Category Archives: 2016

Use for post published in 2016

Decentralized Web Summit pt.6: Lightening Talks

June 9 was the second day of the conference. For more info:

See part 1
See part 2
See part 3
See part 4
See part 5

Lightening Talks were 5 minute introductions to various concepts, products and service being discussed or showcased at the conference. Most, if not all of the lightening talks were followed up with a workshop after so more people could understand the concept and technology behind the product or service.

The first round was 45 minutes late, because a number of the speakers just didn’t show up. This would never happen at a librarian conference and the audience didn’t know what was going on. I went and talked to my friend and found out. I thought it was really unprofessional for the speakers to bail, but it could be part of the decentralized culture.

Brian Warner talked about Tahoe-LAFS. They also have a GitHub site. LAFS stands for least authority file store. It uses other computers (friends, family, etc) for storage. Information is encrypted before it leaves your system. A ‘hash’ was included in the discussion. It has a feature/functionality called ‘magic folders’, which is a two way sync like DropBox. There is a web interface and it is written in Python. You have to make your own arrangements with storage providers directly.

Stefan Thomas (@justmoon) talked about his site, Interledger. Money is the first social network. Interledger is a protocol. It is a way to record money transactions because you don’t want to duplicate transactions. This is called a managing ledger. Their goal is to make it cheap, instant, global (imagine buying something with Euros when the price is in American dollars), scalable. Bitcoin was distributed and is a good start. Bitcoin is open source so you can make changes to the code. IP allows people to communicate with others on different networks. You can’t, however send an email to SnapChat. There are two basic functions: addressing and fragmentation.

Interledger addresses. It uses decimal amounts and has protocols that are part of a stack. They are in the process of writing plugins for different ledgers (e.g. PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay and others).

Natalie Meyers is from the Center for Open Science (COS). She talked about the mission of COS, which is to preserve the data used for scientific experiments so that the experiments can be replicated.

She talked about metascience and the infrastructure COS is working on. They have an Open Science Framework which allows scientists to pass information through tools they are already using. This will be used to investigate how software and operating systems influenced project data. part of their mission is to collaborate in order to promote openness.

Making behaviors visible promotes adoption.

She also discussed better stewardship of scientific data.

Juan Benet: IPFS – he mentioned a ‘merkle’ in his talk about the Interplanetary File System. IPFS has versioning of datastructures. IPFS tells you how to name and move info.

Arkady Kukarkin talked about his company, MediaChain. It is an open and universal media library, decentralized database that provides a unique content ID. Anyone can participate.

There is image recognition so that two versions/instances of the same image have the same content ID and can be discussed as the same. They preserve the raw metadata with ingestion (uploading). People who own images/artworks can amend or retract records, but not edit.There is a log that shows the history of the record. It has similar qualities to Shazam, which tells you the artist of the song when you are listening.

This is a concept about which I am really excited. I want to participate so I can mark my artwork as mine and don’t have to deal with the IG “I forgot where I found this image” issue again.

Other Notes:

Cloudfleet is your own personal data center and some great sounding features.

Resources:

    • Cloudfleet
    • MediaChain
    • MediaChain on Facebook (page is in Polish or Russian)
    • Center for Open Science (COS)
    • Open Science Framework (part of COS)
    • Cryptographic hash function, a derivation of data used to authenticate message integrity
    • Fragment identifier, in computer hypertext, a string of characters that refers to a subordinate resource
    • Hash function, a derivation of data, notably seen in cryptographic hash functions
    • Hash table, a data structure
    • hash (Unix), an operating system command
    • slack.mediachain.com
    • github.com/mediachain
    • Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality.[1][2] It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. (Wikipedia)
    • The block chain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: maintenance of the block chain is performed by a network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software.[15] Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.[11]:ch. 8 The block chain is a distributed database – to achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every bitcoin (amount), each network node stores its own copy of the block chain. Approximately six times per hour, a new group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to the block chain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent, which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, the block chain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.[11]:ch. 5 (Wikipedia)
    • InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol. Nodes in the IPFS network form a distributed file system. IPFS is an open source project developed by Protocol Labs with help from the open source community.[1] It was initially designed by Juan Benet.[2] (Wikipedia)
    • Cory Doctorow’s presentation
      Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
      Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit

Decentralized Web Summit pt.5: Panels & Talks

See part 1

See part 2

See part 3

See part 4

Security in a World of Black Hats

We all know that spam, phishing, hacks, identity theft, etc are big money and a big pain. This panel talked about what they are doing in their companies and strategies.

