What is Web 3.0 and Why Do We Need It?

Web 3, Parity, Polkadot, Substrate, ipfs, blockchain? Wtf?

While visiting Republica 2019 and writing my presentation about it, I was trying to make sense of the deeper decentralised web stack. Jutta Steiner gave a talk at Republica but I was a little lost in what she was talking about. It was clear it was important but I was lost in the terms.

Watching her talk from tech open air (TOA19) was a lot clearer.

She also reminded me about the web3 summit, which I wish I could attend but always felt like I might not be quite the right person for it. I look forward to hearing what comes out of it however because its clear as Jutta says

…The first time I interacted with the web like everything was open and somehow that was the the perception like we now have this great tool and sort of thought like it’s not this these closed intranets. But it’s the information superhighway we can do whatever we want but what happened really over the 30 or so years afterwards was we replicated or built a ton of intermediaries that basically sit between us and anybody we want to interact on the with on the web online, be that through what’s that when we text to someone through Facebook, venmo, whatever you use you buy anything there’s always an intermediary for something that really should be a general p2p interaction. So the problem with this really is what’s underneath this and what led to this mass these mass centralization and of power and data in the hands of very few people is the fact that we had to do this in a very centralized way because this is just how the Internet technologies of where to work so we have an underlying architecture with centralized servers where all the data is gathered because of network effect the power accumulates and accumulates, and this is a very fraught way of doing things because you have a central point of failure and that was massively exposed by the Snowden revelations I mean partly because also backdoors are built into it but partly because it’s it’s centralized architecture…

Clear reason why web 3, I think…

Open hamachi replacement?

Fiber optic bokeh

I wrote this 6 years ago, while looking at VPNs…

I use to love Hamachi, it use to simply work and it was very secure. The only problem is it got picked up by log me in and therefore hasn’t been developed in the way I would have liked. The Windows version has been developed but the linux and mac version are lagging behind in the lab. I also would like to see a Android app like how someone created a Windows mobile version.

Its been a while since I looked at VPNs for different purposes including privacy, anonymity, tunnelling, etc. I really wanted something like Hamachi mainly because Tor can do so much around anonymity, but there are things which I’d like to do like I was on my own network (tunnelling). Hamachi worked very simply and made something quite complex very simple.

I was looking at a few options including Bitmask, FreeLAN, Tinc VPN, WireGuard and ZeroTier. It needed to be open source or actually free software licensed. It needs to run on Linux and Android at least. I don’t mind if its got a commercial service, but I should be able to migrate away without having to replace everything again. It should also be straight forward, extensible, secure and work closely like standard networks. This is why I loved Hamachi, once you had a 5.x.x.x address, everything else just clicked.

I tried all but the ones which stuck out for me are Bitmask which is trying to build a complete system including secure email, vpn and hosting. I originally looked at Zeronet for the hosting side of things and I keep looking at GPG for secure email but its not high on my list currently. Bitmask seems too much, its a client of the LEAP project. One to keep an eye on in the future. FreeLan looked like a perfect replacement for Hamachi but having no gui was a real pain. I don’t mind messing with config files but sometimes I’d like to see whats happening without scrolling through the terminal. Tinc and Wireguard were cool but ZeroTier was ideal.

Zerotier runs on everything, the client is actually GPL v3. Its mainly command line/terminal for linux but easily installed and although you can do everything that way. Its not completely decentralised as you have a server which points the clients at each other. Once thats done, they can talk without the pointer. You can also setup your own server of course. At the server end, its The server allows you to configure the network which the clients join. You can also reject clients, add certs, etc. Its all so easy with a browser interface.

Now I’m connected over this VPN, I can do things like SSH, access my router settings without going via the WAN interface (something I hated about Hyperoptic’s router as its administrative login was on a WAN/public interface). This also means I don’t need to worry so much about securing PlexPy, Sickrage, etc, etc. This saves messing with certs. You can share networks across this too, allowing you to route networks; very useful when trying to get around web blocking, For example I was surprised my 3 tethered 4G connection was restricted to only ports 80 & 443 while roaming abroad.

