aiwendil
aiwendil wrote
Reply to comment by elyersio in Net neutrality isn't enough. by elyersio
unfortunately there is a cost to all of this and I think we can decentralize from where things are currently, but we should still find ways to pool resources to bring these technical solutions to as many people as possible. Like could we campaign to do things like buy the buildings we rent, but taking what we would pay as rent and putting it as a collective down payment and use what would have been our rent to pay the loan... Then we could move forward with building wide infrastructure projects on a building by building basis... Like collectively buying, installing and benefiting from solar panels on the roofs of our buildings, and little community gardens on rooftops, with bees and such. All kinds of things are possible if we could work together... We really need a platform for organizing such things. First step is to get like minded people in a given locality in contact with each other about these sort of things and then the next step is to get resources on how to do these things in their hands. I think in the long run, we could be saving a ton on rent and electrical costs if we learn to collectivize our living arrangements better.
Submitted by aiwendil in LibreCulture
aiwendil wrote
Reply to comment by DissidentRage in Net neutrality isn't enough. by elyersio
I think that is certainly possible, but it will be pretty impossible to prevent things like this from existing underground. In fact it could even be built out with repeaters and ethernet cable and not wireless at all, which could make it much harder to find and crack down on. I think we probably need to build some combination of those things and then connect them together using some sort of onion routing for now... Could just use tor hidden services to connect meshes together. We cannot worry too much about what they will try to ban in the future when building things like this. We should anticipate that they might and try to make it decentralized enough that it will become impossible to actually crack down on.
aiwendil wrote
Reply to Net neutrality isn't enough. by elyersio
I 100% agree. Corporate controlled infrastructure will never be used to serve the people. We need mesh networks in cities and then we need to figure out how to connect small towns and rural areas. That will be a problem, but one that could potentially be solved by launching some satellites or solar powered repeaters, though that doesn't seem ideal with today's technology. Currently we need to work on building a mesh and connecting the mesh networks up with hyperboria. That is phase 1 and phase 2.
aiwendil wrote
Bitcoin's price...
aiwendil wrote
Reply to [Trigger Warning] 8Chan/Voat Fascists Describing The Infiltration Tactics They Use to Fuck With Raddle by ziq
This is why we all need to be examining our opsec. Minimally we should be using tor. The funny thing is, they make broad generalizations about none of us knowing anything about computers across the board because some people clicked on a link that was an IP logger. I would hope by now that most of the users here are minimally on tor and if that is the case they got a lot of bunk IP addresses of exit nodes and that doesn't even seem to have crossed their mind, so I honestly hope that is what happened. If you aren't using tor, maybe let this be a lesson to you... Start now. Aside from that be careful what you click on, but also block javascript. They could be attempting to run some javascript to get your real IP even if you are hidden behind tor. It seems that there are some people on there that actually know some stuff about computers, but lets face it, most white supremacists are just blue collar workers that don't know much about computers themselves and have been vulnerable to similar tactics. It is interesting that they have coopted the term Anon now as I don't think any actual Anons would approve of what they do now, you can send Jeffry Hammond a letter and prison and ask him. It is honestly hard to believe that anybody that is smart enough to actually be a hacker and not some script kiddie doxxxer would side with the fascists, but it isn't outside the realm of possible. Through history there have been many smart people that were also mean spirited. It seems like the brunt of their efforts are some form of brute force internet thuggery though. Make lots of fake accounts and goad people into debate to waste our time. If that is all they've got, that is a sorry excuse for hacking now. I am quite certain there are lots of people doing the same thing to them and that will go back and forth until we are all blue in the face. They get upset because we have zero tolerance for trolling, but trolling is literally the only thing they've got except for some weak-ass ip logger. Stay strong and vigilant.
