internet – An Autonomous Agent

Mastering Bitcoin – Andreas M. Antonopoulos

anautonomousagent — Sun, 12 Aug 2018 03:51:56 +0000

I’ve been following Bitcoin since 2011 but sadly never researched its technical foundations. A few weeks ago I decided to dive into the subject. Mastering Bitcoin, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, clearly explains the fundamental designs of Bitcoin. The book is well written and an excellent entry point for developers new to the subject. Many sites and people recommend this book and rightly so, because after reading it, I feel that I have a new understanding and appreciation of everything blockchain related. While it is detailed and technical — geared towards an audience familiar with programming and Internet technologies, it can be a great resource for those wanting an intellectual challenge.

If you decide to purchase the book, make sure you do it on purse.io with Bitcoin. Purse is now where I make any purchases for books or things I would have bought directly from Amazon.

Decentralized Blockchain Wireless Internet Service Provider

anautonomousagent — Sun, 12 Aug 2018 03:47:49 +0000

It would be greatly beneficial to human communication freedom if we all worked together to create a decentralized blockchain wireless internet provider network. I think there are already at least two projects addressing this idea: DENT and IUNGO.NETWORK. I am still reading the whitepapers for these projects. Before searching for existing projects based on this idea, I imagined a decentralized blockchain where each node in the network operates a wireless access point. And the data sent and received would be computed and deducted from a users wallet. Ideally, a person would be able to purchase a given amount of coins on an exchange which could then be used to exchange for a certain amount of wireless data. There are similarities with SIA coin, etc… where the blockchain provides a decentralized service with security. The key is decentralization, anonymity, security, privacy, and freedom.

There are other options, but not what I have in mind: goTenna, FireChat, etc…

WordPress Application as Static Site Generator

anautonomousagent — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 23:58:10 +0000

While there are currently nice tools which exist to generate static websites, such as Hugo or Jekyll, there is also WordPress combined with a static site generating plug-in. Thus, WordPress can be used just like Hugo and Jekyll to create a set of static files to be hosted on the web via a service like IPFS or Github pages.

I was forced to investigate this topic thanks to Openshift 3, Redhat’s new upgrade for their web application hosting platform. For the past three years this site and two others have been running on Openshift’s version 2 for basically free (around $2.00 per month for total).

But Redhat decided to discontinue Openshift 2 and in the process switch their target customers away from the little guys. Normal people just wanting to blog cannot afford the $50 per month they want for their paid platform hosting account. And just to download their development kit requires filling out private information like phone number, address, and clicking a promise check-box that you agree you are using their CDK for development only. They are now as frustrating as Oracle, where you can’t download an old Java version without filling out the same identifying information.

Well, I then started to look around for WordPress hosting, expecting that I could get-by paying a small fee each month – around $5 for all sites. Nope — nothing, everywhere that I looked they wanted an exorbitant amount just to host a WordPress application. Namecheap was the best I found, 10 for the first year for three sites and then 50 per year after that. So it then seemed like a no-brainer to create a static site and put it on either IPFS or Github, which would be free. Github does have some restrictions like 1GB storage and I think they even have a monthly bandwidth limit. Since Github is free and since this site is not that popular, it was perfect. IPFS would also be nice, but I have a slow Internet connection and I already host one IPFS site and an Openbazaar storefront. And in any-case, with a static site it is rather simple to transfer or simultaneously host on other services.

I had been thinking for some time about switching to static websites, and now I was being forced to actually make the switch. Sacrificing the comment and search functionality in WordPress for a static site was something I didn’t mind, but for some people this might not be an option. Although, on second thought, you could use Disqus or Discourse and a third party search engine. I then spent about a day installing WordPress on my local desktop and transferring all data from my existing sites to the local install. This was near pain-free, although it may be headache for some who are unfamiliar with the internal structure of WordPress or terminal commands. You just have to follow the instructions listed below with the knowledge that online instructions are not always 100% correct due to differences in operating system versions, previously installed programs, etc…

And if you are copying existing WordPress data, be sure to export only the necessary tables correctly and remember to transfer all your previous uploads. Once you have the code on your Github repository, you just need to set the CNAME properties on Github and your domain name provider correctly and you are up and running.

Directions:

How to install WordPress on Ubuntu 14.04

How to install WordPress 4.7 on Ubuntu 16.10/16.04 Using LAMP Stack

Set Up SSL on Github Pages With Custom Domains for Free

How to enable mod_rewrite in Apache?

Github repositories:

An Autonomous Agent

Solar Anamnesis

IPFS Firefox Companion

anautonomousagent — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 13:46:19 +0000

If you know about the IPFS project and wondered how to get the address requests to work seamlessly within your browser, there is a Firefox Add-on called IPFS Companion. From the add-on’s description:

This add-on enables everyone to access ipfs.io (or any other public gateway) urls the way they were meant: from locally running IPFS daemon

To get things running, all you have to do is start your IPFS daemon and then start the add-on. By default both attach to 127.0.0.1:8080. Make sure they both are using the same address. And that’s all! Now every time you visit a site pointing to an IPFS gateway, for instance: ipfs.io gateway.ipfs.io ipfs.pics, it will automatically send the request and receive the response via your IPFS daemon. Pretty awesome! I can’t thank the developers enough – Marcin Rataj and David Dias. You can try it with my own IPFS site: LPPL Market Watch

Free Software Foundation

anautonomousagent — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 20:41:54 +0000

Informative videos on free (Free as in Freedom) software and open source software. Richard Stallman is a great leader for software freedom and seems to be the source of the stereotype for computer programmer “looks”.

