[GNU/consensus] Whistle newsletter volume II -- Prospects

[hellekin]

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Hello,

I wish I had took the time to publish monthly issues of the GNU
consensus Whistle, our "allegedly monthly" newsletter. But the truth
is, publishing a newsletter is a lot of work.

In order to make it happen, I'm calling for volunteers to help shaping
the upcoming issues.  Topics we should address, in no particular order:

- - Post-30C3 report and perspectives

  A lot of interesting stuff happened at the Chaos Computer Congress
last December in Hamburg, Germany. Among other things, meetings
between GNUnet, I2P, and Tor people; Funding meetings with the Wau
Holland Foundation, and a new untitled organization (as in one year
old) that goes under the name of "the Umbrella", and TorServers.net,
all concerning funding of free software projects for radical change;
last but not least, an impressive (in)side-event at the NoisySquare,
with many debates and a world-class series of workshops around the
theme of "You Broke The Internet! (We're Making Ourselves a GNU One.).

- - Blockchain-based systems

DarkWallet, Ethereum, NameCoin, Twister, WeTube... Bitcoin
afficionados are coming up with lots of ingenuity and projects that
warrant some attention. A dedicated issue would be nice, to give some
perspectives on the promises and caveats of the blockchains, for
interested developers.

- - Cryptography and Usability

Another hot topic is how to protect citizens and journalists against
repressive--and potential lethal--powers who don't want you to know
the truth. How to make cryptography more usable to the layman? How to
practice good OPSEC?

- - Economy of Sociability

The dominant economy of social networking is to sell your activity,
your habits, your specificity to marketers who want to feed you their
products, and to governments who want to keep you in line. All of this
happens within a narrative called "Economics" where "markets"
"balance" "offer" and "demand". But this paradigm has a bit of a
problem: there is no human here. An exploration of social economy
should counter-balance what the failing political economy has been
spoon-feeding us for a couple of Centuries.

- - Funding Free Social Software

Now, that's real economy: how can we ensure that free software, that
does not have the incentive of control and monitoring, but of
empowering the individual and the collective, can succeed?

- - The GNU Name System

A key piece of the upcoming Internet revolution, the GNS promises to
square Zooko's triangle, offering secure, decentralized, and
human-readable names.

- - How To Choose Where To Contribute?

Young developers, or old programmers revolted by the current situation
have a plethora of programs to contribute to. One of the important
missions of the GNU consensus is to help them make an informed
decision on their choices.

- - Indie Web / Linked Data

The original idea of the Web is a cooperative, decentralized network
of interrelated documents. How it came to the horrible site-centered,
centralized commercial silos that know dominate it is preoccupying,
but not that interesting. Let's look at how the original model
developed instead, and--despite the obvious security flaws it has to
face, from the brokenness of protocols to the clumsiness of the Web
browsers--how it will contribute to the demise of the surveillance
machine.

- - Secushare API

Get ready for the new oil. As soon as it is ready for developer
consumption, we'll have a special issue on the Secushare API, and the
social services it can help build on top of GNUnet, on your localhost,
where your social network belongs.

- - Sexifying Free Software (Accessibility, Graphic Design, Usability, UX)

Engineers usually suck at designing things for their fellow human
becomings. We need inspiration from successful projects, and ways to
involve graphic and interaction designers more into the fabrication of
free software. Making freedom more sexy than a golden jail, so to speak.

- - UnHosted Apps

The Web, without the Web. Or close. UnHosted Apps allow to reduce the
Web as a commodity, and run all the important (and private) code
locally. Now that's the Web I like: there's no place like ::1. (I
separate it from Indie Web / Linked Data, because I suppose there's a
slightly different interest, but I might be wrong, and I certainly
consider them going hand in hand with each other.)

*

So, here is in brief (some of) the topics I'd like to address in the
upcoming issues of the GNU consensus Whistle. If you're interested in
participating, please say so, join the IRC channel, edit the wiki,
flood the mailing list (well, not that much). Other topic proposals
are also welcome (videoconferencing, OSes, mobility, gaming...):
anything social that will help free us and our loved ones is on-topic.

Cheers,

==
hk
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