I imagine this has implications for the debate where certain people think backdoors and censorship will stop covert communication among criminals or terrorists. Now, we can add to our list of replies, "Hows that working out for Cuba?"
Then "certain people" are happy - at least they'll make you live in totalitarian dictatorship, it's a good achivement already.
I came to conclusion that those "certain people" just hate everybody and want to harm us, and then hope to escape proposed punishment themself.
Limiting your rights is not a "price to pay" for them, it's their target. Fighting crime and terrorism is just a front-end to get to their real target, namely to humiliate citizens.
You "only" need about 650m elevation if you place an equally tall tower at both places. Sadly neither Key West nor Havana has any tall mountains nearby either
A blast from the past. I mailed DVD-R's and flash storage because the price per GB was pretty good. No hackers, either. I later found that this wasn't a unique idea: supercomputing and big corporate players often mailed whole HD's of data to cut cost of WAN links. A trick that it pays to never forget in case one of the benefits appear.
It's only 5-24 terrabytes. That's not including tv shows, which would make it much bigger. But even those would still be small enough to fit it in a small box.
I think the content addressable web is going to help the web bloom in places it's not currently accessible. Take something like the Netflix open connect appliance, preload with a couple hundred TB, plug it in and have it start announcing content in locations with poor network connectivity.
EDIT: Thinking about this more, it becomes almost like S3 for all web content. Each piece of content can be addressed with its SHA hash, disparate nodes can increase the number of replicas based on demand, etc.
They get us mostly there. The rest of the way is how you combine getting that data into a browser.
Subresource Integrity [1] includes the hash of the content/object in the link to the resource, as well as the URL/URI; this lets you do fun things like not fetch duplicate content if its already in the browser's cache from another site (think a specific version of jquery, for example).
Magnet links [2] are a great example of this in practice, but that's bittorrent-specific (although I would not be surprised if you started to see ideas from Magnet URI scheme work their way into Subresource Integrity):
"The Magnet URI scheme is a de facto standard defining a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme for Magnet links, which mainly refer to resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks. Such a link typically identifies a file not by location, but by content—more precisely, by the content's cryptographic hash value.
Since it specifies a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a Magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host."
So something like rather than putting a URL inside a img tag, one could perhaps put a magnet URI, and wait while the browser trawled supported P2P services for said image?
On that note, there as an article posted here on HN a while ago about Gopher. And at that point i found myself wondering if Gopher could have been modified or extended to handle such a scheme.
> So something like rather than putting a URL inside a img tag, one could perhaps put a magnet URI, and wait while the browser trawled supported P2P services for said image?
Exactly, although your browser would probably want to make an attempt at the URL specified before falling back to P2P/DHT if the server or URL wasn't available (you'd want to get objects like CSS, JS, or images FAST but other objects could probably lazy load in the background). The Magnet URI scheme already supports this behavior.
> On that note, there as an article posted here on HN a while ago about Gopher. And at that point i found myself wondering if Gopher could have been modified or extended to handle such a scheme.
How does SRI prevent other sites from using a hash of third party content to load JS they shouldn't load, or sniff browser history by specifying hashed unique to a site and measuring load times?
There's theory and practice. Theory: you can fit Netflix on a phone. Practice: you can't by far. That's unlikely to change unless you own EDA companies, memory fabs, content industry, and whole supply chains. Your link must be a pitch for a company's offerings instead of anything remotely like your claim. Good luck on that, though, as it sounds interesting. ;)
That brings to mind an anecdote i ran into in relation to copyright.
Apparently a startup was attempting to offer a cloud PVR service, but then ran into the MPAA.
Before the encounter the company was planning to use de-duplication to keep storage expenses down. But that was nixed by the MPAA lawyers.
They insisted that each customer had his own, encrypted, storage area. Anything else would be considered a broadcast service, requiring a very expensive license agreement.
At that point i think the company founders basically threw they arms up in exasperation and shut the company down.
As best i recall, it came up in relation to news about that. But it was not about Aereo directly.
It seemed to have been a company getting ready to offer their service, and wanted to clear things with the MPAA (or the MPAA lawyers showed up unannounced). Only to find it impossible to both hit their planned price level and meet MPAA storage management demands.
This because the MPAA demands basically meant they had to massively inflate their storage capacity, and thus the hardware cost pr customer made them uncompetitive with existing PVR products.
There's nothing preventing us from having 48-160+ RISC cores in a chip. There's also 1,000+ core network on a chip. There's hardware acceleration I.P. for about anything common you can think of. Yet, our actual CPU's are much fewer cores and with less I.P. than that for largely business and financial reasons.
