Episode: 2411
Title: HPR2411: Information Underground: Co-op Paradise
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2411/hpr2411.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:29:26

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This is HBR episode 2,411 entitled Information Underground, co-op paradise.
It is hosted by Lost in Bronx and is about 45 minutes long and currently in a clean flag.
The summary is DeepGeek, Klaatu and Lost in Bronx discuss their long-running server co-operative.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR-15. That's HBR-15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Okay, welcome to Hacker Public Radio and Information Underground on Hacker Public Radio.
This is DeepGeek and I have with me Lost in Bronx.
Hey everybody.
And I have with me Klaatu.
Hello everyone and what some people who know the old information underground episodes
that we had independently might know and what many modern HPRs might not know is
we started a long and fruitful relationship over having a co-op for web hosting and I wanted to
I thought it would be nice to talk about that just in case any Hacker Public Radio people
are considering doing something along similar lines and perhaps they can avoid some pitfalls
and save some grief. I think that would be a nice thing.
So we got interested. I did a retro computing episode on the Go for Protocol and we all got
very enthusiastic three of us and no one was offering Go for Hosting anymore.
So we had to get out there and get a VPS license to do it ourselves.
And we also decided to as Klaatu once said and what was the show you used to do Klaatu?
Bad apples wasn't?
No, not on his own but the one he did with the three other guys.
Oh geez, Linux Cranks?
Yeah, I think it was Linux Cranks where you said DeepGeek's taste of sulfur run to the
simple and easily managed.
I want to have just a very old school classic web server not Apache.
I wanted to do TTPD which is a single binary that does slash tilde hosting and multiple domains
and stuff but it is just a very very small basic minimalist thing which we all thought was
well suited to transferring audio files and we all had podcasts going on.
And I also want to do secure email because I don't trust anybody else for my email anymore
and all that stuff that came out about the NSA afterwards anyway proved me right.
So we got together and I think Klaatu had an application where he really needed port forwarding
right Klaatu?
Yeah, yeah because I was in cafes a lot at the time needed some secure connections, yeah.
All right, so we needed SSH, HTTP and GoFur and so we got a slice and everyone
threw itself the bill on split three ways and we tried to run it under the idea of technical democracy.
Do you guys remember the emails going back and forth about how we should do things?
I still have them, I just don't have all those.
I'd have to search but I didn't I didn't delete any of that stuff.
To my memory to be fair it basically all boiled down to no deep geek you're making it too
complicated just do something and leave us alone.
And every now and then deep geek it was working.
Why do you want to change?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was it was like that and and yet I always want to to push
an envelope a little bit further and to offer another service.
So I want to say technical democracy doesn't work.
I mean it's it's like trying to tell you dog that there's a dog on the TV set with a dog doesn't
want to look at the TV you know it's best to have people be in charge of some aspect of it
and let them do it and make that to be a very limited aspect of it you know.
Also when you do these things you don't have a support staff to call in times of trouble.
This is true how much of a burden was that for you?
Let me because you were ultimately our our admin on these things by and large.
What kind of a burden was that for you and what kind of a learning curve was it for you
specifically about this part of it?
It was it was a burden because I would I would sometimes have to go home instead of go to my
in-laws to fix a problem but not very often and since we were such a tight-knit partnerships
since we all became very close but not physically close but very close over the over the network
friends. You guys were always very understanding about the turnaround time being so long.
Well they helped that no one had mission critical stuff going through that too you know.
I was just going to say I don't remember it taking long I was I always honestly felt that you
were more responsive on this co-op than for instance what I had an alternative to use which
was SDF which nothing against SDF but they just sometimes they went down for periods of time and
just could not I you know and I was just out of luck whereas your your stuff just always seemed
to be available. Yeah that that might be more of a tribute to this software selection than
anything else. Well you were very careful yeah I must I must to anybody thinking in these terms
it's important that can't be underestimated. Yeah. The fact that you made choices based on
robustness and and that was primary. You didn't want stuff that was finicky or and you weren't
constantly upgrading and upgrading and upgrading so that's made a you know big difference
over well it's been how many years now we've been doing this. Well Clat 2 left the co-op and you and
I have stuck with it and then the Freemasons one Freemasonic group came in because they wanted
an email server. They wanted a list server. So it's been going on for probably 10 years I think.
