If you love open source, decentralization, and Linux. This podcast is for you. The term "hacker" came out of the earliest of computer enthusiasts such as the ARPAnet experiments for programmers and networking wizards. It's people like these that gave us the Internet, Unix, and every other life changing technology. Hackers are not the ones breaking into systems, stealing credit cards, and causing havoc.
"Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, and as of June 2018 the most recent version, Unicode 11.0, contains a repertoire of 137,439 characters covering 146 modern and historic scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets and emoji." - Wikipedia
Then I was browsing YouTube at the end of the night to relax before bed and came across a video talking about note-taking applications that are both cross-platform and robust. This is where I heard about Notion again. I can't remember where I first heard about it, but the first time I chose not to give it a go. After that first video, I looked up some others on Notion and saw how much this app can do and aims to achieve.
One day awhile back I chose to learn about a cryptocurrency that previously I knew nothing about. The pick was Monero, a coin (at the time) ranked thirteenth by market cap on coinmarketcap.com and eighth by price. What I found interesting about this coin was the mining algorithm, CryptoNight.
My mind has been on the Domain Name System (DNS) server for about a week now. I've been mulling over whether VPNs are necessary and what level of trust should be placed in a DNS provider. It's evident not to trust your ISP's DNS since some companies have been caught manipulating the data or using you DNS metadata to sell to other companies.
Both of which suck.
This collection of data via the DNS still happens even when a user connects to a VPN. The data between the user and the site is encrypted but the request to what IP address ties to the requested domain name, is not. Worst of all the user is almost always using their ISP's default servers which they control.
A VPN is an encrypted tunnel between your computer and the internet at large. They exist to allow employees access to internal intranets of a company to do work remotely.
That's it.
They are merely a tunnel and not a means to keep your data/metadata private. Any VPN provider you use can see what you access, how often, and for how long. It's not hard either; I do this in my own home from time to time with a program called Wireshark; cause I'm a nerd.
Just being on a VPN does not make your data private.
Patreon is able to shut down the income of a creator that is flagged by a random user. This is, at times, warranted by the content of the creator but is a very slippery slope. Instead of leaving this source of funding to a company that takes a cut and can shut you down without notice; creators should use a donation platform that respects their privacy, freedom, and is open source.
Grav is a web-based CMS in much the same way that WordPress is web-based. You set up an account on your server and then log in to create posts, pages, upload media, or add plugins. But, it's much more tailored to the kind of person I am than WordPress.
After some thinking about the current state of social media and mass email lists, RSS came to mind, and it's actually a much better alternative for privacy.
No data collection, no feed manipulation, no email newsletters. It's like someone from the future went to the past and gave us the answer to subscribing to creators without giving our away every detail about our lives.
In this episode we talk about the original decentralized cryptocurrency exchange called BitShares. Why risk the hacking and government shutdown of the old exchange paradigm when you can use the future?!
For the past year, I was using the OnePlus 3T without any Google apps or services. Now I picked up the OnePlus 6T and am figuring out a balance between extreme privacy and convince.
Secure Scuttlebutt is "a database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols." This may be my way to decentralize Archivatory.
In this episode, we chat about Regular Expressions and a great tool to learn how to use this powerful tool wisely. Let me know if you can make this shorter -> `([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}`
IPFS, Better Than HTTP
When we download a file from the internet, we access a traditional server and request to have the data we need. Then the server sends this file over the internet to us little by little until the entire file is in our possession.
This process takes time and resources at a much higher rate than using a peer-to-peer service like IPFS. When we want to download a copy of a file hosted on the IPFS network we get bits and pieces from many computers, not just one.
In this episode we talk about a book that I am using to study up on Linux System Administration. My goal is to same day work as a sysadmin and filling in the gaps of me knowledge will be important to land that first Linux job.
The previous episode in this series covered a few basic commands that we use most often in both the terminal and in Bash scripts. Today we will stay with this trend as we progress into more ways to manipulate what our computer does. If you have never used Bash, go back and listen over those posts.
Welcome back to the bash tutorial series. If you have not listened to the first episode in the series and you have never used bash please check that out before continuing. There are basic commands and terms we cover there that may make this section easier to follow.
Us geeks, nerds, and technology lovers spend most of our day in front of a computer. We wake up and head the work where we spend eight hours on a computer to pay the bills. Then we come home and turn on our own laptop or desktop to relax with some games, code a project, or create content for the web. All this time adds up and we find ourselves over-weight or out of shape. This is what happened to me over the years.
While this podcast is all about a technology of some sort this episode needs the attention of the nerd community. We spend all day on our computers coding, blogging, and consuming knowledge. This leads to many problems over time that even myself deal with now. It is best to keep ergonomics in mind when updating our work space.
We mentioned YaCy in the past episode titled "Peer-To-Peer: Our Only Hope." Today we are getting more in-depth with YaCy and why it is essential. We, as internet users, need to be mindful of who is using our data and how. Does it benefit us to give up our information and privacy?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is virtual since the computer acts like it is on another network when on your normal connection. The private part is where this matters to you. The VPN has end-to-end encryption so while you are connected to the VPN the data is jumbled and unreadable to any onlooker.
We have mentioned peer-to-peer a lot over the past few podcasts but we have not taken the time to dive into the concept. I should have brought this up before all those podcasts but we'll do it now. Peer-to-peer has been around a long time and is decentralized in nature.
Utopian.io is taking the open-source community that exists around Github and adding rewards. The rewards get distributed in Steem for quality contributions to an open-source project. This is interesting since until now there was never a good way to get paid for the work someone labored over within the open-source community.
Demonsaw "is an encrypted communications platform that allows you to chat, message, and transfer files without fear of data collection or surveillance from governments or corporations."
Nextcloud is the solution to the major players in the cloud storage space. It is an open-source project that aims to give you back the control of your data while bringing the same functionality you get with services from Google, Dropbox, or Apple iCloud.
In this episode we talk about what mesh networks are and why they are important. We also get into a nonprofit that is working to make mesh networking easier to deploy.
In this episode we talk about the DAT protocol and the beaker browser! Both are working together to provide a better peer-to-peer internet for the future.
In this episode we talk about the Android launcher called T-UI by Francesco Andreizzi. This is a terminal to replace your native GUI based launcher and it is freaking amazing!
In this episode we talk about alternatives to YouTube. Including VidMe, dTube, LBRY, and BitChute! One of them is my favorite right now and all but one are decentralized!
Decentralization is how we save the internet and move into one based on free speech. We talk about why it is important and where it is being used already.
I 'de-googled' My Phone ~ The Experiment • De-Googled: LineageOS • De-Googled: App Stores • De-Googled: Apps Work & Apps Don't • De-Googled: One Month In ~ A Recap