Not to sound like a "me too" but the idea occurred to me several days ago, I'm already working on it. (Ever since the wired story a couple weeks ago)
With Virginia's registry, it includes home and work addresses, so we'd be able to plot their likely route to work on the map too. Maybe they drive by your kids' school. (I hope not)
Once I figure out how to do all this myself, there are about a dozen maps projects I'd love to do. Most less serious than this one though...
Yes, the FBI certainly couldn't pass the review process. Down at EFF headquarters, in the Hall of Freedom, Batman and Superman vett all the applications with their giant mainframe computer, which not only turns up whether the applicant is a secret KGB agent but can also determine whether he is an evil alien from Beta Promiculi.
My anonymous network would have been more successful, but I was only able to recruit the Silver Surfer, and our Hall of "$60 per month 10'x20' Storage" only has a beatup 486 with AOL access.
What stops all sorts of jerks from trying to abuse it for spam
Anyone who wants to use anonymity but would ever reply to spam, is the biggest fool of them all. Replying to spam, which might be tracked down to the individual message, decloaks you in the most dangerous way possible.
So, assuming that people are aware of this, and assuming they are smart enough to want anonymity, spammers would starve trying to spam anonymous people. I do wonder if it's true that "if people stopped buying, they'd stop spamming", but if that is the case...
Now, this doesn't stop spammers from abusing Tor to spam regular joe retards on the internet proper. And this is why an out-proxying network like Tor is poorly designed.
slander, harrassment
If we do get the perfect anonymous network, drop off the internet proper, start lurking there. You'll be anonymous, and no one will be able to harrass you there.
I don't need wireless... I've got wires running to these things, I'm willing to try more. I don't need another wireless protocol crowding out the RF in my house.
Didn't used to be. Several high-profile cases in the 1990s ended in the judge saying that since there was no profit motive, and since no money was made, they couldn't be charged with crimes. (wasn't actual piracy, just infringement at best, which was a civil matter).
That's when the powers that be managed to buy the NET (No Electronic Theft) act, and it became a crime even if no money was exchanged. The burden of proof in civil infringement actions was also lowered, and the potential damages raised.
In short, its infringement no matter what, but only piracy if it meets the criteria that go with that particular crime. I don't know all the specifics though.
We need a law that makes it a federal felony to "Dim the magic of the movies, with intention or accidentally, through the distribution of any electronic media."
No longer will Ebert be able to safely sit there sending salvo after salvo at the movie industry, safe behind ill-concieved first ammendment rights!
Please, help save the magic of the movies from dimming, think of the children!
No, but it is important to teach all the little sycophants to keep shouting out "Don't cheat, play the game like the rest of us"... otherwise, we all stop playing their games, and they have no more power over us.
But will that actually fix it? There are some sites that just render badly, but when we talk about sites that are IE-only, we're almost always talking about more than just overlapped paragraphs and user agent string detection.
Will it use IE's javascript engine? IE's DOM? Without those, I know of a few sites that won't work , regardless of how the pixels are rendered.
state of mob rule, with the cheerleaders being paranoid crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga
Cheerleaders: Score +12. Hopefully naked cheerleaders. Paranoid: +2. Everyone should be paranoid. Crackpot: 0. Have you ever tried to smoke crack from a pot? Leftovers: 0. Ambiguous score. Are they chinese takeout leftovers from last night, or 3 month old covered in an as yet unknown species of mold? Amiga: + Eleventy trillion. Author: +2. Has-been industry sycophant with mediocre technological expertise -3, shares surname with inventer of superior keyboard layout +5.
Total score: Eleventy trillion + 16. Dvorak would never compliment linux advocates, so this confirms my theory that he has mercury poisoning and is saying random things in his mad ranting. I vote to remove his feeding tube.
So you're sitting at (0, 0, 0) (or 6D equiv, whatever). You introduce me, I'm now at (0, 0, 1). You also introduce someone at (0, 1, 0), who introduces someone at (0, 1, 1). Now, since I and this new node are neighbors, we're supposed to be connected, right?
