Internet Category Archives
hyperlocal
25 March 2014 | Internet, Lifeform, Privacy, Software | 1 Comment
[FireChat] makes use of the Multipeer Connectivity Framework in iOS 7, which allows developers to discover Multipeer-enabled services on nearby iOS devices using Wi-Fi, peer-to-peer connections and Bluetooth.
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In case nobody is around, the app also has a global chat mode that includes everybody on the network (with an Internet connection). So far, the team hasn’t segmented this global mode into different rooms, so things may get a bit noisy in there if the app gets traction. If that happens, I’m sure the team will rethink this setup.
There are no user accounts, so there is no need to sign in and you can remain as anonymous as you would like to be (which is probably a good idea if you are trash-talking the opposing team in a stadium, for example).
коллективные сновидения, не иначе. хотя, конечно, в жизни все с точностью до наоборот:
Two new apps, Secret and Whisper, are capitalising on a trend to connect people anonymously to express opinions or ideas they might not share if their identities were revealed. Nowhere has the opportunity to dish the dirt anonymously been taken up with greater enthusiasm than in the heart of the tech industry, Silicon Valley, where the apps’ online gossiping offers rare insight into a society shaped by opportunity – at one extreme, for talented entrepreneurs to make vast fortunes and, at the other, years of failure and frustration for tens of thousands of others. Postings that show up simply as “friend” or “friend of friend” reveal Silicon Valley not as a place of hard-working, peaceable tech engineers, but a hothouse of ambition, rivalry, jealousy and obsession.
а потом — вдруг — анонимный занавес упадет.
clear and present danger
20 March 2014 | Google, Internet, Privacy, Security | No Comments
“If you look at the logs of people’s search sessions, they’re the most personal thing on the Internet,” [Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo] says. “Unlike Facebook, where you choose what to post, with search you’re typing in medical and financial problems and all sorts of other things. You’re not thinking about the privacy implications of your search history.”
speed, decentralization, anonymity
16 March 2014 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform | No Comments
Why did other payment technologies like PayPal or Western Union apparently fail to meet the requirements to be discussed in virtually every central bank on the planet, yet cryptocurrency is being so thoroughly scrutinised? Ironically enough, the on-going debate about whether or not bitcoin is truly a valuable disruptive technology, is all the evidence you need that it is.
This is because bitcoin as a technology isn’t just challenging business models, or even an entire industry. Plenty of innovative outfits do that with much less flare. Bitcoin is challenging the financial infrastructure of the whole global economy, and even more, it is challenging entire generations of established political and economic theory that that infrastructure is built on.
хорошая статья.
a megaphone
12 March 2014 | Internet, Lifeform, Privacy, Software | 1 Comment
welcome the new way of communicating:
The new app, Secret, which was released on Thursday on the iTunes store, is meant to help one share what one is thinking and feeling with friends anonymously. One can write anything that is on one’s mind, free of judgement.
being free of any constraints, wouldn’t that talk become the stream of unconsciousness of your social circle? I thinnk, it should:
For a number of reasons, Secret is a fascinating app. <...> It transforms the passive-aggressiveness of a subtweet into a product, creating a space for people to speak their minds with less of the filter required by traditional social networks. It created a new type of newsfeed — the SecretFeed — which is not bound by being presented the traditional, reverse-chronological manner, which allows secrets to resurface over time.
me, I’d prefer to absolve from that usual socialness, and put the whole Internet under the hood, no matter if the users are your contacts or not (even though some may be worried by the funders or possible usage).
remember Molly, aye? now, replace her usual ‘I’ — with ‘us’. with secrets, dreams and moves of a community.
isn’t that liberty… inspiring?
to break the shackles
4 March 2014 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform | 1 Comment
love the new *coin initiative:
Iceland has its own Satoshi. A programmer called Baldur Friggjar Odinsson has created an alternative to bitcoin that he is calling AuroraCoin and in twenty-three days he will “airdrop” 31.8 coins to every citizen of Iceland – all 330,000 of them.
that’s what they say on the website:
Five years ago, the government of Iceland imposed capital controls, following the collapse of a Ponzi inspired financial system that had issued far more Icelandic kronas than the nation could ever back up through its real economy. These controls were supposed to be “temporary”, but as with so many government actions, they remain in place to this day.
