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An off-grid social network

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Re: An off-grid social network

#331

Post by bigbugbag »

ballenf wrote: post #47
ISL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different precisely because most social/cloud networks abstract away backups. Very few people have considered whether or not they should attempt to back up their Facebook account. Same's true for Flickr, Twitter, and Gmail.

Frankly I trust Google and Facebook more than I do myself with regard to backups. I know it will eventually burn me, but I've lost, misplaced or misplaced the key to my backups more than once. I'm probably in the minority being so irresponsible with my own backups, but I'm not alone. Google and Facebook have a lot on the line with regard to user trust of their reliability. Also, they can't monetize data that they've…

But goosebook and facegle make backups for their own sake. You're still tied by vendor lock-in and can be locked out of your own data on a whim and prevented from switching to another service provider. They can and do monetize data that users have been locked out of.

I'd rather have my own backup copieS and take my own responsibilities. The scenario you evoke here would not happen if you had proper backup strategy, two is one and one is none.

Re: An off-grid social network

#332

Post by TuringTest »

pmlnr wrote: post #323
georgecmu wrote: post #150

As a historical note, there used to be quite a few very popular solutions for supporting early social networks over intermittent protocols. UUCP [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP ] used the computers' modems to dial out to other computers, establishing temporary, point-to-point links between them. Each system in a UUCP network has a list of neighbor systems, with phone numbers, login names and passwords, etc. Fido…

And this is why I'm curious why nobody yet written a social network on top of NNTP.

Someone has, but it's only got one user.

(Just guessing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened to be true).

Re: An off-grid social network

#333

Post by bigbugbag »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #315
rocky1138 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should?

Maybe but the person's point stands. Facebook has multiple datacenters with probably some kind of backups. It keeps things for years at a time even when it doesn't need to. It likes to because it helps the business model. Hardly anyone's pics and stuff will disappear. Compare that to their experience at home with personal gear. Many like the convenience and reliability of Facebook over their own technical skills or e…

It only takes one time of having your account locked by facebook or google and said people are automatically convinced of the obvious advantage of being in control of your own data.

Same with backups, lose your data to drive failure or theft once and suddenly having a backup strategy becomes a priority.

But as long as they have not been bitten once they don't care enough to actually do something proactive.

Re: An off-grid social network

#334

Post by [deleted] »

bigbugbag wrote: post #329
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you remember you set up an automated encrypted backup to the cloud and thank your past-self. Now is the time to do it if you're not doing this: https://msol.io/blog/tech/dirt-cheap-client-encrypted-online...

Why, oh why do we have smart individuals replacing internet with the word for the visual analogy we used to represent the internet to not knowing better people in position of power ? This is not a damn cloud ! This a remote computer you can access over the internet. Can we stop with this use of marketing lingo please ?

[deleted]

Re: An off-grid social network

#335

Post by bigbugbag »

freehunter wrote: post #67
rocky1138 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: you buy a physical device at Wal-Mart for $29.99, plug it in, hook it up to your wifi and leave it plugged into an outlet. It's got Mastodon or GNU Social on it and could look like this, but branded: http://thegadgetflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/SmartPlu...

And then my internet connection goes down. Power goes out. I run over my data cap for the month. Comcast shuts me down for running a home server. My home network gets DDoS'd. I miss a patch day and I get hacked. None of these things are a concern on traditional social networks. They have to be solved before the world has any chance of moving to a decentralized network.

What do you call traditional social networks ? To me a traditional social network is an AFK thing.

If you're internet connection goes down, power goes out, you get DDoS'D this would hinder your ability to use any third party online service anyways. The data cap and ISP restrictive terms of service are a different problem that would be challenged and fixed given internet subscriber would go the p2p self host way. The commercial ISP situation is a terrible mess right now. If you got hacked unplug from network, boot from recovery, restore from backup, you're back online in less time than it takes to recover a hacked facebook account.

You say decentralized but it seems to me you meant distributed here.

Re: An off-grid social network

#336

Post by nicky0 »

bigbugbag wrote: post #329
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you remember you set up an automated encrypted backup to the cloud and thank your past-self. Now is the time to do it if you're not doing this: https://msol.io/blog/tech/dirt-cheap-client-encrypted-online...

Why, oh why do we have smart individuals replacing internet with the word for the visual analogy we used to represent the internet to not knowing better people in position of power ? This is not a damn cloud ! This a remote computer you can access over the internet. Can we stop with this use of marketing lingo please ?

Sorry buddy, that ship has already sailed. Terms become popular because they are useful. We all know cloud means "a remote computer accessed over the internet", but that is rather cumbersome phrase. "Cloud" says it in 5 characters. Can you suggest a better term?

Re: An off-grid social network

#337

Post by bigbugbag »

reitanqild wrote: post #209
freehunter wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how you feel about it, take a look at people complaining when Google put a news article about Facebook at the top of the results instead of the Facebook login page: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/face... These are people who typed "Facebook Login" into a Google search, clicked the first result without reading, and got confused. Now tell these same users that Comcast blocked…

Still not convinced. It doesn't need to be for everyone in the beginning. The early web (when I entered and before) wasn't for everyone. And thats OK for me. Actually I think it is a good way to start.

The early web was devoid of average users. Then the flow of newcomers and not knowing better users surpassed the old timers and knowledgeable users. Then we entered a leveling downward race to a web tailored to their needs because they're the large majority.

Re: An off-grid social network

#339

Post by glitch003 »

cjbprime wrote: post #194
the8472 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ship a client with a long list of "cached" nodes that were verified to be long-lived. I mean you need to obtain the client at some point, you can gather a fresh list of nodes along with it. From that point onward you keep your own cache fresh. You could also run your own bootstrap node on an always-up server if downtimes making the lists stale is a concern. You can also inject contacts when starting the clien…

These are excellent ideas. Are any of them implemented? If I download e.g. uTorrent today and firewall off the hardcoded public bootstrap nodes, will it bootstrap?

> You can ship a client with a long list of "cached" nodes that were verified to be long-lived. I mean you need to obtain the client at some point, you can gather a fresh list of nodes along with it. From that point onward you keep your own cache fresh.

I believe this is how bitcoin works. Or at least it used to.

Re: An off-grid social network

#340

Post by JetSpiegel »

tonyarkles wrote: post #313
hh2222 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can still access newsgroups through Google, just search for your favorite group, e.g. comp.lang.lisp.

Or eternal-september. Free accounts, although you don't get access to the binaries groups I don't think. I mostly use it for comp.risks, comp.arch.embedded, and some other things like that.

Aoie is another service still around, and is free without accounts.
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