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Back to the internet's peer-to-peer roots. Many protocols besides the www The www became infested with so-called "tech" companies acting as intermediaries (mi
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago
Back to the internet's peer-to-peer roots. Many protocols besides the www
The www became infested with so-called "tech" companies acting as intermediaries (middlemen)
Lots of folks making money from surveillance ad system on the www. Oversized, unmanageable websites calling themselves "platforms"
The www is an ad network. Not a great place for non-commercial activity
Fortunately, the internet is more than the www. The internet was not created to collect behavioral data and deliver advertising as its primary purpose
People pay for an internet subscription, not a www subscription (or now a "social media subscription")
- thefz 5mo agoOnce again American capitalism ruins everything for everyone.
- HerbManic 5mo agoYeah but $1.50 Costco hot dogs! I got nothing more on that.
- drnick1 5mo agoWithout American capitalism you wouldn't have computers, the Internet, smartphones, AI, electric cars and countless other things. That, and the Costco hot dogs mentioned in another reply.
- loopback_device 5mo agoExcept that the www came out of Switzerland, the first electric vehicles out of Scotland and Germany, the earliest descriptions of neural networks - also Scotland, and countless other things, like Rockets and whatnot, also out of Europe. But, sure, congrats on that ARPANet thing.
- bluebarbet 5mo agoFinal sentence was unnecessary.
- matchbok3 5mo agoCan you point to the stock markets and silicon valley, and tech leaders and military of those countries? Oh, wait...
- pocksuppet 5mo agoThose are bad things to have.
- drnick1 5mo agoIt is American ingenuity that turned academic curiosities like neural nets into usable products. The missing ingredient in places like Europe or Asia is not intelligence, it is a business friendly environment and the right incentives for entrepreneurs. This is why countries like China can copy existing stuff and make derivative improvements, but don't meaningfully innovate.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoThank god we have "American ingenuity" to enshittify new inventions. Where would we be without that?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago"Without American capitalism you wouldn't have computers, the internet, ..." In fact, the internet was born out of the American military, i.e., government, and American universities, not "American capitalism" The first time I used this internet, there were rules against using it for commerce
- matchbok3 5mo agoThe American military would not exist without the economic freedoms we have.
- acdha 5mo agoDude, we get it, you’re a super fan but these are some intellectually lazy comments. Our military is powerful, yes, but if you want to make some exceptional claims you need to show your homework demonstrating that kind of claimed huge leap over other economies (China, Russia, Germany, etc.). Be sure to explain how Iran is doing so well for so much less.
- matchbok3 5mo agoUm, where did I mention China or Russia? Intellectually lazy? What are you even talking about? Stay on topic, you are embarrassing yourself.
- dosisking 5mo agoWe don't have any of these so-called 'econonic freedoms'. Anybody can be de-banked at any time.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo agoThese "economic freedoms", specifically the actions of so-called "tech" companies with respect to the internet, are the cause of "age verfification" legislation The original internet had rules against using it for commercial activity It lacked "economic freedoms" FWIW I still found it worth using at the time, despite no so-called "tech" companies It also lacked websites of unmanageable size with hundreds of millions of pages of user-generated content used as bait to lure in ad targets for data collection and surveillance, so-called "platforms" or "social media" It lacked "age verification" to access those websites because those websites did not exist There will be at least one HN reply arguing that the original internet sucked, or some other brainless dismissal As if the internet we have now does not suck. Clearly, it does suck for some people It is not a lack of "economic freedoms" on the internet that has led to "age verification". It's quite the opposite
