-- Leo's gemini proxy
-- Connecting to dfdn.info:1965...
-- Connected
-- Sending request
-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini;lang=en-US
Going Dark: Looking for the End of the Internet, Part 1
11-07-2019
The title of this article is a play on words because "the end of the Internet" can mean two things. I mean both. I'm looking for the undiscovered places at the edges of the Internet, and I'm looking and waiting with anticipation for what may replace the Internet--a next Internet, or next Internets. Perhaps, if it occurs, the next Internet will be what many now call "the darknet". Perhaps it will be something completely different.
Back in the early 1990's, "Internet 1.0", as some have called it, was populated with websites created and maintained by hobbyists, people who loved computers and wanted to share their knowledge and enthusiasm with others. This was before the web had dynamic content, so web pages were composed mostly of text and crude, static, ASCII-character, monochrome, or 8-color graphics. You may have seen examples in computer games from the 1970's. The few companies that had websites had mostly single-page placeholders. The Internet wasn't a place where people bought and sold things. You could surf the Internet anonymously because no one was watching what you were doing or where you were going. Governments were not concerned yet about the Internet; they didn't even have websites. Websites existed mostly around information and file sharing. Although email existed, most of the general population were not on the Internet, so few had email addresses. No one ever asked for your email address. Instead, we used telephones and snail mail. We talked on our telephones. We didn't text on them. Back in those early days when the Internet suffered from a lack of content, some, including myself, were hopeful that it would grow into something great, and we could hardly wait.
I know I am not the first to point this out, but the Internet has become a very different place since its birth back in the early 1990's. Maybe I should say since its childhood in the early 1990's because the ARPANET has been around since the 1960's. In some ways, the Internet has improved, in others regressed. Although it has some great content now, it is over-commercialized to such a degree that you have to actively seek out any left-over hint of the old Internet. Internet users are tracked everywhere they go, both by companies trying to sell them things and by governments paranoid about what they may see, say, or do. The Internet today is well on its way to becoming an Orwellian nightmare, a fenced-in corral for Internet cattle. This is a very different future than the one I hoped for back in the early nineties. This future-now-present makes me nervous.
As a result of my growing nervousness and disillusionment with the Internet, I have been looking around for something better. I have been sampling alternative networks, including what some call "the darknet". I put "the darknet" in quotes because having seen some of it, I realize that label doesn't describe it very well. It is not even one thing. There are many so-called dark networks, with more appearing all the time. Unfortunately, I don't have a better label. I would like to call it the "next Internet", but something completely different and unforeseen could come along to fulfill that role. Perhaps "the altnet" is a better name. I don't know. I have tried a handful of "dark networks" so far--including ZeroNet, the Invisible Internet Project (I2P), the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), the distributed social network Diaspora, and others--some of which I have written about on cheapskatesguide.org. I have also tried some alternative email providers, including protonmail and tutanota. And, I have permanently switched from Google to duckduckgo for search because I now understand that Google's search results are geared toward further corralling the Internet cattle.
Although my search for the end of the Internet has led me to become increasingly knowledgeable about the dark web and darknet, I am by no means an expert. As I said, many darknets exist. And, I still haven't learned more than a small fraction of what can be known about the huge, diverse network space that is out there. I do, however, know enough to recognize that the view of the darknet we get from governments and the news media is myopic. In my opinion, what they tell us about the darknet is very similar to the somewhat self-serving warnings they have been giving us for twenty years about avoiding "shady" websites (i.e. anything other than Facebook, Amazon, Google, and websites run by giant corporations). For example, this article on the FBI's website refers to "going dark" as a problem that "...is eroding law enforcement's ability to quickly obtain valuable information that may be used to [identify] and save victims, reveal evidence to convict perpetrators, or exonerate the innocent." The FBI's article goes on to say, "With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack." While some of that may be true in rare instances--and I stress the word "rare"--a bigger picture exits here. The bigger picture is the one I'm concerned with.
A hint of the bigger picture can be found in the following comment that I found on a forum on the I2P network:
"I used to worry a lot about what would happen to Tor back when I was really active here. Services would go down and not come back, people running legit sites would get threats from [law enforcement] to share user info, Vigilante assholes would go and take down sites cause they didn't like the lack of censorship, and to top it all off rumors spread like wildfire throughout the popular media. Rumors that not only hurt the reputation of the [dark web] but of the people using it. You know the ones. The red rooms, the hitmen, human slavery, etc. All bullshit but it had a way of working it's way into the sensationalist media news cycle. But the more I've thought about it and the more I've had a chance to interact with the communities that use Tor the more I've realized that it isn't going away. Not for along time anyways. Services come and go but the fact of the matter is that there will always be something new to replace the old. I've seen it a million times now. A service goes down and is mourned by the community. Shortly after someone makes a replacement service and that new service takes the place of the old one. I know that tomorrow when I wake up Tor will still be here. That the community will still stand behind it build on it and improve it. And if it isn't then someone will have built a replacement. We'll still be here. Despite government opposition or regulation or the public's fear we'll still be here."
This is a picture of a wild-west kind of "community" that, despite seemingly existential threats, isn't going away. The reason this community exists at all is that many are beginning to wake up and realize that their ability to speak freely and anonymously on the Internet is being infringed upon. They don't like that, so they are creating a more secure, more anonymous Internet where they can be more free. In almost all cases, this is not about breaking any laws--except those against free speech. It's about taking back free speech rights curtailed by governments and corporations. The question in my mind is, "What is this community becoming?"
Despite the many warnings about the negative side of the "dark web", networks like IPFS, ZeroNet, I2P, Retroshare, Scuttlebutt, the TOR network, and others are much more well-lit than you have been led to believe. The dark web is nothing more than a loose conglomeration of websites hosted on various encrypted networks that require special software to access. This software is freely available on the regular Internet and can be downloaded and used by anyone who is interested. For the most part, the dark web is frequented and maintained by your neighbors, your work colleagues, people you go to school and to church with, and people you see at Walmart. The majority of darknet users welcome newcomers. Unfortunately, some are also hostile to newcomers, simply because they want to keep their networks from becoming nothing more than copies of the regular Internet. From what I can tell from months of perusing the dark networks that I've visited so far, denizens of the dark web seem to be somewhat younger than average, somewhat more intelligent, more forward looking, more free-thinking, more socially conscious, much more freedom-loving, and maybe a bit more paranoid. Perhaps, that is why governments around the world seem to be so determined to block and control them. To say more than that about the individuals who frequent the dark web would be, I think, to risk making an artificial distinction between them and the rest of society that is unjustified.
Unlike Internet 1.0, where most sites were run and visited by hobbyists who loved computers for their own sakes, today's so-called dark websites are mostly created and populated by people who have specific goals in mind. Those who love computers are still there. They are just not the majority. Many darknet devotees are activists who don't like what the modern Internet has evolved into and want a place where they can speak their minds unhindered by corporate censors kowtowing to advertisers and various freedom-averse governments around the world. Others simply want to be able to download copyrighted music, movies, TV shows, and books for free. And some, fortunately a very small minority, want to buy drugs and spread child pornography. But, for the most part, the darknet is just like the regular Internet--in the sense that it has a light side, and it has a dark side.
The new trend in the darknet world is the appearance of distributed, or peer-to-peer, networks. These are networks that transfer data between and sometimes store data directly on the computers of users, called peers, rather than relying on central servers. This type of network is very difficult for governments to block or control. And that is the main reason distributed networks are appearing, especially in countries like Russia and China.
As extensions of the darknet, the new distributed networks are similar in many ways to the early Internet. Nearly all of their websites are run by individuals. You'll find almost no commercial content. You will find blogs, chat rooms, forums, email services, gaming sites, file sharing sites, leaked government documents, lists of links to popular sites, and documentation on how to access and use their networks. Unlike the early Internet, however, many websites on distributed networks run javascript, so their content is often more modern-looking and interactive. Because of this, you'll also find rudimentary search engines and Youtube-like sites. However, because content is hosted by hobbyists with small budgets, were you to try to download very large files, like HD movie files, you would often find them to be unavailable. In fact, as was pointed out in the I2P user's comment above, many websites on distributed networks exist for some period of time and then disappear when their owners lose interest. So, having access to up-to-date lists of active websites can be important.
Going Dark: Looking for the End of the Internet, Part 2: Rediscovering the Beauty of Text on the Internet
6-18-2020
I see a new trend developing among geeks. Maybe I am just deluding myself, or perhaps it has always been this way. Maybe it's just wishful thinking--along the same lines that has caused me for decades to wish that the average engineer would suddenly begin to care about using his work day productively. But lately, I have been noticing more individuals who run their own websites writing articles about the value of text-only, static, and non-commercial websites. These hobbyist website designers seem to care deeply about the efficient transmittal of information. They seem highly frustrated by the bloated Internet on which the average web page takes 10.3 seconds to download and transmits next to no useful information to the user. An example, though you may want to avoid it if foul language offends you, is this seven-year-old website. Another article highlights some of the practical benefits of text-only websites. And, this article discuses the broader topic of the value of small, independent websites and the reasons they differ from commercial websites. Then, there is the question of information density, or the amount of information that should be shown on a web page.
The Streamlined Internet is Already Here--You Just have to Find It
Having a more streamlined Internet is about more than just text-only web pages because the Internet is about more than just web pages. Gopherspace and usenets are still around. Project Gemini is being touted as something to fill the gap between gopherspace and the Internet. RSS feeds seem to be once again gaining popularity among geeks. And then there is the Tilde Town server and its overflow onto similar servers. While the average Internet user may see Tilde Town as nothing more useful than an experiment to see how many clowns can be stuffed into a clown car, Tilde town and its imitators have drawn thousands of users to connect to their servers using the text-only technology of SSH. This is a command line world that the average Internet user under 30 likely cannot even imagine. But for thousands, these few servers not only provide free avenues for their creativity and comradery, they also boldly proclaim the truth that some much can be accomplished with so little.
Text-only news websites are also coming back. The reason for this is that some news agencies have finally recognized that the Internet may be less accessible in areas hit by natural disasters. Lower bandwidth connections may be available as backups at these critical times, but they require more efficient news sites to provide continued access to the news. These sites are also more accessible to people in emerging markets.
I should also mention distributed and dark networks like ZeroNet, Tor, I2P, and IPFS. These are perhaps some of the last strongholds of geeks on the Internet, and they are all about text. At least, that is the way it appears to me as I peruse the sites of these networks. And, by the way, these relatively new networks are populated mostly by geeks in the same way that computer hobbyists were once the source of most of the activity on the early Internet. Perhaps the text-only format of most sites on darknet and distributed networks is one reason average Internet users tend to shun these networks like vampires hissing at the sight of garlic.
Text is Beautiful
If you are not one who inherently feels the allure of text, it may not be possible for me to help you understand why text making a comeback is a good thing. You may view my attempt to explain as something akin to Greg Kinnear's character in the movie "You've Got Mail" waxing poetic about his type writer. And, maybe it is in some ways. I'll try to explain anyway.
Think of the difference between reading a book and watching a movie. Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses. A book uses words to convey the inner thoughts of a character in a way that a movie just cannot. Books increase your vocabulary. They also give you a window into the heads of enough people that you develop insights into people that you cannot to the same degree by watching movies. Books are a slow enough form of communication that you have plenty of time to think about the message the author is trying to transmit. If you are initially confused, you can go back and re-read sentences or paragraphs as many times as it takes to understand the full meaning. With a movie, if you sneeze, you may miss something important.
Perhaps the feeling of reading pure text on a computer screen is something that you just have to be of a certain age to fully appreciate. I can still vividly remember my college and graduate school in the days of VT100 terminals with green or amber text scrolling by at 300 baud against a black background, just a little faster than I was comfortable reading. I remember keyboards that seemed to have a full half-inch of key travel. I remember working on assignments in computer rooms during the day, surrounded by other students, having a shared experience, often of frustration, always of learning. At night--especially late at night, or on holidays--I was frequently the only one in the room. I would be debugging some code or running a simulation and after deep brain fry be ready for a few minutes of exploration. That was how I discovered email in the mid 1980's before that was a even a word that most people had in their vocabularies. Back then, email was commonly referred to as electronic mail. Later, it became e-mail, and then finally email. I also have a vague memory of usenet, though I didn't have time to delve into it much. I wish I had had more time in those days to smell the mainframe flowers. I remember better the text-based computer games of the early 1980's. Those were the days when text was king on microcomputers, as they were called then, simply because the computers that individuals could afford to buy didn't have the power to present the flood of eye-candy that we are force-fed today.
The allure of text is about more than just nostalgia. It is primarily about the transmission of information. Even in this Youtube-and-podcast-centered generation, nearly six hundred years after the invention of the printing press, text is still what we use when we are primarily interested in conveying in-depth information. Other media focus primarily on entertainment with information transmittal sometimes as a secondary goal. Information that must be digested slowly is still best conveyed with text.
The beauty of text is most apparent when we look at it through the lens of useful information conveyed. Text is the most information-dense medium on the Internet. We say a picture is worth a thousand words. How much real information is conveyed in this ten minute and 16 second, 1080p cat video on Youtube? I do not deny that entertainment has value and is therefore useful in some way. But, one of the things that irks me when I am looking for information about a computer-related topic is to discover that the only information available on the Internet is in the form of a Youtube video. This is the worst medium for conveying technical information that I can think of. However, I understand that the author of the video may have chosen that format because it was likely to deliver the largest audience of any format to which he had easy access.
Let's look at just how efficient text is in comparison to other media. Leaving aside arguments that can be made about what constitutes useful information, no one can deny that this cat video takes up 150.6 MB of storage space or that it takes about 100 seconds to download across a slower 12 Mb/s Internet connection. The same amount of storage space can hold about 5.2 hours of 64 Kb/s MP3 audio data or about 25,000,000 words of ASCII text. That is the equivalant of around 40,000 pages of text in a paper book. It is the equivalent of about 11,000, fifteen-hundred-word static web pages when the inefficiencies in hand-coded HTML and meta tags are folded in. It is more like 1,100 fifteen-hundred-word web pages coded by Wordpress software. Eleven thousand, 1500-word webpages read aloud at 160 words per minute would take about 1700 hours to read. Reading silently at 300 words per minute would take about 920 hours. So, I would argue that for each human-brain-absorable unit of 1080p video informaton stored on a hard drive, something like 30 units of useful audio information or at least 9,900 units of useful text information can be stored in the same space. That is nearly ten thousand times as much useful text information as 1080p video information.
But, why should anyone care about the efficiency of data storage and transmission? Hard drives are cheap. We now have gigabit per second Internet connections--well, at least a few of us do. Why in the year 2020 should we acknowledge the beauty of text as the most efficient means of conveying information? I can think of several good reasons. But first, let me just state that not caring how much space is taken up on a hard drive illustrates the mode of thinking behind the phenomenon of data expanding to fill the space available. This phenomenon has plagued humanity since we first learned to store information and has cost truly staggering amounts of money. I will now address the role of efficient data storage and transmission in free speech.
Text and Free Speech
Perhaps the most important reason to acknowledge the beauty of text in efficiently conveying information is that we have nearly lost the battle for control of the Internet to commercial companies whose only motive is profit at the expense of all else. I should also point out that companies are regulated by governments whose major concern is usually remaining in power. It appears to me that geeks increasingly reject the eye-candy that predatory websites of large companies use to lure childish "normies" into their cars. That sounds like I'm being overly judgmental of average Internet users. Maybe I am. I just feel that most of what is wrong with the Internet these days is the fault of the majority of its users. They have made themselves the cattle of the Internet by allowing themselves to be corralled into Facebook's and Google's corals. The cravings that normies have for inane eye-candy has given giant companies like Facebook the power to dominate the Internet in ways that are beneficial to Facebook and damaging to the rest of humanity.
The big question is to what ends are these companies using their power? And, how will they use it in the future? Facebook's primary goal is to keep users on its website for as long as possible. Most likely, Facebook could not care less about transmitting useful information, except as one means of keeping users on its website. Facebook and Google combined with other major companies now have the power to effectively bar a large portion of Internet users from accessing small websites, or any website that has not paid for eyes on pages through the purchase of key words in search results. I call this obscuration "the commercial smog of the Internet".
I have seen for myself that rather than using the key words that I specify in the meta tags of my articles, Google chooses key words on which to base its search results that are in my opinion largely irrelevant. The result is that Google does not lead readers to my website who are looking for the information that I have to impart. In my opinion, the vast majority of readers that Google sends to my website are led there by keywords that have little or nothing to do with the information that I have to convey. The result is that readers who happen to be led by Google to my articles most likely leave immediately. Google can then use this to justify an even lower ranking of my articles in its search results.
Google and Facebook effectively choose which websites many users visit. This means that they control the information users see. This is the real problem. Pervading the Internet that large corporations have established under the supervision of governments is the idea that users should be "protected" from untrustworthy websites containing unreliable or false information. But having set themselves up as the arbiters of truth, large corporations have put themselves in a position to filter out legitimate opposing views. They now have the power to erect censorship barriers to prevent individual voices from exposing fallacies in any narratives they may choose to present to the public.
In practical terms, this means that much of what regular people like you and I say on the Internet can be hidden from most Internet users. One example can be illustrated by an article I posted several weeks ago on one social media website. The article explained the reasons I no longer vote in political elections. It received close to 2000 page views before it was pulled less than half an hour after I posted it. No reason was given. My guess is that my article did not fit well with the world view that large corporations and governments are cultivating in their workers and tax payers.
Large companies have also very effectively barred all individual Internet users except the most determined and knowledgeable, I would guess perhaps 0.01% of users, from running their own email servers. So, we are for the most part forced to use company-provided email services. As a result, we are subject to their terms and conditions, which some have used to justify reading our private emails. Luckily, there are still alternatives like Protonmail, but one has to wonder how long they will remain available.
