of many critical errors before the car got stuck might have been avoided by using a map, but they had and used a paper map shortly before, when choosing the alternate route that was, in fact, closed; it wasn't a problem caused by maps not being available (and there is a reason keeping paper road maps, especially of unfamiliar areas, when driving in them was a widespread practice until digital maps with automatic offline downloads tied to GPS became ubiquitous.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas doesn't sound like the best idea depending on what industry we are talking about. medicine, yes. Art, no (we're kinda going through that right now actually). >In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame. This quote constantly rings in my head about topics like this: >The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong. It's the real downside of apathy when you see complaints about those big sites out there and how they screw up. You advertising a new site means the most interested are going to mostly include the worst actors, who eventually put off the best actors. Or at least disproportionately include them. As a simple example: say Twitter has 10 million users and 1000 nazis (utopic, I know). Now your new no BS alternative attracts 0.1% of users but 10% Nazis. Still far from a majority. But by the way these forums work, your site will be 1% nazis, and those nazis will be some of your loudest actors if left unchecked. 100x more concentrated and it will feel some 1000x more nazi.

brutusborn 3y ago
I’m fascinated by the Nazi question (what to do with them). I think we should allow heterodox beliefs in public forums since at least this reduces the effect of echo chambers. The other alternative is to ban certain ideas from the mainstream, but I think this leads to groups like Nazis just moving to dedicated sites where their ideas are reinforced. Like I’d rather see a Nazi subreddit where those ideas are likely to see more challenges, than some random Nazi site where bad ideas metasticize in the shadows. Maybe the spooks prefer it this way since different sites makes it easier to categorise people.
- ipsi 3y ago
  Why would Nazis (or flat-earthers or QAnon or any other group likely to receive _substantial_ challenges to their world-view) stay somewhere where they'd be challenged, though? On a Reddit-like platform they'd downvote and/or ban to ensure it's almost entirely an echo-chamber, like every other part of Reddit. If they somehow weren't able to control that, then I suspect they'd move to another platform organically, because why would they put up with a constant flow of opposing viewpoints that these groups believe, with absolute certainty, to be wrong?

barrysteve 3y ago

Free information is worth what you paud for it. Authority figures and scientists don't share the expensive info.

belorn 3y ago

> you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. Statistically there is quite a large number of criminals in my city, and since I visit shops and other parts of the city, I am bound to unknowingly to me been rubbing elbows with those criminals. We are all anonymous to each other, and what can I really know about the person in front of me in the store. Go past a few hundred people and someone will be a person I would not associate myself with, and yet here I am living in the same city as them using the same infrastructure, and in some way enabling the activity by contributing taxes. Not to say I don't understand the emotional reaction people have. I have relatives in the countryside that refuse to visit the city because of all the criminals that they hear about. It is also fairly common to hear people moving out of the city to the calmer suburbs in order to get out of all the shootings and crime. I also do know first hand that if you go and look for it, finding drug dealers and shady activity is not exactly a big secret. Go to specific streets or part of the city and it's operated in plain sight. I've always seen the original cyberpunk dream as being analogous to a city, with all its benefits and drawbacks.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
It would be more analogous to having all the pedos in the city use one coffee shop and everyone knows that pedos use that coffee shop and you decide to go there because you prefer their coffee.
- belorn 3y ago
  It seems a great overestimate to think that 19 out of 20 people who use tor do so to download CP. I am pretty sure that will be false, and more likely something like one in a few hundred. One in a few hundred is the city. 19 out of 20 is the coffee shop. I should also reiterate that everyone knows what streets and part of the city that criminals visits regularly. People who decide to live or visits those places do make that choice. This lead naturally to city stratification.

sacrosancty 3y ago

[dead]

ineedasername 3y ago

>downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally Before smartphones this was common. Standalone gps units had maps locally stored. Some of the ones mounted in car dashboards stored them on an internal DVD. I used to have to drive a lot for work long before they were commonly built in to cars and I had an aftermarket one mounted on my dashboard, a little 2” monochrome display. Storage was tight, and I’d have to hook it up to my computer to swap out map sets if I was traveling further than usual.