What kind of feedback have you gotten from this Freemason group about their email server?
Are they happy with that? I should I should say I shouldn't should have said list server they
they needed a way to notify they're up to 50 members or so and so yeah they are happy with it
they they they kind of the rank and file kind of wasn't kicking and screaming a little bit but
because they want but everyone had their own list their own membership lists that were they
were constantly doing a thing where you swap membership lists back and forth and try to merge them.
You can imagine. Wow right yeah wow and when I got up to 50 the the grand pruber and I sat down
and said there has to be a better way is what happened and it turns out that mailman was the
better way by then and in the wake of Clat 2 leaving you and I made a very telling and distinctive
choice where we actually chose to have two servers we chose to have a unlimited professional
web host outfit that gave you the right to have you know act as a provider yourself so we can give
each other control panels and so we have 24 seven support for mission critical stuff as you say
as well as keeping a more experimental server offshore that I administer and does useful things
like email and the services that we can't get elsewhere like gofer and shell service and shell
services gone I think yeah and that's too bad because there are so many wonderful things that can
be done with it you know if I wanted to and there have been times when I have I've been able to
SSH in to our server are our little you know shell service if you want to put it that way and then
from there I've been FTPing things elsewhere because for whatever reason I needed that capability
at that time I mean that can't be replaced you there's there's no way I could have done what I
wanted to do simply for my own home and I think it's a sad statement that thing like SDF is it
almost seems like an anachronism doesn't it I mean so many people talk about it in the past tense
and that's a that's a sad thing you know that's a sad thing there was SDF is is almost a legacy
service when there was a time when they were everywhere there were all over the place yeah but I
mean I mean I remember holding on to them for email for the longest time until I found they were
using they weren't using a cryptid email and then the and the same thing blew up and that was that
but you you actually witnessed a long-term outage and you actually witnessed didn't you
lost in Bronx them saying when it's my hosting going to be up and the guy saying as soon as I can
didn't you have an accent like that yeah that was a long time ago and I understand that that was
not the first time it had happened and it wasn't the last time it happened I'm still I'm still on
SDF and and yeah I wouldn't it's just not you it's not mission critical you just cannot treat it
that way it it is a luxury and if it's there you're it's a good day and if it if if it's not then
that's just that's that day then I was on SDF myself for a while and that was my impression as well
at that time and it was one honestly it was one of the motivating factors for my wanting to
participate in our little co-op I was very interested in Gofer and SDF offers Gofer even to this day
they offer Gofer and they have a they are the single biggest Gofer presence in the entire Gofer
sphere if you want to put it that way there are more Gofer pages originating out of SDF than
probably anywhere else is what I really mean and yet it didn't feel like it was adequate to me
now Gofer was my only internet presence at all for a period of years all of my content that I
put together all went out through my Gofer page eventually I wanted something that you know more
I guess more popular you know more people able to see it but you know who was it it was Clat 2 and
I actually approached deep geek if we're talking about the history of this thing Clat 2 and I
actually talked to each other and said boy it wouldn't it be great if we had something ourselves
and we said who do we think would be good and would know about this stuff and that we would really
trust and the first and only name that came to mind was deep geek really that's a fact you didn't
know that but no I didn't know that thank you I'm flattered I'm very flattered so where do I
want to go with this we the pitfalls we ran into besides the issues of technical democracy also
we followed around web hosting choices because whereas I chose this very simple web hosting thing
wasn't there a mime issue that kind of blew up in your face Clat 2 that sounds vaguely familiar
yes I don't remember the details about it but I we didn't switch or did we switch to
how high a watha for that purpose was that why we switched to high a watha I think it was that yeah
you were there for the switch and we switched to high a watha for being able to update mime types
as opposed to having them hard coded as right as well as built in anti hammering protection
and that's why we switched to high a watha what did we have before that we had thtpd
and I remember that that program used to be the backbone or the the the most popular server
back in the dial up days actually where each dial up provider was also a was also providing home pages
remember home pages oh yeah well I actually still technically have one with my host right now if I
want to you know I even have an email address I have never once logged into with my host you know
and they probably sent me all sorts of notices through there that I've never seen but yeah
it still exists people still get them yeah I mean most people I listen to a show from from
radio national australia called download this show all about internet and media and they said the
other day they said uh yeah the day of driving people back to your own website is over you got