At least part of the problem of restricted free speech on the Internet could be solved with a more pervasive use of text that gives individuals the power to speak from their own websites using limited bandwidth and computing power. But before this can be effective, the average Internet user must be educated sufficiently that he becomes willing to go on an eye-candy diet. Only then, will small websites be able to meaningfully compete as a group with giant corporations for the eyes of average Internet users.
While I am on the topic of free speech, let me speak briefly about the mainstream Internet alternatives. Decentralized networks like ZeroNet, IPFS, I2P, and others that are run soley on the computers of their users are subject to many of the same limitations as small websites. They have limited storage and limited bandwidth because their users have limited storage and limited bandwidth. It may be difficult to see if you do not have direct experience using them, but believe me (or don't), it is true. They are mainly useful for transmitting text. They do transmit audio, pictures, and videos, but they do not do it well. I have seen first-hand how users from 8chan flooded into ZeroNet immediately after 8chan was shut down, only to leave a few weeks later when they could not get what they were looking for, a largely visual experience. The fact that decentralized networks have limited ability to transmit the eye-candy that the average Internet user wants means they will probably continue for some time to have only a small voice in the increasingly one-way conversation that is the Internet.
You are no doubt aware that this article begins with a picture. The reason I include pictures in most of my articles is in the unlikely event that an average Internet user stumbles upon one, he will be less likely to leave immediately. I try very hard to limit pictures to 50 KB per article. I do this for two reasons. The first is that in order to keep page loading times low, I have to reduce the bandwidth required. The second is that on rare occasions when a large number of readers want to read an article I have just posted on social media, I have to keep the amount of data associated with the article small enough to make that possible. If not for the fact that I am transmitting this information to you largely through the use of text, I would not be able to provide it for free. Being forced to take money from advertisers to pay for the functioning of this website would mean that I would likely be at least partially hampered from telling the truth as I see it.
ISP's do not Recognize Our Right to Run Websites from Home
Unfortunately, limited bandwidth and computing power are not the only problems that plague operators of small websites. In the year 2020, most Internet service providers do not recognize residential customers running their own websites as making legitimate use of their Internet connections. Have you ever wondered why? Is it simply because too few residential customers run their own websites? Perhaps. It cannot be due to the reason ISP's usually give, which is increased traffic. The average blog only receives something like 3,000 page views a month, or about 1.5 GB of data transmitted a month in the case of a Wordpress blog. That is the equivalent of only a couple of hours of Netflix watching. In the last six or seven years, I cannot recall hearing any ISP claim that watching Netflix is not a legitimate use of residential customers' Internet connections. Thank goodness that applications like Skype and interactive gaming are seen as legitimate needs, or residential customers would have virtually no upload capability at all!
Text Conserves Natural Resources
Another reason to acknowledge the beauty of text is that we have something like 4.6 billion people accessing the Internet. All that access consumes vast resources. By some estimates, the Internet uses 10% of the world's electricity. In the US alone, about 500 million tons of coal are burned per year just to generate electricity. If we can increase efficiency significantly by using text-only web pages, or even text-mostly web pages, wherever possible, we can save an enormous amount of resources. And if that seems too far outside the realm of your personal self interest to concern you, think how much faster web pages would load if we could only somehow convince marketers to stop using so much eye-candy and tracking software to lure buyers into making purchases.
Final Words
To wrap this up, let me just say that if text really is making a comeback among geeks, there are good reasons. Text has the potential to free us from the Internet information gatekeepers, and in so doing make us more free to speak our minds and actually be heard on the Internet. Text can also help us conserve more of our limited natural resources. When given a choice between the dispersal of eye-candy and the dissemination of useful information, the thoughtful practice of choosing text can be a continual reminder that just because we can fill our websites with useless junk does not mean we should. Alas, if only we can somehow educate average Internet users to stop craving eye-candy over substance.
If you've found this article worthwhile, please share it on your favorite social media, so average Internet users will be able to read it. You'll find sharing links at the top of the page.
Going Dark: Looking for the End of the Internet, Part 3: The Gemini Project
9-24-2020
Last Updated: 3-8-2022
Welcome to the latest installment of "Going Dark: Looking for the End of the Internet". This continues my on-going exploration of 1) lesser-known places on the Internet, 2) computer networks that can be reached via the Internet with additional software (e.g. darknets), and 3) networks that may someday evolve into the next Internet or Internets. This week's topic is the Gemini Project. Although the "network" or "space" defined by the Gemini Internet protocol may meet the definition of a darknet, I have not seen anyone refer to it as such. Perhaps that is because its primary goal is not to hide the identity of the user but to provide a useful network for accessing predominantly text-based content. Gemini's purpose is to present text more efficiently and aesthetically than the regular (or "open") Internet.
"What is the point of text-only webpages?" you may ask, especially if you are under 30. Gemini will probably not appeal to those who use the Internet primarily for entertainment, rather than as a source of information. But many, including myself, have lamented the demise of the 1990's Internet. We want an Internet with webpages that do not take an average 10 seconds or more to download--despite having very little user-readable content, let alone content we may actually want to read. We yearn to return to the days when we could actually find noncommercial websites with an Internet search engine. Remember the days before about 2007 when a Google search could yield millions of search results, and Google would let you access as many as you wanted? Now, we get only a few pages of results that Google thinks are worthwhile. Though I have no proof, I suspect these may be mostly websites that have paid Google for the privilege of appearing in its search results. Go ahead and call me pessimistic. Perhaps I am.
No problem can be solved until someone has first pointed out that it exists. One encouraging result of all this lamentation over the end of the 1990's Internet is that some capable programmers have begun writing software to solve the problems of the present-day Internet. As a result, the world has received several "darknet" peer-to-peer networks like I2P, Freenet, IPFS, ZeroNet, and others. More are emerging all the time. In June of 2019, we received another possible solution to the bloated, corporatized Internet, the Gemini Project.
How is Gemini an Improvement over the Networks We already have?
Gemini shares some similarities with, but is in other ways better than, our old warm-and-fuzzy early 1990's friend, the Gopher network, which is currently just barely hanging on by the skin of its long yellow rodentine front teeth. Like Gopher, Gemini is all about text-based pages, but Gemini provides more functionality than Gopher. The value of Gemini is that it works more like an earlier version of the HTTP-based World Wide Web, before Web 2.0. The Gemini protocol is analogous to the HTTP and HTTPS protocols but is not just a stripped down version of either. Unlike Gopher, Gemini supports TLS. The Gemini protocol does not allow JavaScript to be downloaded and run automatically on a user's computer when he visits a Gemini page, nor does it allow a number of other practices that cause the current World Wide Web to be overly complicated and slow. Gemini does allow manual downloading of files of any type, so one can download images, pdf's, software, etc., if one chooses. More information about the Gemini protocol can be found on the FAQ page of the Circumlunar Space web page.
The simplicity of the Gemini protocol brings other important advantages over the web. One is that developers can much more easily create browsers. This means a giant company like Google should not be able to dominate the Gemini browser market. Thus, a single company is unlikely to be able use its browser's dominance to unilaterally redefine the Gemini network the way Google is now doing with the web. For users, Gemini promises super fast browsing, none of the security problems associated with Javascripting, no pop-up advertisements, and none of the ubiquitous tracking found on the web. Gemini does not support the annoying animated advertisements that are designed to distract you from the information you are hoping to obtain from the websites you visit. By not allowing images, videos, and JavaScript to be automatically downloaded, the Gemini protocol vastly reduces the amount of data associated with the typical webpage. This can be especially valuable to users who happen to be on metered or slow Internet connections. Gemini is also designed to be difficult to extend in the future so that it will continue to be fast, simple, private, advertisement free, and text-based.
Internet users who are very privacy focused should appreciate the Gemini network. My understanding is that the privacy advantage of Geminispace compared to the web has much to do to the absence of JavaScript. The absence of JavaScript means cookies and tracking software cannot be downloaded to users' computers. In addition, the Gemini Protocol does not provide a Gemini server with a visitor's browser information via a "user agent", nor does Gemini know the last site that the user visited, via a "referrer header". For those who want even more privacy, Gemini servers and clients can be run over the Tor network. Notes on using the Tor network with Gemini can be found at: gemini://tilde.team:1965/~tomasino/journal/20200706-gemini-on-tor.gmi . I will explain how to access Gemini pages later in this article.
Here is an informative Gemini blog page that explains why the author of the blog likes and uses Gemini and Gopher: gemini://gemlog.blue:1965/users/acdw/1595607025.gmi .
The Gemini protocol has some shortcomings. Gemini has no support for the resumption of the downloading of large files after an interruption. This may mean for example that no one will ever create a Gemini site for downloading HD movies. According to the FAQ page on the Circumlunar Space website, "The TLS requirement of Gemini limits it to more modern machines." My understanding is that this means one will never be able to surf Geminispace with say, a Commodore 64, but he should be able to do so with a computer powered by a Pentium III. This makes Gemini slightly less appealing to me because I would prefer a network that can be accessed even by very old computers. While I may personally never have the need, I can envision the potential for the widespread adoption of very cheap Internet appliances among school children in less-developed countries. Thanks to their overlapping goals, my guess is that Gemini will grow at the expense of Gopher. This may inadvertently extinguish the only readily-available computer network in the world for extremely low-powered Internet appliances or computers from the 1980's and 1990's--except, perhaps, for a few dial-up BBS's.
Although the Gemini network is usually very fast, at times, it seems to slow significantly. My guess is that this may be due to a temporary slowdown in the world-wide computer network that supports the Internet, upon which Gemini depends for the transmission of data. If we only had a separate, world-wide mesh network... But, that is a topic for another article. Gemini's occasional sluggishness may also be due to localized, insufficient computer resources being dedicated to it at the moment, but I am only speculating.
The Key to the Gemini Door
Geminispace is accessed over a regular Internet connection. Other than that, all one needs to begin surfing in Geminispace are a Gemini browser and the URL of a Gemini page. Since Gemini is a protocol, like HTTP or HTTPS, Gemini URL's begin not with "http://", "https://", or "ftp://", but with "gemini://". If you prefer not to go to the trouble of downloading and installing a Gemini browser, you can also get an idea of what Geminispace looks like by using this web proxy: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/ .
Lost in a Forest of Gemini Browsers
A list of Links to source code for eight Gemini browsers can be found here on the web. Unfortunately, unless you have some in-depth knowledge, you may not be able to get any of them to run without some help. So, I will explain how to get the AV-98 browser to work in Linux. But first, let me say something to developers in general. Hey guys and gals, how about bundling some documentation with your code? Does everything you create have to come with its own built-in I.Q. test, so no one with an I.Q. below 140 can figure out how to use it? And while you are at it, how about providing documentation in some standard file format, like maybe ASCII text or a version that is compatible with Microsoft Word? And, would it kill you to provide an x86 binary?
I looked at four of the most promising browsers in the above list: AV-98, Castor, Geminaut, and Kristall. Geminaut looked especially promising because it is supposed to run in Windows. Unfortunately, it came with zero documentation, and I could not get it to run in Windows Vista or Windows 7. I did not try it in Windows 10, because I refuse to use Windows 10. I also tried installing Kristall on my Linux machine, but it is dependent on four or five packages, including QT-5. When I tried to install QT-5, I was directed to the QT website that insisted that I create an account before I would be allowed to download their software (which may or may not have installed successfully on my computer). I draw the line at being forced to create an an online account for a piece of software that I only intend to use once. So, I aborted my Kristall installation right there.
If you are familiar with Linux, you are aware of the problem. Much of the Linux software out there has dependencies. And, those dependencies have other dependencies, and so on. What is supposed to be a simple installation sometimes turns into a marathon session of identifying, locating, and installing packages from several different software repositories until you finally run into a package that you absolutely cannot find a compatible version of anywhere on the Internet. If this process goes on too long, you also run the risk of destabilizing your installed Linux distribution. Not fun! Perhaps the solution is to find some Linux distribution that is designed for developers that already contains every piece of development software known to man. I just don't want to go that far. I prefer to run light-ish Linux distributions, not those with everything including the kitchen sink slowing down my computer and requiring 32 GB of RAM to run. I am sure many readers disagree with this philosophy. If you do, feel free to leave a comment telling me why you think my head is full of mush.
The AV-98 Gemini Browser
I really wanted to try the Castor browser, but it has as many dependencies as Kristall. So, rather than putting myself through that, I chose to install the AV-98 browser that has no dependencies other than Python. "Python" is a Python computer language interpreter that resides on the majority of Linux computers, so this should present no problems. The "README.md" document that comes with AV-98 says two optional "dependencies" can be installed for support of multi-colored text and increased security, but you do not have to install them to get AV-98 to work. The base AV-98 browser is a very simple single-colored-text terminal emulator, so it does not deliver the full Gemini experience that can be obtained with a more modern-looking browser. But AV-98 will put words on a screen, which should satisfy those who are merely curious about Gemini's content.
To install the AV-98 browser, begin by downloading it here. To download the compressed AV-98 file, find the download icon on the far right side of the page that says "Download Repository" when you hover your pointer over it. When I tried downloading and extracting the "TAR.GZ" version, my computer displayed an error message saying, "This does not look like a tar archive". So, download the "ZIP" version of AV-98. Then, move it to where you want it on your Linux computer's hard drive and extract its contents. Now, go into the AV-98 directory that you just extracted. The setup.py script appears to do nothing. If Python is on your computer, double clicking on the "av98.py" script should open a terminal window with an AV-98 prompt. If this does not happen, try typing "python --version" at the Linux command line. If you have Python installed on your computer, a message like this should appear: "Python 2.7.18". Unfortunately, not all Python software is compatible with all versions of Python. So, if you have Python, but AV-98 does not run, that may be your problem.
Once you have an open Linux command window with an AV-98 prompt (i.e. an AV-98 terminal window), everything gets much easier. Typing "help" (without the quotes) at the AV-98 prompt produces a list of 31 commands. Typing "help" followed by a command tells you what the command does. Typing "go gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space" takes you to the Gemini page for Circumlunar Space. If you get this error message instead, "ERROR: DNS error!", you miss-spelled the URL. Each additional page that can be reached from the Gemini page that you are currently viewing has a number in front of it. Typing the number at the AV-98 prompt takes you to that page. Typing "back" takes you back to the page you just left, just like the "back" button in any web browser. Typing "url" gives the URL of the Gemini page you are currently on. The AV-98 command line also provides direct access to the Gemini Universal Search engine (GUS). Just type "gus" followed by the key words you want to search for. One thing that distinguishes GUS from search engines on the web is that when GUS is used to search for the word "blog", it actually yields search results that include personal blogs! Type "exit" to close AV-98 when you have finished. Easy, right?
Visiting Geminispace
In space no one can hear you scream. Is the same true in Geminispace?
Well, Geminispace has some air. Since it is still very new, Geminispace is not teaming with content like the web, but it does have content. On the Gemini page of Circumlunar Space, you will find, among other things, links to two search engines, two Gemini-to-web proxy services, downloadable Gemini software, and about 50 Gemini servers. Another list of links to over 200 Gemini severs (many of which are inactive) can be found at gemini://gus.guru/known-hosts. (Update 3-8-2022: A new search engine called "Totally Legit" Gemini Search (TLGS) now exists at gemini://tlgs.one .)
Content that is created entirely or almost entirely by hobbyists tends to disappear. This is just as true in Geminispace as it is in Gopherspace or on the dark networks. This is simply a fact of life, so just enjoy reading whatever content you find. Hopefully, Gemini will become more popular, and more people will create content in the future. Maybe even YOU will create content.
One thing I love about Geminispace is that anyone can put a Gemini server on line and host content. You do not need anyone's permission. You do not need to pay a fee to ICANN, the agency that manages domain names on the web. You do not even need to identify yourself. I have not yet found any detailed documentation that explains why any of this is true. My guess is that it may have something to do with private TLS/SSL certificates, but I do not know how the Gemini DNS system works. Perhaps, since no commercialization yet exists in Geminispace, no one has had an incentive to cause any problems, so the system is still being designed?
To get an idea of how much content existed on Gemini in the Fall of 2020, when I wrote this article, I went to GUS and performed a search. I typed in the name of our old friend Bill Gates and found 401 search results. Then I went to the web. Somehow, with JavaScript disabled in Firefox 75, I managed to get Google to tell me the number of search results that it produced. I was not able to reproduce that feat the next day. Google said it had 78,600,000 results for "Bill Gates", but I would guess it will probably not let us see more than 20 or 30 pages of results. I typed "model rockets" (with the quotes) into Google, and it produced 759,000 search results. It would only let me see 14 pages of them. Where are the other 758,700 search results, Google? When I typed "model rockets" into GUS (without quotes, because GUS does not understand quotes), I was told GUS had found 510 search results. I think this is not because model rockets are more popular on Gemini than Bill Gates (as they should be), but simply because what is actually being searched for is anything with the word "bill" or the word "gates" versus anything with the word "model" or the word "rockets".
Personal blogs (or gemlogs) contain some of the most interesting material on Gemini--at least, I think so. In the Fall of 2020, perhaps only a few hundred existed. Many more have been created since. Included among the links below are some of the best blogs and collections of links to blogs that I have found:
Final Words
This concludes the latest installment of "Going Dark: Looking for the End of the Internet". I think one of the most enjoyable and interesting activities in the jungle of the Internet is discovering little-known parts or off-shoots. One of my goals for the Cheapskate's Guide is to motivate readers to do their own exploring. Hopefully, you now have enough knowledge about Geminispace to motivate you to visit it. In the years to come, I look forward to seeing Geminispace grow and flourish with many more people producing interesting content.
I just realized that I have not mentioned free speech even once in this article. Perhaps I will just have to write more about Gemini in the future.
