Those same things were said about hundreds of other technologies that no longer exist in any meaningful sense. Current usage of a technology, which in this specific case I would argue is largely frivolous anyway, is not an accurate indicator of future usage.

Is there a published date on there somewhere? I didn’t see one but I’m curious. It cites an estimate that total internet throughput is 167 terabits per second but I can’t imagine it’s that low these days.

I’m uh…

glances disdainfully at Truth Social

not so sure that’s the best idea we could come up with

That’s debatable

Let’s find out

I understood 2 of those phrases but the rest sounds like commie bullshit.

• Republican voters

Don’t frame it like it won’t turn out to be a big deal. That’s a bad idea, intentional or not. Deploying military assets against American citizens should be considered a serious escalation every single time it happens.

Yep, the only thing I’m 100% confident about in this whole mess is that Trump will find some heretofore unimagined way to make it worse.

#synergy

What’s with the switching back and forth between “you” and “u”? Either one is fine but pick one and go with it.

This headline is a really roundabout way to say “kicked out”. He was kicked out of parliament.

Lumen and Verizon both have subsea cable connections to Europe. EXA Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring Aqua Comms, both of which own subsea cables. Google, MS, and Meta have all invested in subsea infrastructure to varying degrees as well. These are not monopolies in the classic sense of the word but they’re not exactly owned by benevolent interests either.

That said, the point is that a malicious government with sufficient pull, for example the current Trump administration, wouldn’t have to bully very many people to severely limit the flow of information between North America and Europe. So much of the internet depends on US infrastructure that this wouldn’t be terribly far off from censoring the entire internet. In that scenario there isn’t much that can be done about it. Europe can control their own information flow to Asia and Africa but at minimum this would be a severe disruption for a significant amount of time. Other entities might take such an opportunity to impose their own restrictions and make the situation even worse.

They do wade into the IP / transport territory a bit but those are not the 6 companies I was referring to. I was thinking of Verizon / AT&T / Lumen / Zayo / etc.

Except that never happens. They get millions and then go bankrupt some other company.

Your last sentence is spot on but it doesn’t capture the full weight of the impact rich people vibes have on the world. The perceived value of every stock, and by extension the economy as a whole, is almost exclusively a vibe check of rich guys. There is no objective information about a company that is more indicative of that company’s success than how rich people feel about it.

While there are interesting projects in that list, everything that I see is either only useful in a local setting, like wireless mesh networks and their derivative protocols, or assumes that no one is actively restricting what can be transmitted over the privately owned long haul fiber networks that make up the backbone of the internet. How would someone in Seattle transmit more data than can be sent via a ham radio equivalent signal to someone in New York without the use of those fiber networks?

Perhaps you misunderstood my point in your haste to make a complicated problem seem simple but no, my argument has not changed.

No it isn’t. Either traffic is allowed to flow freely or it isn’t. Once you start down the “isn’t” path there’s not much that can be done to get around the fact that a few people control a huge chunk of the infrastructure.

Please explain how you can bypass carrier enforced traffic shaping policy.

From geti2p.net:

I2P’s protocols are efficient on most platforms, including cell phones, and secure for most threat models. However, there are several areas which require further improvement to meet the needs of those facing powerful state-sponsored adversaries, and to meet the threats of continued cryptographic advances and ever-increasing computing power.

The people involved in the project you’re referring to acknowledge that governments can, by influencing carrier policy, disrupt and subvert the project’s intended function. Why then are you implying they are incorrect?

So do a million different forms of encryption. That doesn’t make the infrastructure any less centralized. If the people who own the fiber decide to only allow pre-approved types of traffic to cross their networks then it doesn’t make any difference what sort of protocols exist. Building free cross-country or subsea fiber routes is not economically viable and the internet doesn’t exist without them.