Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
outernet.is
Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#2This article has some information about how it works: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-g-outernet-...
It answered some of my questions but doesn't say about how are they planning to select the initial content, which needs to be a lot of data to get people interested. It just says "you can send ideas to our facebook wall... or send us a paper letter".
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#3Interesting idea, presumably you could just download the broadcast as it came across and then offer it up as a locally accessible store of data. Even better if the outernet folks provide a means to auto-insert the download into a structure that allows folks to search, index, and correlate it.
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#4It would be interesting if Outernet were to transmit the Bitcoin blockchain. The maximum data transfer rate of the blockchain is artificially capped at something like 13kbps right now (1x1MB block per 600 seconds), so it would probably be feasible to transmit it. It might allow for some novel economic activity in very poor areas without internet. It would obviously be receive-only, but that could still be useful. It might provide an equivalent to pre-internet banking in areas too poor to be served by banks. ("Pre-internet banking" means you have to take a trip to the bank to send money, but you can call up and ask your balance to make sure you got paid.)
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#5I am really excited about this idea, especially the disaster information aspect. I hope they build a decent system for prioritising what information should be distributed. The connection between an sms request and receiving the most relevant information is going to be tricky, perhaps something like google's i'm feeling lucky might work.
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#6It would be interesting if Outernet were to transmit the Bitcoin blockchain. The maximum data transfer rate of the blockchain is artificially capped at something like 13kbps right now (1x1MB block per 600 seconds), so it would probably be feasible to transmit it. It might allow for some novel economic activity in very poor areas without internet. It would obviously be receive-only, but that could still be useful. It…
An SMS based service for checking the balance of a Bitcoin address seems much more useful, since people in very poor places are much more likely to have cheap cellphones than devices capable of processing the whole blockchain (and an SDR or so to read the signal).
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#7philosophically and technically very exciting, however I'm worried about the business model:
"Do you have content to share with the whole world? Skip the Queue, pay a small premium, and flag your content as Priority."
https://www.outernet.is/en/broadcast
They've "baked in" a corrupting factor to the content: money. IMHO this is what soils services like Facebook, Twitter, Angies list, etc. Places like archive.org and wikipedia are flat donations (I believe).
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#8It would be interesting if Outernet were to transmit the Bitcoin blockchain. The maximum data transfer rate of the blockchain is artificially capped at something like 13kbps right now (1x1MB block per 600 seconds), so it would probably be feasible to transmit it. It might allow for some novel economic activity in very poor areas without internet. It would obviously be receive-only, but that could still be useful. It…
An SMS based service for checking the balance of a Bitcoin address seems much more useful, since people in very poor places are much more likely to have cheap cellphones than devices capable of processing the whole blockchain (and an SDR or so to read the signal).
SMS services aren't secure. Lightweight SPV servers (well within the resource constraints of ultra-low-end smartphones, which will see increased adoption in very poor areas over the next few years) are. And the whole point of outernet is to reach areas that might not even have SMS capability.
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#9Love the idea; don't like that they ultimately own the satellite.
I would like to see a satellite similar to this, storing and broadcasting a queue of information, but that has a crypto-democractic method of submitting data to broadcast. Requests for data to broadcast submitted to the satellite must be accompanied by a Proof-of-Work. The required level of POW can be dynamically adjusted by the satellite itself based on recent demand.
In other words, the satellite is fully autonomous, with no central control. Anyone can submit data to be broadcast. They just have to "pay" for it.
This solves the problem of who owns the satellite (everyone does), but does still mean money can buy broadcast power. Though people can build systems for helping to "crowdsourcing" POW solutions for desired broadcasts.
NOTE: I haven't read up much on cubesat, and just satellite technology in general, so I don't know how possible this is (in particular, how to manage transmission to the satellite and whether cheap kickstarter sats/cubesats can broadcast data on their own, or are linked to some other satellite).
EDIT: Also, this has the same problem similar systems suffer from: potential to broadcast illegal data. No great solution to that problem other than revising the laws.
Re: Outernet: Humanity's Public Library
#10It would be interesting if Outernet were to transmit the Bitcoin blockchain. The maximum data transfer rate of the blockchain is artificially capped at something like 13kbps right now (1x1MB block per 600 seconds), so it would probably be feasible to transmit it. It might allow for some novel economic activity in very poor areas without internet. It would obviously be receive-only, but that could still be useful. It…
Actually, that IS planned.