Tommaso GagliardoniFeb 3, 2025

The internet is going backwards.

Doing a web search in 2025 is a nightmare: even if you tell Google/DuckDuckGo to disable AI summaries, most of the top results you get are clearly AI-generated word salads. More than in the past, I am finding myself keeping a curated list of trusted sources, wikis, personal homepages, blogs, microblogs, to fetch information from, rather than relying on search engines. People increasingly host their own stuff, because it has become easier, and digital self sovereignty is being finally seen as something valuable. Archivists scramble to hoard data that might soon disappear. Fediverse means going back from web 2.0 to email, and frankly it's great. Well, we're still being shoved in our throats modern versions of Clippy, but I guess no pain no gain.

Now please bring back BBSs and 56k modems, and the cycle will be complete. I dream of a next era of steampunk utopia where "key exchange" has a very metallic meaning, and steam computers can factorize more than 15.

#ai #2025 #google #web3 #fediverse #digitalselfsovereignty #clippy #bbs #56k #steampunk #crypto #cryptography #quantumcomputing

Show threadJason Cameron

@tomgag The Reticulum Network reminds me of the days of BBS, FidoNet, IRC, and such. It uses LoRa (Long Range) radios and/or WiFi to broadcast singles short to long distances and connect to others around you. You can also link the Reticulum Network up to the Internet to reach further, but to me, that takes the fun out of it.

#reticulum #meshtastic #lora #reticulummesh #loramesh #nomadnet

Feb 3, 2025 at 1:28amIvory for Mac
Show threadTommaso GagliardoniFeb 3, 2025
@camerongenealogy I've read about Reticulum and I'm very much interested in it! But one thing it is not clear to me and I always wanted to ask is, how does it cope with the legal requirements you get in most jurisdictions that amateur radio communications cannot be encrypted?
Show threadJason CameronFeb 3, 2025
@tomgag While it can be used on the amateur HAM band in the US, you would have to make an argument (see: https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/issues/69), but I'm not sure many would be willing to push it. It still can be used with LoRa (US - 915 MHz) or WiFi, neither of which require a license and allow encryption. With my LoRa devices, I've been able to get up to a few miles just from ground level and even more if I elevate my ground station antenna.