Meet the Hackers Who Want to Jailbreak the Internet | Hacker News Reader

Meet the Hackers Who Want to Jailbreak the Internet

wired.com

90 pointsSonicSoul36 comments

Most people commenting in this thread are missing the point. This is about giving you the ability to put your personal data on a server that you control first, and then having the ability to push it to cloud services you don't control (like Facebook, Twitter, Google apps) easily and selectively through those services' APIs. That way, from your perspective, all the "clouds" revolve around your personal server and they are all interchangeable and disposable to you, because you have all the data on your box and can just choose to push it somewhere else instead. It means you can use all the cloud services, but are no longer dependent on any one of them for storing your own data.

There are some interesting interviews with people working on re-decentralising the web at http://redecentralize.org/ - and there are more lined up for the coming weeks. Definitely worth a watch if you have the time.

https://unhosted.org/ is also interesting

Just in case you didn't see it before - github.com/rossjones/alternative-internet has a list of platforms,protocols and suchlike that are in this sort of area.

https://github.com/rossjones/alternative-internet

Namecoin does a better job of jailbreaking the internet away from government controlled TLDs. There's already plenty of open source twitter and fb clones but one that runs over Gnunet would be interesting.

The not-so pocket sized server is cool and all, but it's running on what is essentially a blackbox with tightly sealed patents. Might as well just write an Android server in a dalvik VM and host off your phone what's the difference if we are going the blackbox route.

> They cobbled it together using a Raspberry Pi, a portable hard drive, and the Camlistore software built by Fitzpatrick and Slatkin.

Do tell, how could something be less black-boxy than that?

Something with at least hardware documentation. Pi is a bunch of binary blobs so might as well just make Android webservers, at least it will be a pocket sized bunch of sealed patents

Pi is a bunch of binary blobs

Wow, you have pretty high standards!

High standards are good.

A running platform is also good.

Raspberry Pi has 2 binary blobs - the boot blob & the GPU blob. Personally, I'd prefer if they weren't needed.

But I think the availability of a cheap, widely deployed and capable computing platform is more important.

Yes, there are other choices that could be made for the hardware. People should be encouraged to explore those other options.

Nevertheless I think the decision to build something on RaspberryPi is a good one.

Why are people so interested in recreating a 'more open X' (where X is something like dropbox, skype etc...)? When these people could actually be iterating on these ideas and creating something different. Is it because there is lots of money/publicity surrounding this new found interest in "openness" or do these people actually believe that this is the most important thing to be working on? I am just trying to imagine what kind of new openness we could create if we began thinking outside of the framework that current applications provide already.

This is not not to say that they're not doing enough, but it's just a question that's been bouncing around in my head lately.

why isn't the iteration/improvement part making it open? i don't see the dichotomy.

I'd imagine it's not seen as an improvement because (most) people don't value it.

You might as well say you're improving a service by localizing a service for Esperanto. To some (small) audience, that well may be an improvement. But most people are going to wonder why you're 'wasting' that time.

Openness helps people who aren't ready to reimplement the whole thing try to iterate their idea on top of what already exists, rather than doing the 98% of the work that is the same as the other product plus the even harder 2% brand new concept work.

Here's my take on why open standards matter (from March '12):

http://www.onebigfluke.com/2012/03/diversity-powers-growth-w...

- Open standards are important because they promote competition and diversity.

- The opportunities of today exist because someone in the past thought about the long term.

- Open standards are an investment in our collective future.

I totally agree, this isn't necessarily about the projects listed in the article. It is more of a reaction against the over abundance of announcements like "it's like X but open!" without really providing any significant openness over google drive or whatever it's attempting to replace.

After checking out the projects mentioned in the article I would definitely say that they don't fall into this category.

> Why are people so interested in recreating a 'more open X'

To me, the biggest benefit is avoiding the problem of orphaned products.

Think about the problems caused by the shutoff of a major web service, for example, Google Reader. Reader users relied on a unique service provided by a company. When the company decided for whatever reason to discontinue the service, those users were left high and dry.

If you use a self-hostable version that runs on a commodity technology stack (i.e. the underlying OS/webserver/Redis/whatever layers are offered by many different providers and/or self-hostable), you can be pretty sure you'll be able to retire the service on your schedule, not the provider's.

If the product is open-source, this is even better because it makes the code more resistant to "bit-rot" (the tendency of code to stop working even though no changes are made, due to changes in lower layers.)

I agree that we would do well to think completely outside the existing framework of services. Under present circumstances openness has moved to the forefront of peoples' thinking in lieu of imagining more fundamental changes. This is probably a good thing, but even better would be building completely new and open tools and services.

Camlistore is "like Dropbox" only for the purpose of a Wired article. In fact it is one of the most exciting projects around on the internet today.

It is a little like Bittorrent. When Bittorrent first came out there was a large community who were most excited about it because "it was open" - both open source and open in the sense it didn't require servers.

