kate pinolo volcano in mexico pancake aguave sirop, smoked in the ground for 3 days near the volcano apple sirop mexican coffee responsable for server, sysop collective organised around the server, every component is replacable: put out work and put new work on members are responsable, server is replacable (you need to change hard disks,, upgrade all the time) ->> not 1 fixed part art server in a server farm in manchester upgrade sysop, pay him monthly fee to be accessible (call him wen things get too scary for them) was a desktop machine for a while, now they bought a proper rack heath does technical side of it, has been to the server farm once wanted something generic as possible -> made up box gender: its military learning unix and then root on the cinema server, then irational very bizarre: you're in a collective, and you have 'root' and it has all this powers, and all others users are barely aware of it, because they haven't learnt unix dicatorship; the governed knows there is a dictator, in collective, the governed doens't think about it there is alays more than one root, 3 2 other people know the other is a despote it would be seen you are hiding something -> that is not normal military structure, to have 2 or 3 generals write job description for root main operating principle: do as little as possible, it's all about restraint don't read other's people mails, don't thinker super passive, even not upgrade -> but at the same time you need to be paranoid and super active, because every morning you get a log file, broing list with all the attacks there were, and what people did, you see it in unbearable detail -> people are trying to kill you, steal from you, destroy things f.ex.script looking for your bitcoins -> combination of paranoid & super relaxed people not understanding your power service & people cleaning your house: linked you pretend that yo(ve not been there, invsible care taker master key of all flats in the building, don't go in unless people ask you even a person in family, mother looking in the daughter's diary -> mother as root -> cliché roles of power coming together issues with thelaw -> are you prepared? one of Heath's project set off an alarm [off the records] 1/pirate radio project: phone call at home from trading standards, most powerful agency in UK, dealing with food, safety and telecom, can search house without permission, they're more powerful than the police they told him to remove the pirate radio project -> not even through legal channels phone to server farm the server farm lied to us: told to say that no one contacted you [/off the records] thought of moving the server into a private house at least you'd be aware, and run with it advantage/disadvantages: at home can be insecure in other ways, normal burglers still negociations for authorities, takes more time to get into a server farm, gives you more time issues of electricity & ISP-continuity (your network can go down very easily) server of cube: anarchist ISP, very reliable for long time, but it can go down more easily -> noise: they're pretty loud who is taking care/responsable 3 roots: - upstream/knowledgeable, an employee: we pay him) we go for knowledge of him that we don't have - Kate unofficial responsable not paid: when there is a problem, time consuming, can be 12hs a day until it is over, is unpayable, f;ex. blacklisted for spam - Heath is root, he's the treasurer -> paying root is difficult thing,even commercially, it is inestimable you need to be on the watch all the time why having to keeping upgrading the OS???? things stop working the people who force you to upgrade: Debian we were using ubuntu up till now, for server it goes 4 years gear heads, technological drive that relates to consumer devices, server culture people want more stuff all the time -> you don't do your kitchen because you want to upgrade again in 2y that is what I hate about technology: I have an idea, i can make it better -> everyone has to follow you're put under pressure by your own team, the people to --- passivity paranoid attack your own team destroying your environment -> not present in my daily life ---- do you provide service to someone? sys admin we provide services for our users and ourselves, 8 members of irational with full accounts, provide email for friends who don't want to use gmail.... when someone requests something (install), you provide service - cooking a meal I really feel satisfaction, with the server it is always a drag -> ok, because th epower goes to people's heads when they feel pleasure in knwoing and doing it for others -> you can get easily drunk on power how does it take care of you? a 'home' in a lot of ways irational in international collective, serbia, spain, mexico and everyone is moving around all the time: you go in the server, and you're home -> very much used command 'w' : who is online now technical environment, but you can see your friends nice to offer webspace & email to others, feels good it definitely provides an 