propaganda

do they have a gofundme i can donate to?

the search providers (especially that famously ‘not evil’ one) had a huge hand in centralising and then gatekeeping access to ‘the web’. They have such a disproportionately powerful effect on how users discover content, and huge power to drive self-fulfilling ‘network effects’ where people go where people already are, which has become so normalised that most people couldn’t imagine ‘the web’ without them.

i’m not suggesting it was ever realistic or possible, but what we needed was for that one search provider and indexer of content to be broken up, partially nationalised, and partially integrated into the network specification itself. Only they are powerful enough to become a model for how to functionally disentangle their operations into public and private parts.

the only alternative is to break the centralisation of the web as china is doing and other BRICS nations intend to do, by creating ‘national internets’ which in some ways federate together and in other ways do not. I don’t like this model of development for the future of the internet but the security considerations of the present require this kind of approach.

i’m replaying final fantasy 6 with a retranslation i haven’t played before called ‘revised old style edition’. I’m still in the world of balance but so far the translation is a good compromise between the innacurate warmth of the woolsey script and the dry accuracy of the slattery script. So far it’s my favourite translation, and next up will be the newly translated ‘t-edition’ mod

this is hilarious