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The webertarian project aims to create software that makes tyranny mathematically infeasible.

All the people saying "don't open your router because then the gov't will hold you responsible for things other people use it for" are missing the point. This is exactly why this is a freedom of speech issue and why the EFF is involved in the first place.
The gov't would like every act online to be traceable to an individual who can then be held responsible for it.
Freedom of speech means freedom from punishment because of your speech. The Soviets used to have a joke "everybody in Russia is free to say what they like - they're just not free to stay out of prison afterwards."
The only way to guarantee FoS is anonymity. The gov't can't punish you if they can't find you. Which is why dictatorships hate online anonymity.
Even if it was true that you could be held responsible for things others do using your router, you'd still have a duty to let them do it.
IANAL but AFAIK there is no legal basis in either the UK or US to punish someone for enabling someone else to commit a crime, unless it was part of a deliberate conspiracy, or 'common purpose'. So, (if its true at all that this is 'dangerous') the authorities are trying to illegally blackmail people into supporting their unconstitutional attempt to destroy anonymous Internet access.
Submitting to this blackmail is treason. Keep your country free, Keep your WiFi free.

At the time of writing http://pipedot.org/ has 58 comments in the first 10 stories.
http://squte.com/ has 69
http://soylentnews.org/ has 247
slashdot has 1043

The only other open-source option for windows is FreeOTFE, which is also no longer developed. It works on Windows 7 with a hack

There are other alternatives to slashdot: http://squte.com/ http://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/

federated social networks will go the same way e-mail has gone: yes, there's tons of minor e-mail servers, but a few large companies control a very large fraction of e-mail traffic (espeically for personal use) because running a server is hard.

For a federated system based on an open protocol, it should be possible to have a desktop client which installs in a few clicks. You can install a mail server yourself, of course, but the main barrier to this is needing a domain name pointing to it. For a desktop 'node' of a P2P system, either it is always on, or you have a name resolution system built into the protocol, or you have to have a domain name and a static IP (or use a dyndns service). All of these have downsides. A workaround is to use the email system as a transport layer. Email servers then effectively act as proxies.

Another problem with a p2p service is that p2p networks require more processor and network usage than centralized services, so they make poor applications for mobile devices.

Well, with the federated model you would just visit a website. If the protocol allowed it, you could use a desktop app on your PC and a website on your mobile with the same account.

Perhaps there is already someone doing this?

Yes, there are a number: diaspora, Friendica, and an emerging system based around RSS, this type of thing is usually called the federated social web. This is my own overview.

meta data and messaging data is spread around different peers as encrypted chunks

This is my proposal for exactly that

Perhaps there is already someone doing this?

Yes, there are a number: diaspora, Friendica, and an emerging system based around RSS, this type of thing is usually called the federated social web. This is my own overview.

meta data and messaging data is spread around different peers as encrypted chunks

This is my proposal for exactly that

Or better* http://squte.com/ which also forwards posts to Usenet - so there is a permanent archive that isn't locked in to any one site and a potential community of the millions of Usenetters.
* for sufficiently small values of better

This is fascinating. I run a website that applies a user reputation system to Usenet - a medium notorius for flame-wars (it's where the words 'troll' and 'flame' come from, after all) - so I'm aware of some of the theory, but it seems games have gone further than forums.
The algorithm I use is much simpler, the 'trust' metric is identical to the user Karma, presuming that users who act sensibly will also moderate sensibly. It works very well and filters out >95% of flames and trolls.
To those who ask how to stop reporting being abused, it's actually simple:
* weight reports by the number of reports. If a user only reports one other person per thousand the reports carry more weight than if they report every other user.
* as you said, have a 'trust' factor that weights the reports. In the case of my site, this is just their Karma score - if they get reported a lot as an arse, they are more likely to be an arse in the way they themselves report.
* Make reporting really easy. The more data you have from legit users, the more your algorithm can work on.

If SoylentNews wasn't so shit I'd be tempted to move over there.

I think the other sites have better stories on average, but there are better comments on /.

Aren't they imploding over some ego tantrums? You could check out, http://technocrat.net/, http://squte.com/ or https://pipedot.org/ if you're looking for a site that actually works.

There are a number of options, as well as http://soylentnews.org/ there is http://pipedot.org./ There are a lot of ex-slashdotter on the comp.misc newsgroup. http://squte.com/ (my own site) provides a slashdot-like interface to newsgroups.

Looking at the first 10 posts on each site, and taking the comp.misc newsgroup for comparison the average number of comments so far is:

soylent news: 27
comp.misc: 3
slashdot: 126

So there is a difference, but not a huge one.

Creating a new site wouldn't solve the basic problem. The issue is common with sites built with user content. Typically the TOS of the site say it can do whatever it wants with the content, and the site owners have an incentive to add as much advertising & costs as possible. Users can vote with their feet and leave, but there is an element of 'lock-in' because of the user's profile, rep and history on the site. The longer the site goes on and the more content there is, the bigger the lock-in and so the more the owners can squeeze the user-base. This makes it inevitable that the site will add more and more burdens on users over time, till a new site comes along that is - at first - friendlier to users. It happened to experts-exchange (replaced with stackoverflow), to Geocities, and now it's happening to Slashdot. Adding a new site with a new owner would just defer the problem, because the same forces would apply no matter how altruistic the initial owner. What's needed is an open platform that isn't owned by one site. this is what I've proposed with the Communion network. This allows many sites to share a discussion, if a user doesn't like what one site does, they can go to another one and continue posting in the same thread with the same ID, the same reputation etc. In order to join the network, a site has to accept the licence that stops them putting content behind a paywall or otherwise locking it in. Communion has a user-moderation system similar to slashdot's (although different).