'identity' we gather around the camp fire is the server --- Sanjay / CAMP india Peter, So good to hear from you! I have been thinking about how the hell to respond to your email, and now I'm in the middle of a server crash and not sure if I have backups, and am just waiting for them to do a manual hardware reset and pinging it and hope the damned thing comes back on (otherwise I may need to send you to the data center in berlin to try and rescue some hard drives :P ) Any-how, replies inline - On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 4:14 AM, peter wrote: > Hi Sanjay! > > Long time no see, how is life in India ? > allthough looking at the activities on the CAMP site, > it looks like you spend most of your time abroad ? > Ah, I've not been spending so much time abroad. I'm doing some projects with CAMP still, but also doing some other web development work. Was trying my hand at being a "serious web developer" - not sure how much of a great idea that is, maybe should get back more to the art stuff , or perhaps there does exist some happy middle ground.. > I have a question for you: > > Between 12 and 15 december, Constant organises "Are you being served": four > intense meeting days in Brussels with lectures, screenings, performances, > discussions and workshops that present a feminist review of mesh- cloud- > autonomous- and D.I.Y. server initiatives. > "a feminist review of mesh- cloud- autonomous- and D.I.Y server initiatives." - you Europeans are crazy , its awesome. > http://constantvzw.org/site/Are-You-Being-Served.html > This looks great. I have been thinking a lot about the general subject of late, as I guess a lot of us have.. > Would you want to contribute to this event ? > we would like to ask you some questions concerning all those beautiful art > hosting platforms you are working on - > This would ask 15 - 20 minutes of your time, it would be in the form of a > recorded interview, either by VOIP or by telephone. > For the pad.ma hosting and generally hosting a bunch of really genuinely cool stuff, Jan is really the person to talk to - he's a sysadmin extraordinaire and people like him boggle my mind. It is a bit terrifying in the context of today's world to be hosting all one's own stuff on bare metal, at least in the solid sense of "I know there is a physical machine sitting in a data center that only I (and only people I have authorized) have ssh access to." - there's no magic, no "automated backups", no "cloud" .. it's a very hard ideal to hold onto though, but we must Aah, that server of mine came back up with a manual hardware reset - seems like all services are back-up, woohoo - btw, this is what I was working on this past year: http://dev.nypl.gazetteer.in/ - some historical mapping stuff for the new york public library, was ok, i learnt some things. > The basic questions we would like to talk about are: > > - Can you present us with a short bio of your server / service ? I'm more in the category right now of "I host a bunch of arbitrary nonsense for people, a lot of it I don't even know why." :/ > - What gender is your server / service ? This is a very good question and has gotten me thinking lots of nonsense since I read your email. Those thoughts were extremely vivid as I was cursing the terminal just now waiting for a Ping to come back from the server. I've never thought of my servers having gender, that's strange. Maybe that is because it is slightly ethereal to me - it's a box sitting in the Hetzner data centre - but it is a box that I own and definitely have a relationship to, so maybe I should think about its gender. I dunno though, I'm not quite sure if my laptop has a gender either. Some days she's a she, some days he's a he and that's how it seems to be? > - How does he / she deal with the law and how does the law deal with her / > him ? I had to give them a copy of my passport to get the server, so in some sense, things on the server do always "feel" tied into my "real" identity. I've been thinking a lot recently about anonymous hosting, etc., which would change the nature of that relationship, but right now it is definitely tied to my identity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. So I behave like I do in real life, and try and not get caught , but also don't do much that would land me in jail because that doesn't sound like fun. This question in the context of internet law and the political climate in India is increasingly interesting to me, though. > - How do you take care of your server and how does s/he take care of you? > Lol > We would also like to ask you to provide us with a picture of your server. > I'd need someone to go to the Hetzner data centers and convince them to let a photo be taken , that would be fun though. Or could send a picture of the hard-drives in the CAMP cupboards, that's a pretty terrifying sight. > The recorded interview with you will serve to nourish a roundtable meeting > between several indepent technological initiatives, mesh networks, > coöperative