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ssh -L 8888:localhost:80 frooboz@appliance.onmylan.net
firefox http://localhost:8888/

You *are* buying only *nix based appliances, right?

Hey! That says [localhost]. How the hell did you hack into my computer?!

It's funny that this is at the top of the front page just now. Just a few minutes ago I managed to insert my first Git repository into Freenet (that is, the first Git repo that I have inserted into Freenet, but not my first Git repository). Since git supports cloning and pulling over HTTP, it already supports doing the same thing through FProxy (an HTTP proxy that allows you to browse Freenet's content as if it were regular websites).

What this doesn't allow you to do is *push* changes to other people's repositories. What you'd need to do in this case is have every developer insert their own git repository into freenet, which others could pull from, and then incorporate into their own repositories. So the accusation that really, truly distributed version control would allow other people to mess up your repositories is hogwash. If someone makes crappy changes, you don't pull from them.

In case you'd like to try it, the freesite for my program (it's a Ruby implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, not terribly interesting by itself) is here: freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySYQvAWac4LoGfnU~tGVm7xvRCgvyjp3c,bKLoSHTgen8TW6gQpemdCeh4SKCTwVM~qnOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/ . To git it, you'd just run

git clone http://localhost:8888/freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySYQvAWac4LoGfnU~tGVm7xvRCgvyjp3c,bKLoSHTgen8TW6gQpemdCeh4SKCTwVM~qnOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/TOGoSFCP.git/

Of course, you need Freenet installed in order to be able to resolve that URL ~_~

Freenet has a built-in web proxy called FProxy that you use to browse freesites. These are just regular HTML webpages but without dynamic content. FProxy has filters that strip out anything that could compromise your anonymity, such as links to the regular internet.

You visit sites by using a standard web browser and visiting an address like this:

http://localhost:8888/USK@....../wikileaks/23/

where the dots are a string of characters that provide keys to the location of the site within Freenet and the decryption keys for the content. The number 23 is the version of the site; Freenet will automatically fetch updates as they are inserted.

It is trivial to expose FProxy so that it is visible to the whole internet. The reason people don't is that you could find yourself in legal trouble if forbidden content is accessed from your IP address. To browse anonymously you have to run a Freenet node yourself, I don't think there is any way round this.

The minimum energy required to capture CO2 from the air at a partial pressure of 4×10^-4 atm and deliver it at one atmosphere is therefore about 20 kJ/mol or 1.6 GJ/tC (gigajoules per ton carbon). If we add the energy required for compressing the CO2 to the 100 atm pressure required for geological storage (assuming a 50% efficiency for converting primary energy to compressor work) the overall energy requirement for air capture with geologic sequestration is about 4 GJ/tC.

The 4 GJ/tC minimum may be compared to the carbon-specific energy content of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas have about 40, 50, and 70 GJ/tC respectively. Thus if the energy for air capture is provided by fossil fuels then the amount of carbon captured from the air can in principle be much larger than the carbon content of the fuel used to capture it. The fuel carbon can, of course, be captured as part of the process rather than being emitted to the air.

[Tips for running a successful Freenet node]

3 Most important ingredients:
Permanent connection
Bandwidth
Disk space

Without these you'll be complaining like the rest. Go ahead and set up a node, but optimum performance is a dream without all 3 above elements. Also, count on 2 days of letting it just run before you'll be able to get much done. After you're integrated things run much more smoothly!

If you're behind a firewall you'll need to know how to setup port forwarding. Windows install is the easiest, GNU systems should be trivial and there's a port for FreeBSD. I believe MacOSX can run it as well. If you can run a modern JavaVM, Freenet should be no trouble for you.

(About firewalls - if your $50 router/NAT/switch thingy cannot handle the hundreds of TCP connections Freenet can generate, you might want to either invest in a dedicated box (OpenBSD works well for me and allows me to prioritize traffic behind my interactive_ssh and vonage queues - Linux floppy distros should be fine too) or specify in freenet.conf to limit the number of open connections. Just be aware as connection tables can overload and distrupt the connection for all behind the NAT. Then again your $50 box may have no trouble at all. Port numbers are all random high port numbers making Freenet difficult to detect and firewall. Connections out will be made but the portforward is necessary for other nodes to connect to you. If nodes can't connect to you, performance will most likely be horrendous.)