to stay on facebook or twitter and I was just saddened by that statement I was like I remember home
pages and you know the guy in the street doesn't have a home page anymore no the average person doesn't
a home page I mean some businesses don't know I mean you know like local a couple local businesses
that I know like what if I ever ask them where to find them online they refer to me to a Facebook
page that is very very common now yeah I mean I mean wow I mean it makes you feel like a real
walking and aquanism it really does but it isn't just about the web page all right and that
circumstances it's not just that it's a community they're hoping to build around whatever service
of product that they're offering and that's a built-in functionality of something like Facebook
the fact that if I have my thing if people follow me I instantly have a community that I can
reach out to yeah that Facebook is very good now I am on Facebook these days what about you too
never no no not at all no not at all yeah so yeah the interface is really good I really I really
like what the company built as far as the user experiences and that the fact that you have a
following you have you you post something and you're following seasons really good but the things
that they're their business model how they make the money to support themselves I really disagree
with but I'm suffering from a bit of a network effect because everyone I know is on Facebook
and that's why I won't get involved yeah well yeah no I don't need more ghosts from the past thank you
but I have to say bring it back to our co-op one of the advantages of that is that I have been
able to create my own platform now I don't have an awful lot of play if you want to put it that
way I don't have an awful lot of mind share regarding my own stuff but I do have my own sites that
I have you know I am a writer and I'm an audio book guy and I've created sites specifically for
my audio books and it is this platform this co-op that we have done together that has allowed me
to do that right and I don't your newsletter helps a lot lost in Bronx I mean like that to me
your stupid little email newsletter that you send out not stupid but I mean that is so lame
that that's what it is and every time I get it in my email inbox I feel like like we just had
a coffee together you know it like brings it so close to you because it's like a newsletter and I
know it's going out to 30 other people but it feels like you emailed me personally to give me
an update on your life well part of that a part of that is calculated as you understand I'm writing
it specifically in order to be engaging you know obviously you must understand that yeah but also
first off that's not coming out of our co-op too I must make that point that's that's a mail
chip that I'm using which is a proprietary service okay but also that don't you use like a service
for the web page hosting then drive them back to the download service in the co-op
the web page the web page is done through was create specifically for the first off my audio
diaries right I do a popular regular podcast called lnb's audio diary I also have a website devoted
to my first book my second book and my third book in my star drifter series chiching chiching
which are all fantastic science fiction okay thank you thank you but all of that stuff including
the the audio diary all of that stuff is created through a free open source software application
called podcast generator and this is hosted on the server on our our I should say in our in our co-op
okay it is through this co-op that I have this web presence you know I also have a page that's
hosted separately and I have you know I have content spread all over the place like most of us do
but the fact is the core like if you want my content if you want my content for free
that probably the easiest place to get it is through this co-op through this thing that we
constructed ourselves I think that's important because it gives me control over what I've got
because I'm frank I could tell you stories but I have put my stuff up through other platforms
that have then turned around and not been what I thought they were you know time changes their
needs change but they didn't change in a direction that worked for me this is something I control
you know there's there is no other way to have the final say and what it is you want to do on
the internet unless you really have hands on to some degree you know again if something goes wrong
I'm always on the phone deep geek saying help me help me because I'm ignorant that's not my strength
but the fact is I trust this guy you know and if there's a problem ultimately that's the guy I
can turn to yeah and I gotta say the control factor is very important was because when I was doing
the newscast I was very afraid of getting like a libel suit or a slander suit or something because
I was pretty outspoken and when I interviewed people that sometimes they would say literally in
the interview they would say why even one guy said outright city council and so on so is the
most corrupt person I've ever encountered in my life I would just be like literally proofing it
I was listening to the headphones jogger I literally tripped over my own feet and skid my leg
you know I was like I gotta publish this to another country I just
sue me over there something like um but yeah as far as the ultimate say it's concerned this is
this is if you want to have that ironclad control this is it and can I say I just want to inject
that you know we we have touched on the challenges you've had but I would like you to at least
expound a little bit on the convenience of this I mean as you said in an email to me once about
the gopher server that it has quote minimal maintenance and in the parentheses you wrote as in