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Gopherspace in the Year 2020
6-25-2020
Gopher I first had access to the early Internet--what there was of it--through the university I attended. I remember how different the Internet was back in the mid-to-late 1980's. We had electronic mail, but almost no one used it. We logged onto remote computers with telnet and transferred files with FTP. All this was done at the command line. If I remember correctly, very few graphical user interfaces existed then. Those that did were composed of ASCII characters. The first web browser was not released until 1991. Remembering causes me some sadness, though in some ways the Internet is better now. It certainly has many more users, and that is a good thing. I just wish it had more Internet-savvy users.
I remember that many of the early computer networks and websites on the Internet were run by imaginative people with great senses of humor. For example, the computer network that I used at the second engineering company for which I worked in the late 1980's had seven sun workstations named after the seven dwarves. As you may imagine, that provided us with no end of entertainment. "Dopey is down, AGAIN!" "Grumpy is acting up." "Sneezy died yesterday. When is the funeral?"
Back then, computers were something special. They were wondrous. Individuals who owned them were mavericks in a sense. Buying a personal computer then was the same as painting the word "nerd" in big red letters across your forehead, and being known as a nerd back then was not something you wanted. One of my highschool friends built a Heathkit computer. The only display it had was in the form of one-inch, red LED digits on the front.
Now, that computers permeate our society, no one bothers giving them interesting names. They've nearly become fungible commodities that we use up and then throw away when they have outlived their usefulness. Nearly everyone uses the Internet at least occassionally. And, strangely enough, being called a nerd is seen as a good thing.
Gopherspace
The Gopher protocol was released by the University of Minnesota in 1991. Gopher servers provided users with access to various types of files, including text, binary, image, sound, and GIF. But the milieu of gopherspace was text. Text was mostly what Gopher users saw. Users could also access FTP, telnet, and Usenet servers. Back in the 1990's, Veronica search engines tied together the network of Gopher servers in a similar way as modern search engines do today with the web servers of the modern Internet. In the 1990's, Jughead search engines were designed to search individual Gopher servers. And, Archie was an FTP search engine. Though Archie was not, Veronica and Jughead search engines were named after characters in the Archie comics that first appeared in print in 1941. Back in the 1980's and early 1990's, when people who loved computers still ran much of the Internet, it reflected their personalities. Now, the Internet is more a beige and gray reflection of the corporate world.
Today the Gopher protocol has been supplanted almost completely by the HTTP protocol upon which the World Wide Web is based. Though the Internet has changed considerably, Gopher servers are still around. Text is still mostly what users see in gopherspace, and it can still be navigated with gopher-capable Internet browsers. Sadly, only one Veronica search engine appears to operate today. Now, When a user navigates through gopherspace with the Veronica search engine, by following links, or by entering URL's into his browser, he has an experience in many ways similar to surfing the modern web.
Though about two dozen Internet browsers can still access gopherspace, either natively or with plugins, I will only talk about one. I'll focus on the Lynx browser because it is readily available, easy to use, and powerful. The Lynx browser also runs on all the major operating systems. I'll show readers how to use the Lynx browser to get into gopherspace and have a look around.
Installing and Using the Lynx Browser
The Lynx browser is a text-only Internet browser that has native support for gopherspace. Lynx allows a user to seamlessly navigate around the web and gopherspace using only the keys on his computer's keyboard. Lynx does not use a mouse or touchpad. Windows computer users can download the Lynx browser from the Lynx website.
Most Linux users can install Lynx simply by opening a Linux terminal window and typing:
sudo apt-get install lynx
Then, type "lynx" (without the quotes) at the command line to start the Lynx browser.
To go to a Gopher address using the Lynx browser, hit the "g" key on your keyboard. Near the bottom of the Lynx window, the prompt "URL to open:" will appear. Now, begin typing the Gopher address. Gopher URL's can also be copied and pasted from other applications. First, copy the URL from the other application, then select the Lynx window, hit the right mouse button, and select "paste". Try going to this Gopher address for practice: gopher://infinitelyremote.com/0/books/Internet_Gopher_Users_Guide.txt. After you hit the "Enter" key, the text file entitled "Internet Gopher Users Guide" should be visible in your Lynx window.
Lynx has three user modes. At this point, you are in the novice user mode, so at the bottom of the page, the following instructions should be visible: "-- press space for next page -- Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back. H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list".
At a basic level, Lynx is very easy to use, so a user does not have to know much to navigate around gopherspace and read text files. I will go over the basic commands, and leave it to you to learn more later. To navigate around inside a text file that contains no hyperlinks, press the space bar or the down arrow on your keyboard to move down one page and the up arrow to move back up one page. The left arrow is like the back button in a modern web browser; it takes you to the previous text file that you visited. In a text file with hyperlinks, pressing the up or down arrow moves the cursor to the hyperlink above or below the cursor's present position. When the cursor is on a hyperlink, pressing the "Enter" key or the right arrow takes you to the document pointed to by the hyperlink.
Some Gopher pages contain forms similar to HTML forms. For example, links to search engines may appear as a search line. Use the left or right arrow to move the cursor to the search line. Then, type the key words you want to search for and hit the "Enter" key. This will take you to a search results page.
To display the Gopher URL of the file you are currently reading, hit the "=" key. Then, hit the left arrow key to get back to the file you were just reading.
Exit from Lynx by hitting the "q" key. By the way, most command-line Linux programs that take control of a terminal window can be exited by hitting either the "q" key or by typing ":q".
This is all the information you need to know to navigate around in gopherspace (or on the web) using the Lynx browser. For additional instructions on the use of Lynx, bring up Lynx and hit the "h" key.
Exploring Gopherspace
Now the fun begins. Perhaps the best place to enter gopherspace is gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/world. There you will find links to dozens of Gopher servers. Floodgap claims that it hosts the last Veronica search engine in existence. So, from Floodgap you can use the Veronica search engine to search gopherspace by key words, or you can go to individual Gopher user sites by following links to the Gopher servers that host them.
One of the largest collections of Gopher user sites can be found by following the Link on Floodgap labeled "'Greatest hits': most recently verified Gopher servers". From there, follow the link labeled "sdf.org:70" to the Super-Dimensional Fortress (URL: gopher://sdf.org/1). There you will find many interesting phlogs and files. Gopher blogs are called phlogs. One interesting phlogger is Tomasino (gopher://sdf.org/1/users/tomasino/). Another is solderpunk (gopher://sdf.org/1/users/solderpunk/). There are also may others. So, have fun and explore!
For more interesting reading in gopherspace, try these:
Final Words
I've given you all the information you need to start navigating through gopherspace, but I haven't explained how to create your own Gopher site and write content for other people to read. You should be able to pick that up easily enough if you become really excited about Gopher.
One of the things you will notice about gopherspace is the speed with which you can move around in it. Gopher is faster than the World Wide Web because opening Gopher pages doesn't entail downloading megabytes of Javascipt and no SSL handshaking occurs. The lack of SSL in gopherspace is not a problem because no one is spying on you in gopherspace the way they are on the web. Just for the fun of it, I tried navigating around gopherspace using my seventeen-year-old Dell Latitude D400 with a 32-bit, Pentium M CPU. It was so fast that it was an absolute pleasure!
Have fun exploring gopherspace!
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My Search for Alternative Social Networks
6-12-2019
Giant social network websites like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Google Plus have some significant problems. One is that users have no real control over anything that happens there and, therefore, often zero recourse when they are treated unfairly. The way users are treated is completely at the whims of the companies that own these sites. And, as with nearly all giant corporations, virtually any employee that a user may manage to contact couldn't care less about the effects of the company's actions on individual users. Remember, users are not customers, they are the product. Customers pay to advertise to users and to buy users' data. One alternative social network user whose post I read recently, called mainstream social network users "the cattle of the Internet".
My Experience with Reddit
Here is my personal example of what I mean. About six weeks ago, I was shadow-banned from Reddit. This means I could see my posts and comments, but no one else could. Despite Reddit's written policy stating that anyone who is banned be given an explanation for this action, I never was. After my repeated requests over the month after my ban, I finally received this message from /u/abrownn, a moderator of the technology subreddit, "You're not shadow-banned any more it seems." That was his full message. So, the shadow-ban was lifted without explanation. I don't know why I was banned, and I don't know why the ban was lifted.
As a result of this treatment by Reddit, and also as a result of the many Facebook privacy scandals that we've been reading about in the news, I decided to find some alternatives for my social network "needs". First, I should explain that, as something of an introvert, I have never been interested in using Facebook. So, I have no direct experience with it, and therefore, I can't make knowledgeable comparisons between Facebook and other social networks. Nevertheless, I will do my best to describe the results of my search for alternative social networks.
What I want in a Social Network
In no particular order, here is a list of features that I feel are desirable in an alternative social network. Call it a user's Bill of Rights.
Features to Look for in an Alternative Social Network
The option for anonymity (pseudonymous user names allowed, and no mandatory collection of user's personal data)
Privacy (no tracking or linking of users to their IP addresses)
Security
Users having a significant say in how the network is run
A network that cannot be shut down by companies or governments
Users cannot be banned
All users are "equal" (i.e. the system cannot be gamed)
Ease of use
A sense of community
Works with Linux
Many believe that alternative social networks are doomed to fail. And, as much as I hate to, I have to admit that many of their arguments seem cogent. The crux of many of these arguments is two-fold. First, most users of social networks are technically unsophisticated and just don't want to spend the time to learn how to use alternatives to their favorite social network websites. While I understand this, I have also found that most of the alternatives are no harder to use than the mainstream social networks. They are just different. The second argument, and the most persuasive, is that there aren't many people using alternative social networks. This is true, and this will be a huge problem for Facebook users whose friends are all on Facebook. But for Reddit users, this is not as much of a problem, because Reddit is not as much oriented around individuals as it is around information. If the information pool provided by the users is sufficiently large, and if it is presented in an easily-digestible format, nothing else matters. As a result, in my opinion, Reddit has much more to fear from competitors in the near future than does Facebook.
Over the last month, I have investigated some of the larger and more well-known alternative social networks: Minds, Voat (now defunct), Diaspora, ZeroNet, Raddle, Mix, 4Chan, 8Chan, and Slashdot. I also investigated Steemit; however, my consideration of Steemit ended when I learned that I either had to pay $4 to join Steemit (plus another $2 fee, if I paid with bitcoin) or hand over my phone number. In my mind, a major point in the favor of alternative social networks is the level of anonymity they afford their users. Regardless of the ostensible reason, being forced to reveal a phone number vaporizes even the pretense of anonymity. The rest of this article details what I learned about the other social networks in my above list.
Centralized and Decentralized Social Networks:
Social networks fall into two broad categories, "centralized" and "decentralized" (or "distributed"). Centralized social networks are hosted on the computers of the organizations that run them. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus are centralized social networks. Centralized alternative social networks potentially suffer from all of the problems of the major well-known centralized social networks. The only difference is that the alternative social networks are not currently large enough to be throwing their weight around and ignoring their users. But, if they ever grow enough to dominate their market, that will most likely happen. The major advantage of centralized networks is that users don't have to install any software on their computers to use them. Usually, you just point your Internet browser to one of their websites, create an account, log on, and you're in.
The centralized alternative social networks that I have tried are Raddle, Voat, 4chan, 8chan, Slashdot, and Mix. As I've said, I also investigated Steemit, but did not create an account. I also looked at other centralized networks that I won't mention because they either have too few users or don't meet enough of the wants that I listed above. However, so many alternative social networks exist that I didn't try to experiment with them all, so you may explore the outskirts of the Internet and find a good one that I missed.
Decentralized alternative social networks are hosted on individual user's computers. This means, in theory, that they cannot be controlled or shut down by some central authority, like a company or a government. In theory, they are run by their users. However, practice and theory may be two different things. On some decentralized social networks, users can still be banned and their posts blocked. Sometimes this can be accomplished by a single user who hosts content, and sometimes it takes a concerted effort by several major users. In addition, social network software can be written to reside on individual users' computers, yet be controlled in some esoteric ways by a central server. Without being a knowledgeable programmer who is willing to wade through tens of thousands of lines of code or more, an individual user will have no insight into who is really controlling a network, or who could control it in the future. Future versions of code can always be subverted if the financial reward is high enough. What I am trying to emphasize is that there is really no way for an average user to know for sure if a particular decentralized network is as free from interference as it claims, perhaps until some company or government pays for a thorough code review.
Speaking of being shutdown by a government, there is some good news where ZeroNet is concerned. Journalists reported recently that ZeroNet was shutdown by the Chinese government. However, this is not actually true. What really happened is that the Chinese government blocked ZeroNet's website on the clearnet (the Internet we are all familiar with) to prevent its citizens from downloading the ZeroNet code that runs on users computers. However, the functioning of the ZeroNet network and its accessibility by all its current users in China are not affected. At least, Chinese users are unaffected until they need to use a newer version of the ZeroNet software. Until then, their connections to the ZeroNet network should work just fine. And, current Chinese users of ZeroNet should be able to pass (via sneakernet) their current ZeroNet software to as many of their friends as want it. So, ZeroNet appears to have passed its first test.
The two decentralized social networks that I experimented with were ZeroNet and Diaspora. Despite China's failed attempt, knowledgeable users of ZeroNet claim that users can be banned and have their posts and data removed from the network. If this is not true, I urge someone smart at ZeroNet to explain this to me, and I'll change what I've written here. I'm talking about more than just having a list of "bad" websites published where users can refer to it. This seems completely reasonable to me. I'm talking about preventing users who desire to access specific content from accessing the content of banned users.
The Most Promising Centralized Networks I have Tried:
The following centralized social networks do not require users to sign up for an account to see their content: Raddle, Voat, 4chan, 8chan, Slashdot, and Mix. Both 4chan and 8chan allow unregistered users to post content, but on Raddle, Voat, Slashdot, and Mix users must have an account to create posts, up-vote content, and make comments.
Minds and Steemit are the two centralized networks I investigated that require users to create accounts just to see content.
Summary of Advantages and Disadvantages of Each Alternative Centralized Social Network:
Raddle: Similar to Reddit. Long list of forums on specific topics. Perhaps only five to ten thousand users. Doesn't seem to have a problem with self-promotion, if the content is relevant. Significantly easier to use than Reddit.
Voat (now defunct): Similar to Reddit. Maybe one to two hundred thousand users, but most don't seem to be active. Doesn't seem to have a problem with self-promotion, if the content is relevant. Lots of swearing and hate speech, but on the flip-side of that coin is the fact that users are definitely able speak their minds. Long list of "subverses" (forums on specific topics).
4chan: Geared for those with very short attention spans. Most posts are pictures or memes. Very little in-depth discussion. Posts seem to have very short shelf lives.
8chan: Much like 4chan.
Slashdot: Similar to Reddit, but far fewer users. More geared to the scientific and technical crowds. I received the distinct impression that there is heavy moderation here. My account stopped letting me log in after about 10 days, so there may be software or database problems.
Minds: About a million users. Most content is of the picture and video variety. Fewer substantial news stories than on Reddit. Content sometimes seems slow to load. Limited number of forums. There appears to be a medium-sized learning curve here. I had trouble locating and following content in the fire hose of posts. Maybe that is just due to my lack of experience here.
Mix: Doesn't appear to have forums on specific topics. Apparently, Mix will only let users login with their Google, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon account. That killed Mix for me. As far as I am concerned, the point of alternative social networks is to avoid mainstream social networks, not to integrate them into my alternative social network accounts! I would have liked to have put another ten exclamation points at the end of that sentence.
Steemit: Influential users known as "whales" can control what everyone is seeing by displaying their posts in the most prominent locations and relegating the posts of less influential users to outlying areas where no one will see them. This is no better than the situation at mainstream social networks. And, as I've said, I will not give my phone number to Steemit.
The Decentralized Networks I have Joined:
As I said previously, the decentralized networks I've tried are ZeroNet and Diaspora. I could also include Friendica because the Diaspora "pod" on which I created my account runs Friendica software.
ZeroNet
I think ZeroNet comes the closest to complying with my above list of desirable features for alternative social networks. I wrote an entire article on my impressions as a new user of ZeroNet here. One of the ways ZeroNet protects users' privacy is by letting them use the TOR browser to hide their true IP addresses. And, users don't have to give away any personal information to join ZeroNet, not even their true names. Users can also create their own websites on ZeroNet for free, in fact the ZeroNet developers encourage everyone to do so. In a way I only vaguely understand, ZeroNet uses bitcoin technology to assign IP addresses to user's websites and distribute them across other users' (or peers') computers. This is supposed to make ZeroNet less subject to interference from those who might desire to control or kill it.
I can't begin to describe the flexibility that ZeroNet users enjoy, thanks to their ability to create their own websites. Did I mention that users can create websites on ZeroNet for Free? As anyone knows who has read much on cheapskatesguide.org, free is very important to me. The ability of users to create their own websites on ZeroNet makes ZeroNet like a whole new Internet, though currently on a much smaller scale. Unfortunately, although ZeroNet websites can run JavaScript, they can't run PHP code. This is the major reason that I have not mirrored this website on ZeroNet. Okay, perhaps it's also due to my uncertainty about whether I would need to have my own dedicated, 24/7 server. And, there is the fact that ZeroNet sites can be accessed from the clearnet. I know because I have found some of my postings there in Google searches. I'm not sure about the effects of that on SEO ratings. Honestly, though, Google doesn't bring enough traffic to cheapskatesguide.org to pay attention to. I talked about this issue in an earlier article. I guess the fact that Google searches ZeroNet websites technically means ZeroNet is not part of the dark web.
The downside of ZeroNet is that, at any given time, there are only in the neighborhood of a thousand users on line. This means two things. First, you won't find anywhere near the number or variety of postings that you would on Reddit. Second, since ZeroNet is hosted on the computers of its users, few users on line means much of the data in individual websites may not be available at any given time. This is most noticeable in book and movie download sites, as most book and movie files are not available a large percentage of the time. I haven't experimented with downloading music, but I assume the same applies.
