This GNS thing...

The gradual growth and unyielding development of our beloved Republic make this item necessary, by and by, and so even though it's not exactly ready, we shall make an effort to catch up, below.

I. Adult OS should at the very least come with Vⁱ and does in fact need a source of entropyⁱⁱ just as much as it needs a processor or a bus. Sorry to be the harbinger of cold reality, but no, quadriplegic girls aren't women, no matter what drawings you might've seen.

II. Since V is available and since usg.dns is evil, we might as well include republican GNS with the item. But how should such a thing work ?

III. Because we're going to replace the whole name resolution infrastructure (the whole name resolution infrastructure) of heathen lands for our own use, it then follows we get to define top level symbols. The scheme drafted ad-hoc yesterday appears ready to stand us in good stead : 40 character ALPHAnumeric strings will be arbitrarily defined to resolve toⁱⁱⁱ IPs, to which the OS can connect, and from which it may expect to obtain /gns.

IV. This /gns should be a directory, containing patches, which is to say a succession of files, .vpatch and .sig with names matching in pairs. The genesis^iv must contain a global.hosts, bitcoin.hosts and manifest.txt ; should there also be a global.names^v ?

V. To use this tree, cuntoo will have to contain a keys directory somewhere. Practically speaking, if you have it you might as well pre-populate it, which begs the question : should it come with the maintainer's key alone (ie, trinque's) ? Or should it come with the lordship's keys in a set ? The former is a factual matter, as plain and simple as it can be : if you're downloading his software you're trusting his signature, no two ways about it. However, it may also put too much weight on the poor man -- he signed up to do some maintenance work on a software package, not necessarily to endpoint all queries forever. Yet the alternative is dubious, because now somebody (who ?) is stuck updating what's essentially a dynamic symbol. Should we mandate the first however many lines in that global.names file read "lordship $key", thereby creating a ready way to splinter off the notion through usage (because obviously) ? Not that it's such a terrible idea in principle, but is it perhaps too soon ?

VI. Upon pressing the tree, one is left with a dysfunctional item, because our global.hosts does not readily transpose into traditional /etc/hosts : private patches are still needed (at the very least to define "localhost"). I deem this a feature : on one hand the user must be aware of his machine (and, honestly, requiring the ability to patch a V tree seems exactly the right setting for "table stakes") ; on the other hand if the user presses the tree to a head consisting of his own patch, should then the gns tree be re-genesised upstream the flow will break, providing what's to my eyes a most valuable canary. Wouldn't you want to know about it ?

VII. The tempting observation that "the link might as well be encrypted", and the scheme could then work as $key1/$key2/gn (a breathtakingly beautiful arch over the centuries uniting previous "Consulem Romanorul Regii Phyrrhy Salutem"^vi with current FC66C0C5D98C42A1D4A98B6B42Fv9985AFAB953C4/17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7/gns ) will most certainly have to await gossipd. The equally tempting "OS should come with irc bot, ready to !!key joe from command line pipe" is a lot more feasible, are we actually doing this ? Not like trinque's bot isn't already there...

Let's talk about it!

1. Which means, RSA, because if you're going to check signatures might as well have the whole KEDSC (keygen-encrypt-decript-sign-check) orchestra ; and which further means keccak. Practically speaking both of these also mean GNAT, because that's what we use to compile the foregoing. [↩]
2. Which yes, means FG, no alternatives available. [↩]
3. IPv4, the Republic does not support IPv6. [↩]
4. Which I originally volunteered to provide, resulting in all this mess, because yes, I'd like to provide it, leaving me stuck trying to figure out what the fuck am I supposed to actually provide. [↩]
5. This could create a truly global space, allowing machine-translation, because all you'd have to remember is something like global.software.bitcoin, and the machine could produce the path for such a thing ; similarily global.properties.time could produce the time and so following ; nevertheless, we're not ready with the full thing just yet, and moreover it should grow organically, through usage, like we do. [↩]
6. Can you believe the ~only~ reference to that ancient formula on the entire fucking "web" of shit is actually... this very Trilema ? Can you ?

   Let's then recount the whole story of it :

   Nicias cuidam, regii Phyrrhy amicum, ad Fabricius consulem furtim venit ac dixit : "Si praemium accipiam, regem veneo necem".

   Tum Fabricius legatus cum letteris missit.

   "Consulem Romanorum Regii Phyrrhy salutem.
   Ad nos venit Nicias, familiaris tuus, quod praemium ad nos petived si te clam iterfecisset. Tu nisi cavebis, iacebis. Vale."

   Pai nu ?!

   I still remember it today, having learned it (by heart, and not by rote) in those olden days because to my eyes, now as then, the final vale is the strongest, most elegant counterpoint. Don't you find ? [↩]