LV-426

> foreign companies

Companies that operate in the UK and make vast amounts of money from operating in the UK.

> I still heed the advice of the 90's: NEVER use your real name.

Where was this advice given? In my experience, people online in the 1990s routinely used their real names, and emails (in the late 90s obfuscated or removed due to spam), on the primary social-network at that time (Usenet), and people still do to this day.

As someone with a generally cynical/pessimistic outlook I too, like blunte, want to see something positive in this.

Hopefully, since it can't be stopped, it becomes so routinely used against so many people that everyone stops caring any more if it's real or fake.

It's sad that our attitudes (if not behaviour) towards sex are still so fucked up and judgemental thanks to thousands of years of religious/Victorian/puritanical brainwashing and guilt-tripping.

Possibly, yeah. I was also under the misapprehension the re-analyse button came up (randomly) immediately after a review, but it seems it appears on old stored reviews.

Anyone who uses this site really needs to do a re-analysis, because on the products I just tested I'd rate its prior ability to detect fakes (reviews and reviewers) at F.

After re-analysis I'll upgrade its ability to C.

TBH, I don't understand the point. I trust my own ability to evaluate reviews more than the unknown logic of a third party website, which may have its own interests/motives influencing its reviews of reviews.

> But after running the analysis on the page again, it changed its mind about that review and decided it was now legitimate.

This doesn't sound very reliable. If nothing had changed on the review, what's the basis for it changing its mind?

> "dictatorship of proletariat" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...) You'll probably argue that this kind of dictatorship isn't to be understood in the common sense

I don't have to. Your own link says so in just the second paragraph:

    Dictatorship of the proletariat is different from the
    popular notion of 'dictatorship'

Lenny being 'just' a bunch of unchanging messages in unchanging order made it all the funnier and more amazing to me (and it was completely brilliant before I realised).

I remember first seeing it a while ago, posted here, ironically (or perhaps naturally) in a thread about Spamnasty (also excellent).

> Well, no you can’t make that equivalent reasoning

And yet I seem to have done it.

> People blaming communism makes a lot more sense

You're entitled to your opinion.

> because it does deal with what the political regime should be (once again, a dictatorship).

Since you persist in arguing about "dictatorship" instead of communism, I don't see any point in continuing this.

Edit: instant downvoter I think you missed one of my posts; here's a link to make it easier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034997

Feel free to check out my comments page and obsessively downvote others you may have missed, if any.

And mass murder had a long history before communism.

Are you even disagreeing with me?

> Capitalism [...] doesn’t aim at making the world a just or better place

I didn't say it did. I pointed out that if you're going to insist that mass murder under a few decades of communist regimes = real communism, then mass murder (and genocide and slavery) under centuries of capitalist regimes = real capitalism.

> Communism [...] invents all kinds of counter measure ( one of them being the revolution, and « temporary » dictactorship).

Communism did not invent revolution or dictatorship.

Millions fewer than died under centuries of global slavery and imperialism, which I'm sure you're not going to now claim is "not real capitalism".

You're probably right; I've read of people's Google ranking being trashed by rivals using spamming tools, so maybe my world view is too dark. OTOH, I seem to be naive about how credit card scamming works.

Ah, okay, makes sense (in an evil way).

It just sounded like it was a sudden wave after the site had become more popular, but it maybe just appeared on the radar of scammers as well as the competition.

Interesting article, and good to know you're still operating despite the problems.

> All those new subscribers beyond the first 800 were actually fakes who had subscribed with stolen credit card numbers [...] a lot of shipping addresses turned out to be fake as well

I don't know if this was already discussed in previous years, but this sounds like a rival (either established or wanting to copy your model).

Edit: https

Yes, it's sad that while so much is discouraged here, far-right/racist comments or voting by certain users is tolerated.

Seems like I have at least one such user following me around now, downvoting my comments (my anti-racist comments anyway) in different threads.

We'll see if they anonymously announce themselves with this post too.

Edit: And right on cue, the test produces a result: mere minutes after making this post - two more downvotes, including a post already downvoted.

So either someone is keeping themselves awake 24/7 to religiously reload a dead thread, or my comments page, using multiple accounts to downvote (which while completely insane is still flattering), or it's a bot with no limit (for reasons that can only be guessed at) that checks for new posts and downvotes automatically.

(Perhaps more tests are needed, I can then write a Medium and submit the results here.)

Either way it's an interestingly hostile response to someone commenting about far-right/racist users at Hackernews.

Hah. The pro hate-speech brigade are trying to bury my free-speech now, but still too spineless and (quite rightly) ashamed to put their names to it.

The definition of "free country" is not zero passport controls on exit, and:

    Robeson declared that it was “rather absurd” that he was
    not “allowed to travel because of my friendship - open,
    spoken friendship - for the Soviet people and the
    peoples of all the world.”

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/paul-robeson-lose...

I've seen some strange downvoting here, but what's this about?

They simply argue that hate speakers should not be given as much time as their targets/potential victims/people not advocating hate, and their post is virtually white.

And none of the people who downvoted put their name to it by making an argument/reply/rebuttal.

> The few reports of a football match between forces have endured for a century, but what has contributed to the focus on this part of the story?

Because it's passed down through generations, told in schools, appeared in the video for Paul McCartney's hit song Pipes of Peace and is a remarkable example of humanity and unlikely camaraderie in an otherwise monstrous 4-year slaughter.

Very modest of the BBC to suggest it's because of a BBC comedy series from 1989, though, which I don't remember even depicting a football game.

Doesn't anyone know how to use the three seashells?

(Somewhat disappointingly) there is now an explanation for this:

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6688/how-did-the-t...

