Cuba's Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify, all without the internet
vox.com
vox.com
Interesting article, but this statement is completely opposed to my own experience. I went to Cuba 4 years ago and nearly everyone I met had something running on the side. One guy said that "everyone has two jobs, they job you're given and the job you love" (he was a tour guide who did photography on the side).
I a country where many (admittedly not all) basic needs are taken care of by the state, the people are able to pursue their own aspirations, as the guy featured in the article has done.
"zero incentive" = neo-liberal bollocks.
That is because that's the only way to survive. The top positions in Cuba are those which face foreigners, as there is always a non-trivial chance of receiving dollar-based tips, which are far, far more valuable than the official Cuban currency. When I went to a Cuban resort town, my barman had been trained in Physics in Moscow, and considered himself very fortunate to be in the job he was in.
Cubans are, undoubtedly, some of the most resourceful and entrepreneurial people I've met -- but by necessity. The statement that they have "zero incentive to deliver anything above the bare minimum" is absolutely right, because everyone knows that their well-being will depend on what else they can come up with on the side.
—Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1989). Computer Networks.
It's only 5-24 terrabytes. That's not including tv shows, which would make it much bigger. But even those would still be small enough to fit it in a small box.
EDIT: Thinking about this more, it becomes almost like S3 for all web content. Each piece of content can be addressed with its SHA hash, disparate nodes can increase the number of replicas based on demand, etc.
IPFS, I'm pulling even harder for you now!
Subresource Integrity [1] includes the hash of the content/object in the link to the resource, as well as the URL/URI; this lets you do fun things like not fetch duplicate content if its already in the browser's cache from another site (think a specific version of jquery, for example).
Magnet links [2] are a great example of this in practice, but that's bittorrent-specific (although I would not be surprised if you started to see ideas from Magnet URI scheme work their way into Subresource Integrity):
"The Magnet URI scheme is a de facto standard defining a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme for Magnet links, which mainly refer to resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks. Such a link typically identifies a file not by location, but by content—more precisely, by the content's cryptographic hash value.
Since it specifies a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a Magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host."
Github has a great explanation as well: http://githubengineering.com/subresource-integrity/
On that note, there as an article posted here on HN a while ago about Gopher. And at that point i found myself wondering if Gopher could have been modified or extended to handle such a scheme.
Exactly, although your browser would probably want to make an attempt at the URL specified before falling back to P2P/DHT if the server or URL wasn't available (you'd want to get objects like CSS, JS, or images FAST but other objects could probably lazy load in the background). The Magnet URI scheme already supports this behavior.
> On that note, there as an article posted here on HN a while ago about Gopher. And at that point i found myself wondering if Gopher could have been modified or extended to handle such a scheme.
"Everything old is new again."
Heh, that line pass through my mind every time i see a Slack headline...
Apparently a startup was attempting to offer a cloud PVR service, but then ran into the MPAA.
Before the encounter the company was planning to use de-duplication to keep storage expenses down. But that was nixed by the MPAA lawyers.
They insisted that each customer had his own, encrypted, storage area. Anything else would be considered a broadcast service, requiring a very expensive license agreement.
At that point i think the company founders basically threw they arms up in exasperation and shut the company down.
But this isn't the end of the matter for cloud-based 'cable operators': http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/17/us-filmon-copyrigh...
It seemed to have been a company getting ready to offer their service, and wanted to clear things with the MPAA (or the MPAA lawyers showed up unannounced). Only to find it impossible to both hit their planned price level and meet MPAA storage management demands.
This because the MPAA demands basically meant they had to massively inflate their storage capacity, and thus the hardware cost pr customer made them uncompetitive with existing PVR products.
Yet. We've got a long way to go before we hit physical limits in storage technology.
I'm just guessing there's similar factors in memory market where max theoretical memory isn't going to happen for business reasons if nothing else.
Back then you had various glossy magazines around, complete with a classifieds section in the back.
Apparently one use of those was to offer a like for like copying service. Meaning that you put up an ad and people would mail you floppies of various games and software, along with a list of same they hoped to get in return.
Apparently it eventually snowballed to the point where he had invested in a second floppy drive just to speed up the copying process, and ended up spending whole weekends switching floppies and stuffing envelopes.
Eventually he got so fed up he started returning envelopes unopened.
Secondly, i think Amazon accept Fedex-ed HDDs for their cloud services. In case the amount of data to be uploaded would take unreasonably long otherwise.
My thought was how about a HFT microwave style network: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba...
So I checked the distance from the Keys to Havanna: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
Which turned out to be 2500 meters via this: http://www.hamuniverse.com/lineofsightcalculator.html
It's four times larger than the largest non-skyscraper (a TV tower in North Dakota): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_and_...
So sadly we cannot beam Netflix or anything else to our entrepreneurial hacker Mr. Weekly Packet. Added incentive to fund space elevator research?
I came to conclusion that those "certain people" just hate everybody and want to harm us, and then hope to escape proposed punishment themself.
Limiting your rights is not a "price to pay" for them, it's their target. Fighting crime and terrorism is just a front-end to get to their real target, namely to humiliate citizens.
http://www.projectcensored.org/the-global-1-exposing-the-tra...
I mean, it's pathetic to live like this.
Also invalidates most of French thinkers of XX century.
Actually there's this conjecture that if communist revolution didn't happen in Russia it would now be more like 300 million strong Sweden, not 145 million Nigeria in snow.
Without internet, I'll go and kill myself anyway, why would me need me?
Have you ever seen the hospitals 'normal people' go?
It is depressing not only because of resources but total lack of incentive for all workers ( nurses and doctors alike)
Same goes for their education system. It was second to none until the collapse. Now? ..OMG!!!
Please never ever think that the castro's did anything other than whatever it takes to stay in power. Their own people can rot in hell, they couldn't care less.