Freenet 2023: a Drop-in Decentralized Replacement for the Web - and More (freenet.org) 54
Wikipedia describes Freenet as "a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication," released in the year 2000. "Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke," Wikipedia adds. (And in 2000 Clarke answered questions from Slashdot's readers...)
And now Ian Clarke (aka Sanity — Slashdot reader #1,431) returns to share this announcement: Freenet, a familiar name to Slashdot readers for over 23 years, has undergone a radical transformation: Freenet 2023, or "Locutus". While the original Freenet was like a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a full decentralized computer, allowing the creation of entirely decentralized services like messaging, group chat, search, social networking, among others. The new Freenet is implemented in Rust and designed for efficiency, flexibility, and transparency to the end user.
"Designed for simplicity and flexibility, Freenet 2023 can be used seamlessly through your web browser, providing an experience that feels just like using the traditional web," explains the announcement...
And in the comments below, Ian points out that "When the new Freenet is up and running, I think it will be the first system of any kind that could host something like Wikipedia, not just the data but the wiki CMS system it's built on. An editable wikipedia, entirely decentralized and very scalable...
"We've already had interest from everyone from video game developers who want to build a decentralized MMORPG, to political advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Plenty of people value freedom."
And now Ian Clarke (aka Sanity — Slashdot reader #1,431) returns to share this announcement: Freenet, a familiar name to Slashdot readers for over 23 years, has undergone a radical transformation: Freenet 2023, or "Locutus". While the original Freenet was like a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a full decentralized computer, allowing the creation of entirely decentralized services like messaging, group chat, search, social networking, among others. The new Freenet is implemented in Rust and designed for efficiency, flexibility, and transparency to the end user.
"Designed for simplicity and flexibility, Freenet 2023 can be used seamlessly through your web browser, providing an experience that feels just like using the traditional web," explains the announcement...
And in the comments below, Ian points out that "When the new Freenet is up and running, I think it will be the first system of any kind that could host something like Wikipedia, not just the data but the wiki CMS system it's built on. An editable wikipedia, entirely decentralized and very scalable...
"We've already had interest from everyone from video game developers who want to build a decentralized MMORPG, to political advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Plenty of people value freedom."
Best of luck (Score:5, Interesting)
Free net c (Score:3, Informative)
All a user need do is ensure their Freenet node is separate from the client PC used to access it, and that the client PC is using a LiveCD, firewalled to do everything throu
Ugh. Posted prematurely (Score:1)
Re: ya cause we know (Score:2)
Re:Best of luck (Score:5, Funny)
Summer: (gasp) Ticketmaster ...
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In my experience, there will be three types of people/entities using this:
The first, relatively few, are the privacy fanatics, like the old school Cypherpunks. Unfortunately, these are minuscule in number.
The IP pirates, and people posting code that jailbreaks or enables functionality of devices. Also, tiny in number compared to the last three groups.
Terroristic actors. Even if an email account never sends mail to anyone, having multiple log on and save drafts is how a cell can communicate with each othe
Re:Best of luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Locutus is primarily designed for decentralization, not anonymity - which will make it less suited to IP theft than various other technologies that are already pervasive, the same is true of a lot of the other "people you don't want to be your early adopters" that you mention. It's definitely a risk for systems like Freenet, but it's a manageable risk.
Re: Best of luck (Score:1)
The "Woke" and "MAGA" reality distortion fields will eventually collapse and critical thinking amongst the populace will return.
Cold hard reality tends to do that.
Re: Best of luck (Score:5, Informative)
I think when the history of the last decade is written, it will be about - in part - the terrible social damage caused by opaque and biased social media algorithms manipulating the public discourse.
Re: Best of luck (Score:2)
The last decade was a huge boom and distorting facts, and putting emotion over facts and logic (and people all too eager to gaslight people in this way.) The "reality distortion field". Woke and MAGA are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum but they both do the same thing, and that's to gaslight and manipulate people to a political end.
Re:Best of luck (Score:5, Interesting)
We've already had interest from everyone from video game developers who want to build a decentralized MMORPG, to political advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Plenty of people value freedom.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3)
Thank you for the software, Sanity!
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You're very welcome :)
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One of the issues with the original version of Freenet was that there was little reason to run it if you were not of interest to the authorities. Be that because you are a political dissident, or a paedophile, just running Freenet made you a person of interest.
TOR was much better in that regard, because you could access the normal web with it too. That gave everyone a good excuse to run it - free "VPN" for privacy and resistance to corporate tracking. TOR can also obfuscate connections so that they appear l
Terrible name choice and marketspeak "info" (Score:3)
Let's make this thing that's vaguely related to the 20 year old thing that never really took off (both are decentralized) and let's call it " "!