If you just install Freenet and immediately try and download large files, you will be frusturated and give up. DON'T! Many freesites will not appear at all. NEVER FEAR! Let your node run in the background for a few days and get itself integrated into the mesh. Nodes that are more useful to the network (fast connection, large data store) will end up the most successful when downloading or uploading content. If you can't leave your machine running all the time or want to use freenet over dialup, fine, but your performance will not match those of others that can provide more to the network. Leeching is fine, it allows others to leech off of you - but leave your machine connected and Freenet's performance may end up suprising you.

Towards the beginning you may just want to start a number of downloads and count on many of them not completing - JUST WALK AWAY or do something else. Don't waste your time. By grabbing whatever bits you can, you'll increase the data in your own datastore and your connections within the network. If others find those bits from your node, your status will increase, more will connect to you and they will then be potential sources for more desired bits of your own. The better connectivity you've got, the more you will find. Leaving your node up at all times and keeping your datastore intact are the best ways to increase Freenet's performance (not just for you but for all).

THOSE PARANOID: I've been running my Freenet node wide open (no throttle) on my Earthlink cable connection in the heart of Raleigh, NC for some time. No threatening letters or trouble, my Vonage works fine (I do use pf's ALTQ) and those in my house have no trouble with connections, download or upload speeds)

For those that are already on Freenet and trying to download large files, one tool is critical. FUQUD (Freenet Utility for Queued Uploads and Downloads). Find it. Use it. Fred (the built in web interface) isn't going to cut it.

Regarding disk space. Unless you've got around say 2Gigs to dedicate to a node, your node may not perform as well as it could (200M is practical minimum). Consider the value you choose to be relatively permanant. You can't trade it with other uses - you build a datastore and that's the size, unusable for your MP3's or ogg's for example. They don't grow or shrink. You s

Freenet is an encrypted P2P network where information is not stored at fixed locations: nodes exchange "keys" (information bits) all the time, and in this way "popular" information stays alive while non-used information gradually fades away.

Since every connection between a different pair of nodes is encrypted using different keys, it would be very hard to use traffic-analysis to find out what somebody is sending. To make matters even better: even you don't know what your node stores; it's all encrypted. This makes legal defense rather easy: it seems the only thing they can charge you with is participation in a P2P network or something alike.

Now, when using Freenet, you download the node-software (see my original post) and run it. This spawns the communication software, and a "virtual web proxy" at port 8888. This proxy interfaces you webbrowser to the Freenet. Browsing thus is a matter of directing your browser to your local host at port 8888.

As for searching: Now this is still a bit of a problem; since information is decentral, there also cannot be a Google-like central database that you can search. However, there are many "spider"-sites (remember the web in the beginning, especially Yahoo before they implemented a real search-database?) that you can use to find info. The most important ones for starting are The Freedom Engine (TFE) and Find Is Not Dolphin (FIND). Links to both are hardcoded into your local freenet proxy.

On the other hand, things are becoming better: The I2P project will be providing fully anonymous IP (IP over ann I2P interface!). Once that's done, you can run anything you like on I2P, even central search engines and the like.

What you just saw was a Freenet "URL", which obviously has nothing much to do with web URLs as we know them. If you run freenet locally, which most people do, you can most likely press this link, but that depends on your running the Freenet demon on the standard port.

Try http://localhost:8888/; it is a real URL, but Firebird 0.7 (I haven't upgraded yet) will take you to an SEO company via www.localhost.net.au if you are not running a local web server on that port. It will do this even if you follow it as a link, it is not limited to things explicitly typed in the address bar.

I think "keyword.enabled" should be 'false' by default. You can at least switch the feature off if you do not want it; there will be no such switch if VeriSign deploy their service.

I generally dislike features where someone else has decided what they think I ought to want to happen if something does not work. "I was only trying to be helpful" is a feeble excuse for covering up the first warning that something is wrong.

... another uninformed person getting modded as Insightful.

Pray tell - how do you search the regular World Wide Web?

Via som sort of service that knows webcontent since it spidered it - right?

Guess what Dolphin's Freenet Index is ... and there are others.

So, no - I know perfectly well what I'm talking about. Freenet is just as searchable as the World Wide Web. Exactly.

Thanks for the Freenet-link, worked just fine. Redoing it here as a real link to localhost for those with FProxy installed.