Have you ever tried to help someone reach Tor from inside The Great Firewall of China? Nightmare-mode hard.
If the CCP decides to actually block Bitcoin, they will and it will take effect in seconds.
Bitcoin is far more vulnerable than Tor and I2P.
Even with a very leaky ban, miners will start forking competing blocks and transactions will become unreliable.
Boomers built the Internet, and GenX built Tor.
I'm grateful to both of them.
"Whatever happens /
We have got /
The Maxim Gun /
And they have not!"
- The Honourable Belloc Hillaire, British MP, dissident and poet
I wish.
They managed just fine without this power before, but I admit the adjustment period would be hard for them.
While pro-Western Third World governments like India and Ethiopia have done full internet blackouts for months on whole regions they don't like, I expect Western governments to be more dextrous. They'll merely lock customers into a walled garden with cat videos and Amazon. Maybe porno, from a government approved provider, with the right KYC and hefty payment.
That is terrifying, and they've chosen the best tool for the job - incentivising private lawyers to go after the assets of open source developers.
I need to check how that Nostr git app is coming along...
The original "pay-to-win". But at least you got to see if the vendor could write stable software.
[VOICEOVER: Most could not...]
Of course they can.
It would seriously harm their portfolios, but they'd do it to protect their power.
Decentralised networking is HARD.
Happily, I don't see any Western government shutting down the internet completely, just doing a Great Firewall of Woke.
Which is bad, but means we just need to bridge it at the edges to maintain connectivity to the world
Regular old Stable Diffusion, running on my own hardware. There are quite a few variants of the model available. CUDA can be a bitch to set up, but self-custody is worth it
Helium is quite over-the-top in their promises of KYC and constant surveillance, despite their feeble bandwidth. A lot of the others you list are no different.
But they have to be like that - no non-KYC internet will be permitted in the First World, my government would unflinchingly escalate all the way up to airstrikes on our cities to prevent a project openly working on a non-KYC internet.
Which is a good reason to look into doing just that, especially since KYC network infrastructure is increasingly complex, fragile and supply-chain-dependent.
But to avoid drawing the "Eye if Sauron", we have to start small and build out.
And avoid single technologies, single suppliers, and unified governance structures, like all the above projects.
Reticulum uses non-KYC globally unique identifiers easily generated and not linked to any other ID, and can bridge multiple physical-layer technologies, including but not limited to LoRaWan.
https://reticulum.network/manual/hardware.html
It is FOSS, and technically quite capable of duplicating the Internet's functionality in a fully decentralised way, but more typically used to create smaller networks of any scale that can easily be bridged.
I already run a Reticulum node over For, but this holiday break I want to test out building some #offgrid LoRa-based nodes. I have the modules sitting there, just need to make the time! Less #nostr shitposting, perhaps :-p
Over *Tor, I meant
Pro/Con of Decentralized peer-to-peer WiFi or LoRa networks
The idea of buying WiFi or messaging communication on a layer 2 internet or No KYC peer-to-peer internet that completely reject’s the government’s infrastructure and surveillance is very appealing. The ideal situation is using some kind of no-government DNS messenger such as Briar with bluetooth or LoRaWAN messengers with layer 2 internet. However, many projects have implementations of this that are either not yet ready for real use, or I disagree with their approach.
This is a general overview of SOME of the projects in this space. Please keep in mind that mentioning a cryptocurrency does NOT mean I’m endorsing their coin. Many of our readers dislike shitcoins. But this isn’t an investment article, it’s a tech article to benefit YOU and not to promote the coins, so you can someday use these concepts in whatever currency you do like.
Helium
Pro: Largest LoRa (Long Range Wide Area Network) out there. This is bluetooth based coverage for IoT. The technology can potentially be used for LoRaWAN messengers which is basically a full-blown off-grid 2nd internet type mesh networks
Con: It’s not WiFi, we’re talking about IoT bluetooth. The range on WiFi is much lower. They may be developing something similar for WiFi in the future
Pollen Mobile
pollenmobile.io
Pro: Peer-to-peer WiFi, this is basically like a reseller market. People buy physical infrastructure and erect it on a satellite thing on their roof. It’s teamed with multiple providers, but one is Starlink, providing a secondary market for Starlink.
Con: They will be doing PCN crypto payments in the future, but right now, it’s temporarily only US dollars. It’s unclear when they will shift. Their test pilot involved government officials voluntarily agreeing in California, so not exactly crypto-anarchy but still progress.
Chirp
Pro: This is real LoRa off-grid, and not a reseller like Pollen. 150+ cities. Hardware is original.
License-free 2.4 GHz LoRa frequency so fuck regulation.
Con: Managed by AI. That’s lame bullshit for decentralization. I can’t find the white paper on their website, but I can find the influencers program. That’s a bad sign.