Possibly. We might want to check if you and he are in the same country first. Doing so without revealing sensitive information is tricky, but doable. Supposing you are, we'd just have the new guy be (0,2,0) then. Only if you both trust each other, decide you want to be partners. And since you are both still connected at this point, you can chat on IRC, email each other, trying to decide. Maybe it takes you months... doesn't matter to me.
How does that connection get made, and isn't any such process abuseable by an attacker?
It is abusable. So you need to be careful when you decide to hook up with them.
I think any such network needs to have some sort of mechanized recognition of cancer nodes.
You're probably right. But I've only got some fuzzy ideas on how to do that. But I don't want to wait until I have it all figured out either... experimenting is possibly the best way to solve such problems.
In your 6D x 3bit network, I think the diameter is then the distance from (000000) to (333333) (assuming wrapping), which is 3 * 6 = 18, and that assumes 12 connections per node in a network of at most 2^18 nodes. I think that simulation results show that Small World networks (like i2p and freenet should be) do much better than that.
From corner to opposite corner, 6d/3bit is 48 units (8+8+8+8+8+8). Wraparound makes it 24 units max distance. Not having a fully fleshed out network means there are even some contrived scenarios where distances of more than 48 hops are possible though.
Though, 24 hops is pretty decent, there are such distances on the internet proper.
I think the whole idea is probably workable, but it also seems a bit awkward. I think it's also starting to be a bit like i2p; have you looked into that?
One exception. This uses off-the-shelf software, and is VPN agnostic.
Any scripts that run in the element will run, can't be helped. If they're an alert() like an annoying one of mine, too bad. But if they just do something, screw it up, firefox is graceful enough to still load the page, after which you can run your corrected version.
You can even override some functions, though I'm not good at this.
And you can replace all the onclick="function"s that you might want.
I've had good luck so far, the only things I'm having trouble with are where I'm adding features. Making it as functional as if it were IE, I'm 100% so far.
I'm not a kiddyporno freak. Hard to claim I'm a dissident. I think rabblerouser is the correct term.
If you're outside the USA, send me an email. Maybe we should talk...
Re:Newsbyte is a well known troll
on
Revamping Freenet
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've never actually used VPN, so I'm far from an expert on what it can and can't do. I'm realy not trying to be obnoxious or trolling or whatever, I just think that solving these problems in the face of a determined attacker is far harder than you give credit for.
Actually, I had figured you as one who has only ever used ipsec. Haha. It can literally be a bitch... openvpn is a simple install, a 6-10 line config file, and you're done. Looks like a second network adapter, acts like one. Hell, it's only a single port to open in a firewall, and can be udp or tcp.
Solving some of the problems is going to be difficult. Some of the layer 4 to layer 7 protocols we'd like to use, that claim to have "secure" implementations never really had this sort of security in mind. What happens when you discover that even SSL/TLS smtp/pop3 aren't good enough, that even if they can't eavesdrop, just the fact that you sent an email there is sensitive? Some protocols, like HTTPS will survive, others may not.
I'm still confused about how you assign addresses. I join the network. Who decides where in your 3D coordinate space I'm sitting?
I'm at 1,2,3. I invite you. You might then be able to be at:
0,2,3 2,2,3 1,1,3 1,3,3 1,2,2 1,2,4
Some of those might already be taken. Others might make you a neighbor/partner to people you aren't allowed to partner with* (more on that later). But, you pick one, and let everyone know it's yours.
OK, so now I'm sitting at (2, 7, 23). How many hops are required to get to (96, 172, 243)?
Not familiar with manhattan distance. Think I know what you mean. With a traditional grid, yeh, that computes distance. But say we go with 3bit dimensions, which allow coordinates to be 0-7. We can actually set up 0 to be adjacent to 7, and if we do that in every "direction", we have halved all hop distances, barring a bunch of routes down in the middle somewhere.
So now I'm sitting at (2, 7, 23). I'm publishing objectionable material. So, someone else decides they're going to take that same address. Who decides who the correct owner is?
First come, first serve. He doesn't get to pick his address anyway, it's based on who invited him. But even if it is a valid location for him, you got there first. Anyone actively attacking the network like that, assuming that I'm a neighbor/partner will get a "ifconfig tun99 down" really quick. And I'll let the other neighbors know what I'm seeing, they can do the same.