ZeroTier seems to have everything at the moment, I am impressed and doesn’t take many resources which is great for mobile devices. Its simply another network but heavily encrypted.

Highly recommended so far…

Sell the sizzle not the steak

I attended a networking workshop at the BBC the other day. I was wondering how it was going to go, because sometimes the workshops at work can be hit and miss. The trainer for the workshop was down to earth Darren Jenkins from digienable. Darren was good and his advice was welcomed.

Now I know most of you are saying why the heck are you (mr social butterfly and social geek event organiser) doing at a networking workshop? Well most of the things I do are picked up after working it out for myself rather than learned. When I signed up I wanted to understand what other people were told because I’ve seen some weird stuff.

Anyway during the workshop, I listen and chipped in now & then. But what got me thinking in the middle of the workshop is the similarity to dating. I hadn’t really thought about it in this way before, but the more Darren talked and I thought about it. The closer to dating it sounded.

Most of you will be thinking “Duhhhh yes of course, relationships are relationships be them business or a love interest” Laid out on paper it makes sense, but I’ve never really put it on paper like that.

Some key points, which really hit home…

First date, first contact
The politics of who pays extends deeply into networking. Darren talked about trying to buy the first coffee or paying for everything to make a good impression. Of course I disapproved. But at least he told it as it was… “Its a power play…

Selling the Sizzle
You got a short time (1min) to tell the other person about yourself, what you do and your general thoughts about things. Sounds like Speed dating, but no were actually talking about networking.

One thing which I’ve not been doing recently is selling the sizzle. When speed dating recently I’ve been under-selling how great things are for myself by describing what I actually do rather than the effect. Not sure why I’ve been doing this but it certainly applies for dating as well as networking…

Social object theory
Of course no workshop would be complete without a bit of give and take. Darren was good enough to remind me to sell the sizzle, so I thought I’d talk about social object theory. He never heard of it but had been using it, regardless.

It was a good workshop and funny to hear Darren is partner to Liz Hardwick from Manchester Girl Geeks.

My home network explained again

My Home network setup

So this is a turn around from my now usual ranting about dating…

Last Friday, we were in the northern quarter and some how got around to talking about networking. I mentioned I had 3 gigabit switches and everyone asked why the heck have you got 3 gigabit switches? To which I tried to explain, very badly. So I promised to do a diagram of why I need those switches and not just extra long cables.

So here it is… Funny enough its not the first time I’ve explained my home networking setup. With a little more time I might have done something a lot more attractive.

First thing is the rooms are serial not exactly how you see them above. Aka the bedroom is as far away from the living room as possible and the spare room is in the middle of them both. Ok maybe I should consider redrawing them… The ADSL2 line works best off the main socket in the cupboard (Its how I can achieve my 1.5meg upload consistently rather that 1meg upload). The next room with power is the spare bedroom, where the ADSL2+ router lives. The router is only 10/100, so I use it just as a modem but I’ve recently been turning on the 54G wireless and using it for guest connections. Turns out at the time it was very difficult to get a ADSL router with gigabit wired points, might not be true 2 years later.

The next step into the network is the WRT firmware upgraded Switch complete with 108N wireless. Because its running WRT I can do many things like Quality of Service (QoS), VPN and port knocking for remote access. I class this part the inners of my home network.

Due to the room layouts, I’ve decided to string the network together by putting a gigabit switch in each room. This means I only have to feed one cable room to room rather than 4+. As you can see I have about 4 devices in the bedroom and living room and thats not including a spare one for guests.

So why wired and not wireless? As I live in a set of flats, theres a lot of people with those BT/Sky boxes on random channels (would show how messy it is but you can imagine). The wireless is good but not really for sending full HD videos to my TV without waiting 5 secs for it to buffer and maybe some pauses in the middle. If I switch to wired 100megbit networking, its fine but if I start to do a large transfer over the network, for example if I’m working on some footage on the server at the same time, its noticeably slower and you may get slight pauses. Now I’m certain it might actually be a IO issue with my 54000rpm disks. But I get nothing like this with my gigabit network.

