I don't think it is as dark as you see it. I tend to search Google and do part of my research (for work) more and more from a TOR browser. Not because I do anything wrong, just because I don't want every search to be registered with my Google account (and who knows who else's cookies are in there anyway).

The other thing is: if every household would run a full TOR node (not exit, just run TOR or i2P all the time), it would also make traffic a lot less suspicious.

For Average Joe: call it "TBP secure browser" ... or whatever catchy English name. They can visit their Torrent portal, plus have some pre-bookmarked sites (Duckcuck Go, Risup, etc) to show what else is there.

To a certain degree I agree with you though: people hear "darknet" and they think you are doing something wrong. Maybe people who understand the idea and the tech behind could do a little better to make them understand, that it is not just illegal stuff there, it is also a tool not to expose them 24/7 to surveillance... I don't even mean NSA, I mean Google/Facebook/Yahoo/MS and their advertisers and the data miners who allow companies to look up your arse 24/7.

And again: I don't mind Facebook showing me a shoe ad because I searched "Mountain bike shoes" on Amazon. However, I would mind a company not giving me a contract because I searched "drone hacking" on Google.... because they won't understand the difference between "hacking a military drone" or "hacking a $200 quad-rotor to have decent RC control instead of the iphone wifi" ....
That search attached to your profile would also make any TSA inspector crawl up in your butt in no time too ... but that's just one example ... you only have to get into some kind of investigation, where they find you searched "how to make a body disappear" ... only because you saw Dexter and wondered if the chemical mentioned would really dissolve hair and teeth into liquid....

Could continue the stupid examples all day to demonstrate how something harmless could turn against you because everything is logged and attached to your accounts instantly, but it is not you I have to convince, it is Average Joe who should be made aware of these.

I do understand, that darknet (i2p, TOR/onion) is still a science fiction for "Average Joe", whose interest is downloading his daily porn and series episodes.

Maybe this is the perfect time to put the 'bay on the deep web and just stop this domain BS. Average Joe will have to use tor2web or install a browser to get his fix. He will (might) also learn about alternatives to Gmail and Hotmail and just browsing in the wide open.

I am not suggesting that the torrent traffic would go through the darknet, just that the torrent sites move in there and this whole domain crap goes away.

I am not advocating piracy, or tell anyone to do anything illegal, I just don't get how something (deemed) illegal doesn't move to a domain-less medium where it belongs. That's all...

In reality what you might be looking for is a decent size monitor. I worked for a while on an iMac (29 or 27 or whatever the biggest was 3 years ago) ... and with a portrait 19 Dell it was pretty good. I had all the code on the iMac, and site + firebug or 3 terminals (running console apps on servers) were on the dell.

Currenty I am running 3x 23 1080p monitors and I feel your pain. The monitors have no decent mount and so I am stuck in a "widescreen gaming" setup for now.

I actually have a 3x23'' 1080p linux desktop, and 3 macs on 3 other monitors for work. I have communications on one (mail, office, skype, etc), some house controls on the other (music player/etc) ... and one for web testing for web projects (or monitoring interfaces for non-web daemons/servers).... In addition I have a 1080p 42 inch TV with a mac mini in the office for video/music playback (tube amp for music and DTS for movies) ...

It is a little overkill, but I never have a "where do I put this window so I can always see it" problem :) .. works well if you both run servers and write code....

Switching between windows is really a time waster multitasker process interrupting horror. Easier to say "these 2 are for terminals, these are for netbeans, and the big one is where the site is tested in 4 different browsers"

BUT ...

However, what I am really looking forward to is a price drop on the 4K TVs. a 46''-ish 4K would get rid of multiple cards, converters, eyefinity, xinerama, and all the shit that complicates life on both OSX/ Linux / Windows.

" Moreover, the popular anonymization network "Tor" can do little to guarantee Bitcoin user's anonymity, since it can be blocked easily"....

What does this sentence even mean?

Bitcoin (Litecoin, Maxcoin, *coin (ok, most) ) can use a proxy. This proxy can go through TOR, I2P, 55 VPNs zig-zagging over the globe.

Bitcoin is Anonymous as you don't need to provide your identity. All transactions are however public: visible in the blockchain. It is like imagining a big mess of encrypted emails that everyone hosts on their machines, but you can only read the ones (spend bitcoins from) you have the key for.

Did I mention: you don't need to run a full node, and you can also use an on-line wallet.

Simple recipe:
1. mine some bitcoins
2. get a VPN
3. Use the VPN to get a free email address (google, riseup or else)
4. Use the VPN to get a VPS hosting
5. set up TOR on VPS hosting (hidden service)
6. and/or set up I2P on VPS hosting (eepsite)
7. Install Bitcoin, Litecoin, *Coin on the machine and run a full node through the VPN, TOR, I2P or combination of them
8. Use the VPN, TOR, I2P (or a combination of them) to access the machine where
9. Use the command line interface to send funds
10. Use any of the libraries to write your own web service to talk to the daemons to manage your funds

There ... find the IP where it came from.... found it ?

Rinse, repeat:

1. buy raspberry PI
2. buy throw-away anonymous SIM online (through VPN, I2P, TOR, with bitcoins)
3. install TOR, VPN, I2P, solar panel, gsm modem, Bitcoind, *coind on raspberry PI
4. Take a long ride from home where there is still reception, climb a tree/rock/old building/tower. Install it there ...

Found my IP ?

and so on ...