I mean that naming scheme went out of fashion back near when the much earlier product came out.
And I never found a use for the first tool. Nor have I heard anyone talk about it or use it (yes I searched a few times through the years at p2p tools and it was mentioned on Wikipedia or similar lists on medium).
And you claim to be simultaneously simple yet flexible (which tends to add complexity) without describing how or why.
Wish you'd explained how you match or differ from the only other similar tool I know of (Ethereum, right?). Or is this for a different purpose than "running work on computers I don't manage, and being able to pay fairly"? Doesn't matter how good a hammer you have if we don't need to nail things.
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The original Freenet was great for discussion forums and filesharing for a couple of years before getting almost completely taken over by wars between child-porn enthusiasts and those attempting to dox/DDOS the child porn off the network.
Re:Terrible name choice and marketspeak "info" (Score:5, Informative)
Wish you'd explained how you match or differ from the only other similar tool I know of (Ethereum, right?). Or is this for a different purpose than "running work on computers I don't manage, and being able to pay fairly"? Doesn't matter how good a hammer you have if we don't need to nail things.
You're being surprisingly judgmental when it doesn't seem like you even read the first few paragraphs on the website about it, let alone the other available documentation.
We're still early but we already have a user manual [freenet.org] that goes into quite a bit of detail, if you'd like to take a look and if you still have questions I'd be happy to answer.
Idiots... (Score:4, Interesting)
... free net won't matter when you're running a trusted computing operating system like windows 11+, TPM will be required to use websites going forward and they are moving us to fully encrpyted computing.
Go look at this talk here and notice when he mentions pluton, they are backporting the Xbox drm tech to windows 11+ and killing of win32 binaries and moving to UWP/Win3 (aka encrypted signed binaries and trusted computing).
They are basically bringing the console firmware update model to the PC, the trial run they did with windows 10 and disabling cracked UWP games on forced windows update.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
AKA you have no private when the OS is client server and is cable of recording everything you type into a keyboard into protected memory spaces inside your PC via encrypted trusted computing functions you have no access to.
Windows 10+ you're under permanent surveillance, the idea you will be anonymous on the internet is laughable. Most of these freenet'ers have a copy of wow and steam, aka you've already bought into compromising ownership of your device and privacy.
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Pluton, God of the Underworld
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
More paranoid delusions.
Re:Idiots... (Score:4)
... free net won't matter when you're running a trusted computing operating system like windows 11+, TPM will be required to use websites going forward and they are moving us to fully encrpyted computing.
This paranoid bullshit is actually dangerous. Fully encrypted computing is a good thing, and TPM has greatly improved security for millions, maybe billions of users.
If the goal was to lock everything down then Microsoft would have done it a decade or more ago. The fact is that they haven't even adopted Apple's MacOS lockdowns, and have instead opened Windows up even more via things like WSL giving access to Linux apps.
Meanwhile TPM and Secure boot have both prevented a massive amount of malware, and allowed for drive encryption to be the default on many prebuilt systems and laptops.
We should be glad that encryption is finally becoming the norm, and ordinary users have some real control over access to their data.
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This paranoid bullshit is actually dangerous. Fully encrypted computing is a good thing,
No it isn't you moron, did you even look at the xbox talk idiot? Xbox games are fully encrypted inside special NTFS, aka this will make backing up games and preserving them a nightmare before you fucking enablers of the kleptocracy.
Secure boot and UEFI was specifically designed as anti piracy, its not about making your PC secure, if you believe this shit you are a grade A moron.
The most secure PC is the one where you can run a debugger and inspect binary plaintext, aka if microsoft or anyone tries to putma
Time for some reality (Score:3)
UEFI is an open standard to replace proprietary IBM-compatible PC BIOSes. UEFI Secure Boot is a user-controlled way to help protect agains
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While it can also be used to provide device attestation, this cannot be used for any kind of effective DRM because anyone can emulate a TPM in software.
Dude go read the slides here from the horses mouth, it admits it is anti piracy and anti ownership technology.
https://trustedcomputinggroup.... [trustedcom...ggroup.org]
No one wants to have to break the encrpytion and create an emulator idiot, the fact you'd need to do that to a PC you bought means you don't grasp the TPM is not pro consumer device, it was specifically designed to hamper piracy and enforce software licenses, aka go watch the Xbox talk in my OP you idiot, they are bringing that technology to future motherboards and c
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How does secure boot reduce malware? Boot sector viruses etc have been out of style for decades. All of the malware that I'm familiar with did it's thing after the boot process. It seems like it is protecting against a largely theoretical attack.