Submitted by aiwendil in security_culture
aiwendil wrote (edited )
Reply to Where do you stand on the systemd war? by alqm
I think my main gripes are exactly what you mentioned, it isn't simple and it isn't modular. To me the beauty of unix system is in the simple modular components that come together to form a cohesive operating system. Systemd is a bit too monolithic. Now that being said, it does a good job doing what it does and it makes something simpler. Also standardization can be good. I finally know where I should be putting init scripts on debian. Before the easiest way to do that was to throw a line running your script in a file that was run at the correct init level and the right way to do that was even more of a pain in the arse. I had a bunch of systems where figuring out when something was causing an issue meant looking through a bunch of potential files for hacked together solutions that were not particularly good. I'd like to see more standardization in that regard, but I don't think we need a huge, non-modular system to do that. Yet, I am also not interested in rolling my own solution here as this is just not the kind of problem I enjoy solving and it is a really complex problem at this point. I'm just going to take what they give me to work with atm. Just my 2 cents.
Submitted by aiwendil in security_culture
Submitted by aiwendil in security_culture
Submitted by aiwendil in security_culture
aiwendil wrote
Reply to comment by BlackFlagged in After killing their warrant canary & going closed-source, reddit is now forcing you to provide an email address to register... by Defasher
I think you should just assume that anything you ever wrote on there is compromised and you should do the same with every single unencrypted packet you send across the internet.
aiwendil wrote
Reply to After killing their warrant canary & going closed-source, reddit is now forcing you to provide an email address to register... by Defasher
I personally think the email thing is common sense. If you want to be able to block abusive people, you need to make it more difficult for them to just re-register a new nick every time you ban them. Eventually they will go away if you make them jump through enough hoops... Not really a bad idea in my opinion.
Also they can't so much be blamed for the warrant canary. If you are based in the US and you get served, you don't have much of a choice. At least they have some way of being honest with you about it unlike Facebook or Twitter.
I think what makes reddit suck more than anything is the users and the admins are just kind of abusive and shitty people with terrible political inclinations since Aaron Schwartz left. I don't know anything about the current admins except that they let too much hate speech take place on that site and if I were running it I'd be getting heavy handed with the ban hammer.
aiwendil wrote
Reply to What's with all the hostility here lately? by ziq_TNG
I think this is why they call the left a circular firing squad. I do think it is important for us to passionately discuss our differences, but I agree that we need to be able to respect each other. I think that the reason people had an issue with the "left is anti-science," post was largely how it was framed. I think you could make the case that there are those on the left who are reluctant to embrace technology, but broadly saying the left is anti-science with some poor examples is just asking for trouble. I don't see why this needs to carry over on to other threads though and I haven't noticed that so much.
I think the problem with ideological differences is not that we don't all want a better world, but our ideas of what that better world looks like. We can never get anywhere near that better world if we can't make some concessions to each other on the more minor issues. I think it would be a good idea to figure out what things we can mostly agree on and build our individual platforms from there. Maybe we don't all get everything we want, but everybody can get some of what they want.
I agree we are better than the bickering and right now it is more important than ever to stand united in solidarity with every person's struggles and in so doing build an understanding for why the issues that are important to others are so important to them even if they aren't as important to you.
I really feel like raddle has been a positive force in my life lately and I hope that it can continue to be a place where we can learn from each other, debate each other, maybe even fiercely debate each other, but when it comes down to it, to support each other.
aiwendil wrote
Reply to comment by josefStallman in Linux And Anarchy by Lenny
I came here to make this same comment. I thought it was a decent article, but can somebody just steal it and put it on an ancom website since the guy doesn't believe in intellectual property, it shouldn't be a problem. lol
aiwendil wrote
I am anti-GMO and it is not because of Genetically Modifying Organism in and of itself. I haven't seen anything that suggests that the practice of modifying organisms is harmful(though it certainly could be depending on what you intend to do). What is harmful is modifying those organisms to be round-up ready. Round-up has been conclusively shown to cause cancer, birth defects and a whole slew of other human health problems, over and over again. So if you don't see a problem with GMO food you are actually denying science.
Nuclear also causes a number of problems especially for those of us who are primitivists. Nuclear waste has to be stored indefinitely in very expensive to maintain facilities. If those facilities fail to be maintained, that waste could slowly leak into our ground water and thus into crops and water supplies. That is only one such danger. In the event of a societal collapse of any kind, nuclear plants could potentially melt down without oversight from humans. Anything that needs that much maintenance is a disaster waiting to happen. Fukashima is not an outlier, it is an inevitability. Over a long enough arc of time all nuclear facilities will have just such a disaster affect the. It is total lack of foresight.
