Hacker News Reader

Comment by deadbabe | Hacker News Reader

It's not accelerating, it's over. We lost.

We didn't quite yet. We're still here, pretty anonymous, I'm sure your real name is not deadbabe :) IRC still exists where you can just pick a nickname from thin air. And most of these things will stay, underground. It's the commercial mainstream that will bow to this, sadly.

Unfortunately, the expert in debugging Arduino electrical errors, or in numpy, or in evaluating what the burn pattern on your spark plugs means, or in identifying that strange object in your telescope, won't be on IRC. He'll be on Reddit, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate. Or on Facebook, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate. Or on whatever large, popular platform replaces them, where you'll need a government-provided ID _and sanctioned device_ to participate.

But rest assured, so long as you want to discuss privacy and nostalgia of the pre-invasionary internet, you'll find a knowledgeable expert on IRC.

There's lots of experts like that on Libera IRC. It's still a big hub for support of FOSS project.

So is Matrix which doesn't have the capability for this kind of checks (and is federated so you can add your own server without it).

Maybe there is an astronomy channel, maybe there isn't. The official page [1] requires longer to install the client to even know which channels exist. That's arguably worse than Reddit, which requires no software nor registration to know which communities exist.

[1] https://libera.chat/guides/findingchannels

What do you mean? The webchat client is linked right there in the second paragraph, doesn't require you to install anything and let's you connect and list channels as a guest without registering. It took me like 30 seconds to find out that there is indeed an astronomy channel.

It was not clear to me that was a web browser interface, because it listed system requirements - none of which were an actual web browser.

Uhh, I'm not seeing any system requirements, am I blind? It just warns against using the /list command if you have a very slow internet connection since it produces rather voluminous output. If you scroll down a bit further they also link to a third-party website that has a searchable index of all publicly visible channels.

There are more free alternatives. We need to move to these platforms. We need the network effect here for sure.

In Germany, before I can send an anonymous message on HN, I have to send a picture of my passport to some government agency and have a video call with them, so that my phone is allowed to attach to the internet.

Could you elaborate? I lived in Germany for a while and I never had to send a picture to a government agency and have a video call with them to access the internet. Phone, laptop, and desktop.

Never heard anything like that from many people I know in Germany.

I feel like there is a huge chunk of context missing here.

Sure. The difference is probably that you had a contract assigned to your home address, so they had your identity and your banking coordinates already, no need to ask.

I'm referring to sim cards bought in a supermarket. Prepaid, no contract. The activation process, regardless of the brand (I've tried many!) involves those video calls.

Oh that sucks deeply. In Spain they have something like that too. But in Holland you can still buy one in the supermarket without registering anything (though you'll have to top up by cash every single time if you really don't want to be traced).

I think Ireland still doesn't require registration either.

That’s insane! Dystopian!

No you don't. You can get a prepaid SIM card.

Amusingly, one of the prepaid sim card that i got in an airport required as a first step that i install an app on my phone (with my previous sim since internet was needed) just so that the app could refuse to proceed because that sim was not German...

Most of the European countries require registering prepaid SIM cards for about 10 years now.

Can you in Germany? In Italy you can't.

I’ve literally never used IRC, wouldn’t know where to begin.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com