Diaspora
Diaspora is a GNU-AGPL-3.0 open-source social network that is much like a stripped-down version of Facebook. With Diaspora, you open an account on a Diaspora "pod", which is a computer that is running the Diaspora (or similar open-source) software. Pods are run by those users who volunteer to do so. Any user can create his own pod. To use Diaspora, you open your Internet browser and log on to the clearnet website that corresponds to the particular pod on which you have created an account. You never need to use any software other than your favorite Internet browser to access Diaspora. The pod I signed up with is social.linuxlusers.com. Diaspora has a website on the clearnet that displays a list of currently-available pods and their URL's.
Diaspora is globally linked to the following other open-source, distributed social networks: Friendica, Mastodon, Activity Pub, and Pleroma. In fact, the Diaspora "pod" I happend to open an account on apparently runs Friendica software, so technically, I joined Friendica without knowing it. There may be other, less-well-known linked networks also, but the afore-mentioned are the ones of which I am aware. A Linux Magazine article claims that Friendica is also linked to Facebook and Google Plus. I have seen no evidence of this, but I still have a lot to learn about Friendica, so it is possible that I've missed this. Regardless, thanks to the linking with other social networks, from Diaspora you can see posts that users of the other linked open-source social networks have chosen to make visible to every one on all the linked networks. The ability to link to other open-source social networks appears to mean that the growth potential of open-source social networks is unlimited. I think this is a brilliant solution to the problem of a large social network becoming unresponsive to its users. Since many open-source software programs can run on the conglomerate social network, intelligent users should see the value of switching away from programs that become unresponsive to their needs. This should mean that unresponsive open-source social media networks should die off and be replaced by more responsive ones.
Due to the collection of a small number of users on each pod, which is in turn linked to all the other pods on a particular open-source network, which is in turn linked to the other open-source networks, this whole arrangement reminds me of the old bulletin-board days before the Internet. That system, though technically still in existence (it's being reinvigorated by some of the old-timers with the original hardware and software), was very effectively replaced by the modern Internet. Only time will tell if this new system of linked, open-source social networks will be replaced by something else. Whatever happens, it should be fascinating to watch.
I found Diaspora (technically, Friendica) to be somewhat difficult to use. The documentation didn't go beyond simple explanations of the basics, and I had no idea how to contact a system administrator to ask questions. Perhaps with more perseverance or help I might have solved these issues.
Summary
My search for alternative social networks over the past month has lead me to some realizations. First, many alternative social networks exist. Some seem difficult to use, but many are no more difficult to use than the mainstream social networks, some even less so.
I liked Raddle, Voat, and ZeroNet for their content, ease of use, and general sense of community. The rest I didn't care for much. I might have liked Diaspora, if I could have solved my posting issue.
Another problem with alternative social networks is that, with the exception of minds, they are small. This means the content is limited. And, it means most people will not want to move there.
I see the most potential in ZeroNet, due to its decentralized network, active developers, ease of use, and flexibility (anyone can create their own website). I can only explain the small number of users as a result of the mainstream news media's anxiety surrounding the "dark web". If you are one of those who are afraid of the dark web, I urge you to overcome that fear and get a taste of the freedom that can be found there. Personally, I find ZeroNet's potential exciting, but I am also fine with the fact that millions of people have not flocked to it and turned it into another commercialized Reddit/Youtube/Google/Amazon network. It seems that, with enough money, anything is corruptible.
If you want to move to an alternative social network, don't expect to follow your friends there. You will have to be the trail blazer. You will have to put forth the effort to convince your friends of the wisdom of following you. With the vast majority's lack of concern about privacy and security, that will be an extremely tough sell. Perhaps, feeling a kinship with the likes of Lewis and Clark, you will have to strike out on your own and wait for "the cattle of the Internet" to catch up, if they ever do.
ZeroNet and the Future of the Internet
5-8-2019
Until recently, the conventional wisdom was that the Internet is beyond the control of governments. How naive the conventional wisdom sometimes is. The thoughtlessness behind this position is beginning to be obvious to even the most naive as China becomes more successful at using it's "Great Firewall" to isolate its people from any website of which it does not approve and Russia experiments with "shutting down its Internet connection". As long as governments can seize a server, the building in which it is housed, a bank account, or a body, nothing that is done with these things is entirely beyond its control. A thing is only beyond the reach of governments when governments cannot find that thing or identify the person who owns it.
One of the latest battles against governmental electronic intrusion into our lives via the Internet is being fought with peer-to-peer networks. These are computer networks that are designed to look superficially like the Internet while putting our files and online identities back into our own hands, where one would suppose few governments would go to the trouble of looking for them. It is anyone's guess as to what these networks may eventually look like, how popular they may become, or how governments may one day gain control over them. But, for now, peer-to-peer networks are an active and on-going experiment in freedom.
Whether unfortunately or not, the typical Internet denizen is so used to inhabiting the World Wide Web, thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, that he has likely never considered relocating anywhere else, nor would he know where to begin, nor is he likely, without significant hand-holding, to make the effort any time soon. It is for these reasons that I decided to experience a peer-to-peer network for myself and write an article about it. This is a summary of my efforts and my first experiences with the ZeroNet peer-to-peer network, or any peer-to-peer network. Yes, I am a peer-to-peer network newbie.
Those of you who are not immediately interested in the mechanics of setting up the ZeroNet software on your computers and connecting to the network may skip down to the section of this article entitled, "The ZeroNet Peer-to-Peer network: A Quick Tour".
Setting up the ZeroNet Software and Establishing a Connection:
When it comes to the Internet, I am strictly a Linux user. So, of course, I selected the Linux version of ZeroNet to install on my computer. The ZeroNet software and installation instructions for Windows, Mac, and Linux can be found here and here. Had I bothered to read the instructions carefully, I would have saved myself an hour or two of trying to get the ZeroNet software to believe that my TOR browser is my default browser in order to automatically bring it up. It is far from obvious to me how to select a default browser in Linux Mint 17, despite the fact that I have been using Linux Mint since the Linux Mint 7 days. I said I was a peer-to-peer network newbie, not a Linux newbie. Fortunately, the ZeroNet documentation explains how to start the ZeroNet software and then bring up the TOR browser manually so that they function together.
Here is how to set up everything and connect to ZeroNet. First, if you don't have the TOR browser on your computer, download and install it. Now, begin the ZeroNet software setup process by downloading the 15 MB "ZeroBundle" package from the first website that I referenced above. In Linux, this can be accomplished by typing the following command (all on one line) at the Linux command line:
wget https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroBundle/raw/
master/dist/ZeroBundle-linux64.tar.gz
Then, continue the installation by uncompressing the file in a suitable location on your hard drive:
tar -xvpfz ZeroBundle-linux64.tar.gz
Now, make sure your computer is connected to the Internet, and then start the application:
cd ZeroBundle
./ZeroNet.sh
It goes without saying that this process would be different in Windows.
Now, with the ZeroNet Software running and your computer connected to the Internet, bring up and configure the TOR browser as follows:
Configuring the TOR Browser for ZeroNet
Start the TOR browser.
Type into the browser's URL line: about:preferences​#advanced
Scroll down to the Network Proxy section and click on the "Settings..." button.
Enter 127.0.0.1 into the "No proxy for" text box and leave the rest of the settings as they are by default.
Type http://127.0.0.1:43110 in the browser's URL Line, and hit the "enter" key.
The ZeroNet main page (the page that says, "Hello Zeronet_" in the upper left-hand corner) should now come up in your TOR browser. You are now connected to ZeroNet. There are further instructions in the second reference that I gave above about how to ensure that your TOR browser is actually connecting through the TOR network. Since I haven't bothered to follow them, yet, my browser isn't. But, for maximum privacy, follow the instructions.
The ZeroNet Peer-to-Peer Network: A Quick Tour
Near the upper left-hand corner of the ZeroNet main page are three tabs: SITES, FILES, and STATS. Clicking on the SITES tab brings up a page with links to the main ZeroNet sites on the left. Here are links to sites like ZeroTalk (Reddit-like posts with comments), ZeroMe (a social network), ZeroMail (encrypted email), ZeroSites (hundreds of links to other sites on ZeroNet), ZeroBlog (recent news about ZeroNet), and ZeroUp (for uploading and downloading files). Clicking on the "activate" button next to a site link downloads the data files associated with that site to your ZeroBundle directory on your computer. You then have access to that site's main page, generally subject to a 10 MB limit. When the 10 MB limit is about to be exceeded, you are prompted to raise the limit. If you don't, no more data from that site will be downloaded until you do. Once data is downloaded, it is automatically available to be served from your computer to other users of ZeroNet.
Clicking on the "activate" button next to the ZeroTalk link brings up the titles of posts on ZeroTalk on the right-hand side of the page. Apparently, the contents of the posts are not downloaded until you click on individual post titles. The ZeroTalk interface is not as flexible as Reddit's, but it works for the roughly 2000 posts that are presently on ZeroTalk. Scrolling down the list of post titles, I would guess there are somewhere between three and eight posts per day--nothing compared to the hundreds of posts per day that can be found on Reddit. As with Reddit, the number of comments on a post are displayed, and readers have the opportunity to up-vote posts and their comments.
In a previous ZeroNet session, when I clicked on the "activate" button beside ZeroMail, it looked like the meta data for thousands of emails, and perhaps the contents also, was downloaded to my computer. This was much more than the usual 10MB limit, more like 200 MB. An account must be set up before ZeroMail can be used, however.
I was taken to the main list of links to ZeroNet websites when I activated and then clicked on the ZeroSites link. I guess I shouldn't technically call them "websites", since they aren't on the world wide web. But, that is the terminology people are used to, so I'll continue using it. On the ZeroSites main page, next to the link to each website is an icon which appears to represent how many people have visited that website. I do not know if these icons represent unique visitors or total numbers of all-time visits, but I would guess the former. Or, the icons could represent the numbers of visitors currently on each website. Based on scrolling past many of these links, I would guess that there are several thousand people who have visited or are currently visiting ZeroNet's English-speaking sites. There are sites in 16 different languages, and visitors can select the language(s) of the sites they want to be displayed. I noticed during a previous visit to ZeroSites that one website contained thousands of recent ebooks in epub format, and another site contained at least hundreds of commercial movies of all vintages, many in HD format. I never reached the end of either list. There is also music. For experimental purposes, I decided to try to view a movie, but the attempt was unsuccessful. Clearly, I have more to learn about ZeroNet.
Predictably for a peer-to-peer network that is designed to enhance anonymity and be impossible to shut down, ZeroNet has it's seedy side. I noticed a handful of sites that appeared to be selling drugs, or perhaps just discussing them, and there were many pornography sites. In fact, an entire section on the ZeroSites main page is devoted to pornography. I didn't visit any of these sites, so I can't comment on them. I did, however, see a good bit of profanity--at something like the level that can be found on Reddit alternatives like voat.co. So, if these things bother you, you may want to stay away from ZeroNet.
After having deleted ZeroNet entirely to fix a bug that prevented me from connecting to the network, then re-installing ZeroNet, and activating only the basic sites that I discussed above, I clicked on the STATS button in the upper left-hand corner of the main page. On the STATS page, I saw that I had downloaded about 19 MB of data since reinstallation and other users had obtained slightly more than 2 MB of data from me. Data is served from your computer to other users, as long as you are running ZeroNet. Everything you've looked at (every blog article, every website, every picture, every file, etc.) is saved to your hard drive until you delete it. This means you can use ZeroNet entirely off line as long as you stick to viewing things that you have previously viewed. By the way, you can easily delete any previously downloaded ZeroNet data file or site to save space on your hard drive. On the STATS page, in the lower right-hand corner, is displayed the number of people, or "peers", currently connected to ZeroNet (616, as I write this on a Tuesday at noon).
This brings us to the documentation on the ZeroNet network itself. The good news is that there is a sufficient quantity of it to cover most of the basics. But not every answer to every question is available in one place. This reminds me of the early days of the Internet before everyone was expected to somehow instinctively know how to use it. ZeroBlog is filled with explanatory information, and there is a ZeroNet documentation site, easily identifiable by its name "ZeroNet documentation". Several areas of ZeroNet contain talk about ZeroNet itself--technical detains of how it works, how it's running, what should be changed, what sites have been banned, and how people who use the network are reacting to it. I think having a lot of information about ZeroNet for newbies like me is a good thing, but I suspect it will decline somewhat as ZeroNet matures. Still, I was unable to find an answer to my question about the meaning of the "people" icons on the ZeroSites main page--whether they represent total visits, visits by unique people, or current visitors.
For the benefit of those of you who like creating your own websites, I should mention that ZeroNet allows, even encourages you, to do so. And, you pay no fees to a domain name registrar or for website hosting! It has always bothered me that my domain name registrar pays 14 cents a year to list my domain name with ICANN, but I pay about $14 a year to reserve it with my domain name registrar. You can find documentation on ZeroNet about how to create websites.
This should be enough information for you to get the general flavor of ZeroNet. As ZeroNet is still under development, there are problems with it, some of which I will discuss in the next section.
ZeroNet Issues:
Although ZeroNet is quite usable and user friendly, there are several issues I noticed during my brief experimentation with it. I have already mentioned that at some point the software stopped allowing me to connect to the ZeroNet netork in the TOR browser until I deleted and reinstalled it. I think this happened right after I deleted the downloaded data associated with ZeroTalk.
Next, using ZeroNet requires disk space for what some may consider to be large amounts of downloaded data. People who are used to downloading Netflix movies for hour after hour in the evenings would, no doubt, disagree. Regardless, you must expect to download and store data on your hard drive, given that ZeroNet is a peer-to-peer network that hosts part of the network's data on each user's computer. I did not see a way of limiting the amount of data served from my computer to other users, but I'm not sure that is a bad thing.
Something else that I didn't like was the fact that html pages that have been saved to my hard drive seem to be all text with poor formating when viewed in a browser. This means that for downloaded webpages to be truly useful later, you would have to view them via your personal off-line ZeroNet. Thus, you can't easily share downloaded webpages with friends or store them on a USB stick to document a project, which is the way I often document my projects.
Another significant issue is that many ZeroNet websites are either poorly designed or are downloading malware to users' computers. I can't say which. The symptom of this is that I frequently found sites freezing my browser, and one site froze my computer to the point where I was forced to hold down the "off" button and reboot it. This could be why several sites on ZeroNet display lists of bad websites. Although there could be fewer freezes and crashes using Windows, I'm not sure I would be comfortable trusting Windows to protect me from either malware or unintended file corruption as a result of visiting some of these sites.
I'm sure I'll see more issues after I've used ZeroNet longer, but the only other concern I want to raise at this time is over ZeroNet's overall layout. ZeroNet is usable at it's current size, but my guess is that it will soon outgrow its layout. For example, there is a search box for searching for keywords in the titles of ZeroTalk posts, but I didn't find a good search engine for all of ZeroNet's content. Don't get me wrong, there were keyword search engines, but most only searched website and article titles for keywords. The only search engine that I found that searched the contents of websites was called "Zirch Automated Search". While Zirch did work, it took a long time to bring up webpages that I clicked on--up to a minute or two. This may just have been the time required to find and gather old files from the computers of several users scattered around the world. But, the bottom line is that I didn't like using Zirch, because of its sluggishness. Also, search results using the "search" box in ZeroTalk do not give any indication of how many search results there are; you just have to scroll down until you reach the end.
Not having a good search engine for any collection of websites numbering more than a thousand likely means being tempted to stick to just favorite websites and not engage in much exploration. Currently, the predominant method of finding websites seems to be by scrolling through long lists of them on the ZeroSites main page. This navigation method is totally unacceptable for a potential future collection of tens of thousands, let alone millions, of websites. Fortunately, work on ZeroNet software is active.
Overall Impressions of ZeroNet and Some General Questions:
In some ways, ZeroNet is like the Internet of the early nineties, but in others it is far more sophisticated. The layouts of the blogs and other websites is modern, and users can chat, read the latest ebooks, and view the latest movies in HD format. But the contents of many of the blogs seem like a throwback to the nineties. There is no way to avoid profanity. Okay, maybe that is not so different from some modern websites, like voat.co. ZeroNet simply has lists of good and bad websites, rather than any "official" intervention--at least that I can see. Some websites likely contain malware. Many websites are nothing more than placeholders--like the early days of the Internet, when companies were still thinking about what to do with it. And, refreshingly, there is a lot of discussion of how ZeroNet works.
Several questions about how peer-to-peer networks will ultimately fit in with the rest of the Internet come to my mind. Will they continue to be largely ignored by the general population, who seem to be willing to trade away privacy and freedom in exchanged for bureaucratic corporate and governmental curation, with the removal of anything they find even slightly distasteful? Will peer-to-peer networks become isolated islands, which only those of us who value privacy and freedom occupy and never want to leave? Or will they become simply "other" websites to which we flit back an forth to as the urge finds us, the way we do with most mainstream websites today. Will governments find ways of making peer-to-peer networks useless by cracking their security? Or, will governments simply declare them illegal, thereby discouraging all but the most ardent searchers for freedom from visiting them?
ZeroNet does contain lively discussions about many of these issues. For example, one perceptive person wrote this: "I just think that we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that technology can never solve problems that are ultimately political in nature, no matter how computer savvy you are... because powerful governments like the US will always find a way to outsmart you with their own hackers and engineers." I also noticed that there is a fierce dichotomy between those who want to attract more people to ZeroNet and those who want it to remain their own little desert island oasis. They feel that they have escaped from the mainland, and they don't want crowds following them, and bringing their governments and governmental regulations with them.
I can't answer many of the above questions with certainty. But, I can say that at a time when the Internet itself seems to be becoming less free and more corporatised into a white-bread or MacDonald's hamburger type of sameness, peer-to-peer networks offer a welcome variety and experiences that are disappearing elsewhere.
