There was a time when the internet had a place in the home; a corner, a schedule, a shared practice. That idea didn't vanish overnight. It came apart gradually, and left something behind.
  • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    7·
    5 months ago

    It would be really nice to have a community where everyone had household compute that was their “main” computer. They could be the hubs for communications that’s always on, and you could set it up to communicate with an otherwise anonymous public handheld, or just leave it until you get home and decide to get online. handhelds wouldn’t need to be repositories of sensitive data, they could just be thin clients that could be safely wiped and restored (without needing a corporate entity’s help or permission) in the event of damage or theft. Home networks could become overlapping network nodes, reducing or eliminating the need for regional or global internet provider services. We could really run the internet ourselves.

      • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Not incoherent at all, that sounds really nice. One of my ambitions is to have my “main” cell phone just be a postmarketOS device that can receive calls and texts and select encrypted data from home base. Eventually I’d like to be able to just flash an image onto a cell phone and have it hooked into my VPN and basically just have it communicate solely with my home server, but that dream is still a ways away.

          • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            Easy is the goal, but it turns out mobile OSes are hard to make, harder when the entire for-profit ecosystem is actively trying to undercut free solutions. Right now I’m working with old devices that, while they are running postmarketOS, are still pretty janky and have a lot of missing functionality. Still, a lot progress is being made, by an army of regular folks who pitch in when and where they can, and somehow the boulder of free software slowly but inexorably rolls uphill. It’s very cool to watch.

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      I don’t know about running the whole internet over peer-to-peer network, but my home server is pretty much the ‘main’ computer and while phones an laptops obviously have data locally it’s also synced to the server so losing one mobile device isn’t really a big deal (besides money to get a new one). Immich for photos, nextcloud for other data, radicale for contacts and calendar and self hosted imap-server for emails.

      Obviously the devices are still very much personal, but it’s easy enough to wipe and start over if needed. For remote wipe I still need to rely with google on phone and with laptop there’s currently no way to remote wipe it but it’s running with encrypted drive anyway so it’s only the monetary value of the thing in case it’s lost.

      • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        That sounds really nice. The peer network is definitely more of a long-term thing, but it would be really nice to have a strong municipal peer network in addition to long-range providers. I’m not saying ISPs need to go away entirely, but I would like the world to be in a place where they could disappear and the internet could still function.

        • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          There are various mesh-network projects around and it’s better than nothing, but their issues tend to be pretty low bandwidth and physically limited area. Wifi-mesh in a somewhat densely populated area is technically possible, but technology says that you need to be pretty close (100m give or take) to the next node. On rural areas people have built pretty long range wireless jumps without ISPs but hardware requirements for those are a bit different and you’re relying heavily on the node next to you in upstream direction.

          Then there’s things like LoRa Networking, but their bandwidth is very small and it’s really only suitable for SMS-style messaging with pretty low traffic, but it can reach up to 10km between nodes. AX.25 over amateur radio has range up to hundreds of kilometers, but it’s also pretty slow (~1kbps).

          So, in practise, the best would be to use something like NNTP and distributed servers across the mesh network where you’re less dependent on long range high speed communications. Modern web experience or instant messaging just isn’t really feasible over any mesh network with current consumer-grade hardware.

  • dparticiple@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    Brings back many fond memories of our hulking, beige family 486 with its EGA monitor!

    BTW, the text scrolling against that suitably 1990s page background creates an odd and disconcerting visual effect.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    I lived in a very rural area and we had dial-up until 2010, so I had specific times where I could get on the internet because it wouldn’t interfere with telephone calls.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    Fond memories of the family computer, but man this website is nausea-inducing. 90s pages had some bad backgrounds but he scrolled WITH the text!