Bonum Certa Men Certa

Our Move Further Away From the World Wide Web, the Browser Monopolies, HTTP, and HTML

Passage of time does not necessarily beget progress

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Summary: The World Wide Web (WWW) is going down a bad path and a clearly regressive direction; the solution isn't going 'retro' but exploring more sophisticated systems which are robust to censorship (localised or globalised) and downtime (related to censorship) while reducing surveillance by leveraging encryption at the endpoints

THE year 2020 was horrific to many of us. To me, personally, it wasn't too difficult as I had already worked from home since 2007 and for Techrights it was an inadvertent boon because having to stay at home a lot more time meant that we could do projects. In late summer we started implementing censorship circumvention for the site. The first step was turning Web pages into one-page or single-object elements. We worked on the daily bulletins. Later came text versions of IRC logs. Last week we started converting images into unicode art, in effect embedding a sort of abstraction of images inside the bulletins. All those things are being fed into IPFS and then distributed (decentralised) overnight, every night at around 3AM. Videos, we've recently been told, are already circulating in IPFS. Some people share them in a peer-to-peer fashion. The physical, centralised server is said to have served 11.2 TB of traffic over the past 2.5 weeks. That's about 7.5 megabytes per second, on average. So the decentralised nature of the site helps reduce load and improve capacity, not just talking about censorship aspects here...



"The physical, centralised server is said to have served 11.2 TB of traffic over the past 2.5 weeks."An increase in capacity (disk space, bandwidth, processors) has facilitated expansion and growth. Not many sites can afford to self-host videos, not quite so frequently anyway. Many just come to rely on Google as a faceless censor (fear of removal of videos, deplatforming, demonetisation, delisting from searches/contextual recommendations and so on) and some opt for PeerTube, LBRY and other platforms/options that themselves have downsides (including threats of muzzling).

WWWIf all goes according to plan, Techrights will be one of the very few sites that are available through multiple channels (maybe Onion/Tor as well one day), including decentralised ones. We will of course remain on the World Wide Web (most people still choose that option), but seeing the direction the Internet has taken, especially the browser monoculture, we must explore alternatives before it's too late to do so. Censorship agenda is being promoted even by supposedly 'liberal' companies like Mozilla. They already discriminate against sites that don't do 'pseudo-security' (centralised, CA-based and often Microsoft-hosted) the way they want everyone to. Not a good sign...

When those who claim to champion Internet freedom and software freedom (not really) are acting in this way you have to wonder who the "bad actors" really are and whether you wish to associate with them.

Recent Techrights' Posts

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It looks like being a chronic liar is what it takes to lead the company once synonymous with computing
Who Imitates Who? Plagiarist as Client (From Microsoft), 'Plagiarism' at the Law Firm?
let's revisit the subject
 
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Links 11/06/2025: "Quantum" Hype From IBM, US Closer to Martial Law, and “The Nation” Celebrates Milestone
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IBM's Goal Is Not (and Never Was) Computer Users' Freedom
More than 1.5 decades ago I found IBM to be an "ally of convenience" because of OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Wayland Shows the IBM/Red Hat Way of Doing Things
IBM is trying to 'kill' X
GitHub is Proprietary, Controlled by Microsoft, and GPL Violation Warehouse
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Slopfarm Catastrophe
Seems like BetaNews (or BetaNoise) has just suffered a major data loss and restored the site from a week-old backup
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VIII: Illegal Working Conditions
How many people need to die for these people to get their massive salaries?
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 10, 2025
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Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
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Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
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Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
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Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
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GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
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