austerity

I vaguely remember giving it some consideration. But the bigger point is that my judgement on these things is not to be trusted since I'm just an application developer and not a crypto expert.

Yup, arbitrary restrictions on passwords are a bane. I've thought about adding various modes but then you need to remember the mode you used. So far the most sensible option seems to be falling back to a password manager for those sites.

As for the service name I've had no issues with that in my use. Just come up with whatever rule is easy for you to remember. Worst case you'll have to make a few tries.

It's simple concatenation. The exact algorithm is described at the bottom of the page so that one could reproduce it (and their passwords) independently.

Shameless plug time! Instead of remembering different passwords or using a password manager (and thus storing all your passwords somewhere) you can use https://salty.pw/

How did this become about taxes when it's actually about corruption? New evidence is uncovered of people at the top systematically abusing their power and disregarding the very laws they instill upon everyone else. Yet HN commenters are telling me the problem is that I am not giving these bastards a large enough share of my income.

It could and it would be wrong. But it's not at all what this leak is about.

Nothing. But some people can't control their urge to cry wolf.

If by "skew" you mean publish some (true or at least reasonably verified) information that could influence the voters' decision then why the hell not?

The wording in that article is pretty telling, but why do you imply they can no longer be trusted? A business that was profitable before became unprofitable due to legal pressure, so they exited it. It doesn't look like they've betrayed anybody's trust in the process.

Welp, it was only a matter of time... Thanks for the info!

First of all, there's no such thing as own server. The trust you are putting into the ISP your "own server" is connected to is exactly the same as the trust you are putting into a VPN provider.

Second, for a lot of people in this world it's a given that their ISP/government is monitoring their traffic. It's vastly better to be potentially spied on by someone abroad then to be certainly spied on by someone who has direct authority over you.

To answer your first question, the most popular use cases for VPN are:

1. Circumventing censorship

2. Circumventing regional content restrictions

3. Hiding your IP while torrenting (note that this is relevant only in the US)

4. Avoiding government surveillance (again, note that US is not the only country in the world, but likely the only one with any meaningful reach outside its borders)

5. Avoiding private surveillance (public wi-fi, etc.)

6. Hiding your IP while engaging in illegal online activities (#3 is a special case of this but it's a vastly larger group so I made it separate)

Note that "weird jurisdictions" can be a significant advantage for cases #3 and #6 (because they are harder to subpoena) as well as #3 (because they don't have retention laws).

I too like to come up with rationalizations of my NIH syndrome.

It's remarkable that you had to preface your argument with "Just playing the devil's advocate here". It appears that the fear of AI taking life and death decisions is so great that merely making an argument in favor of it is seen as immoral. Doubly fascinating is the fact that this attitude has taken roots on HN of all places.

Oh, come on, let's not pretend this is somehow different from the traditional money. I am not particularly ignorant nor reluctant to learn as far as an average person on the street goes and I have no friggin idea how the mechanisms that govern it really work and cannot appreciate the risks. (Nor really can the experts it seems.)

It's the basic reality of human existence that we have to get by without having pretty much any control of the complex world around us. Bitcoin may fail any time and as a casual user you cannot help it and cannot predict it. But you can go buy some drugs with it right now without having to roam shady streets and it's all that really matters.

> This means that there must be at least thousands of IQ alleles to account for the actual variation seen in the general population.

Or that IQ is only governed by genes to a very small extent in which case the rest of the argument goes out of the window.

It's not the memory that is the problem, but the collectivist mentality. I "remember" a lot of history but I know better than to associate myself with dead people of the past or to hold my contemporaries responsible for anything that happened before they were born. Sounds easy enough, right? Apparently not when you have pack animal genes and a bunch of politicians eager to exploit it to their benefit.

As someone who is fairly enthusiastic about Go and has implemented a few livelihood-providing production systems in it I am baffled by the number of people who keep trying to use it for application (and especially web application) development.

I mean it does feel like superpower when applied to tasks you'd previously have to use C for. But have you tried any of the modern web development stacks? They are like a zillion times more productive. Hint: PHP is not one of those.

I guess some people just can't get by without the iron hand of the compiler :)

> Just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's okay, from a values and ethics perspective.

Exactly. And taxation is a prime example of that. Just because a racket gang decides to spend some of their proceedings for the betterment of society (in their or your definition of it) doesn't make their activities morally justified and certainly doesn't make anyone (be it person or corporation) morally obliged to pay up.

The mere fact that the encryption ban is being discussed and bringing it up doesn't instantly end one's political career is frightening. Access to all individual's communications is a level of trust reserved for closest family members if that. And here government nonchalantly goes on to assume this level of trust from every citizen. Yet everyone except a handful of techies is completely oblivious to how monstrously perverted that is. The future looks really dark right now.

Is there anything I can read up on this? I hear the population of Baltics halved, sounds like a rather drastic effect.

Although I didn't imply immigration restrictions are the only problem either- indeed the language and other cultural barriers as well as our tendency to form bonds that are painful to break all work against mobility.

While that's true, holding everyone by force is the most primitive and inefficient (in terms of common good) solution I can think of. For example, the safety net is in fact an early stage investment so it would be logical if the government providing the safety net would take equity in exchange. In fact that's one of the reasons why safety nets aren't such a good idea. The government essentially becomes an angel fund that funds every single idea no matter how dumb. Can't imagine this bringing about an optimal outcome.

At some point other factors like ease of contract enforcement, infrastructure, etc. become more important than shaving off a few more percents from the taxes. So in the end it boils down to which government is able to provide better services for your buck which is how it should be.

If only physical persons could relocate to a better place with the same ease corporations do now the governments would suck so much less.

You are deciding whether to violently take away wealth from the rich. It might even be a good idea, but the real manipulation here is to pretend otherwise and get all offended when it's pointed out.

I don't mind being a pigeon. What I am objecting to is other pigeons making major life decisions for me.

No. Next question please.

Seriously if anyone is treating humans like pigeons here it's the author by posing this question.

That's something a censorship proponent would say. But if it was the case there would be no need for censorship.

You know where those evil profits ultimately come from? People paying to have their needs satisfied.

I make a decent living providing people with solutions to some of the problems described in this article (censorship and fragmentation) and I'm not ashamed to say I am driven purely by profit.

Good article. However I don't understand why so many smart people fear decision-making machines. In my experience the decision makers in bureaucracies, government and private alike, never ever show the "humanity" ascribed to them in arguments about this issue. Instead they follow their instruction (which is actually a program written in human language) to the letter and are usually so obtuse and unempathetic it seems even the present day primitive AI would be much smarter and more flexible. The reason of course is not that people are dumb or mean, but that they are driven by incentives and incentives in these positions are never right. Machines on the other hand are not afraid to lose their job and are (potentially) capable of much deeper and broader analysis of any situation than humans while simultaneously being less prone to error.