I'm just guessing there's similar factors in memory market where max theoretical memory isn't going to happen for business reasons if nothing else.
First off, i recall reading a blog entry or article about someone who owned an Amiga 500 in the UK in the 90s.
Back then you had various glossy magazines around, complete with a classifieds section in the back.
Apparently one use of those was to offer a like for like copying service. Meaning that you put up an ad and people would mail you floppies of various games and software, along with a list of same they hoped to get in return.
Apparently it eventually snowballed to the point where he had invested in a second floppy drive just to speed up the copying process, and ended up spending whole weekends switching floppies and stuffing envelopes.
Eventually he got so fed up he started returning envelopes unopened.
Secondly, i think Amazon accept Fedex-ed HDDs for their cloud services. In case the amount of data to be uploaded would take unreasonably long otherwise.
It's very common for a dco to accept physically shipped storage. There are a lot cases, where it is either cheaper, or securer to hand deliver data when it is not possible due to peering issues to establish a non MitM-able connection.
I wonder why we're still having fans of communism, socialism and otherwise far left people if that's what the best communist states have to offer its population?
I mean, it's pathetic to live like this.
Also invalidates most of French thinkers of XX century.
Communism != socialism. There's much more socialism in the nordic countries then USA for example but they are wealthy, unrestricted internet AND have great socialized healthcare. As with most things it's about finding the right balance rather then choosing one or the other.
Yes, it is so. No, nordic countries aren't the example for leftists I mentioned.
Actually there's this conjecture that if communist revolution didn't happen in Russia it would now be more like 300 million strong Sweden, not 145 million Nigeria in snow.
Disclaimer: I'm Cuban. I lived there!
The 'better health care' fallacy died in 1990 after the Soviet collapsed!
Have you ever seen the hospitals 'normal people' go?
It is depressing not only because of resources but total lack of incentive for all workers ( nurses and doctors alike)
Same goes for their education system. It was second to none until the collapse. Now? ..OMG!!!
Please never ever think that the castro's did anything other than whatever it takes to stay in power. Their own people can rot in hell, they couldn't care less.
"Most people I spoke to in Cuba work for the state and have zero incentive to deliver anything above the bare minimum. They get paid the same either way. Even the private restaurants lack the fervor of a competitive business, since the economic environment they work in is still completely controlled even if they themselves are private."
Interesting article, but this statement is completely opposed to my own experience. I went to Cuba 4 years ago and nearly everyone I met had something running on the side. One guy said that "everyone has two jobs, they job you're given and the job you love" (he was a tour guide who did photography on the side).
I a country where many (admittedly not all) basic needs are taken care of by the state, the people are able to pursue their own aspirations, as the guy featured in the article has done.
>One guy said that "everyone has two jobs, they job you're given and the job you love" (he was a tour guide who did photography on the side).
That is because that's the only way to survive. The top positions in Cuba are those which face foreigners, as there is always a non-trivial chance of receiving dollar-based tips, which are far, far more valuable than the official Cuban currency. When I went to a Cuban resort town, my barman had been trained in Physics in Moscow, and considered himself very fortunate to be in the job he was in.
Cubans are, undoubtedly, some of the most resourceful and entrepreneurial people I've met -- but by necessity. The statement that they have "zero incentive to deliver anything above the bare minimum" is absolutely right, because everyone knows that their well-being will depend on what else they can come up with on the side.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadI came to conclusion that those "certain people" just hate everybody and want to harm us, and then hope to escape proposed punishment themself.
Limiting your rights is not a "price to pay" for them, it's their target. Fighting crime and terrorism is just a front-end to get to their real target, namely to humiliate citizens.
http://www.projectcensored.org/the-global-1-exposing-the-tra...
My thought was how about a HFT microwave style network: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba...
So I checked the distance from the Keys to Havanna: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
Which turned out to be 2500 meters via this: http://www.hamuniverse.com/lineofsightcalculator.html
It's four times larger than the largest non-skyscraper (a TV tower in North Dakota): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_and_...
So sadly we cannot beam Netflix or anything else to our entrepreneurial hacker Mr. Weekly Packet. Added incentive to fund space elevator research?
—Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1989). Computer Networks.
It's only 5-24 terrabytes. That's not including tv shows, which would make it much bigger. But even those would still be small enough to fit it in a small box.
EDIT: Thinking about this more, it becomes almost like S3 for all web content. Each piece of content can be addressed with its SHA hash, disparate nodes can increase the number of replicas based on demand, etc.
IPFS, I'm pulling even harder for you now!