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago"The global Internets progenitor was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) financed and encouraged by the U.S. Department of Defense. In order to understand the wonder that the Internet and various other components of the Net represent, we need to understand why the ARPANET Completion Report ends with the suggestion that the ARPANET is fundamentally connected to and born of computer science rather than of the military. The Completion Report goes on to differentiate the research ARPA supported from the research done by the computer industry: The computer industry, in the main, still thinks of the computer as an arithmetic engine. Their heritage is reflected even in current designs of their communication systems. They have an economic and psychological commitment to the arithmetic engine model, and it can die only slowly.12 The Completion Report further analyzes this problem by tracing it back to the nations universities: furthermore, it is a view that is still reinforced by most of the nations computer science programs. Even universities, or at least parts of them, are held in the grasp of the arithmetic engine concept.13 Computer networking was developed and spread widely in an environment outside of commercial and profit considerations, an environment that supported such research." Michael Hauben Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (1997) IEEE Computer Society Press ISBN 0-8186-7706-6 https://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/book-pdf/CHAPTER https://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/book-pdf/CHAPTER 7.pdf HN commenters/voters may reject the use of the term "military" in the origin story of the internet That's fine However it was American taxpayers, through the _Department of Defense_, that financed the creation of the internet That's government spending, not "American capitalism" The original internet was non-commercial and was not the result of "American capitalism" As above, the American computer industry (capitalism) at the time was not focused on computer networking and using computers for communication, it was focused on computers as "arithmetic engines"
- thefz 5mo agoSmartphones and AI are tady's cancer, so good job America! Polluting the earth and its inhabitants once more. For electric cars, I have my doubts that without China we will have them, but I'll leave you simmer in your exceptionalism.
- timbit42 5mo agoThe world would still have them but perhaps not as quickly is the only difference.
- altmanaltman 5mo agoThe irony of writing this on this particular board, out of all places.
- zrn900 5mo agoNot only that. The Eu is also implementing 'age verification', at the same time with - surprise - digital id. It's just an attempt to reverse the free internet and implement total surveillance.
- NewsaHackO 5mo agoYeah, I feel as though people have seen the error of creating a free internet and are trying as much as possible to reverse it. It's kind of like how Photoshop (and most software companies honestly) have seen how selling a license in perpetuity does not work and opt for the rent-seeking monthly subscription route.
- jijijijij 5mo agoThe age verification with the EU ID card can be implemented without leaking any identifying information. If it's gonna be like that is questionable, but it's technically possible.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoFor $5 I'll give you an age token from my card.
- zrn900 5mo ago> without leaking any identifying information Do you really believe that the governments and the Eu machinery won't use that information for other purposes... https://bianet.org/haber/eu-strips-journalist-huseyin-dogru-of-livelihood-over-pro-palestine-reporting-318266 https://bianet.org/haber/eu-strips-journalist-huseyin-dogru-...
- matchbok3 5mo ago[flagged]
- s-zeng 5mo agoI've really enjoyed playing around with https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet and the reticulum protocol in general as a peer-to-peer alternative to www
- noosphr 5mo agoThat you link to a github is ironic in the worst way possible.
- movedx 5mo agoWhere should the code be hosted, then?
- hunter2_ 5mo agoIt's not the "where" but the "that you link" which is ironic: referring to it by the https:// scheme turns it into a link (a fundamental aspect of www); a scheme like ssh:// or git:// would avoid this.
- zoobab 5mo agoOn a distributed network where the content is always available, maintaining X amount of copies in an autonomous manner. We need to evolve the protocols beyond simple HTTP servers.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoHow about the internet?
- DeusExMachina 5mo agoThere is nothing ironic in using the current status quo to spread something we hope will replace it. It's called pragmatism.
- platevoltage 5mo agoI have to admit, I'm kind of looking forward to what comes after the inevitable death of the www.
- HerbManic 5mo agoI don't think WWW will ever die but I can see a hard split coming eventually. Most people will just put up with the current state of the internet for a long time yet.
- bsuvc 5mo agoGopher and Usenet died
- rustcleaner 5mo agoIRC lives, discord be damned!
- fsflover 5mo agoI2P already exists and is usable.