So an attacker decides to take down the whole network, and starts setting up lots and lots of nodes on the network that look mostly functional but don't route well enough. Can the VPN route around them? Even in the face of a significant fraction of the network being bogus nodes?
I don't know. Honest. Can we somehow detect bogus nodes, can we fight it? Route around them maybe, but that won't be enough. I think this is only realistic on a small, growing network. At some point, it could concievably be big enough that this wouldn't be an issue. So, now all we need are 400,000 people willing to run nodes. Got any friends?
* I'd also add that I think it's a good idea to make all such tunnels/links international in nature. The people who can hurt you the most are in your own country, so don't connect to them, and they'll never know what you're saying on this network. Let's see them serve a wiretap/search warrant in another nation...
Dump the freenet middleman: Yes, do this. Run VPN tunnels to friends, just for kicks: Yes, do this also.
But better yet, do it with more than just a few friends. Ever tried to see how big such a network could become? Me neither. It's about time someone tried.
Re:Newsbyte is a well known troll
on
Revamping Freenet
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
with no centralized IP assigner
Yeh. It's pretty simple, when you think about it. Of course, still restricted to 10.x.x.x, but if you outgrow that, I think you oughtta be able to figure out a solution.
no backbone routing
Yeh, the internet itself was meant to be decentralized. It sort of forgot that. I was thinking a regular geometric mesh, probably square grid, 3d +. Which leads back to your first snide comment, assigning addresses. Where you are in the mesh, gives you coordinates. So, you might get something like 10.x.y.* for your IP address. Better yet, ignore the byte boundary, and go with more dimensions, (/26s with 6bit 3d sounds nice, though maybe 3bit 6d even). Make it so no one is a backbone, and have it massively redundant, a fabric even.
distributed caching of content
Why? Find some people on the network that are distant to you, and would be willing to set up a dozen mirrors. If they disagree with you, they shouldn't have to mirror it for you.
plausible deniability on requests and inserts
Better yet, do https inside the openvpn tunnels. Even a router inside the darknet can't sniff your traffic.
and the ability to publish content without neccessarily always being online?
If you are absolutely incapable of being online 24/7, fine. Find me on such a darknet. Tell me why your content is so important. I'll be moved to mirror it for you, or even set up a proper vhost for it, complete with limited shell access.
Half the problems you bring up were solved *YEARS* ago. But no, let's re-invent the wheel, just so you can dream up convoluted crypto schemes.
Oh, and you've probably also increased the software complexity from the point of view of what the user has to deal with.
The user only needs to install OpenVPN, or for that matter, any vpn client they choose. I have used ipsec (freeswan) from time to time, and even messed around with poptop. Simpler than freenet, looks like a local area connection on windows.
I'd even go so far as to say you've reimplemented Freenet, without the crypto.
No, just gotten rid of the dorky DHT thing. OpenVPN uses SSL, and what's that quote about people thinking they can do a better job of crypto than SSL? Inside the tunnels, do it right from the beginning. Ridicule and harass those that don't use HTTPS from the beginning. Make fun of them. Use SSH only,the few times you need to remote shell around in it. Use IRC with the SSL modules, or better yet, use silc.
Re:Newsbyte is a well known troll
on
Revamping Freenet
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How so? If I'm connected to 3-5 trusted friends, each of whom is also connected to 3-5 friends, that can turn into a globe-spanning network given a reasonable number of hops.
Great idea! Now, just dump the freenet middleman, run openvpn tunnels to those 3-5 friends, route IPv4 the way it's been done for the last 20 years, and we can have a true layer3 network!
Slashdot Mirror
Within the next 3 hours, Tom Cruise will sit down at a table with a director discussing a Phillip K. Dick script treatment...
Not to sound like a "me too" but the idea occurred to me several days ago, I'm already working on it. (Ever since the wired story a couple weeks ago)
With Virginia's registry, it includes home and work addresses, so we'd be able to plot their likely route to work on the map too. Maybe they drive by your kids' school. (I hope not)
Once I figure out how to do all this myself, there are about a dozen maps projects I'd love to do. Most less serious than this one though...
