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Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

locusmag.com

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Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#21

Post by prutschman »

nyolfen wrote: post #11
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #7

"There is no way for us to defend ourselves: even skilled technologists who administer their own networked services are no match for the bandits. To keep bandits out, you have to be perfect and perfectly vigilant, and never make a single mistake. For the bandits to get you, they need merely find a single mistake that you’ve made." Ooof. What a boot-to-the-face reminder. Despite my use of a Tor Router, three ubikeys a…

fun reminder that canonical refuses to use tls on their repos

Do you have reason to believe there's a problem with the gpg signatures in their repo?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#22

Post by EGreg »

At Qbix, we have recognized the Feudal nature of Web 2.0 for a while. You can talk about this for years and years (as people have done with UBI and other things) or you can build the solutions. The same way that talking about vegetarianism is never going to convert people as much as the Impossible Burger, an actual meat alternative, ever will.

About 20 years ago, the original Web 1.0 has disrupted AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy etc. which were walled gardens. It unleashed trillions in value through new business models like SAAS and E-Commerce. But there is no good open source alternative these days to the Web 2.0 feudal lords, including Google, Facebook, etc. Because it's harder to do.

Without sound overly cocky, I think we are perhaps the closest to do it. You can see for yourself at https://qbix.com/token (you can ignore the token part, as it's optional, but it's basically building a micropayment monetization model for digital content, including journalism and open source software, on the new open source Web 2.0)

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#23

Post by xaduha »

gen220 wrote: post #9
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #7

"There is no way for us to defend ourselves: even skilled technologists who administer their own networked services are no match for the bandits. To keep bandits out, you have to be perfect and perfectly vigilant, and never make a single mistake. For the bandits to get you, they need merely find a single mistake that you’ve made." Ooof. What a boot-to-the-face reminder. Despite my use of a Tor Router, three ubikeys a…

You could run your system completely in RAM, to at least limit the duration of exposure. Persistence is overrated! :)

You're joking, but I don't think I will be running Windows without uwfmgr.exe aka Unified Write Filter if I ever decide to use it as my main OS again. More people should be aware of it. It's only for Enterprise editions, but maybe there are similar options out there.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#24

Post by ksm1717 »

konjin wrote: post #6
mwcampbell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A. With tags for accessibility, I hope.

Who cares? We should not force the majority to be serfs so a minority is served.

You’re a serf

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#25

Post by dweberz »

The only path that makes me hopeful involves a combination of 1. FOSS software (ie forkabke when the warlord misbehaves) 2. user owned / governed networks, so the warlord can't easily get extractive against their users.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#26

Post by dmm »

nyolfen wrote: post #11
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #7

"There is no way for us to defend ourselves: even skilled technologists who administer their own networked services are no match for the bandits. To keep bandits out, you have to be perfect and perfectly vigilant, and never make a single mistake. For the bandits to get you, they need merely find a single mistake that you’ve made." Ooof. What a boot-to-the-face reminder. Despite my use of a Tor Router, three ubikeys a…

fun reminder that canonical refuses to use tls on their repos

The packages you download can be easily inferred even transmitted over tls. What does tls buy you? That's the argument at least.

You could always download them over tor.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#27

Post by grishka »

BryantD wrote: post #4

I love the idea of a Ulysses Pact. Something like https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491 would be good. I note that while right now there’s no way to override the malware safeguards, Apple's promising to fix this. (I believe that update was made after this article was written, btw.) Now: it’s absolutely true that Apple could change their mind. Given that possibility, I understand why someone might prefer to avoid A…

> there’s no way to override the malware safeguards

There technically is, because Macs don't come with locked bootloaders, and, you know, system files aren't exactly burned into one-time programmable memory. I mean, you could patch the binaries and have it your way if you really want to. But in reality you don't even need to do that — you only have to completely disable SIP and add change the kernel arguments (something like `amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1` iirc) to disable signature verification altogether.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#28

Post by mxuribe »

jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

>...migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

I'm genuinely curious as to how having an online presence (like a website) implemented as PDF is advantageous? Do PDFs offer some security or authenticity of content that html lacks? Not bashing, really just want to learn.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#29

Post by hinkley »

codeulike wrote: post #18

Reminds me a bit of "Serving at the Pleasure of the King" - Coding Horror, 2011 https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the...

> If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder

Jeff had already forgotten ten years ago that we did, in fact, scream bloody murder. They kept doing it. For decades. And now they wonder why there are people who will never cut Microsoft a break for anything.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#30

Post by coldtea »

konjin wrote: post #6
mwcampbell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A. With tags for accessibility, I hope.

Who cares? We should not force the majority to be serfs so a minority is served.

You can very easily end up in that "minority". It's just an accident or disease away -- and if not, time and old age will get you anyway (presbyopia, motor decline, and so on).
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