A trip down the big river

Published Date 3/21/14 2:36 PM

A trip through central London on the river Thames from Brentford to Limehouse.

Ready to set-off from the last squatted mooring on the big river, near Kew bridge.

Very calm for the first half.

The crew relax and take photes

The bridges were easer than further up the river as they were wider.

Just about to enter the ruff part of the trip (Photo from liquid highway)

It got so ruff and busy we didn’t get any photos or videos of the best bit (:

Arrived safe but shakenup (:

The tech manifesto of the OMN

Published Date 3/20/14 4:27 PM

In technology development, there are many possible paths. Some of these lead to far more fertile ground for cultivating the open internet and open society approach that the #OMN is built on.

What We Reject

We clearly reject:

  • Pure client–server relationships
  • Closed security cultures
  • Geek-only design aesthetics and insular “vanilla” tech culture
  • Data ownership models and closed licensing

What We Support

We actively support:

  • Peer-to-peer relationships, alongside hybrid federated client–server infrastructure
  • An open security culture, with carefully limited use of closed peer-to-peer security where appropriate
  • A balance between technical usability and simple outreach – with the ability to switch between these modes within the same application
  • Geek culture that embraces and mixes with other cultures, rather than isolating itself
  • Open data formats and Creative Commons licensing

Approach

The #OMN is open to any project that aligns with open-source, open-data, and open-licensing principles. There are several existing tools and platforms that point in useful directions:

  • Liferay — Built on a strong standards-based approach, but constrained by being owned by a profit-driven company with controlling interests
  • RetroShare — An open-source peer-to-peer client that already covers many needs for personal security and communication

Opportunities for Integration

A key question is whether we can meaningfully combine these approaches into a more open, global platform:

  • Could we bridge a standards-based system (like Liferay) with a peer-to-peer network (like RetroShare) to create a federated, secure, hybrid infrastructure?
  • Could we build a cross-platform system that combines APIs, federation, and peer-to-peer trust networks?

There are also interesting experiments to consider:

  • Popcorn Time-style distribution – Using torrent-based streaming models
  • Could this be combined with open archives (e.g. Archive.org APIs) to support distributed video hosting and seeding?

OMN Stack Direction

Within this ecosystem, #OMN can be understood as:

  • A network built on RSS style flows
  • A federation layer for content sharing and discovery
  • A bridge between distributed storage, streaming, and publishing tools

Front-End Possibilities

Finally, the growing power of HTML5 web apps – especially on smartphones – provides a flexible and accessible interface layer. This allows us to build user-friendly tools on top of complex distributed infrastructure without locking users into closed platforms.

The goal is not to build everything from scratch, but to stitch together existing open tools into a coherent, trust-based ecosystem.

UPDATE: both Liferay and Retroshare failed in this dev path, the first is the normal blocking of open core as a #FOSS path and the second simply failed due to complexity and #UX. Popcorn time we never found a crew to build the coding. Then web apps were silently blocked by the #dotcons app stores focus. What can we learn from this now?

FAQ why use open websites

Published Date 2/22/14 10:04 PM

We need to get activist to actually use alternative net infrastructure.

FAQ

Q. Its to complex to use this geek software.

A. So was Facebook when it started, almost nobody understood what twitter was for for ages – all new experiences are hard. Its actually ONLY a question of motivation then familiarisation through repartition.

Q. Activist internet site are ugly – if they just look nicer people might actually use them.

A. After bad UI is put to one side (and this can be an issue) the is a direct correlation between full user functionality and bad looking sites – you can make site look nicer by dis-empowering the user or by shaping and controlling there interactions – but freedom always looks messy just look at Facebook its one of the more messy sites out there – it overcomes this issue by good UI and familiarity – people get used to “functionality – ugliness” after they use the software every day.

Q. My activist site has no way for the “user” to be part of the site beyond limited commenting.

A. Yes activist sites are generally in the stone age of hierarchical control freakery, use sites that are web02 not web01 the actually are some projects out their. Complain to admins if the is no peer -to- peer production on an activist site, then actually use the peer production tools they set-up such as wikis and forums.

Q. Why not just use Facebook groups/ fashionable web2 site, every one is on there anyway.

A. This way leads to the death of the open internet/society LINK

Q. Can i trust activist sites with my privacy.

A. On corporate site’s that most activist use, such as Facebook you can only hide from your friends not from your enermys. This is generally true for the open web in general and is something we need to understand. If you have a secret take the activist to the garden and whisper it in there ear, do not rely on any fig leafs of corporate privacy settings or promise of activist client server encryption LINK

Advice on new laptop and phone

Published Date 2/18/14 2:04 PM

If you use a Mac, buy a Mac, if you use a PC buy a PC, if you are undecided buy a PC as Macs are for the slave mentality – its a locked down, but functional, world in Mac land. For PC laptops I recommend thinkpads duel booting into Ubuntu. The use the Ubuntu side with liber office, Firefox, chrome etc. to do all your normal work, including all work on the web. Then only boot into the windows side for video editing and legacy programs, don’t surf the web on the windows side.

For phones, buy a relatively modern android smart phone, the are lots of them. The currently isn’t a good choice for data networks at the moment, Giffgaff used to be very good as you got unlimited data and could tether your phone, they have implemented tethering detection which makes them less useful. I still use giffgaff as its still a good deal as it runs on the reliable 02 network, up for suggestions for alternatives.