Arn_Thor 3y ago

I haven't run across any Cyberpunk fiction that didn't feature exploitation of other people with the aid of technology. That depressing aspect of it is sort of backed in. If it's utopian, it's not cyberpunk, almost by definition.

wkat4242 3y ago

> It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas. Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators. Corporate government is pretty much a staple of. all cyberpunk franchises though.

EamonnMR 3y ago
Yeah Cyberpunk wasn't so much a dream as a dystopian reaction to modern life; instead of exploring space, people do crimes to scrape by. I certainly wouldn't want to live in Snow Crash or Neuromancer...
EGreg 3y ago
Maybe open source generative AI can help solve cp. Cater to all these pedophile fetishes, and no need to exploit children? Remember how we phased out ivory for piano keys, and other poaching? With diamonds, there is still a push to source “the real thing” kept alive by De Beers, and other cartels like that. But for a lot of poaching, we found replacements. I think that’s how plastic got started too btw! Also PETA has approved fake lab-grown meat, perhaps it can reduce demand for torturing so many animals in factory farms. PS: Japan has a culture of infantile hentai or something in its animation - which may alleviate a lot of demand for actual cp — how much cp is in Japan? (There seems to be a lot of unusual/unnatural sexual norms in Japan… from Hikkikomori to dating vending machines to total celibacy for a large proportion of the population.) https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-pornography https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-po...
- tenpies 3y ago
  > generative AI can help solve cp On a side note, there was a very good film about this last year called The Artifice Girl. Think indie, very theatrical with only three settings and three very clear acts, but thought-provoking and with some unstated implications. I would recommend watching it without checking IMDB or any review site first.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

mindslight 3y ago

Tangential to your much larger lament - OpenStreetMap, and specifically OSMAnd which is libre and free on F-droid, works great for offline maps that are downloaded ahead of time. (I think the version on Google Play limits the number of regions you can download unless you make a small donation).

tetris11 3y ago
Organic Maps on F-Droid, is a literal godsend in offline raster maps. I used OSMand a lot on my old phone, buy since I downgraded it just could not load the vectors fast enough
- aembleton 3y ago
  Give mapy.cz in the play store a try. Seems to be much snappier than organic maps. Uses osm data
  - xigoi 3y ago
    But it's proprietary, and built by a company which loves tracking.
ragequitta 3y ago
Google maps offers this functionality. I've had my local map and maps of any place I regularly go to downloaded for many years.
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  It will eventually cease to exist. I went to Grenada in 2014 and used offline maps to drive around the island. In 2015 the tablet suffered an accident and I powered it off to deal with it later. 5 years later I power it back on without internet connectivity. Turns out the maps expired. So much for many years
  - ragequitta 3y ago

jmkni 3y ago

> he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally Isn't that, like, a map? lol we've had maps long before the internet

zo1 3y ago
Have you tried to buy a paper map lately? It's next to impossible, at least here where I am atm.
- toby- 3y ago
  Where are you that it's "next to impossible"? That really surprises me. I'm in the UK, and you can walk into any Post Office, WHSmith, bookshop, most newsagents, etc., and pick up maps of the local area or country, usually Ordnance Survey[0] maps. And (at least when I was in secondary school, about a decade ago) map reading was still taught as a valuable skill, using OS maps. [0]: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
andybak 3y ago
Paper gets heavy real quick and personal microfiche readers never caught on.
- itronitron 3y ago
  I imagine it's really hard to drive a car and use a microfiche reader at the same time.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    The Electro Gyrocator essentially worked that way. You placed transparencies over the CRT for the map section you were currently in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-features/ph-origins-navigation-systems/37314 https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-features/ph-origins-navi...
- 3y ago

kedean 3y ago

Just regarding your overall concern around maps and cellular service, Google Maps lets you download maps within very custom sized tiles for offline use. I'm partial to using them when hiking, so I can orient myself in areas where the actual trail markers become questionable. Routing doesn't really work offline, but that's a different/harder problem.

