waterhouse23
Clearly you can explicitly suppress certain political views. But I think there's probably a lot more you could do. For example, down rank content that while not banned, is seen as undesirable.
Beyond that, I'm sure there are many other forms of social manipulation which a state which wishes to control their population could apply.
The way North Korea uses watermarking to track the progress of file distribution is kind of interesting. But nothing compared to the psychological manipulation you could do with a social network.
Actually kind of interesting to imagine what a state could do if they owned twitter or a similarly large social network.
A surprising number of people are still on low bandwidth connections, while it's probably not reasonable to optimize for them, it's at least worth considering that market occasionally.
There are various (obvious) issues with it being remote and working with strangers. But sounds like a great way to meet and work with new people.
So, basically it was a political choice to use this part. I think it also helped Broadcom sell a part which wasn't hugely popular.
Generally there are issues getting the GPU working well without firmware blobs but other aspects work fine.
Check out the Freescale part used in Bunnie's Novena laptop for example.
This is also the case for TI parts and the other manufacturers you list. Broadcom is somewhat unique in requiring a blob to even boot the system.
What I would say, is go with a provider who accepts bitcoin and doesn't require an email address. Even if you end up paying my card/PayPal, at least you know they have a route to a more anonymous/private service.
I assume at the point Tor's popularity will surge.
I'm quite surprised that they've gone down the DNS based filtering route. I'd expect that to change in a few years time.
I recommend investing in a VPN service. They're relatively cheap. And if you pick the right one, the bandwidth is generally pretty good.