> This article reminds me of Clifford Stolls 1995 article

You should remember this then, from 1994:

"It's not only going to revolutionize the Net, it will change the global economy."

https://www.wired.com/1994/12/emoney/

And this, from 1999:

"The next internet revolution will put central bankers out of business."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/1999/nov/04/onlinesup...

Leaving Tiananmen Square aside - since nobody can disagree it was a terrible, indefensible crime - can you explain further how you think China is threatening democracy and freedom "worldwide"?

They're certainly a threat in Hong Kong, where they have a degree of control and influence, but how and where else?

While they lay claim to Taiwan, what harm do you think they are going to cause to South Korea and why would they even think of something as insane as enabling North Korea to strike Tokyo or Los Angeles (or anywhere else) with nuclear weapons?

Ugh. You know, I don't expect the Motherfucking Website framework, but here are some of the external domains (excluding numerous subdomains) accessed when viewing this text article with a few images:

    cloudfront.net
    stripe.com
    googleadservices.com
    optimizely.com
    webtype.com
    bootstrapcdn.com
    ads-twitter.com
    disqus.com
    facebook.net
    optinmonster.com
    google-analytics.com
    twimg.com
    optnmstr.com
    mstrlytcs.com
    facebook.com
    newrelic.com
    disquscdn.com
    stripe.network
    fastly.net

I've heard that some forums which are dedicated to linking to copyright violations are owned by the file hosting site they use for the files.

If they're running sites receiving 20+ million hits a day (how do you know this, btw?) there's no way that the movie studios, or the people they hire to deal with piracy, aren't aware of it, if not the FBI.

If your real issue is about drugs in your neighbourhood, you should be focusing or asking for help on how to deal with that problem, not online piracy.

Given the state of the front page/s of HN now, and lately, I expected the answer to be coin-hive or some other crypto-currency related thing.

Instead the answer is simply the rather more mundane "advertising".

To be fair, it probably will be pumped to $50k some time in the future (before crashing again). It's what Bitcoin does. After ten years, it's all it does.

In 2011 (or something, I'm going by memory) it rose to $30 before crashing back to about $5. In 2013 (still the days when all people had to do was spam a few forums) it reached $10, $100, $200 before stagnating until MtGox and Willybot pumped it up to $1k.

ISTR some people back then were predicting $10k BTC by the end of the next year (end of 2014). Instead it was about $500 or something, and BTC didn't reach $1k again for about three years (the start of this year or end of last year).

> When it comes to Bitcoin, I think of Linux as an analogy.

I've read Bitcoin is like email, Bitcoin is like TCP/IP, Bitcoin is like the entire Internet. Now I've read Bitcoin is like Linux.

At one time few people had heard of (random thing from thin air) New Kids On The Block.

Some didn't understand the new fangled (boy band) concept, some thought existing bands/music were good enough, some thought they'll take over the world, and some just thought they could get rich off it all before it collapsed.

Bitcoin is something that happened to catch on (entirely, by design, due to profit motive), which is why it's superficially similar to other things that happened to catch on. (Even things that catch on because they're actually useful, and not just a potential route to get rich quick without any effort.)

Once upon a time Denmark, like Bitcoin, didn't exist.

Danes (like Bitcoiners) were a strange bunch, famed and feared for their involvement in crime to make money. Slowly their influence started to spread, however, despite - but in some ways because of - their criminal behaviour.

Many legends were created... Ragnar Lothbrok, Ivar the Boneless, Magical Tux and Free Ross.

Then along came Christianity[1] (Coinbase/Winklevii) which provided more legitimacy with other, less beardy, groups. The true believers didn't like this, of course, but most people recognised the social and economic benefits of selling out everything they were supposedly all about.

The similarities end there, sadly, because today Bitcoin consumes even more power than Denmark. A fact which is completely batshit insane, but since Bitcoin hype and hysteria is even more insane, and increasing with every $1000 price pump, nobody cares.

Serious question (which will go largely unanswered in favour of turning this text white) for people who seriously think Bitcoin ranks in importance/significance with email/Internet/Linux/Denmark:

Now in its tenth year[2], what has Bitcoin actually achieved, other than a sickening energy waste and crazy price fluctuations and speculation?

[1] Which is also Bitcoin: https://twitter.com/larslfe/status/909192006362005506

[2] See creation dates for bitcoin.com/net/org.

Even in the 90s there was (for Windows) a basic, simple to use news proxy called Nfilter. I can't remember if it took multiple feeds or just one, but it allowed filtering on more headers than a Usenet client.

Most Usenet clients would filter on the overview headers, which has the advantage that the messages did not have to be downloaded first, so it's much faster (these days that might not be such a issue), but the disadvantage that all a spammer/troll has to do (and did do) was change the From address to bypass the filter.

With Nfilter it was possible to filter on anything, for example crossposts (commonplace with trolls and spammers), NNTP-Posting-Host or even the Path, so a bad Usenet site with nothing but spam or trolls could be completely filtered out or flagged as junk.

The problem is nobody wanted to make even the small effort of running Nfilter (I tried repeatedly to get people to use Nfilter when groups were invaded by trolls but they preferred to just mindlessly continue complaining about it instead).

The author of Nfilter gave up development in the early 2000s, but its site is on Wayback Machine, from where it can be downloaded from its archived page (whether it works on anything later than Windows 95/NT I don't know), along with its source code:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030206100941/http://www.nfilte...

So even without individual users running INN (which seems a bit like overkill to me), users can and always could filter out every type of abusive garbage very easily. They just have to want to do it.

The Easy Way to Set Up a Local News Server (1996)

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue09/newsserver.html