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A lot of people in tech want to complain about innovation. Why are there so many Farmville apps and nobody seems to be solving important problems? Well here yo

A lot of people in tech want to complain about innovation. Why are there so many Farmville apps and nobody seems to be solving important problems? Well here you are, the biggest and most important problem in modern society today, the fact that our governments are recording most everything that we're doing. And they will use these recordings as they see fit in the future. You couldn't ask for a bigger or more important problem to solve.

Zigurd 13y ago
It's solvable, too. If they are interested in having credibility, Internet services can implement secure communications and storage. They may have to charge for it because they will forego some ad revenue. So what to make of the fact that nobody who has loudly declared they are all for customers' privacy has actually done anything about it?
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  Don't forget mesh networking. Seems like mesh with a combination of trusted anonymous P2P would be very difficult to tap into. There's lots of nerd fun here for those interested. And there's a big need. A shame more folks aren't stepping up to the plate. Just to whet the appetite, how much of the internet do you actually participate in, versus just consume? Most server stats show a 40-1 or even 200-1 ratio of readers to commenters. And how much unique material is really out there, anyway? I'd bet a couple hundred MBs of text represents the vast majority of internet content most consumers passively consume each day. So why all of this client-server, point-to-point nonsense? For most consumption content, do some kind of BT for common content distribution, then use some other solution if a consumer wants to send information the other way. I understand many will yell "But that violates the TOS!" but screw 'em. If whenever I get on the internet all my information is being stored against my will, I have no obligation to abide by any subsequent agreement.
  - visarga 13y ago
    Bittorrent is so last decade! We need a replacement that is truly anonymous. An not just file sharing, but also browsing, email and search. Problem is, suppose TOR is fixed and we are anonymous on its network, we still need to NEVER log in with an account we used over clear net. We have to give up our "friend" lists on FB and followers on Twitter, our karma on reddit, all that could tie us back to a known identity. We can never email a friend on his clear net email account. We are reduced to an anonymous identity talking with anonymous others. It's like 4chan in a way. So, there, we can have anonymity if we give up our old identities and everyone we connected with in the past. And that's assuming we can trust TOR. Sad/ A deeper problem is that we need to treat our computers and phones as hostile. They can push updates with backdoors any time they want, to everyone or to selected few. Apple, MS and Google hold the update keys of most devices in the world. We need a secure OS. Maybe it's Linux, if we can be sure it does not carry hidden backdoors implanted by the state(s). And even then, we need to trust the hardware. The disk, the networking card, all components could spy on us. Maybe they too have backdoors.
    - MrMan 13y ago
      No snark, this is a chance for the libertarians to be vindicated in a big way. Let's see if the geniuses of the software/IT world can design and build a world-wide infrastructure that replaces the DARPA internet, without government help? It would put paid to a lot of tropes propagated in the last 20 years about the decreasing importance of the state, the evil of the state (which is in clear evidence here). Are we capable of allocating capital and human resources at the scale required? Facebook has a billion users, so the network effects should be easy to harness, no? Or does it only work for capturing ad dollars and spying on activists? I am sincerely asking - if there is to be any hope, we have to advance past the internet as it is technically constituted, while preserving the huge social gains it has brought. edit - maybe I should clarify - anonymity is not possible now, and it is at odds with the values of the police state and, unfortunately, the ad-driven media economy. I am agreeing that anonymity is important, and asserting that to reclaim it, we will have to come up with some revolutionary social constructs on a scale of the space program, that exclude the possibility of government involvement.
  - squozzer 13y ago
    I think we're going to have to minimize our traffic over established links for such a system to work. Three types of media come to mind -- 1) Open-air (e.g. radio but possibly IR, optical, etc.) 2) Electric lines 3) Water pipes or other forms of conductive media 4) Couriers So far, so good. The trickier problem is how to get people to adopt the new system while keeping out the snoopers or other bad guys.
nakedrobot2 13y ago
Thank you, thank you! While I wouldn't consider myself one of the people to be doing something as despicably useless as writing farmville or designing PPC ads (I guess others might beg to differ), your observation is very good. Here is a real problem, and if you don't think it's affecting you personally, you're deceiving yourself.
MrMan 13y ago
The embarrassment of helping advertising dollars find a home instead of doing anything real is in my opinion why a lot of HN-ers are always solemnly intoning that this is no place for politics - because they can't face a world outside of their bubble. For us to have the luxury to prosper inside our post-consumerist javascript (and ARC)-based gift economy, we periodically have to do some maintenance work, like figuring out how to stop our country from becoming any more of a tyranny than it already is.
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
I agree that easy, broadly-accessible secure communication is an important problem to solve, but it does not address the (arguably larger) problem of eroded social trust. A low-trust society just doesn't work very well, and no amount of technical mitigation is going to compensate for that.
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  I agree, but I think the trust that is required is trust in transactions, whether electronic, commercial, or otherwise, not particularly trust in people or institutions. To take the current NSA issue, if I take the time to vote for a Congress guy, in return I'm expecting somebody to represent my area in Washington. He doesn't have to agree with me, just represent me. If, in fact, he doesn't know what's going on, or is so captured by the political system that he's unable to make independent decisions, I've lost faith in that transaction. I never may have liked the guy, or ever agreed with him, or trusted him farther than I could throw him, but we had a deal as a society where I did something and he was supposed to do something. If those societal transactions are not to be trusted, the wheels come off the wagon. Same kind of discussion applies for electronic transactions, say using SMTP to move email around.