TV executives discover elusive Higgs boson!
Well, the next liquid metal ends up being 400 deg F or so, doesn't it? How can it be anything else? And heated mercury starts giving off vapor...
Whether it's toxic mercury, or molten tin and/or lead, I'm not sure I like the idea of "liquid metal".
Yes, the FBI certainly couldn't pass the review process. Down at EFF headquarters, in the Hall of Freedom, Batman and Superman vett all the applications with their giant mainframe computer, which not only turns up whether the applicant is a secret KGB agent but can also determine whether he is an evil alien from Beta Promiculi.
My anonymous network would have been more successful, but I was only able to recruit the Silver Surfer, and our Hall of "$60 per month 10'x20' Storage" only has a beatup 486 with AOL access.
What stops all sorts of jerks from trying to abuse it for spam
Anyone who wants to use anonymity but would ever reply to spam, is the biggest fool of them all. Replying to spam, which might be tracked down to the individual message, decloaks you in the most dangerous way possible.
So, assuming that people are aware of this, and assuming they are smart enough to want anonymity, spammers would starve trying to spam anonymous people. I do wonder if it's true that "if people stopped buying, they'd stop spamming", but if that is the case...
Now, this doesn't stop spammers from abusing Tor to spam regular joe retards on the internet proper. And this is why an out-proxying network like Tor is poorly designed.
slander, harrassment
If we do get the perfect anonymous network, drop off the internet proper, start lurking there. You'll be anonymous, and no one will be able to harrass you there.
hacking
There are solutions to this too.
I don't need wireless... I've got wires running to these things, I'm willing to try more. I don't need another wireless protocol crowding out the RF in my house.
Didn't used to be. Several high-profile cases in the 1990s ended in the judge saying that since there was no profit motive, and since no money was made, they couldn't be charged with crimes. (wasn't actual piracy, just infringement at best, which was a civil matter).
That's when the powers that be managed to buy the NET (No Electronic Theft) act, and it became a crime even if no money was exchanged. The burden of proof in civil infringement actions was also lowered, and the potential damages raised.
In short, its infringement no matter what, but only piracy if it meets the criteria that go with that particular crime. I don't know all the specifics though.
We need a law that makes it a federal felony to "Dim the magic of the movies, with intention or accidentally, through the distribution of any electronic media."
No longer will Ebert be able to safely sit there sending salvo after salvo at the movie industry, safe behind ill-concieved first ammendment rights!
Please, help save the magic of the movies from dimming, think of the children!
No, but it is important to teach all the little sycophants to keep shouting out "Don't cheat, play the game like the rest of us"... otherwise, we all stop playing their games, and they have no more power over us.
But will that actually fix it? There are some sites that just render badly, but when we talk about sites that are IE-only, we're almost always talking about more than just overlapped paragraphs and user agent string detection.
Will it use IE's javascript engine? IE's DOM? Without those, I know of a few sites that won't work , regardless of how the pixels are rendered.
Maybe we should just put in our own fiber.
Washington state also outlawed killing sasquatch.
state of mob rule, with the cheerleaders being paranoid crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga
Cheerleaders: Score +12. Hopefully naked cheerleaders.
Paranoid: +2. Everyone should be paranoid.
Crackpot: 0. Have you ever tried to smoke crack from a pot?
Leftovers: 0. Ambiguous score. Are they chinese takeout leftovers from last night, or 3 month old covered in an as yet unknown species of mold?
Amiga: + Eleventy trillion.
Author: +2. Has-been industry sycophant with mediocre technological expertise -3, shares surname with inventer of superior keyboard layout +5.
Total score: Eleventy trillion + 16. Dvorak would never compliment linux advocates, so this confirms my theory that he has mercury poisoning and is saying random things in his mad ranting. I vote to remove his feeding tube.
If only they were that unethical. Despite my dislike of the RIAA, Debeers is in a whole nother category all by itself.
Anyone that goes into the artificial diamond jewelry business had better have some grade A bodyguards.