none on yeah go for is is oh man it is just totally obsolete I mean it's it's not the it's not
the frame primo tool for transferring large files you know it they'll do it but it's not the primo
tool for it but I think it's the primo tool for writing markup either or what is hyper hypertext you
know it's just it's yeah it's just so quirky it is bizarre and hypertext is bad obviously but if
you stick with the gopher map concept not every gopher server supports a gopher map but if you
can stick with the gopher map honest to god this thing is flawless it really does work very very well
it is it is just so dead simple you you just install I just install it when I we've gone through
three iterations of the part we run ourselves now right yeah at least yeah I think it was three
yeah we're number three and we're looking at number four yes yes yeah and um and and it's literally
the second thing installed after secure shell server and it's initiated and left alone it's
initiated you put the files in the directory and it works and this the pie gopher d is one of the
two the other ones written in pearl but the python gopher server also has a web interface so it
automatically detects if a web browser's accessing it and gives it an html interface if that's
what the user wants or you can hit with the gopher browser itself but the gopher browser these days
is now an extension of Firefox I believe and I haven't used it in a long long time yeah if there's a
an update called bucktooth for Firefox it's also they have one for Firefox android and this other
stuff but it's they have not been updated for a long time either it works flawlessly it works really
well and it interpolates the gopher protocol beautifully it's flawless you don't even notice you
wouldn't know you were on a gopher page unless you looked at the address but if I can just very
briefly I've I've been gopher's cheerleader from the very start I think the gopher protocol is
beautiful I love it love it I've never had a problem accessing it if I'm on something that can
access gopher it just works beautifully I don't have to wait it pops up immediately I get the
content not the appearance you know so that's my one thing I believe I still but as I've said to
people gopher isn't dead it's only dreaming interesting enough Apache has has has a offers a
little competition to go for because you can set up a download directory as you all both know
and and Apache but there's actually some weird theming option I actually used it a few times
where you get to the point where you can drop it in and it'll actually put the right icons for the
right count the MP3 icon for MP3 files and do kind of go for pagey things within a download
directory I don't know I might I might have to actually run Apache though for the next server
because it's that thing you actually want to do no it isn't it absolutely isn't but but
let's talk about email and and you'll see we'll see why this is this being considered for
for version four is because I want private email I think I'm the only guy who ever used the
co-op for as his primary email service I think so I only use it to talk to you essentially you
and collect two or the only people I ever talked to on this email service but I do check it every
single day and it's absolutely reliable every single time I go there it's there I did want to ask
you something can I ask you about email this one thing sure long time ago on check Griffin's show
he was talking about what a pain it was to set up and maintain especially maintain an email
server and one of the things he talked about was a problem with spam right and trying to find a good
spam some service to block spam and all this other stuff in all this time that we have had
this email thing I have never once seen a piece of spam come through have you had a problem with
that at all or is that something that's just either not an issue or it's gone away as a problem
I do get spam we run spam assassin my wife and I train it and it does the job I gotta say I run
I run an email server of my own now and yeah and it's I use post fix post fixes the bomb yeah yeah
I mean it's the only one I had any experience with so it's what I went with but the spam issue has
not really been a problem for me either so I don't know I felt like after I got over the initial hump
of like how do I set up this thing I felt like in retrospect I really felt like people kind of
oversold how quote unquote difficulty it was to run your own email server and now maybe they
meant for other people like if you're running it for all your family and your friends or something but
as as my exclusive user of my email server I'm I was a little bit surprised at how well it was
actually going yeah actually I'm sorry I'm actually a little bit surprised to hear you say that
because you did I think it was a series two or three episodes on your show about how a on the one
hand how simple email ought to be and how on the other hand how complicated it really is in reality
do you think it's time to revisit the idea of email as as a service that you could run yourself
on your show yeah no I mean I remember the conversation that you are you are referencing and I think
I was no I think I'm still I still feel that way I still feel like email is inherently a very complex
process because you do have all these you can have an email server and then you can have a separate
SMTP not yeah SMTP server and then you could have a you know you can just have and then you can
do aliasing and then you can accept emails from certain places or none and it there are a lot
of options and I don't feel like there's there is still no let's encrypt kind of setup thing for
email do you know what I mean like yeah yeah before let's encrypt no one knew how to set up
SSL even though honestly that wasn't actually that hard I I've done that before can I say encrypt is