Zigurd 13y ago

It's solvable, too. If they are interested in having credibility, Internet services can implement secure communications and storage. They may have to charge for it because they will forego some ad revenue. So what to make of the fact that nobody who has loudly declared they are all for customers' privacy has actually done anything about it?

DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Don't forget mesh networking. Seems like mesh with a combination of trusted anonymous P2P would be very difficult to tap into. There's lots of nerd fun here for those interested. And there's a big need. A shame more folks aren't stepping up to the plate. Just to whet the appetite, how much of the internet do you actually participate in, versus just consume? Most server stats show a 40-1 or even 200-1 ratio of readers to commenters. And how much unique material is really out there, anyway? I'd bet a couple hundred MBs of text represents the vast majority of internet content most consumers passively consume each day. So why all of this client-server, point-to-point nonsense? For most consumption content, do some kind of BT for common content distribution, then use some other solution if a consumer wants to send information the other way. I understand many will yell "But that violates the TOS!" but screw 'em. If whenever I get on the internet all my information is being stored against my will, I have no obligation to abide by any subsequent agreement.
- visarga 13y ago
  Bittorrent is so last decade! We need a replacement that is truly anonymous. An not just file sharing, but also browsing, email and search. Problem is, suppose TOR is fixed and we are anonymous on its network, we still need to NEVER log in with an account we used over clear net. We have to give up our "friend" lists on FB and followers on Twitter, our karma on reddit, all that could tie us back to a known identity. We can never email a friend on his clear net email account. We are reduced to an anonymous identity talking with anonymous others. It's like 4chan in a way. So, there, we can have anonymity if we give up our old identities and everyone we connected with in the past. And that's assuming we can trust TOR. Sad/ A deeper problem is that we need to treat our computers and phones as hostile. They can push updates with backdoors any time they want, to everyone or to selected few. Apple, MS and Google hold the update keys of most devices in the world. We need a secure OS. Maybe it's Linux, if we can be sure it does not carry hidden backdoors implanted by the state(s). And even then, we need to trust the hardware. The disk, the networking card, all components could spy on us. Maybe they too have backdoors.
  - MrMan 13y ago
    No snark, this is a chance for the libertarians to be vindicated in a big way. Let's see if the geniuses of the software/IT world can design and build a world-wide infrastructure that replaces the DARPA internet, without government help? It would put paid to a lot of tropes propagated in the last 20 years about the decreasing importance of the state, the evil of the state (which is in clear evidence here). Are we capable of allocating capital and human resources at the scale required? Facebook has a billion users, so the network effects should be easy to harness, no? Or does it only work for capturing ad dollars and spying on activists? I am sincerely asking - if there is to be any hope, we have to advance past the internet as it is technically constituted, while preserving the huge social gains it has brought. edit - maybe I should clarify - anonymity is not possible now, and it is at odds with the values of the police state and, unfortunately, the ad-driven media economy. I am agreeing that anonymity is important, and asserting that to reclaim it, we will have to come up with some revolutionary social constructs on a scale of the space program, that exclude the possibility of government involvement.
- squozzer 13y ago
  I think we're going to have to minimize our traffic over established links for such a system to work. Three types of media come to mind -- 1) Open-air (e.g. radio but possibly IR, optical, etc.) 2) Electric lines 3) Water pipes or other forms of conductive media 4) Couriers So far, so good. The trickier problem is how to get people to adopt the new system while keeping out the snoopers or other bad guys.

nakedrobot2 13y ago

Thank you, thank you! While I wouldn't consider myself one of the people to be doing something as despicably useless as writing farmville or designing PPC ads (I guess others might beg to differ), your observation is very good. Here is a real problem, and if you don't think it's affecting you personally, you're deceiving yourself.

MrMan 13y ago

The embarrassment of helping advertising dollars find a home instead of doing anything real is in my opinion why a lot of HN-ers are always solemnly intoning that this is no place for politics - because they can't face a world outside of their bubble. For us to have the luxury to prosper inside our post-consumerist javascript (and ARC)-based gift economy, we periodically have to do some maintenance work, like figuring out how to stop our country from becoming any more of a tyranny than it already is.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

I agree that easy, broadly-accessible secure communication is an important problem to solve, but it does not address the (arguably larger) problem of eroded social trust. A low-trust society just doesn't work very well, and no amount of technical mitigation is going to compensate for that.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I agree, but I think the trust that is required is trust in transactions, whether electronic, commercial, or otherwise, not particularly trust in people or institutions. To take the current NSA issue, if I take the time to vote for a Congress guy, in return I'm expecting somebody to represent my area in Washington. He doesn't have to agree with me, just represent me. If, in fact, he doesn't know what's going on, or is so captured by the political system that he's unable to make independent decisions, I've lost faith in that transaction. I never may have liked the guy, or ever agreed with him, or trusted him farther than I could throw him, but we had a deal as a society where I did something and he was supposed to do something. If those societal transactions are not to be trusted, the wheels come off the wagon. Same kind of discussion applies for electronic transactions, say using SMTP to move email around.