ISP's and alternative hosting services that we organise on > saturday 14 for which we'll have representatives of Calafou, Guifi, > Samedies, all2all, Mur.at, Neutrinet and others in the room. > This sounds cool. Hopefully you guys can beat the NSA - it's good times in the world > Other initiatives that we ask for an audio interview are: > Spc, Superglue, Irational, StudioXX, Riseup, Servus.at, L'Autre Net, > Koumbit, Domaine Public, NoLog, GlobeNet, > You should definitely speak to Jan. He is definitely a bit more "serious" than I am in this department.. > Well I know it might be far from your daily work, > but I hope you're up for it ! > Ah, you crazy Europeans are probably the best bet for this planet, let me know if I can help, glad to do whatever .. > Good vibes are still coming from your T-shrt, still wearing it with pride! > hehe, nice - I have very fond memories of my Brussels time - I hope I returned all the winter-wear I stole .. > All the best from Brussels > make some plan to come to India soon .. Happy Diwali from Bombay! --- services have changed over last ten years: projects last longer than service ex pandora many video archives, many servers -> most of them are in large data center in south of germany, reused before by other projects they all have harddrive failures at some point biography consists of being up and losing one harddrive, harddrive being replaced when they are to slow, they're replaced they get some name in function of what they do, bdx-0, but not very much of a relationship ex pandora servers 1, 2, 3 datacenter moved server was offline for some hours what gender? I never thought of gender, they might be like snakes changing their gender in function of their use or of what is required of their environment none-gendered, it is more an 'it' server takes care of you? developing software, they take care of the infrastructure one has, that they exist while we don't have to be there, enact certain ideas one has formulated in order for them to do so, we need to take care of them: do security updates, change hard drives, make sure that none of the projects take up all the memory, make sure that the projects can operate with each other make sure they have electricity (paying the bill) fixing some of the components my server at home: helps me to sleep when it is humming it requires that it is set-up, that software is installed this needs to be maintained/updated it requires taking care in order to not get bitrot or disintegrate if there are public web servers, webaccess... security issues that people could break in and destroy parts of your server relationship with the law mostly bound by physical laws: speed of light and density of processes national law has an effect on it, more between the person renting us the server and us server hasn't been in contact with law enforcement, as far as we know letter gets sent to the hosting company, forwarded to us, we can reply to the letters, the server doesn't really know it it can be that server gets confiscated, copied, evidence in a trial: more imaginary relations to the law than real ones --> defense mechanisms in case of confrontation with the law: some yes, none of the video archives needs encryption of sensitive material, since the information is mostly public, available throught the website mailserver would have encrypted hard drive, would be hard to get the data when taking physiscal psossesion of the server --- James Stevens spc > > > - Can you present us with a short bio of your server/service? hmm thats tricky.. almost everything we can say about ourselves is up at http://spc.org/described/ and sibling pages.. try this from the http://dek.spc.org home page *DECKSPACE* is an SPC Media Lab in Borough Hall, Greenwich. A serious climb with prime views and an evolution of environment for tea drinkers node builders and code meddlers to relay power and light into public space fit for use. > - What gender is your server/service? transsexual m>f > - How does s/he deal with the law and how does the law deal > with her/him? respectful distancing (mutual) > - How do you take care of your server/service and how does > s/he take care of you? we power her and he warms us > > Plus, if possible, a picture of the server.. hmm.. > > I am hoping you would like to take part in this, would be > great to add your voice! We already have Irational, CAMP, > all2all, bibliotecha and mur.at and ten more to come; some > other initiatives will present live in Brussels. > > If you are around at Deckspace next Friday 8 November around > 12, that would be ideal; I'm in London for FLOSSIE but will > visit Matthew in the morning so am close to you. That's great, I will be at both sessions.. > > If that does not work we can find a way to record a phone > call, your answers by e-mail or you can record yourself and > send us the file. The idea is not to go longer than 15 > minutes. > > Let me know, would be lovely. great to hear from you.. look forward to seeing the collected responses.