Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Aug 2022)

Who has power over AI - world map

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing 1 billion chinese citizens data hacked, The UK’s DWP using AI ti decide who gets universal credit and Elon & Twitter once again.

To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

You are seeing aspects of this with some fresh thoughts about federated moderation, the EU attempting to regulate those black box AI’s and clever environmental moves around reusing paper and rethinking body gels.


The Internet health report dives deep into AI harms

Ian thinks: Mozilla’s internet health report is usually across the board but this year they have deep dived into AI harms. Its not a surprise but the detail is surprising in part.

Those public cameras are everywhere, here’s how they are being used

Ian thinks: This short video from Amnesty International and Wired Magazine is simply the surveillance state utopia some have dreamed about. For the rest of us its a dystopian nightmare, but this is no nightmare… its now.

What is the matrix? Not that one!

Ian thinks: I have always found the Matrix protocol incredible and this frank interview will give you a real scope of what a open distributed protocol can actually do. The stance on bridging is certainly refreshing.

Violence guarantees success?

Ian thinks: The influence and lobbying of Uber was bad but picking through the uber files, its insane the high ranking people who have been influenced by Uber. There is something deja-vu about this?

Uber whistle-blower’s sends a stark warning for us all

Ian thinks: If the Uber files isn’t super clear to you, spend 25mins watching this Guardian video interview with MacGuann, the Uber whistle-blower.

The freakonomics tackle Crypto, NFTs and Web3 in their style.

Ian thinks: The freakonomics team look at many things from a economics point of view. Hearing their unique view on some of the battle for the next internet is quite insightful.

Canada’s Rogers outage is exactly why monopolies are a bad idea

Ian thinks: Not many saw or were affected by this almost complete network outage. But its important to remember Rogers has been pursuing the merger of another Canadian telcom.

The European Commission joins the fediverse, join them

Ian thinks: The EU joining the fediverse is refreshing but I saw so little about this trial by the EU. I really hope they don’t expect huge numbers of people because that would defeat the purpose of the fediverse.

A Game Designer’s presentation turns into a wake up call for all

Ian thinks: You can read the slides in English here and there are subs for an excellent talk which he admits would never be selected. Asking the question do we really want to live in a trust-less society, which crypto is setup to support?

Servers and heat do not mix

Ian thinks: A clear reminder that environmental change/collapse will massively affect the way the internet works and is shaped into the future. Our expectations of servers always up and instantly available needs to shift.

Shhhh, what is quiet?

Ian thinks: I have seen a few of these decentralised slack, discord, element systems. The introduction of everything over TOR will excite certain people along with IPFS support, but its clear the track record of Holmes Wilson is another key feather in the hat.


Find the archive here

So busy and tired recently…

I have not blogged for quite a while. This is down to a few things.

  1. Ecto is simply doing my head in, as it keeps loosing draft entries and screwing up on the spellchecker. I paid for the software and I'm back to using W.blogger again.
  2. I have been out and about across the England and Scotland recently. I have actually been to more places up north that ever before. My Flickr account is full of pictures from different places. I also need to find the time to sort out all my pictures.
  3. Wireless has been patchy in some places and after a day of working and night of socialising, I actually do need to grab some sleep.
  4. When I'm at home, i've been preparing to go somewhere else the next day or so and the broadband has simply been a nightmare due to Demon's restrictions (more about this later).
  5. Last of all, when I do find the time to blog, the blog is down because Resin has shut its self down on the server. I then spend a little bit of time trying to work out what the problem is instead of blogging. This has been a real pain and I know your as pissed off as myself about this. I'm totally lost why after months of perfect service, why this has just started happening.

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How mininova.org stays a float

Torrent freak has done some digging and found that the Torrent sites are becoming even more popular. Mininova.org is still the most popular (no suprise there), Torrentspy is 2nd and The PirateBay is 3rd. The freak have also followed up on Mininova and done a post about itsServer setup. When I first saw this graph of the Mininova server setup, my first thought was wow, that's really not a complex setup at all. I was expecting at least 5 webservers to deal with the daily load it must get hour. However the servers are pretty good spec /images/emoticons/laugh.gifual AMD Operton's). Generally its not a complex setup and makes me wonder what software is running on each server.

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