daemontus 3y ago
No disrespect, I use offline Google maps almost daily, but there are far far better offline hiking apps out there. Google will probably work ok for the most popular trails, and I guess you can use it as a supercharged compass. But at least in Europe, if you actually plan a route in any mountains based on Google, you're in for an adventure :)
- Zpalmtree 3y ago
  What apps would you recommend?
  - daemontus 3y ago
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy Bit focused on eastern Europe, but has a hiking mode with very good coverage of the official routes (not only in eastern Europe ;)). And everything is free, including offline maps. Terrific value for casual trips. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bergfex.tour https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bergfex.to... This one is not free (there is a free tier though) but seems to have more details in some areas, so the pro tier may be worth it if you hike a lot.

charlieyu1 3y ago

Do jurisdictions really care about child porn before internet? I always feel like it is just a convenient excuse for them to get away with their bullshit, for a largely non-existent problem.

pessimizer 3y ago
No, they didn't. They still don't. Not having a victim on the other side of the case (possession of child porn, not production of child porn) gives judges an easy excuse (and no opposition) to sympathizing with the accused and suspending the sentence. Child porn is just leverage to pry. We used to care as much about sending information about birth control through the mail. And with the modern movement to sexualize children as soon as possible, they might have to use another excuse in 20 years. "Terrorism" will always work, because it doesn't mean anything.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  I believe this is the case, as unfortunate as it is. The loudness of their voices in "protecting the children" when politicians are introducing new communications surveillance measures, with no mention of local, boots-on-the-ground, child protection services funding increases, just screams to me that they care about surveillance a lot and about protecting children not at all.
  - didntcheck 3y ago
    In that way the government represents the people. For every 9 people you meet screeching about how much they want to hunt a pedo and torture them, there's 1 person talking about actually helping children experiencing abuse (which is not always sexual, to the former group's disappointment)
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  These tactics have been called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp....
3y ago

noAnswer 3y ago

> Ultimately what drove me away was the literal flood of cp that was always right next to anything to do with tor, whonix, or anonymity in general. As a teen around 2003 I hosted a freenet-node (freenetproject.org). It generated 1TByte/month which I believe was a lot for the time. I shot it down and never came back, because the only things that ever loaded was cp and Chechnya rape and torture videos. Its not a network for "dissidents"... I gave up on humanity.

jowea 3y ago
It's the same thing with the old reddit alternatives. Very few people are actually going to bother purely for the sake of principles, so the alternatives end up flooded with the ones that are forced to alternatives for good reasons. If the mainstream Internet banned "dissidents" I believe such things would have more uptake by other types of users.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  The threadiverse (Lemmy/Kbin), which recently became popular due to the Reddit API protests, is pretty healthy. Of course, there are some servers catering to 'dissidents' (e.g. Lemmygrad, Exploding Heads), but it's easy enough to avoid those communities.
sanderjd 3y ago
Humanity is mostly good, it just isn't universally good. Providing services that rely on "universally good" to avoid being dominated by the tiny but horrible minority is always a disaster.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ThrowAway1922A 3y ago
  > Humanity is mostly good I don't believe there is any evidence to back this up whatsoever. People are compelled to be "good" by society and laws, nothing more. Humanity is fundamentally bad, but reined in by a handful of powerful people and organizations.

sanderjd 3y ago

> It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. Isn't it more, "This is why the original cyberpunk dream was always a naive and bad idea"? Like, it appealed to me too when I was young, but then I learned more about humans and our history and ...

deleted 3y ago
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AnonymousPlanet 3y ago
Since when was cyberpunk a dream to be pursued? It's the opposite of a naive dream. It's a nightmare full of high tech and people living on scraps, constantly trying to keep up with the tech fallout from big corporations. One of the most iconic places in cyberpunk was literally described as being "like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept the thumb permantently on the fast-forward button." How is this appealing? It's a warning, not a cosy idea to aspire to!
- antod 3y ago
  I think this is the difference between cyberpunk as a fiction genre and the views of the people calling themselves cyberpunks back in the day (or reading the Wired articles about them).
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  really depends on your literature. Star Trek's interpretation of the future is very different from Dune's. Much of cyberpunk tends to be cynical but there are some more utopic interpretations out there as well.
  - rainonmoon 3y ago
    Neither Star Trek nor Dune are cyberpunk.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago

Euphorbium 3y ago

But google maps provide offline maps, and have done it for years. You just have to save them in advance.