Dave's YQ test: They Never Taught Me this in School

I want to make a web page that quizzes web surfers about useful stuff I learned outside of school. After you answer, it provides links to info supporting various answers. Ideally, visitors to the site could contribute questions, answers, and "research material" of their own, and rate the most interesting threads.

Intellectual Ant Trail

The web does okay at helping you to find the answers to some questions, others maybe not. Can it show the evolution of my thinking, how answering one question leads to the next? Seems to me that I could greatly profit from being able to follow the ant-trail of net-thinking left behind by someone who beat me to my current question, and I'd very happily leave some net-pheromone to show that I was following the trail with enthusiasm.

Right now, after reading about something or searching for something, I sometimes can leave a comment or a thumbs up or a plus one. I can find blogs or web sites where a person has explicitly curated ideas and discussion threads by hand. I'm not sure whether or not Google learns from what we click on after we search for something. But I imagine weird and wonderful possibilities if the process could self-organize, like an ant trail. I want my response to mark the things that attract my attention.

This might make more sense if I could think of specific examples. Maybe it doesn't really make sense except as a nice metaphor.

I'm interested in skepticism, fanaticism, fringey politics, psychology, persuasion, cults, beliefs, logic, rhetoric, motivation. I could use google alerts or twitter to gather a massive haystack of links on any of these topics. I could write blog entries, allow comments, incorporate suggested links, but it just doesn't seem to scale. Is it like a college degree, or a single college course, or a boy scout merit badge, or an initiation rite, or a museum exhibit?

Say I want to satisfy my curiosity about how cults recruit new members. I want to create a trail that someone else can stumble onto, and add to. It should grow links to new items about cult recruitment. It should grow different sorts of links to items about cult membership retention, cult finance, recruiting for the military, advertising, group psychology. It should grow links to items that contain background info or basic knowledge that the items assumes the reader knows about, so it I don't understand it, I can go learn or review "the basics" in sociology, psychology. While I dredge the net for answers, I build a structure of knowledge in my head. I want to be able to externalize and track my progress, and allow others to view the result and add to it.

I would link to existing items on the web, but emphasize some connections, de-emphasize others, and make new ones without altering the contents of the pages.

I guess this relates to my arguepedia idea, especially the anti-trolling measures where you see a different web depending on how you rate contributors.

This idea is far from mature, but I want to publish this anyhow. Maybe someone wants to join my trail, or can point me at an existing one.

what happened to the cypherpunks?

I hope they all went underground on a darknet, or something. Kinda boring if they just quit.

EFF is still plugging away.

The TOR project is trying to make it possible to browse the web without getting tracked.

In Europe you may be able to vote for one of the pirate parties. We need one in the US - does the LP count?

The crypto project seems to want to pick up the cypherpunk torch.

I2P is an anonymizing network.

News from Bruce Schneier.

crypto.is has an irc channel for discussion of crypto/privacy.

https://www.calyxinstitute.org/

Bitcoin may realize David Chaum's dream of digital cash, but that phenomenon deserves its own post.

Second Realm is an online mini book PDF inspired by TAZ, crypto-anarchy, and agorism, but trying hard to be more practical.

DIYISP

In my ideal internet, I would have my own server and provide email and web hosting services to my family and pals. This server would be connected to the net with a fast connection. I could use my server to encrypt and proxy my access so my ISP can't spy on me.  None of my traffic would be in the clear, with an obvious destination, and even traffic analysis would be difficult. Every person would control her/his own data. My identity would be associated with my home server, to assist in authentication. Lots of other nerds could do the same thing, and share expertise.

So what's stopping me? Cost. Cowardice. Distractions. Priorities.

web of trust instead of lastpass

Why can't/don't we use public key crypto for authenticating on google, facebook, etc., all the web 2.0 services? Instead of all the usual jazz, why don't I just hand out my public key to the various services? It would provide better authentication more securely.

It is inconvenient to have a separate username and password for every service I use. There are various security issues.

One strong implication of using public key crypto: I'd better never lose my private key.

What happened to the cipherpunks and their web of trust idea?
I could make it  so my wife can also unlock my stuff with her private key, or my lawyer, in case of my death.