So you're sitting at (0, 0, 0) (or 6D equiv, whatever). You introduce me, I'm now at (0, 0, 1). You also introduce someone at (0, 1, 0), who introduces someone at (0, 1, 1). Now, since I and this new node are neighbors, we're supposed to be connected, right?
Possibly. We might want to check if you and he are in the same country first. Doing so without revealing sensitive information is tricky, but doable. Supposing you are, we'd just have the new guy be (0,2,0) then. Only if you both trust each other, decide you want to be partners. And since you are both still connected at this point, you can chat on IRC, email each other, trying to decide. Maybe it takes you months... doesn't matter to me.
How does that connection get made, and isn't any such process abuseable by an attacker?
It is abusable. So you need to be careful when you decide to hook up with them.
I think any such network needs to have some sort of mechanized recognition of cancer nodes.
You're probably right. But I've only got some fuzzy ideas on how to do that. But I don't want to wait until I have it all figured out either... experimenting is possibly the best way to solve such problems.
In your 6D x 3bit network, I think the diameter is then the distance from (000000) to (333333) (assuming wrapping), which is 3 * 6 = 18, and that assumes 12 connections per node in a network of at most 2^18 nodes. I think that simulation results show that Small World networks (like i2p and freenet should be) do much better than that.
From corner to opposite corner, 6d/3bit is 48 units (8+8+8+8+8+8). Wraparound makes it 24 units max distance. Not having a fully fleshed out network means there are even some contrived scenarios where distances of more than 48 hops are possible though.
Though, 24 hops is pretty decent, there are such distances on the internet proper.
I think the whole idea is probably workable, but it also seems a bit awkward. I think it's also starting to be a bit like i2p; have you looked into that?
One exception. This uses off-the-shelf software, and is VPN agnostic.
I live in Canada and so far our need for underground, secret channels of communication is not pressing (knock wood)
This is actually true for most people (with the exceptions of those living under truly oppressive regimes like China or N. Korea).
Maybe though, it wouldn't be a bad idea to line up some channels of communication before it becomes difficult to do so?
It was meant as a troll. Besides, what is a 4 digit uid doing making me a friend, anyway? ;)
Any scripts that run in the element will run, can't be helped. If they're an alert() like an annoying one of mine, too bad. But if they just do something, screw it up, firefox is graceful enough to still load the page, after which you can run your corrected version.
You can even override some functions, though I'm not good at this.
And you can replace all the onclick="function"s that you might want.
I've had good luck so far, the only things I'm having trouble with are where I'm adding features. Making it as functional as if it were IE, I'm 100% so far.
I'm not a kiddyporno freak. Hard to claim I'm a dissident. I think rabblerouser is the correct term.
If you're outside the USA, send me an email. Maybe we should talk...
I've never actually used VPN, so I'm far from an expert on what it can and can't do. I'm realy not trying to be obnoxious or trolling or whatever, I just think that solving these problems in the face of a determined attacker is far harder than you give credit for.
Actually, I had figured you as one who has only ever used ipsec. Haha. It can literally be a bitch... openvpn is a simple install, a 6-10 line config file, and you're done. Looks like a second network adapter, acts like one. Hell, it's only a single port to open in a firewall, and can be udp or tcp.
Solving some of the problems is going to be difficult. Some of the layer 4 to layer 7 protocols we'd like to use, that claim to have "secure" implementations never really had this sort of security in mind. What happens when you discover that even SSL/TLS smtp/pop3 aren't good enough, that even if they can't eavesdrop, just the fact that you sent an email there is sensitive? Some protocols, like HTTPS will survive, others may not.
I'm still confused about how you assign addresses. I join the network. Who decides where in your 3D coordinate space I'm sitting?
I'm at 1,2,3. I invite you. You might then be able to be at:
0,2,3
2,2,3
1,1,3
1,3,3
1,2,2
1,2,4
Some of those might already be taken. Others might make you a neighbor/partner to people you aren't allowed to partner with* (more on that later). But, you pick one, and let everyone know it's yours.
OK, so now I'm sitting at (2, 7, 23). How many hops are required to get to (96, 172, 243)?