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What I Learned about the Internet by Creating My Own Website
12-19-2018
Shark Fishing: Throughout history the rich and powerful have always managed to pigeon hole the masses into the boxes they wanted them in. With the Internet, we had a brief window of opportunity to change that, but now the window is closing. And it's no one's fault but our own. We are the ones who have been eager to throw away our freedom in exchange for a few figurative strings of beads. We are the ones who have allowed the giant corporations to corral us into their websites and lead us to believe that everywhere else on the Internet is unsafe. And we are the ones who, in exchange for illusionary safety, have allowed governments to pass more and more laws making Internet freedom more and more difficult.
What the Internet Used to Look Like:
I remember what the Internet was like in the late '80's and early '90's. In 1985 I sent my first email to someone else on the university's computer network. I think I used the command-line email program called "pine". I remember using the "gopher" command-line search engine to look for my first job. There was no graphical Internet back then, because there were no Internet browsers. A few years later, what we now know as the Internet was mostly called the "World Wide Web". That's why we have the "www" at the beginning of many URL's. The Internet was still composed mostly of the websites of hobbyists linked together by telephone lines. Company upper-level managers were just beginning to wonder if they could make some money from it. As such, the Internet was so varied that is was hard to characterize. I remember thinking back then what a great potential existed and how I could hardly wait for more people to start using it and making it more useful.
Before the "Internet" was a word that most people knew, we had Bulletin Boards Services (BBS). A BBS was a computer connected to a telephone line via a modem. Hobbyists created BBSes and filled them mostly with free software, online games, forums, and local email. If you wanted to connect to their computer, you didn't go through an ISP, you called them directly. Long distance service was expensive back then, so you were limited to connecting to BBSes with local phone numbers. That meant you usually had to live in a big city to have access to one or more BBSes. For a fee, BBSes provided limited, world-wide email capability. But there weren't many people you could email back in those days. Back then, anyone was welcome on the Internet. There were no real rules or laws governing what you could do. It wasn't even illegal to hack into someone else's computer network and create whatever havoc you could think of.
The Internet really began in earnest in the early '90's. Companies like America Online and Compuserve became the first ISP's by making it possible for people to connect to the global computer network by dialing a free local phone number. Technically, ISP's began in 1989, but it took a few years for significant numbers of people to start using them. Many of the first websites were nothing more than BBSes that had migrated to the Internet. The Internet grew mostly because commercial companies found ways to offer Internet services that people wanted: first, information and email; later, social networking and shopping; even later, VOIP telephone services, music, movies and all the other great stuff we have now.
What the Internet Looks Like Now:
The Internet is a very different place now. I recently learned just how different by creating my own website. Now, if you want to have anyone visit your website, you have to please the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers are the search engine providers, the most influential being Google. Unless you are some kind of celebrity, search engine traffic will most likely account for more than 90% of the traffic to your website. So, if Google doesn't like you, very few people ever see your website. And, if my experience is typical, Google very likely won't tell you why it doesn't like you. It just doesn't send anyone to your website. Oh, there are some vague statements that Google makes from time to time, and there are companies that make money by interpreting those vague statements. And, Google provides some tools that it claims will help you. But the bottom line is that Google doesn't have to tell you anything. I have no way of knowing whether writing an article critical of Google will affect my search results, because Google doesn't say. For me that's not a problem for two reasons: 1) my website can't possibly be ranked any lower that it already is, and 2) I'm not trying to make a living off this website. But, if you are trying to start a business on the Internet, Google not liking you means your business is over. Period. One of the major criteria that Google says it uses to decide who to list high in its search results is the amount of traffic to their website. In other words, if you have a new website with no significant traffic, it is likely that you never will have any significant traffic. In fact, given that cheapskatesguide.org is a very new website, if you are reading this article in December of 2018, when I wrote it, you are literally one of a handful of people on the planet Earth who will see it then.
Another tactic being employed against individuals who create websites is the SSL/TLS security certificate. Google has decided that "secure" HTTPS websites are preferable to "unsecure" HTTP websites. So, they are prioritizing HTTPS websites in their search results. And, if you try to create an HTTPS website that doesn't meet Google's security requirements, they throw up a page warning visitors that your website is not secure and asking whether they want to continue or leave. Not knowing any better, about 80% of visitors choose to leave. To become an HTTPS website, you have to get an SSL/TLS security certificate. And guess what? In order to get one, you have to "prove" that you deserve it and pay a fee. (The one fee-less certification authority is Let's Encrypt. Thank you Internet Security Research Group and Electronic Frontier Fondation.) This is a bit like being searched by the TSA at the airport. In my opinion, it's all just a big show that doesn't really do much, if anything at all, to deter someone who wants to scam you. One reason is that you are still relying on human beings who run the certification organizations to be trustworthy and vigilant, and we have already seen examples where they weren't. (See here, here, and here.) The current fees and level of proof are not the major issue. The major issue is that once we allow ourselves to be put into this box, the fees and level of proof can be raised to whatever level the controlling organizations decide. They can be raised so high that individuals can no longer afford to have their own websites. At this point, everyday people like you and I will have been completely relegated to the role of consumers of the Internet, rather than true participants in it. We will be right back in the box the rich and powerful want us in.
The point I am trying to illustrate is that the Internet is now a highly controlled place. If you want more than a tiny trickle of traffic on your website, you have to write and display your webpages the way Google wants. If you want traffic, you better not link any of your webpages to websites that Google doesn't like, or it will lower your website in its search rankings. It's sort of like being an unpopular kid in high school. But, if you are trying to run a business, this kind of unpopularity can bankrupt you. I think this kind of gatekeeper control over the Internet has had a hand in turning the competition for website traffic into a feeding frenzy like sharks fighting over chum. This is why you very rarely see a hobbyist's website on the Internet any more. Hobbyists can't afford to hire consultants to tell them how to rank high in search results.
In addition to the gatekeepers, governments are strengthening their control of the Internet with new laws coming out seemingly every month that limit what you can do on the Internet. An example is the new European law concerning what websites have to reveal about the information they collect from their visitors (which I am mostly in favor of). But there are also far less rational laws being passed. These days, if you say something wrong to the wrong person on the Internet, you can be prosecuted for "cyber-bullying" and sent to jail. As if cyber-bullying is somehow worse than the regular kind of bullying. Kids sending each other revealing pictures can be theoretically locked up for child pornography. This can potentially happen to a teenage girl sending a picture of herself to her boyfriend. But what would you expect in a country where public urination, simply because someone has to empty their bladder and can't find a public restroom, can be a sex crime? Perhaps the worst thing is that the politicians of the world have finally found ways of preventing people they don't like from speaking out against them. They simply intimidate the gatekeepers into shutting off our Internet access to those speaking out--China's intimidation of Google being the best example. And many of the rest of us who aren't even engaged in political speech are afraid to search for certain things on the Internet for fear that the NSA or some other governmental entity is watching us. This means that free speech is being effectively shut down on the Internet. If no one can hear anything you're saying, or if they are afraid to search for your website, then you have no speech--free or otherwise. (See here.)
The Future of the Internet:
The trends of increasing control over the Internet resulting in the lessening of free speech seem to be worsening. Not only are large companies, controlling who can be found online, but governments are increasingly finding ways of silencing online political dissension through policies and regulations less and less respectful of free speech. And because these institutions now have more control than ever over the Internet, meaning more control over what you and I see on the Internet, there will be less free speech there. This trend doesn't have to continue. If we decide to do something about this, we can. But, my prediction is that we won't. I base that on my view of one aspect of human nature. That is, for 99% of us, rather than standing up for ourselves and solving the problems we see around us, we wait for someone else to do it for us. Unfortunately, in the case of the Internet, the problem solvers--organizations like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft--are now the ones causing the problems, as well as solving them. And that does not bode well for the average person who simply wants to speak the truth and find the truth on the Internet--or just find anything on the Internet that isn't sanctioned by the gatekeepers.
How to Access the Interplanetary File System
7-8-2019
The Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer, distributed computer network that can be accessed from the Internet. Some might call it a new Internet separate from the regular Internet. In a peer-to-peer network, computers talk to each other directly, rather than through a central server. This makes peer-to-peer networks much less susceptible to censorship of information. In 2017, when the Turkish government declared Wikipedia to be a threat to its national security and blocked it in Turkey, a turkish-language copy of Wikipedia was put on the IPFS. Although development of the IPFS is still on-going, and issues still need to be resolved, anyone can use the IPFS for free right now to access information or even to create their own static website, without paying domain name registration fees.
In this article, I will explain how to install software onto your computer for accessing the IPFS and show how to access information stored on the IPFS. I'll leave a tutorial on creating IPFS websites for another time.
Installing the IPFS Desktop onto Your Computer
Since many novice computer users are not completely comfortable installing random software from the Internet onto their computers, I'll try to give some of the details they may need to successfully install the IPFS software. First, the IPFS software runs on Windows, Apple, and Linux computers. There are two versions, the command line version and the GUI version. I'll assume that most people would rather run the GUI version, so that is the version on which I will focus our attention. But, if you prefer the command line version, called "go-ipfs", it can be found here. You do not have to install the command line version before installing the GUI version.
To install the GUI version of the IPFS software, called "IPFS desktop", go to this Github page on the Internet. Github code is opensource, so Github is generally considered a safe place from which to download code. I'm not sure about binaries (executable programs), however, so download at your own risk. Honestly, I doubt there is much risk associated with downloading this software from Github or in using it to access the IPFS. Linux users: go two-thirds of the way down the page to the Linux installation packages section, and select the package that is appropriate for your version of Linux. Windows 10 users: download the 64-bit binary of the IPFS desktop labeled "ipfs-desktop-setup-0.8.0.exe". If a newer version is available by the time you read this article, then install the newer version. A 32-bit binary version of the IPFS desktop does not appear to be available, so if you are running a 32-bit version of Windows, you will either have to run the 32-bit, command-line version of go-ipfs or download the source code for the IPFS desktop and compile it yourself.
On Windows, once "ipfs-desktop-setup-0.8.0.exe" is on your hard drive, double click on it to start the installation. When the blue IPFS desktop icon appears on your Windows desktop, the IPFS desktop has been installed.
Linux users: on Linux Mint 17, the IPFS desktop installs into the /opt/IPFS Desktop directory. When I installed the IPFS desktop onto my Linux machine, despite the fact that the deb package installation process produced a message that said all dependencies had been satisfied, libnss3 was missing. After I installed libnss3 (using "sudo apt-get install libnss3") and started running the IPFS desktop program, the IPFS desktop blue cube icon appeared on my task bar at the bottom of my monitor.
Running the IPFS Desktop
To run the IPFS desktop in Windows, just double click on its icon on your Windows desktop. Nothing appears to happen, but if you click on the appropriate icon on your Windows menu bar (for Windows 7, that's the icon that is used to eject USB devices), you will see the IPFS desktop's blue cube icon. Left click on that icon and select "status" to bring up the status page of IPFS panel that looks like this:
IPFS Status Panel
Except perhaps for the IPFS desktop's blue cube icon appearing in a different location on the task bar, the Windows and Linux versions of the IPFS desktop appear to work exactly the same. Some of the things the status page shows are:
The installed version of go-ipfs
The amount of storage space taken up on your computer's hard drive by IPFS content data files (should currently be something small, like 64 KB)
The number of peers (other computers currently on the IPFS network)
A history of the IPFS network traffic to and from your computer
I noticed a couple of other interesting things on the status page of the IPFS pannel. One was that a significant amount of traffic appeared as soon as I started running the IPFS desktop for the first time (like a few kb/s outgoing), when I would have thought nothing should have been happening. And, after 5 minutes or so, I had about 600 KB of IPFS content data files on my hard drive, according to the status page. Another thing I noticed was that the number of peers varied greatly, from less than ten at times to over 100 at other times. I don't know why this is, but I would guess that one of the things it means is that you may have to wait for a while before a peer comes on line that has a copy of the file you want.
Finding Content on the IPFS Network
There are three ways to access information on the IPFS network. The first is by clicking on the "explore" link on the left side of the IPFS desktop panel. Then click on one of the links to content that come up on the right side of the panel. Then click on the "view on IPFS gateway" link. Your Internet browser should come up and connect to the page you selected. This can take a while because the IPFS network can be slow at times. Glacially slow. Downloading a random 800 KB page took me 5 to 10 minutes. At other times, the IPFS network is just as fast as the regular Internet.
The second way to get to content on the IPFS is to bring up your regular Internet browser and copy and paste an IPFS document address (from wherever you may have found it) onto the browser's URL line. Naturally, the IPFS desktop must be running for this method to work. For example, by searching on the regular Internet on duckduckgo.com for "IPFS links", I found this IPFS link to an IPFS blog that explains how to host a website on IPFS: http://127.0.0.1:8080/ipfs/QmdPtC3T7Kcu9iJg6hYzLBWR5XCDcYMY7HV685E3kH3EcS/ . This is a link to an english language version of the Wikipedia main page on the IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/ . I noticed, however, that this page does not have a search field or any links to general topics like, art, history, and math. So, I don't know how to look up a specific topic on this IPFS-hosted version of Wikipedia. Here is a link to information about the IPFS team's goals for the IPFS version of Wikipedia: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/Qmb6SjJMzkqfKEZxXX5uET64fPkvHHoVUou84m3HAKbeZC/ . Regular Internet search engines can be used to find other IPFS websites and music and video files, including the copyrighted kind. However, given the length of time it sometimes takes data to download over the IPFS network, I question whether anyone would have the patience to wait around while an entire commercial movie downloads.
The third method of finding content on the IPFS is with an IPFS-dedicated search engine called IPFS Search. IPFS Search is a search engine on the regular Internet that gives links to information on the IPFS, just like a regular search engine. IPFS Search also displays information about the last time a particular link was successfully accessed. When you use it, you will see that most of the content that can be found through IPFS Search was last successfully accessed months ago and, therefore, is unlikely to be accessible now. Other than often having terse titles for listed content, the most noticeable problem with IPFS Search is that it has no description below the link to give you a better idea of what information is pointed to by the link. This means it can be difficult to tell whether the link is useful or not before you click on it.
Sources of Additional Information
Several good sources of information on the IPFS can be found on the regular Internet. This page gives a brief history of the IPFS network and explains the basics of how it works. A 66-page, pdf manual, called The Decentralized Web Primer is also available. This manual gives more details about the installation of the command line version of the IPFS software. It also contains detailed information about how to upload content to the IPFS. You can also find more documentation on the IPFS network here.
Last Words about the IPFS
From the little experience I've had using the IPFS, the speed at which information can be accessed seems so inconsistent that I can think of only three current uses for it: 1) creating a small, static website where you don't have to pay domain name registration fees or be concerned about your information being blocked by a government or Internet service provider, 2) accessing information that normally resides on a part of the Internet that is blocked in the country in which you live, or 3) doing something illegal, like downloading copyrighted material. While today the IPFS is often glacially slow, it may speed up as more people use it, but there is no guarantee of this.
One thing will become immediately apparent through the use of IPFS Search. That is that the IPFS does not currently contain much content, especially compared to the regular Internet. My guess is that the IPFS contains about as much now as the regular Internet did back in the very late 1980's, before most people even knew it existed. You can look at this in one of two ways. You can see it as depressing that the IPFS has so little content. Or, you can see it as exciting that you are one of the first to access this new version of the Internet that is virtually unknown to non-geeks. You may be able to watch it grow into something remarkable and life-changing, as the regular Internet has. Or, you may see it fail to come into wide-spread use and never live up to its potential. With all the efforts being made by various governments to cut off their countries' populations from parts of the Internet, my guess it that the former outcome is more likely than the latter.
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How to Avoid being Tracked and Spied-On while on Line
10-3-2018
There are legitimate reasons to want to avoid being tracked and spied-on while you're online. But aside from that, doesn't it feel creepy knowing you're probably being watched every moment that you're online and that information about where you go and what you do could potentially be sold to anyone at any time--to advertisers, your health insurance company, a future employer, the government, even a snoopy neighbor? Wouldn't you feel better not having to worry about that on top of everything else you have to worry about every day?
First, let me start out by giving you the bad news, there is no such thing as perfect online privacy. We'll assume for the purposes of this article that online privacy and anonymity mean roughly the same thing. No matter what anyone tells you, online privacy (and anonymity) just doesn't exist. The fight for online privacy is like warfare. Every time one side gets an advantage, the other side figures out how to get around it. That means your level of online privacy is dependent on how much effort you are willing to continually put into making yourself invisible. Let's face it, if the NSA wants to spy on you and is willing to put more time and money into singling you out than you are willing to spend being anonymous, then you will be spied on.
The good news is that there are things you can do to be less surveillable--and they won't cost you anything. Remember the old story about the two friends in the woods who came across a bear. One says to the other, "We'll never outrun this bear." The other smiles and says, "That's OK. I only have to outrun you." That isn't exactly a perfect analogy because any trace that you leave behind on the Internet could be used against you at some later date. But it's still better to leave less behind than the next guy. Make it too expensive for "Them" to surveil everyone to the level that they would need to get much on you--at least for the time being.
Picture of Computer Anonymity
The most anyone can possibly do to avoid online surveillance is to use a different computer every time he goes on line--one that has never been on the Internet before and cannot be traced to him. Then, after a single use, he will dispose of it where it can never be found by anyone. Further, he will wear gloves, a ski mask, and dark glasses and go to some public wifi hot spot with hundreds of people using it in a town far away from where he lives (a different town each time). Then he will avoid sites he has frequented in the past and never log on to any site with a password. And he will leave no finger prints or DNS evidence behind... So, obviously, no one is going to actually do this--unless he is in some really, really deep trouble. But, barring that, no sane person is going to put out this level of effort to be anonymous every time he goes on the Internet.