Subresource Integrity [1] includes the hash of the content/object in the link to the resource, as well as the URL/URI; this lets you do fun things like not fetch duplicate content if its already in the browser's cache from another site (think a specific version of jquery, for example).
Magnet links [2] are a great example of this in practice, but that's bittorrent-specific (although I would not be surprised if you started to see ideas from Magnet URI scheme work their way into Subresource Integrity):
"The Magnet URI scheme is a de facto standard defining a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme for Magnet links, which mainly refer to resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks. Such a link typically identifies a file not by location, but by content—more precisely, by the content's cryptographic hash value.
Since it specifies a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a Magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host."
Github has a great explanation as well: http://githubengineering.com/subresource-integrity/
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme
On that note, there as an article posted here on HN a while ago about Gopher. And at that point i found myself wondering if Gopher could have been modified or extended to handle such a scheme.
Exactly, although your browser would probably want to make an attempt at the URL specified before falling back to P2P/DHT if the server or URL wasn't available (you'd want to get objects like CSS, JS, or images FAST but other objects could probably lazy load in the background). The Magnet URI scheme already supports this behavior.
> On that note, there as an article posted here on HN a while ago about Gopher. And at that point i found myself wondering if Gopher could have been modified or extended to handle such a scheme.
"Everything old is new again."
Heh, that line pass through my mind every time i see a Slack headline...
Apparently a startup was attempting to offer a cloud PVR service, but then ran into the MPAA.
Before the encounter the company was planning to use de-duplication to keep storage expenses down. But that was nixed by the MPAA lawyers.
They insisted that each customer had his own, encrypted, storage area. Anything else would be considered a broadcast service, requiring a very expensive license agreement.
At that point i think the company founders basically threw they arms up in exasperation and shut the company down.
But this isn't the end of the matter for cloud-based 'cable operators': http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/17/us-filmon-copyrigh...
It seemed to have been a company getting ready to offer their service, and wanted to clear things with the MPAA (or the MPAA lawyers showed up unannounced). Only to find it impossible to both hit their planned price level and meet MPAA storage management demands.
This because the MPAA demands basically meant they had to massively inflate their storage capacity, and thus the hardware cost pr customer made them uncompetitive with existing PVR products.
Yet. We've got a long way to go before we hit physical limits in storage technology.
I'm just guessing there's similar factors in memory market where max theoretical memory isn't going to happen for business reasons if nothing else.
Back then you had various glossy magazines around, complete with a classifieds section in the back.
Apparently one use of those was to offer a like for like copying service. Meaning that you put up an ad and people would mail you floppies of various games and software, along with a list of same they hoped to get in return.
Apparently it eventually snowballed to the point where he had invested in a second floppy drive just to speed up the copying process, and ended up spending whole weekends switching floppies and stuffing envelopes.
Eventually he got so fed up he started returning envelopes unopened.
Secondly, i think Amazon accept Fedex-ed HDDs for their cloud services. In case the amount of data to be uploaded would take unreasonably long otherwise.
I mean, it's pathetic to live like this.
Also invalidates most of French thinkers of XX century.
Actually there's this conjecture that if communist revolution didn't happen in Russia it would now be more like 300 million strong Sweden, not 145 million Nigeria in snow.
Without internet, I'll go and kill myself anyway, why would me need me?
Have you ever seen the hospitals 'normal people' go?
It is depressing not only because of resources but total lack of incentive for all workers ( nurses and doctors alike)
Same goes for their education system. It was second to none until the collapse. Now? ..OMG!!!
Please never ever think that the castro's did anything other than whatever it takes to stay in power. Their own people can rot in hell, they couldn't care less.
Interesting article, but this statement is completely opposed to my own experience. I went to Cuba 4 years ago and nearly everyone I met had something running on the side. One guy said that "everyone has two jobs, they job you're given and the job you love" (he was a tour guide who did photography on the side).
I a country where many (admittedly not all) basic needs are taken care of by the state, the people are able to pursue their own aspirations, as the guy featured in the article has done.
"zero incentive" = neo-liberal bollocks.
That is because that's the only way to survive. The top positions in Cuba are those which face foreigners, as there is always a non-trivial chance of receiving dollar-based tips, which are far, far more valuable than the official Cuban currency. When I went to a Cuban resort town, my barman had been trained in Physics in Moscow, and considered himself very fortunate to be in the job he was in.
Cubans are, undoubtedly, some of the most resourceful and entrepreneurial people I've met -- but by necessity. The statement that they have "zero incentive to deliver anything above the bare minimum" is absolutely right, because everyone knows that their well-being will depend on what else they can come up with on the side.