Ross Schulman, Open Tech Institute

Van Jacobson, Google

Mike Perry, Tor

Paige Peterson, MaidSafe

Brian Warner, Tahoe LAFS

One strategy they suggested was using safer code languages. Paige said that MaidSafe products are being rewritten in older languages. She mentioned C++, but I am not sure if they are using that or C++ was an example. I guess those older languages aren’t dead.

There is also something called a Freedom Box, which allows an individual to host their own part of the web. I’d like to take a look at this.

The speakers talked in general terms about what their companies are doing, but couldn’t make specific details public because the event was being livestreamed. That would open them up to hacking and other nastiness.

Moonshot Challenge: What Can You Do?

Juan Benet: websites divorced from locations

Trent McConaghy, Big Chain DB and IPDB: decentralize at scale

Karissa McKelvey, The DAT Project: breaking open scientific data

Denis Nazarov, MediaChain: connect content creators with audiences. MediaChain is an open universal media library that provides a content id to your artwork. This idea keeps the owner/creator information with the image.

Evan Schwartz, Interledger, an Internet protocol for money: he is interested int he future of money. He wants to help payment systems talk to each other. I actually had some idea what this company was talking about. If you use Google Pay and your vendor uses PayPal, Interledger will allow your systems to talk to each other so that you can still pay. In my mind, it gives everyone choices about what payment system works for them and doesn’t require us to have multiple passwords and our money spread around. Interledger helps with the routing of packets of money across networks. It will lead to agnostic payment systems

IPFS is a peer to peer hypermedia protocol

 

Resources:

    • slack.mediachain.com
    • github.com/mediachain
    • Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality.[1][2] It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. (Wikipedia)
    • The block chain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: maintenance of the block chain is performed by a network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software.[15] Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.[11]:ch. 8 The block chain is a distributed database – to achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every bitcoin (amount), each network node stores its own copy of the block chain. Approximately six times per hour, a new group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to the block chain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent, which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, the block chain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.[11]:ch. 5 (Wikipedia)
    • InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol. Nodes in the IPFS network form a distributed file system. IPFS is an open source project developed by Protocol Labs with help from the open source community.[1] It was initially designed by Juan Benet.[2] (Wikipedia)
    • Cory Doctorow’s presentation
      Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
      Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit

Decentralized Web Summit pt.4: Panels & Talks

See part 1

See part 2

See part 3

After the Big Guns, others started to talk. There were panels, lightening talks, workshops and informal meal socials.

Peer to Peer Networks

The first talk was a panel about Peer to Peer networks. I was thinking that we already have that when someone else echoed my thoughts. Kevin Marks of Indie Labs was the moderator and the panel included Feross Aboukhadijeh of WebTorrent, David Dias or Protocol Labs & IPFS, Zooko Wilcox of Zocash & Tahoe LAFS and Gavin Wood of Epthcore (sp??), Etheory and Ethereum.

In this section, Kevin asked questions and answers were given by the most interested or qualified person. In some cases, questions were directed at certain panelists. All of the panelists are clearly passionate about their projects.

They don’t think links are as fragile as the Big Guns made them out to be.

Zcash has privacy in the payment system, which prevents censorship.

Public applications are saved to the network without having data in once centralized location. They think this helps find content on a network. I wonder how and if there is an opportunity for content management

Ethereum decentralized http post allows transactions within post request (filling out a form on the web) with no server on the other end.

Webtorrent – they are trying to make a torrent client that runs in the browser. Other torrent clients have to be installed, which is a barrier.

Visitors help host various sites

Torrents area and efficient way to send data across the web

Naming and User IDs in the Decentralized Web

Again this was a panel with a moderator. Participants included:

Chelsea Barbaras – moderator

Muneeb Ali (@muneeb), Blockstack

Joachim Lohkamp, Jolocom and Ouishare

Jeremy Rand, Namecoin

One of the things I liked about this talk was that right away they acknowledged that the decentralization of the web is not an intuitive thought for most people. One person gave an example of 10 sites being involved when a person types an address into the browser bar.

Naming matters.

They want to decouple data from applications. This would help with archiving issues such as not having the software to run and look at data.

