Post by James Venn on Nov 27, 2022 0:48:12 GMT
Hey All, I just wanted to introduce myself and raise an issue I think about a lot.
I run a hosting company, so am fairly familiar with how the internet works. In its current iteration it is centralised around ICANN, the service which converts URL's to IP address, and a handful of big data service providers. Think Amazon Cloud for example. This trend towards centralisation is, in many ways, escalating. Personally I think this is a problem.
Anyway, as we all have a keen interest in history here, I'm sure we're all aware of what happens when you keep all your information in one place. Invariably, something occurs and it all goes up in smoke. Think Library of Alexandria, Persepolis, lost British History and countless other examples. It doesn't even need to be a disaster, it can come about with self proclaimed gatekeepers limiting the spread of certain information. We see this commonly on social media and, more broadly, the wider internet today. With suppressed information this is all the more important and is, in very large part, the engine behind the original creation of 'occult' schools and the use of cryptographic techniques to exchange data. Information was encoded in myth, music, architecture in cypher and so on, and ideally was done in a way which could allow information exchange in public without drawing too much attention. The Gothic Cathedrals are of course an excellent example of this. The Welsh are also, of course, masters of this. As we all know. They have suffered worse than many.
The reason I mention this here is obviously the information shared here is hard to come by and has been targeted for destruction on more than one occasion. As such, to try and get in front of the inevitable event which wipes the slate and clean and we have to start from scratch, I wanted to talk about alternate technologies to backup and decentralise data.
There are many people looking this way and this has been a key interest in the 'hacker' and cybersecurity communities for decades. Here is one such project, the Hyperboria Network, near dead last time I checked. Also, I'm aware they misspelt Hyperborea but it does go to show how long people have been thinking about this in the digital age. Anyway, one of the key ways in which people feel they have overcome this problem is through 'meshnet' technology. This is, in simple terms, when you set up a network which is a distributed network of nodes rather than a network relying on a centralised backbone.
There are countless options out there, some good, some bad, but one I wanted to draw everyone's attention to was 'ZeroNet'.
This is in effect, a meshnet for websites. What this means, in simple terms, is each website is similar to a torrent file, shared with all visitors to the 'website'. So, for example, if I had my library of books, documents and videos up on my Zeronet website and you decided to come and visit, you could, optionally, download my entire website onto your computer. If I update my website, those changes are propagated, in real-time through the network onto the computer of every visitor.
Should I, for whatever reason, go offline, the content is still available from your (and every visitor hosting my site's) computer. You wouldn't be able to edit the data others saw as the website is cryptographically signed to me. However, let's say I had a total hardware failure and my computer was destroyed, I would still be able to access my site and my library by downloading a copy off of your computer and then simply signing in. Also, should I become compromised and start updating my library with inaccurate information or deleting what is already there, you can click a button, clone my site, and then publish it under a separate domain name. I'm sure you could see the benefits of such a system.
Drawbacks to the above are the technology, whilst fully functional, is still in a constant state of development. I see from the above wikipedia article that the original dev has apparently dropped the project. This is, incidentally, something I will be using my hosting company to redevelop (God willing). This technology is also not security hardened, as, when I last looked, it was using old and out of date python libraries. Regarding anonymity, this probably adds many ways you can unmask a user, but, in all honesty, anonymity is a distant second in terms of what I'm interested in. What this offers, and currently provides, is a real time updating global backup solution with potentially infinite backups. Incredibly 'high redundancy' in tech jargon. So high, in fact, it could conceivably be used to avert total data loss in the case of, for example, sustained massive comet strikes.
I have run it off rooted android phones in the past as a proof of concept, and it worked flawlessly, so can confirm that this is 'low tech' as far as modern options go. You do not need a massive datacenter or a complex global data grid to make this work. In fact, you could even use packet radio to update the site even in the event of a total breakdown of the global internet. Bandwidth would be slow, but it is doable. A total global shutdown is a highly interesting threat model to be able to overcome whilst, at the same time, having a functional 'modern' browsing experience presuming a non-worst case scenario.
There is a lot more to it than this, but that is the overview.
I'm only sharing this here as I'm sure there are many others who are aware of how long this tradition of occulting and protecting knowledge goes back. This is just a modern take on the ancient problem. Of course, chiseling things in stone, making marks on clay, and encoding knowledge into oral tradition via myths and poetry (or, simply telling the gypsies and other travelling folk as per Fulcanelli) are all valid methods, but, whilst we have this technology, I feel perhaps we should make use of it. I'm a big fan of all the information you have compiled and would hate to see it lost.
None of the above is intended to imply an imminent threat, however, we live in strange times, so who knows? Given the amount of work the ancients put in to transmitting knowledge, hidden or otherwise, to us, I feel the above is worthy of consideration. Again, as I'm sure we've all realised, this problem of knowledge loss, rediscovery, then loss is as old as our written records themselves. I hope the above may provide a framework by which we can avoid the worst excesses of the next stage in such a process.
It might not be a concern today, or tomorrow, but over a long enough timeline such destruction is guaranteed.
I thought perhaps this was an area others here would be interested in. Whilst not directly related to British Hidden History, I certainly feel it's related. Has anyone else thought about this? Any other suggestions regarding technologies to use and so on? I'm all ears, but the above is a system I've been mulling over in the back of my mind for the last few years. I'm sure there are other potential solutions out there and would love to hear about them.