So, what level of effort is reasonable? Well, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. But let's assume you are not doing anything illegal. You just want to access your email and surf the Internet, maybe buy something on Amazon. In other words, you are the average consumer. Well, there's some more bad news. Given a reasonable level of effort, you can't be anonymous on any website where you enter a password. Once you type your password, you have identified yourself. That's the point of a password. So, some level of anonymity can only be achieved when you don't enter a password during the period of time that you're logged on to the Internet. I know that's probably not what you were hoping to hear. But unless you are someone like Edward Snowden fleeing from the NSA, or on the FBI's ten-most-wanted list, you'll probably not be willing to expend the amount of effort I spelled out above to get the level of online privacy that it would take to keep yourself really, really anonymous.
Assessing Threats
Given that you are willing to make an effort to achieve a reasonable level of anonymity, how do you go about it? The first thing you need to do is to understand who "They" are and how they are watching you. The first group that is watching you is the companies who are hoping to make a buck off of you or off of information about what you are doing on line. These are companies like your Internet service provider, Google, Google Analytics, Microsoft, Facebook, WordPress, Squarespace, their competitors, and every website that uses web development software written by these companies or their competitors. The problem is that their software is used on just about every website these days. So, chances are extremely good that if you visit a website that sponsors advertisements, tracks the number of hits it receives, or allows you to make comments or fill out any kind of a form, you are being identified and tracked online. (By the way, this website, The Cheapskate's Guide to Computers and the Internet, only uses open-source software and does not attempt to identify or track you in any way.) If you are using an Internet browser or operating system written by Google, like Chrome or Android, you are also being identified and tracked. If you are using Windows 10, you are being identified and tracked online. That covers just about everyone who accesses the Internet.
The next group that is watching you works for a government. These are the NSA and possibly the CIA and FBI and other US government agencies (there are 17 government intelligence agencies in the US) and their foreign equivalents. For the time being, all the US government agencies want is to make sure that you are not a criminal or a terrorist--and to make sure they know where you are at all times, in case you ever decide to commit a crime or become a terrorist. In the future, who knows? Governments of some countries make it a crime to speak out against them, so you can probably figure out why they may want to watch their citizens. And the British government seems to want to spy on its people ... well apparently it just likes spying on its people. I don't know how else to account for the level of surveillance in Britain.
The next group that is watching you is composed of thieves. These are people who want your passwords, so they can empty out your bank accounts. Or they may want to use your online accounts, so they can hide while they steal from others. They may also want to convince you that they are actually a nigerian prince who has no other place to keep his money safe except in your trustworthy hands.
The next group that is watching you is the hackers who are not thieves. Mostly, they just want to snoop and to practice snooping so as to improve their ability to snoop. They want to know everything about everyone, especially governments and large corporations. And sometimes they want to get notoriety for revealing that information. Maybe some want to fix the broken systems that we all live under to make the world a better place.
Reasonable questions for you, the average consumer, to ask are, which groups, if any, can you protect yourself from, and how hard should you be trying? In order to be able to answer these questions, let's look at a few things. In the three lists which follow, I've assumed that the governments to which I am referring are Western "democratic" governments. The first list is a probable ranking of the above groups from most to least difficult to protect yourself from:
Governments
Hackers
Corporations
Thieves
Next, the ranking from most to least likely to be spying on you probably looks like this:
Corporations
Governments
Thieves
Hackers
Lastly, the amount of damage from most to least that these groups could do to you while spying on you probably looks like this:
Thieves
Governments
Corporations
Hackers
Taken together, the three lists above suggest the following. First, you shouldn't be worried about hackers because they probably aren't spying on you. But even if they are, you can't do anything about it. And you really don't have much to fear from them, even if they are spying on you. Second, you should definitely be trying to protect yourself from thieves because you have the most to fear from them, there is a reasonable likelihood that they are trying to spy on you, and they are the easiest group to protect yourself from. Next, Corporations probably aren't going to do you much damage by spying on you, even though they are certainly spying on you, although you have a chance, with vigilance on you part, of protecting yourself from them. So, whether you want to try to protect yourself from corporations is a judgment call that you'll have to make. And, lastly, governments are spying on you. And you have nearly as much reason to fear them as to fear thieves. However, governments are the hardest to protect yourself from. So, though you may be tempted to give up on trying to protect yourself from governments, due to the difficulty of doing so, you should probably be looking for ways to protect yourself from them. By the way, it makes sense that you have nearly as much to fear from governments spying on you as from thieves, since according to Paul Kennedy, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, governments are nothing more than institutionalized thievery. One more thing to note about government spying is that the numbers of people they are spying on is at least in the millions--if not a very significant portion of everyone on the planet, judging by what we know about the NSA. Also, see this and this.
Threat-Tailoring Approaches
So, now that we have established that we need to fear thieves, governments, and corporations, in that order, let's talk about what we can do about each. Thieves' main methods of attack are through social engineering attacks. Social engineering works mainly through phone calls, offers on websites, and email. A thief may call you on the phone or send you an email to try to scam you by saying they are someone else who has a legitimate need for your information. For example, they may pretend to be the IRS and ask for your tax information, including your banking information and social security number. A thief may have a website with a message that pops up saying that your computer is infected with a virus and telling you to call a phone number. This is never legitimate. To avoid being scammed through email, many people advise you not to open emails from people you don't know. That's like never answering your phone unless you recognize the person calling. You may miss legitimate calls. But it is safer than talking to every caller. Avoid clicking on links in emails or opening attachments because they may execute malware programs or take you to fake websites. Also 2-factor authentication is another layer of protection against thieves. By the way, you cannot protect yourself from thieves who steal your information out of companies' computers; however, the one exception is that you can encrypt your data before giving it to online services like Dropbox or sending it in emails. Often thieves will hide malware in software that looks legitimate. Don't load software onto your phone or computer from any sources that you don't trust, which is just about every source on the Internet except for official Microsoft and Google websites and Linux distribution repositories. With any other software, including web browser add-ons, you are risking your privacy and security. If you have to load software from another source, some of the less risky sources can be found here. One way of telling if you may have malware on your computer that is transmitting information to a thief is to see what ports you have open. You can do this using the Shieldsup test. You should not see any ports open while you are online. If you want even more online security, my personal recommendations are to not bank online and to consider using my three-USB stick method. Also, since threats, threat prevention software, and threat prevention techniques change continuously, it is important to keep yourself aware of the latest information.
Protecting yourself from corporate spying requires even more effort. It also requires even more knowledge. No gadget out there will do the work for you. Every time I've seen someone offer consumers a gadget, I've seen someone else explain why it's not very effective--at least, not so far. That leaves software. First, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can see everything you do online. You probably can't do anything to completely change that; however, you can make it a little harder for them. First, use another DNS server, not your ISP's. This will make it slightly harder for them to see which websites you visit. It is also possible to encrypt your DNS traffic. This prevents your ISP from from seeing which websites you're visiting by examining the DNS headers in individual packets coming across its servers. Then, take full advantage of the built-in encryption on the Internet by only using HTTPS websites, where possible. Many people suggest using a VPN service. However, studies have shown that most VPN services don't actually work when it comes to hiding your activities from your ISP. Note that HTTPS and VPN's can no longer protect you from government surveillance.
To protect yourself from being tracked online by corporations other than your ISP, like Google and Facebook, many people recommend that you use anti-tracking software--like, for example, Privacy Badger. The bad news is that anti-tracking software, including anti-tracking settings in your browser and deletion of tracking cookies are far from 100% effective. There is a technique called fingerprinting that takes all the information that your browser puts out to websites and uses it to uniquely identify you, no matter what anonymizing or anti-tracking measures you have taken. It is extremely difficult to circumvent fingerprinting because all browsers transmit information to websites. I have never tried using an ancient web browser like Lynx to see if it may transmit significantly less data than the average modern web browser, but it's worth a shot. However, since a lot of corporate tracking techniques rely on your own web browser to do their work for them, one thing you can do to thwart them to some extent is to turn off javascript in your browser. You can test to what extent your browser is transmitting unique information using these sites: panopticlick.com, Shieldsup, and ip-check.info. These sites confirm that browsers transmit a lot of data that can be used for fingerprinting. From playing around with these sites, I have noticed that turning off javascript in my browser does help some. Also the TOR browser seems to transmit less data than most, but even it is not completely effective. The added benefit that you get from the TOR browser and especially the TAILS operating system is that they block your IP address from the websites you visit. You want to try several browsers to see which one transmits the least information. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to find a browser that transmits less information than the TOR browser.
The next thing to be aware of is that corporations have methods other than tracking to spy on you. There is a saying that if a corporation is offering you their product for free, you are their product. This means that corporations that offer you free services are selling the data they collect from you in order to be able to provide you with these services. So, chances are that companies that provide you with free email are reading your email. We know that, in addition to tracking you, Facebook reads your posts and knows who your friends are, and that is just the beginning of Facebook's spying methods. Free online surveys are just ways of collecting more data from you. Companies also monitor your credit card transactions and sell your online dating profiles. If you have a Samsung TV that is connected to the Internet, it's probably recording what you watch and may even be listening to your private conversations in your home. In fact, anything that you have in your home that is connected to the Internet may be spying on you, right down to your Internet-connected light bulb. With a few exceptions, online search engines monitor and log your searches. One of the exceptions is the ixquick.com search engine, which is headquartered in Europe. The steps to counter the nearly ubiquitous activities of free service providers would be to pay for services you receive online, read website privacy agreements, and not buy products that are known to be spying on you. However, the only way to be really secure from corporations using the Internet to spy on you is to never connect to the Internet or buy any Internet-connected appliances. Welcome back to the 1980's.
Protecting yourself from government spying while you are on the Internet is the hardest and requires the most knowledge. The biggest problem is that unless a whistle-blower like Edward Snowden tells us, we have no way of knowing how governments may potentially be spying on us. That means that we have no way of protecting ourselves 100% of the time from government spying. Some things whistle-blowers have revealed are that the US government logs the meta data from all phone calls (who calls who and when), secretly forces Internet service providers and providers of other services to allow it to "listen in on" and record all traffic going through their servers, reads nearly all email sent from everywhere in the world, and tracks the locations of all cell phones (even when they're turned off). And, although I am not aware of any specific whistle-blower revelations on this, there is every reason to believe that the US government (and perhaps others, including China's) has backdoors built into all computer hardware and operating system software for monitoring everything we do on our cell phones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, and routers. See also this. Because Lenovo computers are manufactured in China, the US government has issued warnings to all US government agencies and subcontractors to strongly discourage them from using Lenovo computers. And the US government probably has backdoors into all commercially-available encryption software, with the possible exception of Truecrypt version 7.1a. I hope you are understanding now the magnitude of the lengths that governments are going to (using your tax money) to spy on you. In truth, we are now approaching the level of government spying that George Orwell warned about in his book, 1984
So what can we practically do to protect ourselves from government spying? Seriously, there isn't much, if we want to use cell phones, credit cards, and the Internet. About all we can do, if we absolutely need to have a private conversation, is to have a face-to-face meeting without any electronics within microphone range. That includes cell phones, Samsung TV's, video cameras, computers, or land-line telephones. And don't travel to the meeting place using long-distance commercial transportation. Sending a letter through the US mail is the next best, although it is known that the outsides of all mail sent through the US mail are photographed, and the pictures are stored. So, don't put your return address on the envelope. As far as surfing the Internet is concerned, begin with all the precautions that I outlined above to protect yourself from corporate spying (except HTTPS and VPN's). Then, add the TAILS operating system on a USB stick. As I said, TAILS will not prevent you from being identified and tracked via the fingerprinting method. And who can be sure whether the government has a backdoor in TAILS? As far as I know, the super-paranoid, hoody and sunglasses method I outlined above is is the next step.
Some people recommend using ProtonMail to send private emails (and then, only to other ProtonMail users). In order for this to work, ProtonMail would have to provide both the sender and the receiver with software that runs on their computers to encrypt and decrypt the contents of their emails before they are sent over the government-monitored Internet lines. Or you could encrypt the contents yourself with a prearranged password (from that face-to-face meeting you had). Be sure to use an extremely secure password! The real benefit of ProtonMail is not its encryption (because it's more secure to do that yourself), but the fact that the emails are stored in Switzerland, where the US government can't get them. But, if the government has a backdoor into either the encryption software that you used or that ProtonMail used to encrypt your email, then encryption does you no good if the US government ever manages to get their hands on your emails. (See this, this, and this.) All we know is that Snowden provided evidence in 2014 that the NSA had not cracked Truecrypt. Whether that is still the case today is unknown.
Be aware that simply the use of methods of avoiding government spying techniques may make you a target. This includes the use of encryption and TAILS. However, if millions and millions of law-abiding people begin to actively use these methods, then the NSA cannot put them under significantly more scrutiny than that to which it is already subjecting the rest of the world. This alone is an argument for their use.
Summary
To finally wrap up this long article, let me reiterate that the more you know, the more you will be able to protect yourself on the Internet from hackers, thieves, corporations, and the government. So, find out everything you can. Then take a deep breath, or ten, and begin doing what you can to protect yourself to any level that you consider reasonable. Tailor your approach to the actual threats that you are facing. And where you can't protect yourself online, find a way that does not involve the Internet. You can still use the old methods of communication: the US mail, telephone, fax, etc., just as you always have.
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There's no Such Thing as a Secure Computer--How to be Relatively Secure
9-27-2018
Picture Place Holder
Giant companies spend millions of dollars a year on computer security staff to keep their computer systems "secure". And, as we've been hearing for years, data is stolen out of their computers all the time. The bottom line is this: no matter what anyone tells you, there's no such thing as a secure computer. It's inherently impossible. There are only more secure computers and less secure computers. Computer security is really, really hard. So how does the average person who isn't a computer security professional go about having a more secure computer without spending millions of dollars?
I understand that you want to be free to enjoy all the benefits of modern technology. You want to be free to surf the Internet, visit all those cool websites, and maybe find out what the Illuminati are up to these days, and just explore to your heart's content. And you also want to be able to do some online shopping and banking, maybe check your stock portfolio, and send that private email to your girlfriend. But you also want to keep those financial records and other personal data on your hard drive safe. You don't want your bank account emptied, your credit card numbers intercepted, or your passwords stolen. I hear you. We all want those things.
Okay, I'm not going to lie to you. For the average person, being able to do all those things relatively securely takes some effort, but it can be done. And, in my opinion, it takes more than what everyone else is telling you about buying a new router every few years and keeping your software updated and using strong passwords and two factor authentication. Don't get me wrong. Those things are a great start. By all means, do them. But doing those things only gets you what I would call a less secure computer. That's better than the average person, which I would say has only slightly better than an unsecure computer. But if computer security were that easy, huge companies wouldn't be spending millions of dollars on it--and still getting their data stolen. Computer security is more about understanding the risks, coming up with a plan, and sticking to it, than it is about buying some particular hardware or software. In other words, it takes vigilance. I've come up with a way that so far has worked for me (fingers crossed), but you may not be willing to use it because it takes vigilance. So, if you're not into vigilance, stop reading here. The rest of this article is not for you.
Before I tell you about my method, let me introduce you to a little operating system called "Qubes". Qubes is billed as "a reasonably secure operating system" for "securely compartmentalizing your digital life". It was developed by a postdoctoral researcher named Alison Hales. Like me, Alison realized that there's no such thing as a secure computer. So, she came up with a plan for an operating system that would keep you "reasonably secure", even if your computer has already been compromised. She spent years writing Qubes. Her basic idea was to use a very secure underlying operating system (Qubes) that hosts virtual machines to separate the operations that you might perform on your computer from each other according to their relative levels of risk. A virtual machine is created by a piece of software that isolates what you're doing in one window on your computer from everything else you're doing--all the way from the application software you're running, right down to the operating system you're running it on. So, if you want, you can even have different operating systems running on different virtual machines all at the same time on one physical computer. Don't worry if you don't grasped the concept immediately, it may take some thinking to understand.
The basic idea that Alison had is to separate security-wise risky things you're doing from things that you want to be less risky when you're doing them. That way, if something risky that you're doing compromises one of your virtual machines, the malware or whatever can't spread to a virtual machine where you're doing something you need to be absolutely unrisky. So, with Qubes, for example, when you're surfing the Internet and checking up on those pesky Illuminati, you can be using a "less secure" virtual machine. When you're sending email and watching Netflix, you may be using a different, "moderately secure", virtual machine. And when you're doing your online banking, buying that great troll doll online, and working on your taxes, you can be using yet a different, "more secure", virtual machine. With Qubes, you are the one who decides which operations are more or less risky and how to set up your virtual machines to group your operations accordingly. If you choose, you can even use a different virtual machine for each program you use--one for your email, one for your Internet browser, one for your tax program, etc. So, you can basically separate operations any way you want. It's a great idea.
The only problem is that, about a year ago, I spent two weeks trying to get Qubes to work on any computer that I owned, and failing miserably. I did get it to install on one of my computers, but I couldn't do anything with it after that. It turned out that Qubes was not at that time completely compatible with any computer--not just any computer that I own, any computer, period. So, you're not going to get it to run "out of the box", if at all. Alison, if you're reading this, know that I feel for you. Writing an operating system all by yourself that everyone can use on whatever PC they're using is an incredibly ambitious and difficult undertaking. But the Bottom line is that so far Alison has failed. It's heartbreaking but true. So, at least for the present, Qubes is out as a way of securing our computers.
Now back to the method I've come up with. Conceptually, it's very much like Qubes, only without the single underlying operating system or the virtual machines. Instead of virtual machines, I use the ability of Linux distributions to run from USB sticks. So, I install Linux Mint (you can use whatever distribution you want) onto three fast USB sticks. One stick, I label as "unsecure", one I label as "medium security", and one I label as "secure". Then, when I'm surfing the Internet, I use the "unsecure" USB stick, and I can go to any risky site I want, because that's all I use that USB stick for. I never go to any site where I have to enter a password. I never type in any personal information. With the "medium security" stick, I only go to my online email site and watch Netflix because I have to enter passwords. I don't go to those risky sites--just email and Netflix. Here, I want to be safe, but if I'm compromised, it's not the end of the world. With the "secure" stick, I only shop online and do other things online that I absolutely don't want compromised because they involve credit card numbers, etc. If I did online banking--which I don't, for reasons I'll discuss in a later article--I would use this USB stick.
