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The Zen of Reticulum

github.com

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#11

Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" prevents it from being used in e.g. militia groups in oppressed countries who may wish to use it to harm humans in self-defense.

I'm sure such militias wouldn't worry about the ToS.

However there's a chance apartheid and authoritarian countries would not use it exactly because of this.

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#12

Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" prevents it from being used in e.g. militia groups in oppressed countries who may wish to use it to harm humans in self-defense.

A) In self-defense, you don't intend to harm humans, but are only doing so when it's down to your life or theirs. So such a system could be argued to not be designed to harm humans, but instead preserve your own life.

B) In any case, I'm OK with it. Having the software explicitly licensed like this may prevent it from being legally considered a terrorism tool or munition if a bad actor were to be found connected with it, and if that happens, that's going to have much more freedom-restricting consequences with respect to the software.

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#14
> The internet we rely on today is a chain of single points of failure. Cut the undersea cable, and a continent goes dark. Shut down the power grid, and the cloud evaporates. Deprioritize the "wrong" traffic, and the flow of information is strangled.

The deep brokenness of the current internet, specifically what has become the "cloud" is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years. (now I'm working on trying to solve some of this - well, at least build alternatives for people).

and this:

> The way you build a system determines how it will be used. If you build a system optimized for mass surveillance, you will get a panopticon. If you build a system optimized for centralized control, you will get a dictatorship. If you build a system optimized for extraction, you will get a parasite.

Seems to be implying (as well as in other places) that this was all coordinated or planned in some way, but I've looked into how it came to be this way and I grew up with it, and for me, I think a lot of it stemmed from good intentions (the ethos that information should be free, etc.)

I made a short video recently on how we got to a centralized and broken internet, so here's a shameless plug if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/4fYSTvOPHQs

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#15

Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" prevents it from being used in e.g. militia groups in oppressed countries who may wish to use it to harm humans in self-defense.

>Willing to kill.

>Not willing to violate the license of a software package.

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#16

Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" prevents it from being used in e.g. militia groups in oppressed countries who may wish to use it to harm humans in self-defense.

>Willing to kill. >Not willing to violate the license of a software package.

Thank you very much! I also feel that the impact of software licensing on violent groups behavior might be low.

It is, however, interesting on principle, since it only allows the use by criminals (implicitly), and not by law enforcement. By then making the tool very impractical to use, we can punish bad actors still.

(I think there was a honeypot operation to this effect, something with feds making up a "secure encrypted phone" and then acquiring Cartels as a major customer.)

(On the off chance I just burned this very similar operation: dear feds, I'm so sorry!)

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#17

> The internet we rely on today is a chain of single points of failure. Cut the undersea cable, and a continent goes dark. Shut down the power grid, and the cloud evaporates. Deprioritize the "wrong" traffic, and the flow of information is strangled. The deep brokenness of the current internet, specifically what has become the "cloud" is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years. (now I'm worki…

The author discovered Conways law and got frustrated

Too bad nobody wrote a book called “the mythical man month” to dispel the majority of fantasies that engineers have about the way the world works

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#18

Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" prevents it from being used in e.g. militia groups in oppressed countries who may wish to use it to harm humans in self-defense.

The maintainer is actively saying they’re stepping back from the project

so explain to me how the license is going to be enforced?

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#19
post #8

I’ve looked at a few of the LoRa-based mesh network systems over the last couple months. They all seem to have a philosophical document of some sort, like this one, sometimes buried as part of the user docs, but none of them have clear protocol specification docs. When I look at their node maps, the node counts are absurdly small (like 20 nodes in a city of 1 million people). I suspect each of them has major scaling…

Reticulum is absolutely not flood routed and is not "LoRa-based" lmao. Typical hn comment.

Planetary-scale networks is mentioned as a design goal on the first page of the docs https://reticulum.network/ which are hidden at the very top of the git repo.

Re: The Zen of Reticulum

#20
post #19
post #8

I’ve looked at a few of the LoRa-based mesh network systems over the last couple months. They all seem to have a philosophical document of some sort, like this one, sometimes buried as part of the user docs, but none of them have clear protocol specification docs. When I look at their node maps, the node counts are absurdly small (like 20 nodes in a city of 1 million people). I suspect each of them has major scaling…

Reticulum is absolutely not flood routed and is not "LoRa-based" lmao. Typical hn comment. Planetary-scale networks is mentioned as a design goal on the first page of the docs https://reticulum.network/ which are hidden at the very top of the git repo.

Design goals are great. How do they actually achieve it?
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