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One very common vector for malware in the XP and Vista eras was to infect the Windows drivers for IDE/SATA and NTFS. That made the malware difficult to remove, because anti-virus software trying to find the infected files would be handed a clean copy by the malware itself.
Attacks on the boot process were popular until Secure Boot made them impossible.
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One very common vector for malware in the XP and Vista eras was to infect the Windows drivers for IDE/SATA and NTFS. That made the malware difficult to remove, because anti-virus software trying to find the infected files would be handed a clean copy by the malware itself.
Attacks on the boot process were popular until Secure Boot made them impossible.
Yes but the worst thing that could happen is you just remove the drive and load it up as secondary drive on another PC and replace the files and reboot.
Secure boot is really about killing plaintext access to our devices.
Chen talking about killing plaintext access:
https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo?t... [youtu.be]
So see secure boot here, so its not my paranoia buddy:
https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo?t... [youtu.be]
That's why UEFI was made and why BIOS was killed and why secure boot exists and why windows 11 requires TPM. If you listen to t
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Moving the drive to another machine and replacing system files is not something most Windows users can do.
Having drives encrypted by default is a massive win for privacy and security.
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Moving the drive to another machine and replacing system files is not something most Windows users can do.
Having drives encrypted by default is a massive win for privacy and security.
Fucking idiot, no its not because you forget YOU do not write your software, and your fellow citizens are computer illiterate and can't differentiate criminally coded software from legit software, AKA steam, mmos, because of software is licensed means they've been stealing software on an industrial scale for over 23+ years now begining with ultima online in 1997. As a nerd we've been doing triage to keep gaming history alive, they are killing emulation and reverse engineering with Trusted computing, new s
Decentralized (Score:2)
I see we're well on our way towards the decentralized cyberspace.
Cryptominer? (Score:2)
So how long until people try to turn it into a cryptominer?
Nice to see Ian is still at it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite sure how reality will go for this project at least based on comments here so far, but it is nice to see someone still trying to address core philisophical issues with the Internet. Of course, the irony of using Youtube and Google Docs for the presentation kind of hurts.
I remember a few years back thinking how the promise of Freenet was so easy to achieve today between low power computers, cheap storage, and bandwidth... yet we are stuck with what we have.
Re:Nice to see Ian is still at it. (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite sure how reality will go for this project at least based on comments here so far
Most of the negative comments so far are from people who I doubt spent 20 seconds looking at our site, so I hope they don't color your judgement. Read through our user manual [freenet.org] and form your own opinion.
Of course, the irony of using Youtube and Google Docs for the presentation kind of hurts.
Once there are viable alternatives on Freenet we'll use them.
I remember a few years back thinking how the promise of Freenet was so easy to achieve today between low power computers, cheap storage, and bandwidth... yet we are stuck with what we have.
I think the time is right, which is exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing :)
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Glad to see you still fighting the good fight. Will donate some to the cause.
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Thank you!
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What you are trying to achieve is no doubt tough, but is also much needed. Good luck and best wishes.
Re:Nice to see Ian is still at it. (Score:5, Informative)
When the new Freenet is up and running, I think it will be the first system of any kind that could host something like wikipedia, not just the data but the wiki CMS system it's built on. An editable wikipedia, entirely decentralized and very scalable.
I'm glad they used a simple, functional name (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if they went with something like "Qoojizo" which a lot of companies and open source projects often do, most people would not know what they were trying promote.
It's looks like a minor thing, but it can make or break a product.
Re:I'm glad they used a simple, functional name (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally agree about the importance of naming, and Freenet has the advantage of literally describing what we're building - a free network.
The new word in replacements (Score:5, Funny)
How do you know if a project was written in Rust? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
Re: The new word in replacements (Score:4, Funny)
As an LGBT vegan cross-fit Rust programmer, which should I mention within the first 30 seconds of any interaction?
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Re: The new word in replacements (Score:2)
Ha!
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lol - same thing with pilots ;)
Decentralized and open - nice idea, but... (Score:1)
I'm all for decentralized and open, and Freenet seems like a good idea, until one looks at the basic fact that it requires Java.
Java?
Java is not lightweight. Java is not good at forward and backwards compatibility. Java takes TONS of memory. Java is slow on older machines / machines without plenty of memory. Older JVMs have lots of security issues.
We forget that there's a planet full of people with older computers, recycled computers, computers with significantly more modest resources, non-mainstream archit
Re:Decentralized and open - nice idea, but... (Score:4, Informative)
The new Freenet is written in Rust.
site does not seem to be available via tor (Score:1)
Lack of users (Score:3)