so simple yeah it is not so simple I have looked into it and I still need to encrypt my own stuff
I still find it very challenging I don't know where it needs to be just yet okay interesting
I find it very very simple but as I said I have I I have installed SSL prior to that at a job so I
was kind of used to the the non let's encrypt so but I mean even so that's what I'm saying there
is no simple way to run a script and then suddenly end up with a email server or a SSL thing
you know whereas you have something like next cloud formerly own cloud you can have your own
file sharing server and your own little private everything in next cloud and it is super simple
you know it really is very simple it's like a WordPress install if you can install WordPress
you can install next cloud and there's still nothing like that for email why do you think that is
is it too complicated or no one thinks that there's a one-stop solution that's going to service a
large portion of the audience yeah I think the idea of peer-to-peer and federated services and
stuff just it hasn't taken hold yet and I feel like everyone's just like why do that if I have
Gmail and you know why I have an own cloud if I can have a Facebook you know and it's just like
everyone's just so brainwashed into thinking well there's this there's a one-stop shop for that
so let's all go to that shop and who cares that's that's what I think yeah you have to have a
bit of care I mean for me it was for me it was encryption and I've kind of finally I think I came
to this conclusion earlier if you ever did clap to that PGP just isn't going to be usable by normal
people you know I realized this it's just too hard for them to get and I realized that the only
thing you could do is have your own email server and then tell your email server to put out and
take in only an encrypted and then if the people who are your friends who are on your server with
you you're secure and with people who are off your server you're as secure as you possibly can
be with them and that kind of accepted that I mean in a way we're talking about an aspect of your
life that's apart from the larger internet that is to say like this server although you've made the
email your primary email deep geek this server is something that I feel like doesn't necessarily
intersect with the rest of my life except in those areas where I've made it primary so in other
words in your situation with email in my situation with those websites that I mentioned before you
have to have faith in them you have to say this is going to be me this is my presence online and I
have faith in this and you have to go forward with that it can't just be well as claps you say
to campy sdf where you just you simply don't have faith in it you love it you like it you have
fun with it but you simply can't put your faith in the thing no I mean that that's very important
because essentially I don't have faith in in google that's where I don't want to use the Gmail
server you know same goes for Yahoo you know and Verizon my current ISP because I have the fiber
optic they decide not to have the old ISP traditional triumvirate of a web page host and a news host
and a mail host and when they finally closed their mail service they offered us all free AOL
accounts that were the Verizon yeah you can you can you can I'll let you have a guess us to my
reaction Lawson Bronx I'll let you guess so I have I have a comment to Lawson Bronx and then a
question to deep geek so Lawson Bronx when you said you had to have faith in in that platform
I actually misunderstood you what you were saying and I thought you were saying more of like a
philosophical thing like you have to have faith in your online presence being this sort of off-the-wall
private server where you're going to build where you're going to actually spend energy to say yes
this is my home garnet I'm going to plant flowers out in the front and I'm going to direct people
to it and have company over and this is my home and I'm going to be proud of it whereas everyone
else on the block is saying hey we live over at Facebook and I and I actually really like that
and I think it's a valid point I think that if you choose to make a co-op or or you know to run
your own service or whatever I do think you have to take ownership of it a little bit and say
you know what I don't need that other thing because this is where I live this is where all my
comfy stuff is this is where all my toys are and it's almost like you're investing in that server
that you are running rather than sort of diversifying a whole bunch and going out and getting all
the social account social media accounts and stuff I don't know if that's nonsense or not but
I I don't know I feel like there's a certain amount of pride that you have to do you know this take
ownership of that this is actually that exact point where your your principles and your philosophy
crosses over into practicality in the real world you know this is that spot if you're going to
make a statement like that if you're going to look at something like Facebook or Google or whatever
you might have a problem with online because I still use my Gmail account I still have Gmail but
deep geek doesn't because he has a problem with that and I don't have a you know a Facebook
page because I have a problem with Facebook okay this is that spot though where you have to be
able not only have faith in yourself yet to have faith in your bedrock yet to have faith in in
this case this co-op this situation that we have constructed I have to be able and ultimately
I have to say ultimately I have to have faith in deep geek you know that was that was day one if
I if he you know deep geek was one of these guys that I didn't trust it never would have happened