However, understand that even with the "secure" USB stick, there is still a possibility of being compromised. Perhaps your router has an infection, or there is "Bad USB" in your computer's firmware, or something else that you don't know about and my three-USB-stick system can't protect you from. You have no way of knowing about processes that are running on your computer at a very low level, which makes them beyond your control. You just can't protect yourself from them. In fact, the only way to be relatively certain that someone on the Internet isn't spying on you is to never connect to it in the first place. So, for my needs which require the most security, like storing financial records, and actually anything sensitive that doesn't require Internet access, I use a completely separate computer that I never connect to the Internet. In fact, I have one computer in my home that I designate as my Internet computer, and the rest I keep off the Internet, unless I have a burning need to update their operating systems or some such thing. For those of you who only have one computer, an approach that is nearly as good is to encrypt your computer's entire hard drive before you store your sensitive data on it. That way, when your Linux USB stick is plugged in, it not only can't see anything on your hard drive, it can't even tell that you have a hard drive. If you don't believe me, try it and see.
There are a few details that you need to know to use my three-USB-stick method. First, you need to know if Linux Mint will even run on your computer. Microsoft has done a good job of preventing anything but Windows from running on computers manufactured after 2012. So, you need to check that. You also need to know how to install Linux Mint on a USB stick. There are websites that explain that. Then, you need to understand that you will have to reinstall Linux on the "unsecure" Linux stick fairly frequently, like once every four to six months or so, because it will eventually be compromised to the point where it stops working.
So, to summarize ... Realize that there is no such thing as a secure computer. If you want to put in the effort to be "relatively secure", you may want to try my three-USB-stick method. It gives you nearly the security of Qubes--which is, as far as I can tell, the most secure operating system out there. But my method actually works.
How to make Your Router More Secure on the Internet
4-15-2019
Router
Many consumers are unaware of the critical importance of their routers in protecting them from Internet threats. A router prevents hackers and bots from being able to see your computer from the Internet. If a hacker can't see your computer, he can't hack your computer. Although router hacking is less common than computer hacking, it's prevalence is rising because it is both harder to detect and harder to reverse.
Unfortunately, nearly all consumer-grade routers fail to do an adequate job of hiding your computer from hackers; thus, they are inherently insecure on the Internet. Andy Greenberg, a senior writer for WIRED magazine, covering security, privacy, and information freedom, wrote, "...home routers are notoriously prone to vulnerabilities that can allow remote hackers to take them over, ...". Michael Horowitz, a router security expert, wrote, "I think it is a mistake to use a consumer router. The big reason is that their security is not acceptable." Horowitz says that manufacturers of consumer-grade routers are concerned with making a profit, not with making secure routers. For a manufacturer, providing security updates year after year is not compatible with offering a low-priced router.
It is important to understand that private hackers are not the only ones who want to gain access to your computers. Government hackers are also active on the Internet. In fact, the US government's NSA also tampers with modems made in the United States, in order to spy on their owners, as Edward Snowden revealed for the first time in 2013. Your ISP also spies on you via the modem/router they provide to you when they set up your Internet service. They can do this because the US government, under coercion from ISP industry lobbyists, passed a law in 2017 that allows ISP's to sell your private browsing history.
What makes Consumer-Grade Routers so Insecure?
There is a long list of reasons for not using consumer-grade routers. First, when manufacturers release new routers, their software (usually referred to as firmware, because it resides on a chip, rather than on a hard drive) is often full of bugs and security flaws, as a result of being rushed to market before the software is ready. Then, manufacturers update their router software as little as they can get away with, in order to maximize their profits. In fact, they really don't have an incentive to do anything at all to improve security until a widely-publicized security flaw is found. Very few routers update their software automatically, leaving it up to consumers to take care of this. But, manufacturers don't make much of an effort, if any, to inform consumers when they publish software updates. So, often consumers are completely unaware that their router software even needs to be updated, much less when it needs to be updated.
A major problem with routers provided by ISP's is that they usually include software and settings that make it easier for ISP's to watch where you're going on line. Unfortunately, software that makes it easier for your ISP to watch you often also makes it easier for everyone else to watch you, too. These settings and software are sometimes impossible for consumers to change or remove. This is because many consumer grade modem/routers are intentionally locked down to prevent consumers from undoing the IPS's modifications. Some routers will not even allow their owners to change passwords or select different DNS servers.
There are different routes you can take to improve your router security (pun intended).
The Optimal Router Security Solution
The best solution, according to Horowitz, is to buy and use your own modem and router. You should also buy a modem and router that are two separate pieces of hardware. And, the router should be of the commercial variety, not a consumer grade router. As Horowitz says, "When you buy a consumer router you are buying the hardware. The software is provided as cheaply as possible. When you buy a business class router you are buying the software."
Commercial router software is better than consumer router software, because commercial companies hire IT employees that understand network security. Knowledgeable customers make it much harder for manufacturers to unload substandard equipment on them. Manufacturers will manufacture and sell better products when they understand that their customers will go elsewhere to buy if they are being sold low-quality or inadequate products.
The Suboptimal Solution
Throwing away their cheap, ISP-supplied modem/routers and replacing them with more expensive equipment is simply not a reasonable option for many consumers. Add to this, the fact that commercial routers are harder to use, and it becomes apparent that not everyone will transition to the higher-security option. So, what can you do on a tight budget?
If you are on a limited budget and willing to learn, one thing you can do with some routers is to replace their software with open source software. Among the available open source router software are the three most popular: OpenWrt (now merged with LEDE), DD-WRT, and Tomato. OpenWrt supports the broadest base of hardware, but it can be difficult to configure. DD-WRT is more user-friendly and easier to install than OpenWrt. Tomato is very lightweight and has a more intuitive interface. You will have to do some homework here to decide which, if any of these, is right for you. If you are not at all technically inclined, replacing your router's software with open source software is not the way to go. Installing router software incorrectly can brick your router. So, do your research and think carefully before going this route.
At a Minimum, do This
If neither of the above options appeal to you, what can you do to get a higher level of security (however inadequate, as judged by the experts) out of your current router?
Easy Fixes:
If you can change the settings on your router, do this:
Settings to Change on Your Router
Change the administrative account user name and password.
Change the WiFi password, and if possible, make the SSID non-discoverable. For even more security, turn off WiFi completely and use a wired connection only.
If you decide not to turn off your WiFi, at least enable WPA2 WiFi encryption.
Turn off remote management, or remote administrative access.
Somewhat Harder Fixes:
If the router allows the following settings to be changed, do so:
Other Settings to Change
Disable PING, to prevent hackers from being able to easily discover the existence of your router.
Prevent hackers from easily communicating with your router by disabling the following: Telnet, SSH, UPnP, and HNAP.
To make it harder for your ISP to log the sites on the Internet that you visit, change the DNS server setting on your router to select a DNS server other than the one provided by your ISP.
Update your router's firmware to the most recent version.
Another thing you can do is to go to Steve Gibson's Shieldsup webpage to see what ports may be open on your router. Ports can be thought of as a mapping to computer memory locations where data is briefly stored during communication with other computers. For example, port 22 is used by the SSH communication protocol to talk with another computer that is talking to yours via SSH. If you are not playing multi-player games on the Internet and are not running a mail server or a web server on a computer connected to your router, then your router should probably not have any open ports. Close any currently open ports that don't need to be open.
Why You should Absolutely be using Linux!
9-26-2018
Linux Logo
These days, everyone should be using Linux! I know that isn't going to happen any time soon, but I just have to say it again. Everyone should be using Linux! Being a cheapskate, I can't help being in love with the Linux operating system--even though at times, it's a painful kind of love. Here's why.
According to one website, today 60.6% of all computing devices are using either Android, IOS, or OS X. Actually, it's unclear whether they mean people or devices. So, I'll assume they mean devices. Android, IOS, and OS X are all Linux or derived from Unix or some Unix offshoot, by the way. While those operating systems are all great, they are not what I'm talking about. According to the website, only 0.77% of devices are using the type of Linux I'm talking about, while 36% are still using Windows. I've seen estimates for Linux use in other places as high as 2%, but the bottom line is that very few people are using Linux. There is no good reason for this! There are too many reasons that Linux should be used on every desktop computer and laptop everywhere.
In the past, while Linux had been somewhat ... difficult to use, that changed somewhere around the middle 2000's. That was when Linux repositories became widely available to Linux users. Before that, installing software on Linux was a nightmare. Today, while it is still not quite as easy as on Windows, most Linux software is relatively easy to install. And in case you did not know already, the Linux operating system and the software that runs on it are free. Okay, some proprietary software like gaming software is not, but almost everything else is free.
If you are still unconvinced that you should be using Linux, you should understand that Microsoft felt so threatened by Linux (and possibly Android in particular) that it was forced not only to make Windows free and add a version of Linux inside Windows (however hidden and not useful to the average user), but also to invent UEFI to keep Linux off the platforms it runs on. Alright, that's just my opinion because there's no way Microsoft will ever come out and admit that. But, let's face it, Microsoft is really, really afraid of Linux, and there are many valid reasons for this fear.
While, in the past, Linux hasn't been compatible with every Laptop, with the emergence of the Linux Mint distribution (Linux versions are called distributions, for some reason), many fewer incompatibility issues exist. By the way, Linux Mint is the distribution of Linux that I use because in addition to being very compatible, it is also nearly as easy to use as Windows. Linux Mint is currently the most used distribution. It is so compatible with most laptops that it has worked on every laptop I have tried it on recently--maybe half a dozen. The same cannot be said for Ubuntu.
Did I mention that almost all Linux software is free? In fact, there are now several different Linux office suites--Free Office, LibreOffice, Open Office, and others. My favorite is Free Office because its word processor is the most compatible with Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, its compatibility with Power Point still needs improvement. Still, all three, especially the first two, are perfectly acceptable office suites as far as I'm concerned. They even run on Windows--for free! In fact, despite some grumbling from coworkers over the Power Point compatibility issues, I have used these office suites at work for years. I stopped using Office 365 when it insisted that I allow it to connect to the Internet before it would open a document that I had written and stored on my laptops's hard drive! That was absolutely the last straw for me. As I see it, all businesses and especially all governmental agencies should now be using a free Linux office suite, or the free Windows equivalent. And this link will take you to an article that explains why. Government agencies that are funded by our tax money have absolutely no reason for paying the outrageous sums they are currently paying for expensive office software that is no better than free office software!
I didn't mean to neglect other free Linux software to go on my office suite rant. Most of the categories of software that you find running on Windows have free equivalents on Linux. These include Internet browsers, chat and email clients, movie and music players, graphics and movie editors, video trans-coders, pdf readers, software development suites, and utilities, including equivalents of most of the miscellaneous software that you find in the accessories folder in Windows. Even a lot of proprietary software like Skype (some of which you have to pay for) runs on Linux. In fact, here is a huge list of proprietary software that runs in Linux. And that is really just scratching the surface, because when you allow anyone to write software, you get a lot of software. I have even written some myself. Have I mentioned yet that it's almost all free?
Another reason that you should seriously consider switching from Windows to Linux is that Linux doesn't spy on you. It has been said that "Microsoft Software is Malware". Whether you agree with that or not, Microsoft does watch what you do at your computer, on the Internet, and in documents that you edit. Linux does not. In fact, some distributions of Linux are specifically designed to protect your privacy on and off line. One of these is TAILS, which uses the TOR network to greatly impede the ability of websites that you visit to track you on line or identify you through your IP address. Thanks in part to Edward Snowden, we now know how important that is.
Linux also recognizes that you own your computer; they don't. Microsoft Windows 10, on the other hand, downloads updates whenever it wants as often as it wants and locks you out of your own computer while it's doing so. Regardless of how badly you may need to be using your computer right at that moment! And you have no say about any of this! windows even uses your Internet connection, which you pay good money for, to distribute Windows and Windows updates to other people! Frankly, how much more arrogant can you get?!!! In stark contrast, Linux can easily be set to ask for permission before updating anything. You can even specify that it never update and never nag you about it ever again! You can also choose to update any part of it that you want to the latest version at any time that you want. Talk about a refreshing change from Microsoft!
Another great thing about Linux, and the reason I started using it, is that Linux has historically been more secure than Windows. Not, that no security flaws exist. There are security flaws in every operating system, and there always will be. Linux is just more secure than Windows for a couple of reasons. The first is that Linux's design evolved from Unix. The Unix file structure that Linux inherited was designed from the ground up to have what are called "file permissions". File permissions are the limiting of files to be read, written, or executed by only certain users. This means that an administrator (called "root" in Unix and Linux) has permission to read, write, and execute (if an executable file) any file in the operating system. But normal users can only do these things with files when they are specifically allowed, and they are not allowed with most Linux operating system files. By the way, although Windows did not initially implement file permissions, my recollection is that they began to be implemented with Windows NT. But most Windows users until recently did not have access to a version of Windows that had permissions implemented. Even now, they are usually granted administrative permission by their IT people, which negates the benefits of having file permissions. One practical result of file permissions is that if you are surfing the Internet with a Linux Mint computer as user "mint", for example, which does not have permission to write to operating system files, and your computer is infiltrated by spyware or some other malware, it cannot have access to your operating system. So, it cannot easily spy on you or wreak havock on your computer.
Another reason that Linux has historically been more secure than Windows is that fewer people write malware that is designed to run on Linux computers. However, as the previous link and the next one point out, that may be changing. Security purists would say, "Security through obscurity is not real security." They are correct. But, obscurity has still historically worked rather well, as there have been fewer viruses and other malware that could successfully attack Linux computers. More recently, however, you will find larger numbers of security experts warning about Linux malware. This has been a side-effect of the rise of Android and the large body of servers that run Linux. Despite this, another reason Linux is still thought to be more secure than Windows is that it is open source, so everyone in the world who wants to can look at it and, at least in theory, spot security flaws. My personal opinion from having been through many code reviews as an Engineer is that, just because many eyes can be looking for flaws, does not mean they are looking or that they are finding them. However, judging by the numbers of new vulnerabilities found each year, it can still be said that, in a practical sense, Linux is a better operating system to choose if you want to be secure while surfing the Internet--although not by a large margin, in terms of the number of exploits. Perhaps it should be mentioned here that most Android malware successfully attacks Android computers when users unwittingly download malware and give it root permission. Also, the security of the Android operating system isn't usually a problem until a user does something not so smart, like clicking on the wrong email attachment. And, many people fall for email fishing attacks or other social attacks that have nothing to do with the security of their operating systems.
Another reason I use Linux is that it can be run from a USB stick without even installing it on a hard drive. Needless to say, Windows can't--at least, there are safeguards in place in Windows to make it much more difficult. In addition to making Linux easier to try, having Linux on a USB stick means I can have my own "computer" in my pocket. I can carry it around wherever I go, plug it into just about any computer I want, and have all my files and my browser favorites and settings available on any computer I happen to be using it on. In a practical sense, this means that I can have an "unsecure" USB stick that I use to surf the Internet without worrying about what site I visit or what I do there. I'll talk more about this in a later article.
Another beauty of Linux is the Linux windows manager. A windows manager is software that lets you choose the way Linux looks and acts. It allows you to pick your background, the way your windows look, the applications that are on your menu, and how your menu looks on your desktop. Taken as a group, these are called a "theme". A windows manager allows you to easily and quickly switch between themes. One application of this is that you can install a theme that makes your Linux distribution look very much like Microsoft Windows. Some distributions are specifically designed to look like Windows. Some are also designed to look like MacOS.
With all of the great things Linux has going for it, what's stopping you from using it?
One issue that has always plagued Linux, and the reason I say I have a painful kind of love for it, is that there is a lot of glitchy Linux software out there. That is bound to happen any time you have a huge number of non-paid programmers writing code. Some Linux code is just, frankly, junk. And some code that behaves well on one distribution may not behave well or even work at all on another. Fortunately, the creators of the top distributions try to provide software in their distributions and in their associated repositories that works well together. So, unless you are installing a lot of software from random sources (which I sometimes do), you should not run into this problem with a well put-together distribution like Linux Mint. The reason the average user should not have to be installing much extraneous software is that the top distributions come with all the standard applications that most users should be wanting to run every day--Internet browsers, movie and audio players, email and chat clients, office suites, graphics editors, and the utilities and accessory programs they are likely to need to do most things.
As I see it, the main disadvantage of Linux to the average user is learning how to use it in the first place. But it's a point-and-click operating system, just like Windows is a point-and-click operating system. So, the menu items have different names than they do in Windows, and they are in different places in the menu. So, what? You can figure all that out, just as you did with Windows. You used to have to practically do that each time a new version of Windows came out anyway. The only time the average user would have to resort to the Linux command line (the equivalent of the DOS window in Windows) would be when he wants to do something that Windows either can't do or can only do in the DOS window. The fact of the matter is that Linux is no harder to learn to use that Windows. And, if you are a person in his teens or twenties, guess what. You are probably going to be using computers for the next fifty or more years. Why be stuck with something like Microsoft Windows when you could have been using Linux all that time?
Why I've never owned an Apple Product
10-27-2018
I was in college back in the '80's when Apple first began offering discounts to students. Even though Apple would have given me a 50% discount on an new computer, I didn't bite the Apple lure. Here's why.
Even back then, it was clear that Apple was using discounts on their products to lure students into entering the Apple ecosystem trap. Most of us students understood that after we graduated we would be paying full price on our next Apple computer (and Apple software). And Apples were so expense, even back then, that the 50% discount did nothing more than bring their price into parity with the other computers that were available at the time.