It would be best if the services themselves accepted public keys for authentication. But we could create a web app or software like lastpass. It would maintain a database of my usernames and passwords with the URLs of the services they match, encrypted with my public key. It could automatically update/randomize my passwords. This sounds so simple, does it exist somewhere already and I don't know?

arguepedia

Like wikipedia, only for arguments, especially political ones. Wild claims, documented claims, conspiracy theories, rebuttals, etc. Ideally, when you encounter the internetwit, you could tell him (usually) "Hey, you're spouting a weak version of , which has been thoroughly rebutted at . Do you have anything to add, something I haven't heard before?" Hard part is, how to prevent it from becoming the magic land of trolls. It would need a very serious reputation mechanism, to keep serious arguments at the top, wackyness off to the side. Do we want one emergent version, or might it show different stuff to you depending on who you trust? You could choose a popular curator, or a group, or curate yourself.

Or it could be a linking protocol. This sort of link implies agreement, that sort implies rebuttal. Maybe my universal web commenting idea will solve this without a specific wiki? Tunable search for comments on this page, supporters, likes, rebuttals, dislikes. What else?

Hackerville

I want to play a game that sharpens my understanding of computer security attacks and defenses and helps me to pick the low-hanging fruit with regard to keeping my data secure. Of course, the internet itself is just such a game. But the action variance is too high (too boring until it is too exciting, and not in a good way). I want to play a lower stakes game that teaches me how to play the real game (on defense) as safely as is reasonable.

Why aren't people trying to sell me more software for this purpose? The antivirus companies are there, but they hardly count. I saw a crazy commercial on TV a few weeks ago, I didn't actually feel tempted to buy, but I was pleased that there's at least a market for security for home PCs. I think their deal was they have you go to some web site, and it scans and does whatever. Not sure if/how it differs from antivirus.

universal web comment protocol needed for tunable search

Email and the web triumphed by defining open decentralized protocols that in principle anyone with a computer could use, and still can. Unfortunately, they are a bit high maintenance, so most people do not run their own server with a direct connection to the internet backbone. Most use an ISP. The ISP can spy on them.
Web 2.0 enabled crowdsourcing. We contributed to the construction wikipedia.
Web 2.0 deprecates protocols. Google, facebook, twitter etc. capture our comments and wall off our/their content from the rest. Every web site wants you to get a username and password to make content for them. AOL's walled garden strikes back from the grave! Governments like China love to target the centralized data vaults. Mark Zuckerberg is the devil. He wants to own our data. Faceless... bookless.
We need a truly decentered protocol for commenting and collaborating. I should be able to publish comments on anything, and find useful comments on anything, one system everywhere. Wikipedia should be like a torrent, a truly decentralized peer-to-peer document perpetuated by usage. Similarly with Google's web index. Facebook is just training wheels for the web.
If anyone came up with a better search paradigm than Google's could they resist becoming another Google? Can the web return to its internet roots, or is there no turning back?
Diaspora*, Identi.ca, Friendica, tent, and the open microblogging standard are Daviding against the web Goliaths. I guess there is still some hope.

Why did delicious fail? My comments should be on my server in a peer-to-peer network, and searchable from google or any search engine. I should be able to comment on any URL or URI. Authentication based on public key crypto web of trust.

I should be able to tune my searches on google depending on who I consider an expert. If you are my only expert, stuff you like would top my search results, stuff you ignore would be in the middle, and stuff you dislike would be at the bottom. Or I could mark you as an anti-expert - stuff you dislike goes to the top. Or I have multiple experts, and their attitudes vote on my search results.

Google had the right idea - people's use of the web should self-generate the rankings of pages. But because both humans and bots inhabit the webosphere, this didn't work out. Can we fix this with pubkey crypto/web of trust and tunable search? It doesn't matter if x is human or a bot if I can make x an expert or antiexpert. Otherwise we need a turing test or captchas.

Bots may end up with even better reputations than some humans, by aggregating humans, or by evaluating mechanically. Biz model for bloggers?

Reverse reputation lookup - who rated this page highly? Who uses this page a lot?

my kinda socialism (rant on)

The music labels tried to hang on to their deal, suing napster and grokster and your grandma. And they won every battle, right? So now they're happy, right? Kazaa & emule etc. Has Apple saved their business? They're on life support. That industry, music distribution,  got socialized - now everyone owns it. No more stupid lawyer tricks, no more getting the government to subsidize your business model, and the whole idea of intellectual property has a black eye. This is revolutionary entrepreneurship. Who's next?