- globular-toast 5mo agoThat's no good if broad laws are passed that require age verification. It could be interpreted as even SSHing into a server that doesn't verify your age is illegal. Some decades ago it would have seemed too stupid to actually happen. Now I'm not so sure.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago"It could be interpreted as even SSHing into a server that doesn't verify your age is illegal." If the plan is to provide "social media" to millions of people via SSH then yes one could forsee such an interpretation These laws are targeting so-called "social media" provided by "Big Tech" But there are anonymous comments across the web trying to portray this as something else. These comments are hilariously nonsensical The cause of this legislation is the activity of so-called "Big Tech" If there is collateral damage to others then that is the fault of "Big Tech". This is the cost of the Silicon Valley "business model" There is no requirement that the internet be used to create "social media" or something else with large audiences^1 for advertising Although that may be a Silicon Valley VC requirement 1. For example, the Malaysia legislation sets a threshhold of eight million users. List of SSH servers with over eight million users:
- buzzy_hacker 5mo agoMy instinct is also to retreat to technical solutions. But, unfortunately, it appears we engineers need to fight back in the legal and political domain to stand a chance.
- tpdly 5mo agoI like to think someone can come along with Jobs-like charisma and redefine the public's intuition for personal computing again. Foundation models with maximally deterministic harnesses, voice assistants with honest, tasteful amounts of roboticism, maybe data tenancy that doesn't make you feel like a surveilled ecosystem prisoner. NVIDIA local AI builds are moving in that direction, but are wildly expensive. I think a lot of the current AI backlash (esp data-centers) comes from the public's accurate intuition that the current centralized, monopolistic, cloud-centric solution disempowers them, and eats any gains this magical technology would've brought them. Plugging a sliver box into the wall and your router, with no recurring fees; that would make people feel different about "taking our jobs" because they would be the unquestionable beneficiary.
- euroderf 5mo ago> voice assistants with honest, tasteful amounts of roboticism Do you mean like, hey chatbot stop trying to be my best friend ? This marketing tone that every company I do business with cares deeply about me as a person - this corrosive hypocritical nonsense has obviously been sucked up into AI training materials. So I agree 100%.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo agoThis type of response is one I keep seeing, maybe it's becoming a meme It doesnt make any sense as an argument because nothing stops one from doing _both_: 1. use a practical solution now and 2. "fight back in the legal and political domain" hoping to achieve another solution in the future Common sense favors pursuing #1 as the opponent in #2 has "limitless" resources and the process is extremely slow A cynic might even see advocating #2 at the expense of #1 as a "call to inaction", i.e., "please do nothing", as almost all readers are unlikely to pursue such a difficult and costly "solution" Framing the two options as either-or, i.e., one or the other but not #1 and not both, encourages readers to give up, accept the status quo and "let others do it", assuming they dont have the ability to pursue #2 themselves
- motbus3 5mo agoDon't worry. Your government is creating plenty of laws to make to blatantly expensive to run anything that can compete with them.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo agoWhy would I want anyone to "compete" with so-called "tech" companies if I believe their "business model" is fundamentally-flawed The cause of this legislation is the proliferation of that "business model" Namely, creating large audiences for advertising,^1 data collection and surveillance through intermediation, i.e., acting as a middleman, the opposite of peer-to-peer "Big Tech" does not compete. It acquires potential competitors. It is sometimes questionable whether the "potential competitors" actually intend to compete as they are more than willing to sell out 1. For example, audiences over 8 million people
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- perilunar 5mo ago> The www is an ad network. Not a great place for non-commercial activity No, hard disagree. The web is great for indie content. Anyone can publish anything, at any time. And there's still plenty of great content out there. Ads can be blocked, surveillance can be blocked, and social media sites can be avoided.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago"No, hard disagree." OK it's not an ad network "Ads can be blocked, surveillance can be blocked and social media can be avoided" Yes, hard agree But if it's not an ad network then why would anyone need to "block" and "avoid" It's an ad network That's why the "blocking" and "avoiding" is necessary