Once I went Gigabit, everything just worked smoothly. I don’t ever see any latency issue, even when streaming stuff to the Xbian in the bedroom at the same time. I once did a test of both my Lenovo XBMC and RaspPI playing Inception at 1080p with me pulling the same file to my laptop. Although the PI struggled playing it back, everything seemed to work as expected. I bought into Gigabit at the point when it just dropped in price. My laptop, Server, Lenovo XBMC box, etc have gigabit ports so it was a no brainier really.

I am keen to try out 802.11AC but right now my main focus is to replace my Lenovo XBMC box which outputs in VGA to the LED screen. This is why I was trying out Simon’s Ouya. I already removed all other desktop machines from the network (got 3 mini desktop machines in the spare room to get rid of).

So thats the crux of why I got 3 gigabit switches…

Feel free to talk about other solutions but they need to be cheapish and not interfere with much else. Its worth pointing out the runs of cables between the rooms are roughly 20meters long. I will at some point drill into the walls but not quite yet. Finally I looked into powerline solutions but there pricey and I’m not sure of how good they are in a set of flats. Think I prefer a ethernet cable, as I would end up with a setup similar to what I have now.

If I was to list these things, what would I be talking about?

Dunedin Internship Speed Dating 2012
Really interesting the link between self confidence, your career and your dating life.

For example if I was to say here’s some tips, would you know what I was talking about?

  1. Come prepared
  2. Eliminate pressure
  3. Don’t expect too much
  4. Get comfortable
  5. Remember: desperation isn’t cool
  6. Focus on developing a relationship
  7. Respect their time
  8. Keep in touch

Now knowing me and what I talk about most of the time, you would be forgiven for thinking this is good tips for speed dating or your first date. But actually your wrong! Nope this is taken from 8 Tips For A Successful Networking Coffee Date. But to be fair most of the advice is transferable between your career, self confidence and dating.

Even more to the point is, The Dating Game: The Similarities Between Recruiting and Online Dating.

Recruiting these days seems a lot like online dating. After all, recruiting is performed mainly through online resources like LinkedIn. You check out a profile, maybe a person’s picture, and assess or judge how the candidate writes about him or herself. Does it make sense? Are there spelling errors? Could they be a good match? How would they fit in? I wonder what they’re like in-person? Are they the same as they portray themselves?

Hmmm, this sounds awfully familiar to me. Ever heard of Match.com, okcupid (personal fave), or eHarmony? Online dating is becoming increasingly popular, and so is sourcing and hiring candidates online from Linkedin.

Absolutely… I rest my case for now.

Decentralised networking is hard, no really?

Sydney, January 2009

Straight out of the “No Sh*t Sherlock…” book….

Although I think its amazing what developers do, I can imagine how hard it must be to write decent decentralised software. The Diaspora guys spell out how difficult it is… which Adwale likes to make sure I and others fully understand.

  • If you build a decentralized application, you actually need to ship software. You need to package, test, create installers, test on a variety of platforms, write defensive code to work around misconfigurations your customers are likely to create, etc. For a centralized website, you can often edit files in place on the production server.
    Result: decentralized is 10x harder at least.
  • Somebody somewhere will run every single version of your app that you ever shipped. It will be badly out of date, full of security holes (you fixed years ago), outmoded graphics etc. It will cost you additional support, and your brand will suffer. Almost nobody upgrades to the latest and greatest within a life time it seems.
    Result: decentralized is less functional, less pretty, and less secure.
  • Decentralized software is much harder to monetize. You can’t run ads on somebody else’s installation. You can’t data mine your users (because most of them aren’t in a place that you have access to, it’s somebody else’s installation). You can’t do cross-promotions and referrals etc. You can charge those people who install your software, but there’s a reason most websites are free: much better business.
    Result: decentralized produces less money for you, so you have less investment dollars at your disposal.
  • Database migrations and the like for decentralized apps have to be fully productized, because they will be run by somebody else who does not know what to do when something fails 15 minutes into an ALTER TABLE command.
    Result: decentralized is 10x harder at least.
  • Same thing for performance optimizations and the like: it’s much easier to optimize your code for your own server farm than trying to help Joe remotely whose installation and servers you don’t have access to.
    Result: decentralized is slower, more expensive, and harder.