When analyzing whether a technology is good or bad, it is not simply enough to ask ourselves "can we do it," but also, "should we do it."
Technology is not inherently bad. It is also not inherently good. Right now the consequence of industrialization seems to be loss of freedom and destruction of natural resources. I don't think that has to be the case. For example we can design ways to wash clothing now that use way less water than doing it by hand and we can recycle that water with grey water systems and then send it finally through bioremediation systems before that water re-enters the water table. We CAN do that, but we are not currently doing that. So I think what most of us are seeing is that technology is actually becoming a net negative in our lives.
I don't think we should just embrace all technology because not doing so will get on your nerves. I think we need to analyze the ethical imperatives and consequences of all technology and decide if there is a place for it that is #1 safe and #2 useful.
Thats my 2 cents, feel free to be upset with me. I don't view myself as somebody that hates science or denies science. I just have a different interpretation of the data than you do.
aiwendil OP wrote
Reply to comment by Ape in Countries That Don't Retain Data. by aiwendil
I generally agree, but the moment you stop giving a shit about security because it is a lot to keep up with, you and all your comrades are fucked.
aiwendil wrote
Also rights are just ideas, they are meaningless when somebody gives them to you and then strips them from you at will. There really is no such thing as rights, just like borders and money, they are imaginary and as soon as you choose to live outside of those fantasy worlds, you can begin to be free. Unfortunately militarized governments that have declared a monopoly on violence use tangible, real world resources to enforce these imaginary ideas. I would like to reject these ideas out right, but one can only do that to some degree and still manage survive and thrive in this world. Governments will criminalize any lifestyle that avoids it's control.
The main reason I despise the idea of rights is that they contribute to jingoist rhetoric.
“Freedom!- is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling of what the stuff actually is.” -David Mitchell
People can go on about how great it is to have freedom of speech, when if you've been paying attention, even just intermittently it is impossible to fail to notice how eroded these "right," have gotten. I mean, you have the right to speak freely, but what you say can be used against you in court or in the media to destroy you. That is not really freedom. I do believe that all actions have consequences in a broad sense, but when the government is manufacturing consequences for using your "rights," they cease to be rights and become privileges afforded to certain cross sections of society, based largely on incumbency to wealth, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc...
aiwendil wrote
Reply to comment by Defasher in How do I find people to squat with? by sudo
I'd rather not make it a public thing anymore than it has been, but I would be happy to discuss over email. If you want email me at [email protected] and I will give you a brief overview of some of the things I've been through personally as well as things I've heard about other squats.
aiwendil wrote
Reply to How do I find people to squat with? by sudo
Maybe try squattheplanet.com as a resource for that. As far as squatting OpSec, I think it would be cool to start a thread in /f/opsec on the specific challenges presented in various communities.
I've squatted alone and with other people. Alone has some interesting security challenges of it's own. A house full of people can protect each other, but it can also become a liability with people of various ethics coming and going. I have heard some horror stories from squats in Oakland, CA that I hope we can all avoid repeating. However being alone in an abandoned house can put you at risk in a lot of other ways in our modern society, where people are violently lashing out against the homeless. Should the homeowner show up, that could be very bad as well.
Another interesting thing to consider is morale. Squatting alone can be quite lonely. It is really easy to get very depressed dealing with challenges by yourself. I think you have to weigh all of these things together.
aiwendil wrote
We should start making take tattoo sleeves that we can wear to protests. It really wouldn't be too hard to do. But I do warn comrades about this frequently. Anything that is identifying needs to be completely covered during any direct action of any kind. We live in a dystopia society, so anything that can identify you needs to be immediately disposed of.
aiwendil OP wrote
Reply to comment by zombie_berkman in FLOSS, Torrent based YouTube alternative. by aiwendil
yeah, it looks rad, but I think we would have to set up a server to post content. Or maybe we could set up multiple servers and really capitalize on the distribution of data over multiple computers so it's not just using up space on one server. While at it, we should get a media goblin going to so we can post images more easily. I wish I had a bigger raid setup, I would do this today if I did.