I run a hosting company, so am fairly familiar with how the internet works. In its current iteration it is centralised around ICANN, the service which converts URL's to IP address, and a handful of big data service providers. Think Amazon Cloud for example. This trend towards centralisation is, in many ways, escalating. Personally I think this is a problem.
Anyway, as we all have a keen interest in history here, I'm sure we're all aware of what happens when you keep all your information in one place. Invariably, something occurs and it all goes up in smoke. Think Library of Alexandria, Persepolis, lost British History and countless other examples. It doesn't even need to be a disaster, it can come about with self proclaimed gatekeepers limiting the spread of certain information. We see this commonly on social media and, more broadly, the wider internet today. With suppressed information this is all the more important and is, in very large part, the engine behind the original creation of 'occult' schools and the use of cryptographic techniques to exchange data. Information was encoded in myth, music, architecture in cypher and so on, and ideally was done in a way which could allow information exchange in public without drawing too much attention. The Gothic Cathedrals are of course an excellent example of this. The Welsh are also, of course, masters of this. As we all know. They have suffered worse than many.
The reason I mention this here is obviously the information shared here is hard to come by and has been targeted for destruction on more than one occasion. As such, to try and get in front of the inevitable event which wipes the slate and clean and we have to start from scratch, I wanted to talk about alternate technologies to backup and decentralise data.
There are many people looking this way and this has been a key interest in the 'hacker' and cybersecurity communities for decades. Here is one such project, the Hyperboria Network, near dead last time I checked. Also, I'm aware they misspelt Hyperborea but it does go to show how long people have been thinking about this in the digital age. Anyway, one of the key ways in which people feel they have overcome this problem is through 'meshnet' technology. This is, in simple terms, when you set up a network which is a distributed network of nodes rather than a network relying on a centralised backbone.
There are countless options out there, some good, some bad, but one I wanted to draw everyone's attention to was 'ZeroNet'.
This is in effect, a meshnet for websites. What this means, in simple terms, is each website is similar to a torrent file, shared with all visitors to the 'website'. So, for example, if I had my library of books, documents and videos up on my Zeronet website and you decided to come and visit, you could, optionally, download my entire website onto your computer. If I update my website, those changes are propagated, in real-time through the network onto the computer of every visitor.
Should I, for whatever reason, go offline, the content is still available from your (and every visitor hosting my site's) computer. You wouldn't be able to edit the data others saw as the website is cryptographically signed to me. However, let's say I had a total hardware failure and my computer was destroyed, I would still be able to access my site and my library by downloading a copy off of your computer and then simply signing in. Also, should I become compromised and start updating my library with inaccurate information or deleting what is already there, you can click a button, clone my site, and then publish it under a separate domain name. I'm sure you could see the benefits of such a system.
Drawbacks to the above are the technology, whilst fully functional, is still in a constant state of development. I see from the above wikipedia article that the original dev has apparently dropped the project. This is, incidentally, something I will be using my hosting company to redevelop (God willing). This technology is also not security hardened, as, when I last looked, it was using old and out of date python libraries. Regarding anonymity, this probably adds many ways you can unmask a user, but, in all honesty, anonymity is a distant second in terms of what I'm interested in. What this offers, and currently provides, is a real time updating global backup solution with potentially infinite backups. Incredibly 'high redundancy' in tech jargon. So high, in fact, it could conceivably be used to avert total data loss in the case of, for example, sustained massive comet strikes.
I have run it off rooted android phones in the past as a proof of concept, and it worked flawlessly, so can confirm that this is 'low tech' as far as modern options go. You do not need a massive datacenter or a complex global data grid to make this work. In fact, you could even use packet radio to update the site even in the event of a total breakdown of the global internet. Bandwidth would be slow, but it is doable. A total global shutdown is a highly interesting threat model to be able to overcome whilst, at the same time, having a functional 'modern' browsing experience presuming a non-worst case scenario.
There is a lot more to it than this, but that is the overview.
I'm only sharing this here as I'm sure there are many others who are aware of how long this tradition of occulting and protecting knowledge goes back. This is just a modern take on the ancient problem. Of course, chiseling things in stone, making marks on clay, and encoding knowledge into oral tradition via myths and poetry (or, simply telling the gypsies and other travelling folk as per Fulcanelli) are all valid methods, but, whilst we have this technology, I feel perhaps we should make use of it. I'm a big fan of all the information you have compiled and would hate to see it lost.
None of the above is intended to imply an imminent threat, however, we live in strange times, so who knows? Given the amount of work the ancients put in to transmitting knowledge, hidden or otherwise, to us, I feel the above is worthy of consideration. Again, as I'm sure we've all realised, this problem of knowledge loss, rediscovery, then loss is as old as our written records themselves. I hope the above may provide a framework by which we can avoid the worst excesses of the next stage in such a process.
It might not be a concern today, or tomorrow, but over a long enough timeline such destruction is guaranteed.
I thought perhaps this was an area others here would be interested in. Whilst not directly related to British Hidden History, I certainly feel it's related. Has anyone else thought about this? Any other suggestions regarding technologies to use and so on? I'm all ears, but the above is a system I've been mulling over in the back of my mind for the last few years. I'm sure there are other potential solutions out there and would love to hear about them.