Building Values Into the Decentralized Web

Amber Case – Calm Technology

Primavera De Filippi – Backfeed and Coala

Max Ogden (@denormalize) – DAT Project

Wendy Seltzer – W3C

Peter Van Gardenen – Artefactual Systems

One of the speakers said that decentralization should be a means a different object NOT the object itself, which I think is fairly profound. I can’t say I noticed that people wanted to decentralize the web in order to decentralize the web. Many listed privacy, anti-censorship, etc as reasons behind it. I got the impression that there are a limited number of reasons, which might focus the effort, but also not be enough.

provenance of information

  • authentication
  • how do I trust it?
  • does it have good metadata?
  • are there multiple copies?

Bandwidth and storage of commodities of the Internet. I never thought of it like this, but it is true.

Resources:

    • Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality.[1][2] It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. (Wikipedia)
    • The block chain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: maintenance of the block chain is performed by a network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software.[15] Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.[11]:ch. 8 The block chain is a distributed database – to achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every bitcoin (amount), each network node stores its own copy of the block chain. Approximately six times per hour, a new group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to the block chain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent, which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, the block chain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.[11]:ch. 5 (Wikipedia)
    • InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol. Nodes in the IPFS network form a distributed file system. IPFS is an open source project developed by Protocol Labs with help from the open source community.[1] It was initially designed by Juan Benet.[2] (Wikipedia)
    • Cory Doctorow’s presentation
      Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
      Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit

Decentralized Web Summit pt.3: Big Guns

See Part 1
See Part 2

Sir Tim Berners-Lee @timberners_lee

He is the director of the WWW Consortium. He was really hard for me to understand. He is so smart and talks so fast that mere mortals have to run to catch up. He made some excellent points

Sites/services such as FB, Flickr, Instagram don’t talk to each other. Those sites are silos. These sites display the siloization of the web.

=> When I heard him say that it occurred to me that mobile devices are creating a bridge (nota bene: NOT a solution or breaking down the silos) in that photos are stored in one place to the different silos have access to them. This still means that you don’t have to go to different places to find the photos to upload.

=> While you can click on the ‘share with Twitter’ button within Instagram, the tweet still refers the reader back to Instagram.

People think that consumers sold their souls to get web/app services for free.

He wants a place to store that individuals can control

  • He is working on a project called Solid

Locking the Web Open / Brewster Kahle

Can web openness be irrevocable?

Can web openness be baked into the infrastructure?

  • Build archiving into the cloud

The more access is available, the more a site is used (e.g. Amazon Cloud moves sites around and replicates them for a larger fee if they get more popular)

Reader privacy is an issue that came up a few times at the conference

 

 

Listen/watch the video of the whole conference for more detail and more information.

Resources:

Cory Doctorow’s presentation
Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit

Decentralized Web Summit pt.2: Big Guns

See part 1.

As I said the concept of the “Decentralized Web” wasn’t made very clear at the Summit. Everyone seemed to know what everyone else was talking about.

Mitchell Baker (one of the few women and a powerhouse in her own right) explained it like this:

  • Agency. User agent can choose how to interpret content provided by a service offering.
  • Immediate. Safe, instant access to content accessible via a universal address (similar to http) without an install.
  • Open. Anyone can publish content without permission or barriers and provide access as they see fit.
  • Universal. Content runs on any device or any platform.

The above description is what I tried to keep in my head throughout the Summit. The questions it brought up were:

  1. Is this a new concept or am I just learning about the movement?
  2. Are these concepts coming around again after 20 years as they seem familiar principles from when I first got on the web?

Vint Cerf @vintcerf

Vint Cerf came next. He is a VP & Chief Internet Strategist at Google. He didn’t talk much about Google and didn’t do the gratuitous mentions (much) like many do. Instead he talked about the Digital Dark Ages, which is a time we are in now where content we think is permanent blinks on and off. Files simply disappear and links die.

He is advocating for a Self Archiving Web.

What we have learned from the Internet is that the following is important:

  • Collaboration and Cooperation
  • Open design and an evolution process
  • Anyone can join by following the protocols
  • Multiple business models are acceptable
  • Modular, layered evolution
    • who really cares about how packets are being carried as long as they are delivered?
  • E plurbis unum

Thinking Out Loud

Some of the things that Cerf mentioned were compression schemes and what they could and couldn’t do, Tarball and related formats, the importance of storing and being able to recover particular objects as well as the storage of software with versioning. Imagine a world where you have a lot of digital stuff, but you can’t access it because you don’t have the software.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is starting to ‘archive’ the web. Even they admit their efforts are inadequate. They take snapshots of sites. They are time indexed copies. Hyperlinks don’t work. Hyperlinks will have to be reformed to resolve with other archived (snapshot) sites “InArchive” pages.

