It has been quite some time since my last post.  Life has kept me
quite busy as of late, but I thought I would squeeze in another
post.

Spring has come with it's usual splendor in these parts perhaps
more so because of the particularly wet winter.  The rains are
slowly beginning to taper off although not gone completely.  Of
course this also means a lot of mowing before the fire season
begins.  The joke is that every time I try to schedule some mowing
to be done, the weather changes and I have to push it out a little
farther.  The back of the yard has turned into a jungle so a lot of
work is waiting.

*Enough is enough*

<beginning of rant>

Your expectation of any remaining privacy over the internet has
just been blown out of the water:

http://sdf.org/l/aj

Of course the vast infrastructure and power requirements of the
internet have to be paid for at some point and the big players such
as AT&T or Comcast are wanting to generate advertising revenue to
cover these gargantuan expenses.  Fair enough, but in the public
sphere, there is an expectation of cheap or even free access to
communication and information.  Most people are unaware of the
colossal costs behind the internet backbone.  I suspect this move
by the industry and their congress lackeys is going to bring about
the long descent of the internet as we know it.  It is just not
economically sustainable.  The huge amount of investment money and
cheap debt required to keep companies such as Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram etc. afloat is slowly drying up:

https://tinyurl.com/mvabwlg

In light of the numerous security breaches, Snowden revelations and
now leaks about the CIA's vault 7, many consumers are fed up.
Personally, I have begun to utilize the Tor browser for my regular
browsing and have begun shopping for a vpn connection.  As I
touched on in a previous post, I will try to confine myself to
using my Unix shell account for text browsing.  Hopefully the
Gopher protocol will stay under the radar for some time.  As time
marches on, alternative networks might begin to appear on the
scene.  Fidonet which was popular in the late eighties and early
nineties may make a comeback.  I understand ham operators have been
experimenting with different networking protocols for many years.

Ultimately, I am uneasy with the idea of having a browsing profile
developed by some unknown organization and sold to the highest bidder
or, even worse, handed over to Uncle Sam.

I could go on and on, but I will stop here.  (aren't you glad?)


<End of rant>