#VitalikButerin Expresses Concerns Over #AI -Induced Power #Centralization
https://www.coinlive.com/ja/news-flash/1083460

#totalitarism #oligarchy #power #privacy #FreeWill #peace #dignity #HumanRights

#ThoughtProvoker  

App-centrism is a re-centralization force in the #ActivityPub fediverse.

For the #fediverse the accepted app-centric #SocialNetwork work method is a decentralized NPM-like dependency hell waiting to happen.

Apps that introduce extensions become owners of parts of the specs when they become de-facto standards. We can only hope for responsible #ownership, and that the project stays around to keep their #design docs and code in the air.

The #FEP and the #SocialCG are two points of #centralization we find acceptable to help mitigate protocol decay and tech debt. It is not ideal, but a bandaid to keep an utterly fragmented developer ecosystem together.

The people who do most of this holding together are volunteers that can be counted on one hand. They may burnout and leave any day, in typical #FOSS fashion.

#SX investigates the concept of #GrassrootsOpenStandards, where the standardization process matches social dynamics that exist in our #commons.

[en] Cloud outages: "#Concentration is the real risk" - Prof Doug #Jacobson

For example, #DNS ... has quietly become a single point of failure ... DNS is not alone.

#Cloud outages are getting more #expensive. "#Centralization magnifies these costs."

"... concentration means that a single configuration error, routing issue or attack can ripple across much of the web."

https://theconversation.com/why-cloud-service-outages-ripple-across-the-internet-and-the-economy-272241

#cybersecurity #spof #outage #crowdstrike #iastate

Austrailia's early 2000s experiment with a #SharedServices organization is super interesting.

Super impressed that they actually checked that their #centralization effort was delivering on it's claims.... and it wasn't.

The original business case was "fundamentally flawed" and has "resulted in a total cost to the State of $473 million" instead of the expected savings of $68 million/year.

* 91 per cent of sampled agencies comment that service delivery has deteriorated upon transitioning to shared
services.
* Over 80 per cent of the sampled agencies reported that processing timeframes have worsened
* rolling-in to the DTFSSC has had a detrimental impact on the operations of the majority of rolled-in agencies

"The Authority concludes that the current structure of the DTFSSC is problematic. It is a monopoly provider, with a mandated client base and a lack of meaningful service level agreements. This means that there are minimal incentives for DTFSSC to improve service delivery and few ways in which client agencies can hold DTFSSC accountable"

#gcdigital

https://www.erawa.com.au/sites/default/files/Final%20Report%20-%20Inquiry%20into%20the%20Benefits%20and%20Costs%20Associated%20with%20the%20Provision%20of%20Shared%20Corporate%20Services%20in%20the%20Public%20Sector%20-%2010%20June%202011.PDF

#Internet
#Centralization
#OnlineHistory

I remember building a Geocities page. Talking to people on ICQ. Forums and other great things.

Then everything went bland and no one hears me.

The Rise and Fall of the Free Internet

https://youtube.com/watch?v=18-I3HsitSs

00:00 – Intro: The Free Internet 05:43 – The Google Revolution 09:13 – The Social Takeover 11:33 – The Age of Centralization 14:33 – Remembering FreedomA...

"#Mastodon’s current leadership is trying to move away from [#centralization at Mastodon.social].

In this newer model, the server boundary becomes a social boundary, and your experience of Mastodon is supposed to be shaped by the community you joined rather than just by who you follow across the wider network.

Instead of one network with distributed infrastructure, it is a network of networks where each node has meaningful social coherence. #Newsmast, a UK-based organization building ActivityPub infrastructure for publishers and communities, is pushing this further by creating branded apps on top of individual server #communities that combine #community feeds with a publisher’s content. The logical conclusion of their approach is one app per community, with federation as the connective tissue between them."

https://connectedplaces.online/where-does-community-live/