to begin with you know yeah it never ever would have come about from the very start you have to have
faith if you're going to do a co-op if you're going to do it with other people you have to trust
those people you know I don't have to trust deep geek with my life although I would but I don't
have to I just have to trust him with my online presence well you know we used to call each other
roommates a lot like I remember that we would always refer to each other as a roommate essentially
yeah I still have the artwork of our little home on the internet that a lady friend of yours
did once and sent to us she drew a pen and pencil etching of a little house on the internet
very I still have that uh it's funny I don't remember that but cool did I ever see that I don't
remember it either I had my wife scan I know I sent it to both of you uh it's in my record somewhere
but that's that's the thing the fact that I can trust him means I can trust what he's done
and since I can trust what he's done I can trust myself through that platform when you get to that
stage then you can put your shingle out you can't say this is who I am this is what I'm doing
and I'm doing it through my own little instance my own little place on the internet you know again
it's almost nothing if there's almost nobody who's ever gonna go to my stuff and see what I do
but the people that go I have control of it it's my spot and in the end if I want to change the
website I can if I want to drop the website I can't if I want to do whatever I you know whatever
else within my very limited skill set I can do all of that that's an ability I have and I'm not
judging anybody else you know based on the choices they've made I've made some very practical
choices too you know and I still do and I and I I have reasons for it but I have to say that this
co-op has changed my life in the end what I'm choosing to do online that's an extension of myself
and it's an extension of my art and my art helps define me as a person and this co-op has allowed
me to do that in the way that I want to you know if it hadn't been for this I I almost certainly
would be on Facebook right now you know there's no doubt I would have gone where I thought that I
had to go because I wouldn't have known that there was an option I wouldn't have known anything else
people that listen to HPR they are a lot of them are capable of doing what we have done here
I think they should frankly I think they should consider doing it you know the the crazy thing is
and this isn't what I I still have this question for deep cake about something but but the first
thing I want to just kind of address is that the international exchange process has been dismal
for me and it's the reason I have not rejoined your co-op is because the process of getting money
out of New Zealand both the New Zealand dollars and just getting it you know somebody that
electronically transfer the thing has just been outrageously more difficult than I had expected
well I mean I'm getting a little tired of the monthly billing thing I need to find some way
of doing this on a quarterly basis you know frankly it's gotten so cheap now we could we could
drop it I could put the bill myself you know but I don't want to because it's like I feel like
you're not invested in it no you're not a true partnership if you don't it's more it's not
about needing the money as much of it's about needing the commitment uh frankly if you want to uh
send me jaws of that morning stuff you spread and toast and New Zealand I know it's just in the
water you know can I just say can I just say New Zealand honey is the finest honey on this planet
they're actually they're actually yeah you're right it actually is it's it's amazing it's really is
and it's it is one of the culinary secrets of the world but you could travel the world over and
not find honey as fine as they have in New Zealand just saying so I mean yeah there's options and
and frankly if you if you want to be the the the the the the the CTO for the web server I'll be glad
to trade you being the CTO for the email part you know that'd be great but I mean this wasn't meant
to be an overcho overcho to seduce you to rejoin us no it's not you report a year ago I did I
I approached you guys about rejoining and then it but it did it literally came down to the
exchange rate so I figured I should mention it just so that people who may be considering this
are aware that the money situation you know on a global scale is not what we all I think
think it is it's like it's it seems like it's super easy and like the internet has bridged every
gap but the the financial thing is still a real puzzle to navigate lost and I do this with bitcoin
and I'm just doing the bitcoins on my own computer and at one point I had a scare when I had
had a reinstall and I lost a a data set that had my bitcoins on it I got it back by rebuilding
tell tell them how you got it back this is this is a fabulous thing I actually had my bitcoin
addresses still intact but not the actual files and by by re downloading the blockchain I could
go forward from bitcoin transaction number one to the present and get everything back he sifted
he sifted the blockchain and got all of his money back yeah I was my jaw was on the floor when
I heard about that yeah so you know you know what this is deep geek this is why you have no time
for other stuff you do stuff like that anyway now I back up the blockchain too good point
good point valid point and this deep geek this is why we approached you from the very
exactly yeah okay so deep geek another logistical question about how how you maintained the the
co-op while I was there at least and I could be misremembering here but I feel like you were fairly
not strict because you gave us pseudo apt-get rights but you had a policy if I recall correctly