Frankly although I take the points… If you want to stand out in a clearly over crowded field, and one which has a major elephant using up all the space. You need to think differently (to quote someone we all know too well).

This means doing the difficult things which no one understands and owning the platform!

Your business model should/could be charging other developers to build and be creative on top of your platform. App.net have got the right idea, charge the developers who then create the experiences. Your focus should be on managing the platform and supporting their creativity. Anything else is greed and/or lack of focus.

What do I mean by creativity? Think about Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck innovated on top of the Twitter platform and in the end the platform twitter bought them (stupid move). Tweetdeck for a lot of people made twitter usable at long last. The amount of news rooms I’ve been to and seen tweetdeck with a million panels open is untrue. The same isn’t true now… Tweetdeck guys innovated on top of Twitter and instead of sharing revenue with them or something. They bough them…!

A quote which comes to mind is something like…

The train company thought they were in the railroad business, what they didn’t get was that they were actually in the transportation business.

I really like twitter but frankly their control/greed/whatever is getting out of control. While on a panel yesterday at the London transmedia festival in Ravensbourne College. I was sat with Danielle from Tumblr, Bruce from Twitter, Cat from BBC and Doug Scott from Ogilvy. Although its tempting to make a few comments about there change in stance, I passed. Although I did notice say something which could be seen as slightly negative. Doug said how useful Twitter is for understanding users and I agreed but I said,

“Well its important to remember Twitter is only explicit data, implicit data is the stuff people really want to get there hands on…”

Anyway, the point stands and its hard to see how Twitter will get into the implicit data game at this point. If they acted like a platform, maybe someone else would do the innovation for them. But back to the main point why would you do it on someone closed system?

Decentralised network systems are harder but will drive much more interesting creativity… I can see how this might be at odds with setting up a business, startup and having investors etc… But I’m sure I could make a argument that its better in the long run…

What ever happened to the PAN?

Hooping

I remember ages ago when I was at University the concept of a Personal Area Network was heavily talked about but over the last 10 years I have heard very little about it. Now with the internet of things (IoT) coming into full effect, it seems a very good time to revive it from its dormant sleep?

From Wikipedia

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computerized devices, including telephones and personal digital assistants. PANs can be used for communication among the personal devices themselves (intrapersonal communication), or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet (an uplink). A wireless personal area network (WPAN) is a PAN carried over wireless network technologies such as IrDA, Bluetooth, Wireless USB, Z-Wave, ZigBee, or even Body Area Network. The reach of a WPAN varies from a few centimeters to a few meters.

The PAN should always operate in your benefit and not against you. Devices can freely communicate within the PAN but not so easily outwards. I imagine it would work something like a 2 way firewall blocking items within it from communicating out and vice-versa. As devices enter the trusted PAN zone, then permissions will be granted to allow external access, etc.

This does beg the question of how you do these type behaviours on a device with no buttons, screen, etc. But to be honest that’s a lovely interaction design problem to solve.

Fancinating to also see where the PAN is in the greater network topology…

Would be great to be able to specify rules based on the position of the thing/device. For example if an thing is classified/identified itself as needing to be on the BAN (body area network) then you can say its only allowed to talk to the PAN and never the NFC layer for example. Maybe it should come with defaults but they are changeable like the permissions used when trying to connect via OAuth.