About 25 years later, Apple was still offering the 50% student discount. A friend came to me and asked whether I thought her daughter, who was just entering college, should go for the discount and buy an Apple laptop. You should have no trouble guessing my answer. But despite my strong warnings, they bit into the Apple lure. I haven't kept in contact with them for years, but back in 2011, the daughter was still locked into the Apple trap, but now she had the problem of paying to have her laptop repaired--and not at a discount. In addition, they had also purchased an Apple TV, again despite my objections. What bothers me most is that my friend has never been all that financially stable. So, she really should have made a better computer-buying decision. However, even though I disagree with her decision, I do understand some of her motivation for doing what she did.
Reasons to buy an Apple Computer
There are some good reasons for buying an Apple computer. To begin with, they are easy to use and maintain. That includes being much more resistant to malware than PC's. Steve Jobs has, to an extent, delivered on his promise of making computers that are easier for the average person to use and keep running. It's no secret that Apple's software is mostly high quality and easy to use. Of course, that's compared to, in my opinion, the lousy software that Microsoft generally puts out. Apple computers themselves tend to be reasonably powerful and have more advanced features than most PC's--faster processors, higher file transfer rates, the newest port types, etc. Apple laptop monitors are known for their high resolution and otherwise generally pleasing appearance. These are all good reasons for buying Apple desktops and laptops.
There are also some not-so-good reasons for buying Apple computers. The fact is that Steve Jobs always was a great salesman. Everyone talks about the ability he had to keep people anticipating the next product and his ability to present it in such a way, that if not substantiative, was dramatic. He had the ability to keep the news media talking positively about his latest products. Sometimes that even extended to refusing to invite them to his product press release meetings, which Apple calls "Special Events", if they didn't talk positively about Apple's products. Another reason people, especially brand-conscious high school and college students, buy Apples is that Apple laptops are a status symbol, along with most other things that not everyone can afford to buy. One should never under-estimate the ability of peer pressure to motivate individuals to do things that don't really make sense.
Reasons not to buy an Apple Computer
When Steve Jobs hasn't been the head of Apple, in my opinion, the quality of their products has suffered. Jobs was kicked out of Apple and John Scully took over back in 1985. By 1997, Apple was nearly bankrupt, when Jobs once again took over. Opinions appear to vary about why Apple nearly died, but mine is that Scully just didn't have the vision and the same drive to create quality products that Jobs had. And the fact is that, since Jobs died in 2011, the amount of grumbling over the quality of OS X and Apple hardware in general has grown to the point where many who have left say that Apple quality is just no longer good enough to justify the high prices. And many have left partly due to their perceptions that Apple is no longer ahead of many PC's in processing capability and looks. Many people want more powerful laptops for the CPU-intensive work they do, and they feel that Apple hasn't been coming out with new computers fast enough to keep up with PC's since Jobs's death. (See this, this, this, and this.)
As I alluded to in the previous paragraphs, Apple products are still significantly more expensive than their competitors. Although it's difficult to compare, my estimate is that Apple laptops and desktops are somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% to 100% more costly than equivalent PC's. An then there is the $5000-to-$13348 iMac Pro. The price says all I need to hear, but there are still people who think this is a "great deal". I don't agree, of course.
Now we come once again to the main problem with Apple products, as I see it. They are intentionally designed to communicate only with Apple products. I was first made aware of this back in the late '80's when people explained to me that floppies from my work MacIntosh couldn't be read by a PC. The file format was entirely different. You had to buy software to do the conversion. I have a friend who recently bought a new Samsung phone. She asked me how to transfer files from it to a computer and back. At first, I didn't see the problem. My two cell phones act just like flash drives when I connect them to any of my laptops. Transferring files is trivial. Then I realized her problem, she has a MacBook Air. Game over. It's designed not to work with any phone not made by Apple. And this is just the beginning. Apple does the same thing with cables, monitors, and anything else they can manage to keep from working with competitor's products. Why? Because they want to sell you their product, including their $20 to $50 cables and adapters that competitors sell for PC's for as little as $5 to $15. Apple also got rid of the headphone jack on their recent cell phones, I have no doubt, because they want to sell you their $160 AirPod earbuds. If I want to listen to music on my cellphone, I can go to Walmart and buy earbuds for as little as $5, and I have a very nice-sounding pair that I bought for $14 on Amazon. And my earbuds don't have batteries to recharge or wear out.
One last problem I have with Apple products is that Apple does everything they can to force you to get their products repaired at their facilities. This includes making them very hard, if not impossible, to repair yourself, and opposing any laws that try to give you the right to repair any of their products that you may have (see also here.) And of course, many people complain that Apple charges too much for those repairs.
Now you should understand why I have never owned an Apple product, and why I say that you shouldn't buy their products either.
Computer Built-In Obsolescence
01-09-2019
Built-in obsolescence, also known a planned obsolescence, is not a conspiracy theory. It is a fact. We know this because companies have been caught intentionally designing built-in obsolescence into their products. In fact, not only do we know that companies do this, we know who first came up with the idea. An American economist, Bernard London, wrote a paper in 1932 called Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence. As he saw it, the reason for the great depression was that, although there was plenty of everything to go around, many consumers were not buying. Their fear of the economic conditions during the depression motivated them to make what they had last longer. He called this frugality on the part of consumers "planless, haphazard, fickle attitudes" and proposed built-in obsolescence as the solution. Many now go to great lengths to promote the continued use of built-in obsolescence. But two facts exist: 1) built-in obsolescence is not good for the consumer, and 2) built-in obsolescence is part of the design of everything from cars to light bulbs. If you don't believe that built-in obsolescence is everywhere, just go shopping at any department store for a spatula or frying pan where the handle is not a separate piece of metal. The only reason to make spatulas and frying pans from two pieces of metal is to provide a way for the handle to break off. If you could buy one of these made from one piece of metal, you would not have to buy a new one every couple of years.
About a year and a half ago, the plastic on my mostly-leather, casual shoes was cracked so badly that I decided to replace them. The other parts of the shoes were in fine shape, but the shredded plastic made them look worn out. I went to three or four shoe stores looking for a new pair of casual shoes (not boots, tennis shoes, or dress shoes). Every single pair had some amount of plastic in the upper part of the shoe (the part that should have been only leather). I went to the manager of one shoe store to ask if she had any casual shoes without plastic in them. She looked puzzled by my question--like no one had ever asked her that before--and asked why I wanted a casual shoes without plastic. I said I did not want the built-in obsolescence. She chuckled knowingly and suggested a nearby shoe store. That store did not have any casual shoes without plastic, either. I ended up replacing my casual shoes with a pair of all-leather upper dress shoes.
From this, I learned something that should not have surprised me, but it did. Virtually no consumers have enough sense to look for shoes without built-in obsolescence. Unfortunately, the only defense against built-in obsolescence is an informed consumer. When consumers refuse to buy shoddy products, manufacturers stop making shoddy products. Period.
As you have probably guessed, computers are also designed with built-in obsolescence. Arguably, the computer manufacturer that makes this most obvious is Apple. But nearly all manufacturers do this with cellphones, desktop computers, and laptops that are designed to be used by consumers. Your only defense is to know what to avoid.
Consumer Laptops
As I stated in a previous article, business-grade laptops, while more expensive than consumer-grade laptops, are significantly higher in quality. Not only do they last longer, they also work better. The reason for this is simple. Manufacturers know businesses understand that quality laptops will be cheaper in the long run. Consumers typically buy whatever they see on sale at a big box store. And frequently, what is on sale is what consumers are returning to the store because they don't like it. So, laptop manufacturers build high-quality laptops for businesses and low-quality ones for consumers.
Non-Replaceable Batteries
I do not believe the argument that replaceable batteries allow cellphones and laptops to be thinner. If you compare the hardware associated with replaceable and non-replaceable batteries, I think you will come to the same conclusion. As I see it, manufacturers use non-replaceable batteries for only two reasons. First, this causes you to go through such a hassle to continue using the product that you would rather throw it away and buy a new one. The second is to be able to charge you a high price to replace the battery.
Weak Laptop Cases
In my opinion, weak laptop cases are second only to glass cellphone screens in the manufacturers' arsenal of methods of forcing consumers to buy new devices. If you have ever dropped a cheaply made laptop and a well-made laptop, you most likely already know what I am talking about. Cheaply made laptops shatter when they are dropped. Pieces go flying everywhere. Laptops with strong, durable cases can emerge from a drop with barely a scratch. The best cases are all metal. Look for laptop hinges that are made of solid, thick steel. Dell builds high-quality metal cases on their business class laptops--especially the older Dell Latitude E6XXX series laptops. I have a Dell Latitude E6220, and I love it--both for its beauty, and for its durability. I also have an old Dell Latitude E6500, which has a mostly plastic case, but it is still fairly durable. For years, Apple has also been using metal cases as a way of distinguishing its laptops from the competition. In my opinion, metal cases is one of the only areas in which Apple laptops shine (no pun intended).
CPU Overheating and Thin Laptops
Nothing reduces the life of a laptop more than an overheating CPU. Unfortunately, as I have written about before, the vast majority of thin laptops have significant overheating issues. The best way to know before you buy whether a particular laptop model has an overheating problem is to look it up on notebookcheck.com. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you should never buy a laptop without knowing how hot the CPU gets and whether it has thermal throttling issues.
Keyboards
As the recent Apple keyboard scandal has illustrated, not all laptop keyboards are created equal. I bought a used consumer laptop a few years ago with a couple of missing keys on the keyboard. I bought and installed a brand new keyboard, and one of the keys popped off on the same day I installed it. On looking closely at the key mechanism with a magnifying glass, I discovered that the problem had occurred because it had been manufactured with one of the little "ears" of metal bent that was supposed to hold the key. Clearly, the manufacturing process that built this keyboard was inferior. The moral of this story is that you should pay attention to the keyboard quality of any laptop that you are considering buying. You really do not want to go through the expense and hassle of repeatedly replacing your laptop's keyboard. A great source of information about laptop keyboards from the people who actually buy and use them is amazon.com reviews. My recommendation is that you not buy any brand of laptop until you have read at least 20 to 30 reviews on Amazon. If Amazon does not have that many reviews for the laptop you are considering buying, do not buy it.
USB Ports
You cannot do much about USB ports going bad. No consumer-focused organization tests the USB ports of specific laptops, tablets, or cellphones. Despite that, I thought I would mention that USB ports are one source of the built-in obsolescence. USB ports were originally designed to last for only about 1500 plug/unplug cycles. Luckily, most mini and regular USB ports last more like 5000 to 10000 cycles. (See this and this.) Of all the laptops I have owned, only one or two USB ports have stopped working. However, I treat them well. Rougher use may cause more failures. So, be careful with these, if you want them to last.
CPU Non-Upgradeability
This has always been a problem for laptops, and there really is no good excuse. Manufacturers sometimes claim that putting motherboards in laptops that are socketed for CPU replacement or upgrade adds too much thickness to the laptop. I simply do not buy this. I think the real reason that almost no laptops have socketed CPU's is that manufacturers do not want you to be able to upgrade your CPU after a couple of years of ownership. I think the same applies to unsocketed RAM and hard drives. A few people have been thinking about modular laptops and cellphones with replaceable CPU's, but so far, this has gone nowhere, most likely because consumers have not realized how much it would benefit them.
Limited RAM
Laptops are designed for a certain range in the amount of RAM that can be installed. Not being a designer of motherboards, I cannot come up with a legitimate reason for this, other than that older versions of Windows supported limited RAM and that the growth in RAM required for applications has grown a bit more slowly than CPU capability. I have no data to back this up. This is just a feeling that I have. Regardless, with the current generation of CPU's capable of addressing 256 terabytes of RAM, why are current laptops only able to address 4, 8, 16, 32, or at most 64 gigabytes of RAM? Despite the fact that Microsoft Windows can only access a much smaller amount of RAM, the only real reason that I can see for computers not being able to access much larger amounts of RAM is built-in obsolescence. I will discuss Microsoft Windows' small RAM limits in the next section of this article.
Software
Software companies practice built-in obsolescence mostly by adding new features--whether the new features add any real value to the consumer or not--by making newer software look "glitzier", and by making newer software incompatible with older software. A good example of newer software being designed to be incompatible with older software is Microsoft Word. I have been forced by various employers since the early 1990's to use Microsoft Word, and I have watched as newer versions came out that were incompatible with older versions. When a new version of Word came out in the '90's, suddenly we could no longer open older company documents written with the previous version. This had quite a negative effect on my impresion of Microsoft. But, the companies I worked for went right on using Microsoft products, as if they had not noticed a thing. In the early 2000's, one method that Microsoft devised of preventing its customers from moving to alternative free office software (like FreeOffice, OpenOffice, and LibeOffice) was changing Word's document format from .doc to .docx. This did not work for long because the makers of other office alternatives simply responded by adding the .docx file format to their programs.
Another practice that I suspect occurs is the intentional limiting of software features and capabilities, so more can be added to later versions. As I alluded to above, an example of this would be Microsoft limiting the amount of RAM that various versions of Windows can address. I see no other reason for Windows 7 Starter Edition having access to only 2GB, Windows 7 Home Basic having access to only 8GB, and Windows 7 Home Premium to having access to only 16GB, while Windows 7 Pro has access to 192GB.
The way that I fight built-in obsolescence in software is by using free software like Linux. With free software, no incentives exist for programmers to create useless new features or make newer versions of software incompatible with older versions. The goal of a programmer of free software is to make software that people will want to use, not software they will have to use.
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What is Wrong with a Cheap Cell Phone?
10-5-2018
Picture of Cellphone
About two years ago, I saw a Hauwei Union Y538 Android smartphone on sale at Best Buy for $20 (regular price $30), so I bought it. It has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage and can handle a 32GB micro SD card. Its camera is not great, but not bad either. I use it mostly for reading ebooks and listening to podcasts and music. Occasionally, I watch a movie, go on the Internet, or take some pictures. So far, I've not had a problem with running out of storage space because I have an app that can move most apps off of the main storage and onto the SD card. I've never had a problem with my Hauwei cell phone, other than that sometimes it has issues with static electricity, where it will do strange things when I pull it out of or put it into my pocket. But that is rare. It has done everything I've asked it to do with no unusual lag. In other words, it's adequate at doing what I ask of it.
A friend recently bought a Samsung Galaxy 9 for $790. She actually bought three of them. She had to take the first two back because they were having major problems. She uses it mostly for making phone calls, sending text messages, surfing the Internet, and playing Youtube videos. Her cell phone has a nicer, larger display than mine and more RAM and storage. It also has a better camera. But as far as usability is concerned, it's about the same. In other words, it does what she asks of it with no unusual lag.
I can't understand why the ways in which her cell phone excels mine are worth the extra $770. Am I missing something? Why did she pay forty times what I paid--for a phone that I'm perfectly happy with? Why are other people doing the same? Why are some people paying over $1000 for a cell phone? I can't even guess why people do this. Really, I can't.
The Cloud is a Scam
9-26-2018
Lightning Storm
photo by Brandon Morgan
In the early days, before the mid-eighties, we called the cloud by another name, "mainframes". That was back in the days when computer computation time and storage were extremely expensive, before "microcomputers" became useful as a tool in industry. We're talking a hundred thousand dollars in inflation-adjusted dollars to rent a computer for a month and a million dollars to buy a megabyte of storage.
When I entered the work force in the mid '80's, the cost had declined somewhat. My company was using VAX 11/780's--cost: about $150,000 each (not adjusted for inflation). And it wasn't unusual for 50 engineers to all be at VT100 terminals competing for time on one of these things. Let me tell you, you think you're frustrated by slow computers now? You don't know what a slow computer is.
Then, sometime in the mid-to-late eighties, microcomputers received a new name, "PC's", and began landing on engineers' desks. Why did we stop using mainframes and start using PC's? Cost. PC's only cost about two to four thousand dollars each (not adjusted for inflation).
Now, everything we've been hearing for the last four or five years has been about how great the cloud is and how it's the new thing, the future. Do you ever hear anything concrete about the virtues of the cloud? So, why the big push to get us all in the cloud? What's the cost compared to what I have sitting on my desk right now?
Unfortunately, I have no idea how much a provider like Google, providing a service like Google Docs, can make by selling any of my data that they can manage to siphon off. So, I have no way of computing the true cost of computational time in the cloud.
But I can talk about data storage costs. Today I can buy an external, 2.5", four terabyte hard drive for $90. If I have my primary hard drive and two backups, that comes to $270. My guess is that, if I take care of it, the average hard drive will last me for about five years. One website says 6 years. Assuming five years, that's about $60/year to store and back up four terabytes of data.
Now let's look at how much it costs to store four terabytes of data in the cloud for five years.
Product Cost/Month Cost for 4TB/5yrs
Google $2.57/mo/50GB $12336
Dropbox $33.16/mo/4TB $1990
OneDrive $1.99/mo/50GB $9552
The cost of google storage includes some, but perhaps not all, of what Google charges to transfer data. And none of the above charges include what I pay my Internet service provider to upload and download that data.
So, the cost to store data in the cloud is significantly higher than to store it on my desk. The cheapest provider, Dropbox, charges 737% of what it cost me to store data on my desk. And Google charges me a whopping 5570%! No wonder they want to store my data!
You may choose to argue my point. You may say, "But those data storage providers store my data outside my house. So, if my house burns down, my data is safe." My response is: that's what I do with the second backup hard drive. I store it at work, or at a relative's house, or even in my car. You respond with, "That's too hard!" My response is: we'll then you're paying all that money for your convenience. I don't think I want to pay that much for convenience because I don't think storing data is all that inconvenient. In fact, if you want to pay me $12336 to store four terabytes of data for five years, I would gladly store it on my desk.
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