Or did they mean: if you just run a full node from home and accidentally connect to one of their servers they propagate, they can see where the transaction was coming from the first time ?
bitcoind --printtoconsole

After trying to get the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy from Audible ($30+/pop) and realising that most of the author's books are not available in my country (stupid)...
I figured, that I could buy the same books on dvds. MP3 format, not linked to any Audible or other account, and for $10 or less. Tantor media.

I also don't like physical formats and CD/DVD is the ultimate nightmare for me (I have one working cd drive remaining in my MBP) but with this pricing you can get 3-4 books for the price of the audible one.

Just got Thirteen (Black) and Market Forces, $10 shipped too:O

Except for the people who don't own a single optical drive. Not trolling, Being an Apple user first I freaked out. Then now back to Linux and somehow don't miss them. So when I put a server and a desktop machine together, I didn't put an optical drive in them at all.

I think the right way to do it is to give users a bootable USB drive. Or offer the download with a utility to make a drive bootable.

I have probably 50 driver CDs in a shelf I never opened and this plastic nonsense has to end right now.

my 2c ...

You seem to have a different experience I run OCZ in 3 24/7 machines ( 2 OS/x 1 linux) ... the only SSD drive that failed on me was on my Macbook Air, and it was a Samsung, and it was a "freeze, then all data gone and drive unrecognisable" nasty failure (thanks Apple for time machine, really) ...

The OCZ drives are Vertex 4 and Agility 3 drives (latter in the Linux box, crunching data all day, writing to a mysql db non-stop - data collection app) ..

I am happy with the drives, but would double-think getting a Samsung or Kingston (knowing the filed drive and the total crap quality of several sticks I own)...

Actually, not. Prime coin is more about "usable" or "practical" math. Then there are a load of other coins. Some of them with a pretty reasonable exchange/sale value ...

But .. just trolling, really ... yes.. could have said bitcoin as well ..

I wonder what this little app would do with the keyboard I am typing on. First of all, it is a mechanical keyboard with cherry MX browns. Second, I have the "buzzer" function on that simulates "clicky"-ness, since it is not a real clicking switch (though tactile) like e.g. the blue one or the real buckled ones.

I am not saying it would work better or worse, just curious if it would work on a Kinesis and how much the "clicker" and the totally odd shape of the keyboards would disrupt the functionality.

Anyway.... my phone is usually on airplane mode when I enter the house and is redirected to a landline that has an Asterisk box on it... then the Asterisk box' FXO is carefully disconnected, so no calls in, no calls out:). That's the way I like to handle phones and phone calls.

Almost as useless and annoying as mining primecoin then :)

That is why I mine crypto currencies with my graphics card 24/7 and liquid cool them.

The overclocking burns the malware out, then the distilled water flushes it out. My 99.8% pure silver kill coil takes care of any remaining parasites - just in case the UV lighting didn't burn them to death already....

I know I2P ...

And agree with mostly what you say. However I think ANY crypto would be better than NO crypto. I think we can agree on the following:

sending a PGP encoded mail out on my connection that has a bitcoin purchased (no payment info) VPN, maybe even do that over TOR (shit or not) makes things a little more complicated for whoever that wants to see that mail and where it was coming from.

That said, a friend argued, that if I started using crypto chat over Skype (OTR with Adium or Pidgin) then I would draw attention. Which might be true. That is why EVERYONE should start using it, so it will require crazy amounts of computing powers to figure out what the hell is happening on the wire.

Realistically, we could also go back to remailers. If it is 2048 +bit encrypted, the remailing would occur, else, it wouldn't.

I mean, with a little effort we could make it really hard for the snoopers.

my 2c :)

HAhah.... I live in Costa Rica... Dry season and Wet season. People keep insisting it is winter and summer, though we are on the north hemisphere and wet season coincides with summer on the north hemisphere and the driest dry is Dec/Jan when it is the coldest elsewhere.

And still, people use gmail, hotmail, Facebook, mobile me ....

Even worse: no one uses crypto. PGP is there. TOR is there (OK, with some problems with the latter),. a 4096bit key is a tough cookie to crack. There are 2-3 click installers for almost every OS (linux, win, osx, ios and android).

There is also OTR chat for chatting.

Still, I cannot convince one single person to use it, even for business matters that shouldn't go through mail servers and chat servers in clear text form.

I am talking about programmers, technical managers and system administrators, who find these tools either unnecessary, or too bothersome to use..... So how will average Joe convince grandma, grandpa, and uncle Joe to install these tools and go through the incredibly long (5 minute tops) learning curve and start using the F@#$@#$ tools?

Let's use diaspora, go back to vote-in BBS systems with made up names and use crypto ... but no... people are upset about their privacy while posting borderline illegal videos with under their own name with location services stamping info into the media.

ARE WE STUPID or what ?

I was whining about the price tag too. Finally I got one and it is the best ever investment (after a Kinesis keyboard and a quality trackpad) ...
I was going nuts over ambient noise at the office where I was abroad, plus being winter I had to have the heater on at the hotel.
I first got a "noise cancelling" Sony, that turned out a joke, then tested the Bose QC 15 at Best Buy with the airplane noise simulation ....

I had various fans at my home office before my Bitcoin miners went water cooled, and without them it was unbearable. As of other noises: it is actually capable of levelling the sound of a (just in front of my open window) lawnmower to a level, where I can listen to music on a really low level and only hear the occasional bursts of RPM adjustments caused by whatever stuff the mower is chewing through...

Trust me. BUY ONE. You won't regret it. I am not a Bose sales person, nor do I like their products too much, but the QC 15 is simply great.. It also sounds really good with movies, music, though it is a little heavy on the bass.

Hope this helps...