Not familiar with manhattan distance. Think I know what you mean. With a traditional grid, yeh, that computes distance. But say we go with 3bit dimensions, which allow coordinates to be 0-7. We can actually set up 0 to be adjacent to 7, and if we do that in every "direction", we have halved all hop distances, barring a bunch of routes down in the middle somewhere.
So now I'm sitting at (2, 7, 23). I'm publishing objectionable material. So, someone else decides they're going to take that same address. Who decides who the correct owner is?
First come, first serve. He doesn't get to pick his address anyway, it's based on who invited him. But even if it is a valid location for him, you got there first. Anyone actively attacking the network like that, assuming that I'm a neighbor/partner will get a "ifconfig tun99 down" really quick. And I'll let the other neighbors know what I'm seeing, they can do the same.
So an attacker decides to take down the whole network, and starts setting up lots and lots of nodes on the network that look mostly functional but don't route well enough. Can the VPN route around them? Even in the face of a significant fraction of the network being bogus nodes?
I don't know. Honest. Can we somehow detect bogus nodes, can we fight it? Route around them maybe, but that won't be enough. I think this is only realistic on a small, growing network. At some point, it could concievably be big enough that this wouldn't be an issue. So, now all we need are 400,000 people willing to run nodes. Got any friends?
* I'd also add that I think it's a good idea to make all such tunnels/links international in nature. The people who can hurt you the most are in your own country, so don't connect to them, and they'll never know what you're saying on this network. Let's see them serve a wiretap/search warrant in another nation...
Are you saying we shouldn't do this?
Dump the freenet middleman: Yes, do this.
Run VPN tunnels to friends, just for kicks: Yes, do this also.
But better yet, do it with more than just a few friends. Ever tried to see how big such a network could become? Me neither. It's about time someone tried.
with no centralized IP assigner
Yeh. It's pretty simple, when you think about it. Of course, still restricted to 10.x.x.x, but if you outgrow that, I think you oughtta be able to figure out a solution.
no backbone routing
Yeh, the internet itself was meant to be decentralized. It sort of forgot that. I was thinking a regular geometric mesh, probably square grid, 3d +. Which leads back to your first snide comment, assigning addresses. Where you are in the mesh, gives you coordinates. So, you might get something like 10.x.y.* for your IP address. Better yet, ignore the byte boundary, and go with more dimensions, (/26s with 6bit 3d sounds nice, though maybe 3bit 6d even). Make it so no one is a backbone, and have it massively redundant, a fabric even.
distributed caching of content
Why? Find some people on the network that are distant to you, and would be willing to set up a dozen mirrors. If they disagree with you, they shouldn't have to mirror it for you.
plausible deniability on requests and inserts
Better yet, do https inside the openvpn tunnels. Even a router inside the darknet can't sniff your traffic.
and the ability to publish content without neccessarily always being online?
If you are absolutely incapable of being online 24/7, fine. Find me on such a darknet. Tell me why your content is so important. I'll be moved to mirror it for you, or even set up a proper vhost for it, complete with limited shell access.
Half the problems you bring up were solved *YEARS* ago. But no, let's re-invent the wheel, just so you can dream up convoluted crypto schemes.
Oh, and you've probably also increased the software complexity from the point of view of what the user has to deal with.
The user only needs to install OpenVPN, or for that matter, any vpn client they choose. I have used ipsec (freeswan) from time to time, and even messed around with poptop. Simpler than freenet, looks like a local area connection on windows.
I'd even go so far as to say you've reimplemented Freenet, without the crypto.
No, just gotten rid of the dorky DHT thing. OpenVPN uses SSL, and what's that quote about people thinking they can do a better job of crypto than SSL? Inside the tunnels, do it right from the beginning. Ridicule and harass those that don't use HTTPS from the beginning. Make fun of them. Use SSH only,the few times you need to remote shell around in it. Use IRC with the SSL modules, or better yet, use silc.
How so? If I'm connected to 3-5 trusted friends, each of whom is also connected to 3-5 friends, that can turn into a globe-spanning network given a reasonable number of hops.
Great idea! Now, just dump the freenet middleman, run openvpn tunnels to those 3-5 friends, route IPv4 the way it's been done for the last 20 years, and we can have a true layer3 network!