Bonum Certa Men Certa

Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 19, 2024

Last day of my work

Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users

AT RISK of repeating what's "obvious" (what "goes without saying" often goes unsaid), the Net predates the Web and it wasn't always known as the "Internet" (with capital "I"; not FidoNet or the Russian equivalents). At its core, unlike Social Control Media, centralisation was definitely not the goal. We're talking about post-WW2 "Cold War" times. Nuclear explosions can take out a lot of core infrastructure all at once, so decentralisation was a design choice, even if the military or Army-connected (US Army) interests drove and funded development. In the 90s the Web came along and more people, even outside CERN, got Web browsers in their labs... and universities... and businesses... and eventually homes (dial-up age with plenty of AOL's disposable garbage). The Web's nature was miles better back then, bandwidth aside. In fact, centralisation was barely a thing, except perhaps for root DNS stuff (even DNS is made up or composed in such a way that it's robust to nuclear strikes against "core" or "root" authorities/servers - something that cannot quite be said about most Certificate Authorities/CA schemes). Over time, as more nations got "hooked onto" this Net and Web thing, we've collectively allowed the dream of decentralisation slip away. Regimes wanted tighter control over how we use/access "online things" and also wanted to know everything we do online (so that they can retaliate rather than reward us). The power dynamics effectively got reversed in more and more ways. The Net didn't emancipate us, it served to collectively oppress billions of people (many are still unaware of this because of the false marketing Dr. Andy Farnell spoke of yesterday). In today's Web, the powerful expose us the people; we the people can barely expose the powerful without getting caught, then suffer disproportionate reprisal.

The Web (WWW) is particularly bad in this regard and we've often condemned centralisation in Certificate Authorities because we saw where this most likely leads to. Yesterday I spoke about someone from Intel about UEFI and M.E. at the local old pub. Even he recognises that it's pure B.S. and it has nothing to do with security, it's just more complexity and now they try to rebrand UEFI as "BIOS" (which it is not). In the case of booting sequences, we get more lock-down, DRM-like mechanisms and unnecessary restrictions. Meanwhile, the WWW's evolution is something like: online hopping, online shopping, online snooping, online slopping (slop as in LLM vomit). Over time the Web turned from scientific resources of some of the world's best scientists at CERN into a propaganda machine of racist grandpas like Donald Trump and skinnerbox trash from Bytedance, teaching kids to torch homes and electrocute themselves.

We're still hopeful though because this past week we served over 30,000 Gemini pages per day (on average) and judging by Lupa, Geminispace moves only further away from centralisation. When it comes to the Linux Foundation's near-monopoly in Certificate Authorities, it is down to fifteen now. To quote Lupa today: "2629 (90.7 %) capsules are self-signed, 15 (0.5 %) use the Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt, 256 (8.8 %) are signed by another CA (may be not a trusted one)."

When Lupa says "another CA" it can be one's own. Anybody can create a CA. Whether the Pentagon (or PentaGAFAM) fancies or trusts this CA is another matter. They create a monopoly of "trust", but do you trust those who want back doors in everything, everywhere? It's like a cartel or a cabal for back door access and censorship by remote revocation at the flip of a switch (with "modern" browsers as de facto enforcers; Mozilla is part of this).

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
 
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles