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This article was originally published in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It is reproduced here with their permission.

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coördinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For many years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on ``The American Scholar,'' this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge.

• The Editor

This proposal concerns the management of general information about accelerators and experiments at CERN. It discusses the problems of loss of information about complex evolving systems and derives a solution based on a distributed hypertext system.

Overview

Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question - ªYes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?º This proposal provides an answer to such questions. Firstly, it discusses the problem of information access at CERN. Then, it introduces the idea of linked information systems, and compares them with less flexible ways of finding information.

It then summarises my short experience with non-linear text systems known as ªhypertextº, describes what CERN needs from such a system, and what industry may provide. Finally, it suggests steps we should take to involve ourselves with hypertext now, so that individually and collectively we may understand what we are creating.

Losing Information at CERN

CERN is a wonderful organisation. It involves several thousand people, many of them very creative, all working toward common goals. Although they are nominally organised into a hierarchical management structure, this does not constrain the way people will communicate, and share information, equipment and software across groups. //

A problem, however, is the high turnover of people. When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost. The introduction of the new people demands a fair amount of their time and that of others before they have any idea of what goes on. The technical details of past projects are sometimes lost forever, or only recovered after a detective investigation in an emergency. Often, the information has been recorded, it just cannot be found. //

The problems of information loss may be particularly acute at CERN, but in this case (as in certain others), CERN is a model in miniature of the rest of world in a few years time. CERN meets now some problems which the rest of the world will have to face soon. //

A solution: Hypertext
Personal Experience with Hypertext

In 1980, I wrote a program for keeping track of software with which I was involved in the PS control system. Called Enquire, it allowed one to store snippets of information, and to link related pieces together in any way. To find information, one progressed via the links from one sheet to another, rather like in the old computer game "adventure". I used this for my personal record of people and modules. It was similar to the application Hypercard produced more recently by Apple for the Macintosh. A difference was that Enquire, although lacking the fancy graphics, ran on a multiuser system, and allowed many people to access the same data. //

"Hypertext" is a term coined in the 1950s by Ted Nelson [...], which has become popular for these systems, although it is used to embrace two different ideas. One idea (which is relevant to this problem) is the concept: "Hypertext": Human-readable information linked together in an unconstrained way. //

We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.

The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use.

The passing of this threshold accelerated by allowing large existing databases to be linked together and with new ones. //

I imagine that two people for 6 to 12 months would be sufficient for this phase of the project.

A second phase would almost certainly involve some programming in order to set up a real system at CERN on many machines. An important part of this, discussed below, is the integration of a hypertext system with existing data, so as to provide a universal system, and to achieve critical usefulness at an early stage.

(... and yes, this would provide an excellent project with which to try our new object oriented programming techniques!)

TBL March 1989, May 1990 //

Nelson, T.H. "Getting it out of our system" in Information Retrieval: A Critical Review", G. Schechter, ed. Thomson Books, Washington D.C., 1967, 191-210

Some tips from entrepreneur Alex Miller for other ways to protect your Zoom calls include:

Anyone publicly sharing Zoom links where they could be discovered by trolls, like on Twitter:

• Be sure to change screensharing to “Host Only” before a call starts or as soon as they see the feature being abused.
• Disable “Join Before Host” so people can’t cause trouble before you arrive.
• Enabling “Co-Host” so you can assign others to help moderate.
• Disable “File Transfer” so there’s no digital virus sharing.
• Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin” so booted attendees can’t slip back in.

You are using Pale Moon 28.8.3 on Windows 10
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:68.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.4 Firefox/68.9 PaleMoon/28.8.3

If Sen. Lindsey Graham gets his way, the federal government will launch another attack on online privacy. The South Carolina Republican will ask lawmakers to give Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice unchecked access to all of your messaging, file-sharing, and video-sharing…

for maximum security on your domains, consider adopting some or all of the following best practices:

-Use registration features like Registry Lock that can help protect domain name records from being changed. Note that this may increase the amount of time it takes going forward to make key changes to the locked domain (such as DNS changes).

-Use DNSSEC (both signing zones and validating responses).

-Use access control lists for applications, Internet traffic and monitoring.

-Use 2-factor authentication, and require it to be used by all relevant users and subcontractors.

-In cases where passwords are used, pick unique passwords and consider password managers.

-Review the security of existing accounts with registrars and other providers, and make sure you have multiple notifications in place when and if a domain you own is about to expire.

-Monitor the issuance of new SSL certificates for your domains by monitoring, for example, Certificate Transparency Logs.

How do I take a screenshot?

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Today, the Public Interest Registry (PIR), which maintains the .org top-level domain, announced that it will be acquired by Ethos Capital, a private equity firm (via Domain Name Wire). This move will make PIR, previously a non-profit domain registry, officially part of a for-profit company — which certainly seems at odds with what .org might represent to some. Originally, “.org” was an alternative to the “.com” that was earmarked for commercial entities, which lent itself to non-profit use.

That’s not all: On June 30th, ICANN, the non-profit that oversees all domain names on the internet, agreed to remove price caps on rates for .org domain names — which were previously pretty cheap. Seems like something a for-profit company might want.

Removing price caps wasn’t exactly a popular idea when it was first proposed on March 18th. According to Review Signal, only six of the more than 3,000 public comments on the proposal were in favor of the change.

In an “open letter” published on May 1st, just days after the comment period had closed, PIR said that it had “no specific plans for any price increases for .org.” And, in a statement, Ethos said that it plans to “live within the spirit of historic practice when it comes to pricing, which means, potentially, annual price increases of up to 10 percent on average” — which typically equates to about $1 per year. But if those plans change, and if the rates for .org domains do go up significantly in the future, it could affect non-profits and institutions that rely on low domain name fees to maintain their websites.

.info and .biz, which also used to have price caps, had them removed this year as well. //

Giving control of internet naming to European interests would make it better they said, they’re not just as shitty and greedy as the US government they said. They sure knew what they were on about.
Posted on Nov 14, 2019 | 8:47 PM

There have been so many different emails and articles floating around about the ISOC sale of PIR to a new, two-person investment firm with only one investment, it’s hard to piece together exactly what has happened and when. I have put together a timeline based upon what I have read, and I’m sharing it here in case you find it helpful. I think it raises more questions than answers, though…

The proposed acquisition of Public Interest Registry (PIR) by Ethos Capital was announced on 13 November 2019 by the parties and the Internet Society (ISOC). This announcement has raised many questions. In light of this, we want to be transparent about where we are in the process.

On 14 November 2019, PIR formally notified ICANN of the proposed transaction. Under the .ORG Registry Agreement, PIR must obtain ICANN’s prior approval before any transaction that would result in a change of control of the registry operator. Typically, similar requests to ICANN are confidential; we asked PIR for permission to publish the notification and they declined our request.

According to the .ORG Registry Agreement and our processes for reviewing such requests, ICANN has 30 days to request additional information about the proposed transaction including information about the party acquiring control, its ultimate parent entity, and whether they meet the ICANN-adopted registry operator criteria (as well as financial resources, and operational and technical capabilities).

Public announcements made by PIR, ISOC, and Ethos Capital contain relevant facts that were not required in the request for approval. Today, we sent PIR an additional information request to ensure that we have a full understanding of this proposed acquisition. We have asked PIR to provide information related to the continuity of the operations of the .ORG registry, the nature of the proposed transaction, how the proposed new ownership structure would continue to adhere to the terms of our current agreement with PIR, and how they intend to act consistently with their promises to serve the .ORG community with more than 10 million domain name registrations.

In March 2019, ICANN proposed removing price caps on the dot org domain name registrations. ICANN received overwhelming responses against the proposed change yet in May 2019 it decided to go ahead with the change.

1. The CEO of ICANN left ICANN and began working at investment company Abry. Abry is a company that is co-founded by one of the members of ETHOS (who is purchasing the dot org registry).
2. Abry purchases a domain company called Donuts.
3. The co-founder of Donuts winds up on the board of PIR, which has control of Dot Org.
4. PIR sells Dot Org to Ethos.
5. Ethos Capital is co-founded by two people in May 2019. One is a former SR VP of ICANN and the other is a partner at Abry.

It seems that at every step of the way there is an influential former executive from ICANN who is involved in the transaction to purchase control of the dot org domain registry.

At this point it’s unclear whether the sale will be approved by ICANN. ICANN is requesting more information about the sale and the ability of the involved parties to manage the dot org domain name registry.

Read the official ICANN announcement https://www.icann.org/news/blog/org-update

There's a serious debate on reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I am in the process of figuring out what I believe, and this is more a place to put resources and listen to people's comments.

The EFF has written extensively on why it is so important and dismantling it will be catastrophic for the Internet. Danielle Citron disagrees. (There's also this law journal article by Citron and Ben Wittes.) Sarah Jeong's op-ed. Another op-ed. Another paper.

I am reminded of this decade-old quote by Dan Geer. He's addressing Internet service providers:

Hello, Uncle Sam here.

You can charge whatever you like based on the contents of what you are carrying, but you are responsible for that content if it is illegal; inspecting brings with it a responsibility for what you learn.

-or-

You can enjoy common carrier protections at all times, but you can neither inspect nor act on the contents of what you are carrying and can only charge for carriage itself. Bits are bits.

Choose wisely. No refunds or exchanges at this window.

We can revise this choice for the social-media age:

Hi Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/everyone else:

You can build a communications based on inspecting user content and presenting it as you want, but that business model also conveys responsibility for that content.

-or-

You can be a communications service and enjoy the protections of CDA 230, in which case you cannot inspect or control the content you deliver.

Facebook would be an example of the former. WhatsApp would be an example of the latter.

I am honestly undecided about all of this. I want CDA230 to protect things like the commenting section of this blog. But I don't think it should protect dating apps when they are used as a conduit for abuse. And I really don't want society to pay the cost for all the externalities inherent in Facebook's business model.

Smith’s art is a stunning achievement, featuring layers and layers of intricate code that must have taken untold hours to lay out and piece together by hand. But there’s a catch to this kind of art creation — and because we live in a word full of choice when it comes to computers, it’s a big one. //

Browser variance turns Francine into modern art — and nightmare fuel. //

As Smith was quick to note in her GitHub repository for the piece, this illustration was designed specifically with Chrome tools, meaning it was made to be viewed in the Chrome browser. As Vox engineer David Zhou soon learned, trying to view it with other browsers — in this case, an older iteration of Opera — produced, er, a slightly different image.
Fortunately for Francine, most internet users are currently viewing her on newer versions of Chrome, as she was intended to be seen. But if you’re one of the roughly 42 percent of users out there who are still clinging to an outdated version of your browser of choice, let this be a lesson to you: software updates don’t just keep you safe from viruses, malware, and the ridicule of your peers. They can, quite literally, change your perspective.

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Our proprietary content delivery network delivers the highest quality stream in the industry, and is trusted by more than 6,000 stations across the globe. With infrastructure in more than 13 locations around the world, you can count on your streaming audio being the highest quality, efficient, and always-on.

IP multicast is a bandwidth-conserving technology that reduces traffic by delivering a single stream of information simultaneously to potentially thousands of businesses and homes. Applications that take advantage of multicast include video conferencing, corporate communications, distance learning, and distribution of software, stock quotes, and news.

This module contains a technical overview of IP multicast. IP multicast is an efficient way to use network resources, especially for bandwidth-intensive services such as audio and video. Before beginning to configure IP multicast, it is important that you understand the information presented in this module.

When you troubleshoot multicast routing, the primary concern is the source address. Multicast has a concept of Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF) check. When a multicast packet arrives on an interface, the RPF process checks to ensure that this incoming interface is the outgoing interface used by unicast routing in order to reach the source of the multicast packet. This RPF check process prevents loops. Multicast routing does not forward a packet unless the source of the packet passes a RPF check. Once a packet passes this RPF check, multicast routing forwards the packet based only upon the destination address.

Like unicast routing, multicast routing has several available protocols, such as Protocol Independent Multicast dense mode (PIM-DM), PIM sparse mode (PIM-SM), Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP), Multicast Border Gateway Protocol (MBGP), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP). The case studies in this document walk you through the process to troubleshoot various problems. You will see which commands are used in order to quickly pinpoint the problem and learn how to resolve it. The case studies listed here are generic across the protocols, except where noted.

IP Multicast Routing Configuration Guide, Cisco IOS Release 15.2(2)E (Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Switches)

Traditional IP communication allows a host to send packets to a single host (unicast transmission) or to all hosts (broadcast transmission). IP multicast provides a third possibility: allowing a host to send packets to a subset of all hosts as a group transmission. This overview provides a brief, summary overview of IP Multicast. First, general topics such as multicast group concept, IP multicast addresses, and Layer 2 multicast addresses are discussed. Then intradomain multicast protocols are reviewed, such as Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), Cisco Group Management Protocol (CGMP), Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM). Finally, interdomain protocols are covered, such as Multiprotocol Border Gateway Protocol (MBGP), Multicast Source Directory Protocol (MSDP), and Source Specific Multicast (SSM).

This document is intended as a general "refresher" on IP multicast, not a tutorial. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with TCP/IP, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and networking in general. Please refer to Beau Williamson's book titled Developing IP Multicast Networks, Volume 1 (Cisco Press, 1999) if you need more information about any of the topics presented in this overview.