A complete archiving effort for the web has to be:

  • self-contained
  • include continuous crawling
  • determine how to decide when to create a new instance
    • Is there a role for RSS??

Then he had a random question: Does a set of all sets include itself?

=>This question alone made the whole conference worth it. This type of question would never come up in the corporate world. If you think about it, it will start to blow your mind.

Environmental Thoughts

The web can hardly contain itself. Is there room to replicate it? (LOCKSS)

Hyperlinks deteriorate with time

  • Perhaps we need a permanent link – something like digital object identifiers

HTMLx rendering challenge: backward compatibility

What about permissions, access control, copyrights

  • these cause problems for archiving over decades or centuries

Some Basic Thoughts

  • Automatic, cooperative replication of created web pages could be part of the publication process.
  • Is there a role for something like Good docs property of replication/real-time synchronization?
  • Could there be a reference space (like a reference room in a  library) held in common by cooperating web archives?

More Thinking Out Loud

  • Is there a role for publication/subscription mechanisms for cooperative and other entities?
  • A lot of metadata is needed to replicate some kind of Time Machine feature
  • A library of rendering/interpretation software is needed to correctly render archival material on the web
    • there is a whole subtext of permission to use here
    • how do you use software over time (decades, centuries) when companies go out of business, go bankrupt (and the judge won’t give you access because it’s an asset)
  • Guaranteeing backward compatibility is a good goal, but not practical over hundreds of years.

Surfing the Self Archiving Web

  • Multiple, alternative resolution targets (shouldn’t matter which is chosen if the system works right)
  • Note: static media of newspaper and magazines and books are snapshots of a ‘work’ in time. We have editions. People can see the work as it existed at that time and something similar might be valuable for the web and digital objects.

Desirable Properties

  • Auto-archiving upon publication?
  • could auto-archiving be a service for which you sign up? How would it be funded?
  • Registration of rendering engines (and permissioning system?)
  • Auto-malware filters
  • Fidelity levels
    • everything works
    • surface display only (no links)
    • other? e.g. can see there is a video, but don’t have software or rights to render it so user can only see part of the object
  • Once archived, is a page an indelible and unalterable instance? Could it be useful in a court of law?
    • could different levels of fidelity have different uses, e.g. an official version?
  • Is there an ‘official records’ side effect of making Self Archiving web work?
  • Can such a system work for encrypted content?
  • Can access to parts of the archive be access controlled
    • e.g. release after 25 years?
    • what about a separate archive of encryption keys?
    • could metadata be added to trigger access?
  • Is there a role for containers?
    • all information needed to do rendering would be held in one container
      • Google is doing this for the Android Framework
  • Apps?
    • What is their role in the structure above?
    • How would they be shown/displayed in 25 years?
    • Would an index of information for apps help render them?
    • archive of apps
    • digital dioramas
  • Digital vellum could be an ad model + a subscription model + a service model

We discussed the right to be forgotten in a digital archiving space

  • In order to wipe something out you have to remember it because you have to know it in order to get rid of it (another mind blower!)

 

 

 

Listen/watch the video of the whole conference for more detail and more information.

Resources:

Cory Doctorow’s presentation
Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decentralized Web Summit pt.1

I spent the last day and a half at the Decentralized Web Summit.

My head is about to explode. Seriously.

This conference was so out of my normal scheme that it really shook things up for me. I don’t think that it will blow my life into a new stratosphere or anything, but I know about things that I didn’t know about before. I have heard of things that I don’t understand and I have participated in a cultural group that is really different from the librarians, knowledge managers and content management people with whom I normally interact. It was an eye opener.

The conference was held at the Internet Archive, which owns an old Christian Science building. The former sanctuary (or CS equivalent) still has the pews, but houses the servers that run the Internet Archive, was where the presentations were held.

The majority of the attendees and presenters were male, but there were a few females, including a few female presenters. Tons of t-shirts, only one suit (that I saw), beards, boots. The new uniform.

If the building had been bombed, the history of hte Internet would have been wiped out, not because the IA servers would have been destroyed (they are backed up offsite), but because most, if not all, of the fathers of the Internet were in attendance: Brewster Kahle, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf (he wore the suit), Cory Doctorow, Richard Sullivan, etc. I was in awe of these guys. I remember when they were were working on making the Internet more open. And here they are again, working for the same thing.