The difference between free and open-source software was not clear to me until after watching these videos and doing further research. See the Wikipedia article on the naming of GNU/Linux.

I personally encourage readers to consider switching to a GNU/Linux operating system or a distribution like Debian if they have not already. If you prefer having a hard copy of the OS or do not have the technical know-how to perform the image download-transfer-install process, OSDisc.com is a great site to order many different distributions.

Also, be sure to become a supporter of GNU by joining the Free Software Foundation.

If you prefer to support individual programmers or projects, check out some of these on Patreon:

And come on… we need to severely lower the percentage of desktops running Windows.

IPFSDroid

anautonomousagent — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 00:57:55 +0000

One of the new platforms promising to change the framework of the internet is IPFS. As an example, I have downloaded IPFSDroid and turned my cell phone into an IPFS node. You can see a test file hosted on my Android cell phone via the IPFS gateway server: https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/Qmb2gLkmnLAH5mVNVKy39Ye7cnQg8FegjNUHzG97hm2B2T

Alternatively, if you have IPFS on your computer, navigate to the WebUI and enter:

/ipfs/Qmb2gLkmnLAH5mVNVKy39Ye7cnQg8FegjNUHzG97hm2B2T

A Few Interesting Projects

anautonomousagent — Wed, 04 May 2016 17:55:32 +0000

This post is aimed at people who are perhaps unaware of some new technologies and platforms. I have listed the ones I think have great potential to benefit an open society.
If you have any others which are of similar scope, please let me know. Will add to these links as I continue to research.

Update (06-12-2016):

Sia – Will someone develop a MySQL version to run a database that exists on Sia? I imagine hosting a WordPress site on IPFS, and the database for the site will be on Sia, I think that is a correct way to view the future of WordPress…?

Steem

IPFSDroid – IPFS for Android, eventually I imagine it will support a full node on a cell phone!

Update (05-11-2016):

AKASHA PROJECT

IPFS:

InterPlanetary File System and IPFS Blog

Juan Batiz-Benet slide deck

Ethereum:

Ethereum and Ethereum Blog

Developing Dapps

Synereo:

Synereo and Synereo Blog

Others:

Follow My Vote

Kim Dotcom’s MegaNet (link and status pending…)

Videos:

Juan Batiz-Benet at DEVCON1:

Ethereum for Dummies – Dr. Gavin Wood at DEVCON1:

MegaNet Kim Dotcom on RT:

Bye Facebook… Here Come the Decentralized Social Networks

anautonomousagent — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:35:09 +0000

Wikileaks recently claimed that Facebook censored their post on Hillary Clinton’s email dump. This suggests that users of Facebook are in no way guaranteed the right to post whatever they want. At the end of the day, it is Facebook Corporation (Quote: FB) which has the final say on what should be publicly allowed on Facebook. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, this is the expected outcome of a free service existing as a centrally managed set of servers owned by special interests and shareholders.

The solution, not without its own disadvantages, would be to create and migrate all users to a decentralized social media network. I think this would be possible with Namecoin in combination with WordPress (think BuddyPress) where all users would have their own local servers or rent machines with services like Heroku, Namecheap, Openshift, Amazon EC2, etc.. The process should be simple:

User rents machine on Heroku, Namecheap, Openshift, etc…
Install WordPress on this machine
Add WordPress social network plugin
Create Namecoin domain
Create user profile
Publish posts, socialize and message friends

Here are some current examples/ideas of people creating and implementing P2P social networks:

Diaspora – Working version of a private decentralized social network

Synereo; visit their blog to keep up with their progress.

The Pandora. P2P Social Network

Vole: Peer-to-peer social web

Masques: an invisible social network

Samsara Social Network

Kálmán Graffi

Student’s brilliant idea: A peer-to-peer social network

PeerSoN: Privacy-Preserving P2P Social Networks

Nerdy Method to Encode Email Address to Avoid Spam

anautonomousagent — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 13:07:09 +0000

Contact Email (spam robots… try to solve this!):

Supply modulus N: 13503701

Decryption Key d: 2273

Ciphertext Message in numeric form:

8207129 334600 4505190 12801374 7109281 11118282 2016909 11164527 5778177 7691883 10206105 12801374 10206105 2976139 7669811

Decrypt Email Here

NOTE: To encode your own email you must first find two prime numbers and then follow the steps listed in this RSA Worksheet.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)

anautonomousagent — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 02:26:00 +0000

Aaron Swartz was a critical protagonist and fighter for open access. Sadly, for Swartz, centralized sources of power detest such proponents of freedom. These power hungry institutions are constantly trying to win legal control over various aspects of the internet. Restriction and control of the internet inevitably results in clever ways around such imposed sanctions. Why then, do they keep trying?! Money, as usual, is the answer. And it is the responsibility of all freedom supporting internet users to demand and fight for such rights as seem necessary to uphold the open and free internet. I hope that one day the US constitution includes internet access rights.

Swartz’s vision of the internet as a way to empower the individual is a powerful force for democracy and societal progress. I suggest watching the documentary and biography, The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.

Swartz ran into trouble when he tried to show the world how academic journal producers restrict access to their publications. They lockup knowledge and scientific discoveries inside virtual safes, where any combination of $$$$ will unlock the door. It is a shame. Academic knowledge should be shared and free to access; for a good example go to arXiv.org, also The Social Science Research Network.

P.S. I found out the other day that one of the coauthors of RSS was Aaron Swartz — when he was only 14 years old, wow! What would I do without RSS feeds!? They provide such a convenient and “simple” stream of articles, news, and updates. He was brilliant.