Once again I’m not sure how to surface this to the user without some kind of external access like how you configure routers and switches now. But someone is working on it now I’m sure of that…

I quite like the Hula Hoop analogy. You can have multiple, some are bigger than others and some will overlap. You can even hula hoop around certain parts of the body rather than just your hips. Hula hoops are also shareable and I guess you can fit more than one person within them. However it still doesn’t explain how you control the wiring/influence/networking of the devices/things…

London Geekdinner Facebook group

Geekdinner london logo

After some minor issues with Facebook networks, I have finally sorted out a global geekdinner group on facebook. You can sign up here or search for geek dinner to find the girl geekdinner group along side the geekdinner group.

As you may have noticed in some of the blog comments else where (Regular Jen) not everyone could sign up to the previous group because I left the default network of London instead of setting it to Global. This was stupid because I even after I knew the problem I couldn't change it. So please makes ure you're signed up to the correct group (the one with the geekdinner logo not the red x).

I do make the joke that everyone is on Facebook but I won't be using Facebook as the official way to tell people about events and news. As Regular Jen points out.

The catch, as I see it, is that you still have to be a member of Facebook to view it. That is not what I would call open… it is open to members of Facebook only. That’s fine and fair and there is no reason to hold back from creating such a group, however, it absolutely divides the followers of London Geek Dinners (and London Girl Geek Dinners). You now have a group within Facebook and ‘the rest of us’

Total agreement and I expect to be using some sort of aggregation to allow good communication between the different spaces. This isn't the first time I've had this problem. It would be very easy for me to stop using our tradional geekdinner blog and setup some group on upcoming and urge people to use that instead but I don't. Instead I prefer the older comment system on the geekdinner blog and then allow sign up on upcoming.org. Ideally I would aggregate the upcoming results via there API back on the geekdinner site but this will all make sense hopefully in the near future.

I want to address something Jen talked about in the same post.

Making something very clear: this isn’t about London Geek Dinners, but the recent LGD Facebook group creation solidified a feeling I already had forming in my subconscious about Facebook dividing people. I posted about Facebook last week. I caved to social pressures and joined the service. I wish I hadn’t. I have only me to blame for that (well, and Facebook. Bastards. /images/emoticons/happy.gif.
What I hope I’ve brought forward more than anything is that every time a link is posted to a page within Facebook to the world outside of Facebook, that link (and its poster) excludes people. The ‘welcome’ page non-members get is a stark, uninviting login screen with no other content— it’s the equivalent of a giant, muscly body guard outside an exclusive club’s door. You aren’t welcome to the content within the Facebook walls unless you give up something in return, and in this case, it’s your data. Forever. I have never felt so unwelcome on a site. Even without the information brought to light by the video I linked to in another post, I felt this way.

This is not the way to start or nurture relationships. It’s high-level data mining wearing a social network cloak and at the same time subtly creates social outcasts out of the ones who want nothing to do with it.

I joined it and now I can never truly leave. Sounds dramatic, but Rachel called Facebook a new Hotel California. She’s right you know

 

 

 

I hate social networks for the sake of social networking, this includes Facebook. Facebook is the new roach motel as one of the gilmor gang use to say. I like Jen resisted till the bitter end but once they included a developer API and I started to see some applications being built I signed up.

I heard rumors that the facebook guys didn't sell to Yahoo because they are working on a operating system or something. Well currently you can certainly see how once your in facebook it would be easy to ignore most of the net if your thinking that way already. Its like the portals of the late 90's but with social networking layed through-out it. This may be all good for most people and at this very moment just about bearable for me too. I still can't find a way to put my blog rss into my facebook profile for example and I'm a sucker for owning my own data.

I think Facebook is almost unstoppable without some radical game changing from someone else. I'm hoping that other thing is open and decentralised (the first person to make the concept of FOAF work or the concept of FOAF work will bite a huge chunk out of Facebook) and puts a end to facebook but till then i'm forced to use it because thats where the attention and people are right now. Sad but true.

Please note I haven't mentioned Plaxo 3.0 or Plaxo Pulse which I'm sure will come up when I decide to do a post about lifestreams.

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