that you know we didn't install stuff that we didn't need basically yeah that was a policy
and and and indeed the you know my modern web serving is now vps based so the attempt to
to install software really nilly would be disastrous but we all had we all had the rights to do it
and I gave you instructions on how to do it in a way that could be backed out because there'd be
a good log file yeah I did it a couple of times in the past I actually I did a couple of things
and a couple of them might have seemed really nilly but I had a reason for them but yeah
that it worked just fine yeah and apt-get remove has really improved since the time I started
using apt-get it really is reliable at this point it's fantastic but yeah I mean I mean there's
just something you can do as a shell user with your shell located in other country that you can
like install a tool on and get it something and for a long time what one of the secrets to my
success with the newscast was that newscast producers in foreign countries who would not release to
America would release to Iceland and so I would download them in Iceland and you get the
information that way and transfer it encrypted that back to America where they didn't want to publish
for whatever reason deep geek if someone was considering this they have a small group of friends
that they are thinking about this sort of thing themselves give them a really good thing to
avoid something that you've learned uh something that I learned a really good thing to avoid a really
good thing to avoid is having no backups for the people you mean individual backups no I mean
backups for the people when I lock myself out you get me a new password lost all right when I
can't get through to an upstream provider you make the phone call oh yeah you see what I mean
yeah yeah in theory if I couldn't talk my way to getting an upstream guy to do something for me
maybe you'd be more persuasive of that individual and me so yeah I think this should be done in groups
I think that would be great I do think all HPR people should be doing not the Facebook thing
just at the at a minimum but I would say you know a couple of things to do and don't is don't have
don't try technical democracy have this is your domain this is my domain you want me to
commit like a bitch you don't I don't and trust that person do have something like a
C panel web host provider as part of it so people can easily go to a standard mass market style
service for certain projects if they don't want to be using fringe software to host what you
would call a mission critical system do encrypt the hell out of everything then there's room for
experimentation on paper the info underground co-op is a certificate signer if we're not
recognized by the web browsers but we do that we sign their own certificates with our own
certificate authority we experiment we had for a while we had a not not a bit towards service
what's the thing I'm thinking about the encrypted server the the docknet tour tour tour we had a
tour service yeah we had an underside version of the of the web pages for a while the experimentation
factor is fantastic yeah that's also I got to I got to say to people that that also can be the
part that can test your patience if you're not the person in charge of installing all this stuff
just saying yeah I did want to ask you one thing when we started we did not have mail that was not
part of it but you experimented with that would you consider the mail server to have been an experiment
that you feel succeeded and that graduated is to be part of the regular service yeah it was an
experiment I didn't know what to do and there was so there were many things to to consider because
the email is by intent design totally modular which is why you have a separate SMT to get back to
what clat 2 was saying I was separate SMTP server and a separate IMAP server and a separate mail
server it's not to make it more confusing it's so that you can fit the functions to your needs
so you know right now we're running dovcott for the IMAP post-fix for the email transfer
and post-fix for the SMTP server also you know and yeah it graduated and as I learned the situation
around us went while I'll never forget me and my niece with my first incarnation on Facebook
me and my niece quit Facebook one week before the Snowden revelation wow yeah and then you
after after my company went bankrupt I realized the reason you want to have a network of friends
is to get rehired so I went back on Facebook you know because that's for all the people I knew
were I'd like to hear your final thoughts about this is the guy who is really the one behind it
you know I'm the first to admit I'm a co-tail writer on this is the guy behind it what do you
feel you personally have gotten out of this and why would you encourage someone else what have I
gotten personally out of this I mean you meet above and beyond the fringe services I need well maybe
they they are the primary thing in which case that's what you might want to say no I'm you know
I'm a I'm a gracefully aging cyberpunk hippie I I got a sense of community out of this you know
my community is you guys in particular which is why we have a sub show in Hacker Public Radio
why we decided to continue information underground it within the the larger framework of Hacker Public
Radio and beyond that Hacker Public Radio is my community that I'm a member of this is my posse
that's what I get out of this it's an integral part of my geek lifestyle it's my claim and my
contribution to do this and for people that maybe don't have your skill set what do you sit
of them I say if you don't want to develop the skill set then get friends friends are great
and if you do want to get the skill set free software's the way to go you've been listening to
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