WiFi Map
Pro: Crowdsourced WiFi mapping funded by crypto. In other words, people map out where you can get free WiFi for a reward for updating the map.
Con: Proprietary AI technologies help manage the map. Socialist purpose, to provide “free coverage to all”. This is NOT about defying the government. They’re hosted on Amazon and use Google.
Drop Wireless
Pro: Blockchain w/ LoRaWAN, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and more services. A lot of options for users.
Con: They openly WANT to collect metadata and use it for AI machine learning. This company should stop pretending to care about blockchain and just be a gig economy company. Maybe they’re trying to get around laws by masquerading as decentralized.
Karrier.One
Pro: WiFi and cell service peer to peer
Con: Tries to comply with telecom regulations by tying blockchain identity to government phone numbers.
ThreeFold
Pro: GrapheneOS phones with decentralized service network.
Con: Spread out too thin on capital. Why are you selling pre-orders of phones if you need millions of dollars to do a network also? We already got Graphene phones, just sell/give us the new tech.
Resources
Where can you learn more about Decentralized infrastructure?
Check out this site listing projects, https://depinhub.io/
As one of the MANY examples of LoRaWAN messengers. Here’s TheNico14’s github:
Helium is quite over-the-top in their promises of KYC and constant surveillance, despite their feeble bandwidth. A lot of the others you list are no different.
But they have to be like that - no non-KYC internet will be permitted in the First World, my government would unflinchingly escalate all the way up to airstrikes on our cities to prevent a project openly working on a non-KYC internet.
Which is a good reason to look into doing just that, especially since KYC network infrastructure is increasingly complex, fragile and supply-chain-dependent.
But to avoid drawing the "Eye if Sauron", we have to start small and build out.
And avoid single technologies, single suppliers, and unified governance structures, like all the above projects.
Reticulum uses non-KYC globally unique identifiers easily generated and not linked to any other ID, and can bridge multiple physical-layer technologies, including but not limited to LoRaWan.
https://reticulum.network/manual/hardware.html
It is FOSS, and technically quite capable of duplicating the Internet's functionality in a fully decentralised way, but more typically used to create smaller networks of any scale that can easily be bridged.
I already run a Reticulum node over For, but this holiday break I want to test out building some #offgrid LoRa-based nodes. I have the modules sitting there, just need to make the time! Less #nostr shitposting, perhaps :-p
Stupid. Or a political activist. Or driving a nicer car, banging a hotter girl or living in a nicer area than the cop thinks you deserve, and this is all he can pin on you.
Other than that, 100%!
You Americans are so innocent!
Its up to three years jail here for possession of a firearm blueprint. More if they can tack on conspiracy to manufacture, or intent to distribute.
Dunno what they plan to do about all the old machinist and engineering texts with firearms examples. Probably nothing, but then selectively enforce based on politics...
Don't tempt them.
Cold War Communist Romania unironically condemned longevity.
Although, seeing what it has done to the US Congress, they may have had a point.
Lactose tolerance 40 kya? I can haz link, pls!? That's wa-aay earlier than conventionally accepted dates for goat and cattle domestication!
Its Dihydrogen Monoxide!
I wish they'd legalize 1970s-style high-sulphur av gas, at least for use above the troposphere.
Less wear on fuel pumps, and even traces of SO2 aerosols in the stratosphere can neatly reverse quite a few degrees of global warming / climate change so we don't have to hear politicians using that as an excuse to steal.
Not the quickest, but the one least likely to allow Google et al to sell your habits and psychological profile.
Oh, the fallout of THIS will be funny to watch!!
But then again crickets is the likely outcome haha
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-12-26-climate-insanity-racist-study-africans-breath.html
Its Woke nitwitage, but not as bad as the NaturalNews clickbait makes out.
Researchers wanted to study human breath to see if it could be diagnostic for anything. After all, its cheaper to analyse than urine, and creates fewer protests than blood.
Researcher A: "But how do we get our paws on that sweet, sweet grant money to pay for our research if we're not sure it'll work?"
Researcher B: "We mix in climate and racism! The commitee won't dare oppose it then!"
Interesting article from The Upheaval -
"Woke: Collectivist or Individualist?"
From the author's introduction:
"Charles views Woke – through the lens of
Friedrich Hayek – as a radically collectivist threat to classical liberalism, while I suggest Woke is instead better viewed as radically individualist, and a product of liberalism itself. This is an important distinction, because it will
necessarily shape how we ought to best respond to the challenge."
Full article at the below link:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/woke-collectivist-or-individualist
One-click link to the book "One Nation Under Blackmail" - https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacecwvjlydzaw7pi5heop74r6f6f6sypnppij5rnrnikxh6ge564p3m?filename=Whitney%20Alyse%20Webb%20-%20One%20Nation%20Under%20Blackmail--Vol%201%262-Trine%20Day%20%282022%29.epub
I haven't read it yet, still downloading...