Has that "openness" been important to the success of Bittorrent? Perhaps, but most people now talk about more specific qualities: the fact it resists legal attack and the high downloads speeds that can be obtained without paying for bandwidth. Some of these are actually what people meant when they spoke of "openness" initially.

So "open"="nice", but discussion of specific qualities of that that means is much more important.

I'd note that "open" is only mentioned once on http://camlistore.org/, and that is a very specific quality ("Open Source" - not some general "open" principle).

Jailbreak the Internet? The first talk of the video link below goes in that direction giving some real ideas. Discussing GNUnet and Psyc2.

Rather technical.

"You broke the Internet. We're making ourselves a GNU one." by Christian Grothoff, Carlo von Lynx, Jacob Appelbaum, and Richard Stallman.

https://gnunet.org/internetistschuld

What does this have to do with the internet? This is more about what people do with it, than how the internet actually works...

Frankly .onion sites are a bit more impressive than someone cobbling together a NAS and some random software.

If you hack on this stuff, try to attend IndieWebCamp next year (or in the UK in September):

http://indiewebcamp.com/

I'm so glad we're going back to the days of hosting a blog on your ADSL connection. Yay, freedom for my dat...! Shit, connection went out again.

A little black box with a big hard drive and a web server on it? It's called a NAS, they've been around for a while. Can someone explain to me how such talented people can come up with such stupid ideas?

I also prefer the cloud over a local box (except for storage), but I've stopped trying to argue with the plug people. I'll just take their software and run it in the cloud and enjoy the resulting higher performance and higher availability.

maybe not the perfect solution, but at least they are trying to do something about it, and not just being a meek lamb

also being a techstar has its drawbacks.. people always spect more from them.. but technology its all about iteration, community, cooking ideas and getting back to the sketchpad to try something better..

we SHOULD do something about it, and i take my hat off, to whoever its trying to do something.. techstar or not.. brilliant or not..

the web has a tendency to centralization and one that is creating big black-hole titans that swallows everyone in between..

economically this means the beginning of end of the middle class, and a greater abism between the super rich and the poor..

so kudos to everyone trying to do something about that, and not just using because its fine.. there are "traps and tricks" in all of those free services that we happilly use for free

storage is cheap.. processor is cheap.. computers(pc/phones/tables) are getting cheaper and faster so why are we using and depending of obscure clouds that much?

>computers(pc/phones/tables) are getting cheaper and faster so why are we using and depending of obscure clouds that much?]

Because the infrastructure to support high availability is expensive and most efficient at scale. Proper backup, disaster recovery, redundant HVAC, redundant power, waterless fire suppression, real access control (not the $15 Kwikset lock on your front door), server-class hardware which is built to last for years rather than fly off the Best Buy shelves and get abandoned as far as updates within months like most Android phones. All of these things are expensive and difficult and necessary to support the model of computing currently in place.

I'm excited about renaissance of protocols like BitTorrent which are tolerant of failures of individual nodes, but you can't just take current client-server computing, move the server to your shitty residential ADSL connection, and call it a day. "Trying to do something" in this manner is actively harmful because people are going to lose data.

We need entirely different (not necessarily new) protocols and paradigms to have a truly decentralized Internet, and they aren't exactly mature yet.

ot: driveby you're dead.

Maybe some people do not want to be in this situation:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/feds-give-ok-to-d...

Camlistore lets you host on your own box AND "in the cloud", automagically.

Just because the Wired article dumbs down what they are doing a lot doesn't mean the ideas are dumb.

Bigger guys may make you dependent, but smaller guys are easier for bullies to push around. I for one am not sold yet on the idea that these larger companies enjoy sharing data with the US government, and so I still think they're looking for ways to not have to do that if they're not literally compelled to.

Small guys can run away when they need to though. Just keep it cheap and disposable and abandon-able, like a image of your system you can spool up on plug n play commodity servers / free hosts and let the bullies spend their resources.

There's a huge benefit that you get by DIYing your cloud as opposed to hosting it with a company, and that's that you cannot be the target of government shenanigans without your knowledge. If they want your data, there's a knock on a door and a warrant, not this illegal NSA demand BS.

The other benefits (such as knowing that your stuff is encrypted, knowing the logging characteristics, etc) come for free with that.

now theres a label for the type of working i am doing.. "indie web", despite im doing something completely different, but with the same basic intentions..

Do any of you know what/where their IRC channel information is? I'm interested in checking it out.

I believe it's #indiewebcamp on freenode

http://indiewebcamp.com/IRC

I find IRC to be distracting and more often than not a waste of time. I gave up IRC 10+ years ago and and am much happier.

If people want to communicate, there are plenty of other options, both real-time and not.

Sounds more like they're making their own subtle jail on top of existing infrastructure. I wouldn't expect much from Wired, post 1999, anyway.

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