The first issue I had was that I had no idea what a Decentralized Web was. A day and half into the conference, I am still not 100% sure. Wendy Hanamura, the Partnership leader at IA suggested:

  • Open
  • Private
  • Secure
  • Free

She suggested and this was reiterated later, that these values should be ‘baked into the code”.

 

Resources:

Cory Doctorow’s presentation

Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project

Twitter hashtag #DwebSummit

Content Management – Valuing Content Practically

Some time ago, I talked a little about information reuse and content management. I have had the opportunity to talk with a company that is experiencing this right now. The short version is that people cannot find the information they need and doing their jobs is delayed.

This company is several years old, but still young and I applaud them for realizing that their information has value and wondering if it still has value if nobody can find it.

This is interesting to me and I wonder if it is a trend? For years companies had vast libraries with multiple researchers and librarians corralling information and pushing it back out to colleagues for use in the business of the organization.

Libraries started to close in the early the 2000s and that coffin was nailed shut in the crash of 2008. Many libraries were closed or reduced to shadows of their former glory. Law firms, in their bid to recover from the crash have followed suit. Organizations believed the hype about full text search being the ultimate tool. Librarians didn’t help their cause when they stuck to traditional methods and, in many cases, failed to understand and embrace new technologies and methods.

Now Content Managers are being hired. These are not always MLIS grads; they are sensible people who have skills in organization, but may not be trained in standard (library) methods. This is a place where a forward thinking, technologically oriented information professional can thrive if s/he can get past the stereotype of the shushing librarian.

Various & Interesting #4

 

Michael Ginsborg, NOCALL President shared the title of a post by NOCALL member Sarah Lin which was published at the On Firmer Ground blog. Sarah offers us tips on how to deploy our data sources to better track collection usage. She describes new ways to think about our monitoring tools and training opportunities. Michael also noted that  Sarah will join David Holt in a related panel moderated by Hadi Amjadi: “Google Analytics: Best Practices and How To Use At Your Library” at the NOCALL Spring Institute. Check the NOCALL site for an announcement about Institute registration.

Various & Interesting #2

I know this series of posts must seem like All ResearchBuzz All the Time. I think Tara, the author and owner of ResearchBuzz does a great job and has so many helpful tips on so many different topics that I can’t help myself. I have found some other interesting tidbits and added them.

The Toronto Public Library and the Kansas City Public Library really did a good job collaborating on activities and events around the World Series. Great way to engage in the community and get people to the Library.

From ResearchBuzz: “Aaron Tay’s got a useful article if you’ve been using Google for a long time: 6 Common Misconceptions When Doing Advanced Google Searching. These are good points but I want to add it’s always worth it to try multiple * as wildcards when doing phrase searching. It doesn’t work quite like it used to, but it can still change the count and order of your search results. (Compare “three * mice” to “three * * mice”, “three * * * mice”, etc.)” (10/31/2015)

–> One of the things corporate and special librarians do for their professionals is help them with more precise Google Searching. I really wish Google would partner with librarians to work on their search algorithm.

Tara from ResearchBuzz also gives us some tips on uninstalling in Windows 10: “In case you need it: How to uninstall an app or program in Windows 10.” (11/2/2015)

ResearchBuzz is spending NaNoWriMo writing articles she has wanted to write for a long time. recently she posted one on Buffer. I knew about Buffer peripherally, but the article really got me interested in the product. I hope Buffer is listening as Tara has some GREAT ideas for improving the service.

Intersect Alert, the Government Relations newsletter of the San Francisco Bay Region chapter of SLA has posted an interesting new app. LawLibe – A Law Library – on Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

“This app comes preloaded with the U.S. Constitution. Then you can download additional legal content directly into the app, including the U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, State Statutes, the M.P.E.P., and more!”

Features:

  • Fully offline – just download and go!
    • Download additional content directly into the app!
    • Lightning-fast speed.
    • Full-text search and in-text highlighting.
    • Page through content just like a book.
    • User preferences – adjust the font and font-size for easier reading.
    • GoTo Button – know the exact section you want? It’s one touch away.
    • Includes Advisory Committee Notes where available
    • Updated frequently to ensure you have the most current edition.

Have you tried it? What do you think? What effect will we see on law libraries and law librarians.