This means that the people of Iceland have, for the past five years, been forced to turn over all foreign currency earned to the Central Bank of Iceland. This means that the people are not entirely free to engage in international trade.
in an interview to TechCrunch quoted above the author also adds:
The people of Iceland are being sacrificed at the altar of a flawed financial system, controlled by an elite that made astronomical bets supported by the government on behalf of the people and ultimately at the expense of the people. The power must be taken away from the politicians and given back to the people.
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Giving people Auroracoin is a way of introducing the nation to cryptocurrencies, currencies that can’t be controlled by politicians and central bankers.
*coins aren’t the Gold 2.0 we used to believe. the concept behind these currencies, it’s rather the Socialism 2.0 we were missing so much.
King Zuck’s Bible
1 February 2014 | Art, Internet, Lifeform | No Comments
как искусство совокупляет жизнь, например:
In summer 2012 the social network LinkedIn.com got hacked and lost its whole user database. A few months later parts of the decrypted password list surfaced on the Internet. These eight volumes contain 4.7 million LinkedIn clear text user passwords printed in alphabetical order. Visitors are invited to look up their own password.
как похищенные наборы символов, означающие доступ; как симулякры, симулирующие несуществующие тайны — и тщетные мечты о неприкосновенности — оказывются выпотрошены на всеобщее обозрение: hey, come and see! найди своего подкидыша, расскажи секрет, что лежит, среди прочих, так же наг и сир в этой новой прозекторской:
что есть искусство, как не ваши осколки?
comfortable in their authorities
24 January 2014 | Internet, Privacy, Security | No Comments
Snowden said the vast amounts of data being stored about everyone is harmful in two key ways. Firstly, the fear that everything is being recorded will change our personal behavior for the worse, and secondly that the data amounted to “databases of ruin”, storing embarrassing or harmful details can be plucked out in retroactive investigations.
the stolen Internet
24 January 2014 | Censorship, Internet, Privacy, Security | 1 Comment
о недалеком будущем:
Put simply: the Internet we know and depend on will become something very different. The business relationship with your provider will change its focus from consumption (how many ones and zeros came over the wire) to behavior (what kind of ones and zeros). The latter is much more discriminatory and insidious.
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The privacy implications are just as chilling. A discriminatory model bakes surveillance into the way ISPs do business.
сферический конь в вакууме
29 December 2013 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform, Politics | 1 Comment
с другой же стороны, Чарли Стросс подводит итог максимально точно:
To editorialize briefly, BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. Which is fine if you’re a Libertarian, but I tend to take the stance that Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).
он абсолютно прав, это прекрасный инструмент для идеального мира. но мы-то живем на Земле.
altcoins
29 December 2013 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform | 3 Comments
Брэд ДеЛонг о своих наблюдениях за биткойном:
Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. Underpinning the value of the dollar is a combination of (a) the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government, and (b) that the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year (yes, I know).
Placing a ceiling on the value of gold is mining technology, and the prospect that if its price gets out of whack for long on the upside a great deal more of it will be created. Placing a ceiling on the value of the dollar is the Federal Reserve’s role as actual dollar source, and its commitment not to allow deflation to happen.
Placing a ceiling on the value of bitcoins is computer technology and the form of the hash function… until the limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached. Placing a floor on the value of bitcoins is… what, exactly?
мне кажется, я могу ответить: это договоренность сторон о необходимости альтернативных денег, неподвластных государственому регулированию. и до тех пор, пока такая договоренность в силе, биткойн будет жить (падая и снова возрождаясь). проблема, однако, в том, что формализировать эти договаривающиеся стороны мы, на самом-то деле, не можем. и следовательно, поскольку намерения этих сторон нам неизвестны, сложно расценивать биткойн, как действенную инвестицию — условно говоря, если значимая часть игроков решит денонсировать свое участие, биткойн обесценится и накопления остальных, well, дольщиков элементарно сгорят[1].
поэтому можно говорить разве что об исключительно удачном эксперименте — но он еще не окончен, вот в чем дело. и несмотря на то, как математически прекрасна эта криптовалюта, сегодня она годится разве что для спекуляций в мире стальных нервов.