StuntPope

If you run email at your own domain, and sync it offsite even if you use hosted IMAP, you can always switch your MX and be back in control of your email.

Added an update to post to acknowledge this.

I am told that the registry's logic around the exorbitant cost to pull a domain out of redemption is to teach the registrant to be more mindful of expiries ...and not to be predatory because they have you over a barrel.

I can't speak to whether the registrar sent you renewals or not. I did mention in another comment below that for some unfathomable reason my company (easyDNS) is the only one I know of that offers the functionality to setup an iCal feed with your domain expires.

Not sure why nobody else does this, but with easyDNS you can setup an iCal feed with your domain expirations.

It should be pointed out and understood that when a domain enters Redemption period, in every TLD, the inflated cost to redeem it is imposed by the registry itself, not the registrar.

So the point where the normal cost is $6.95 but it cost over $100 or $200 is not because the registrar is gouging you, but because the registry is charging the registrar minimum $100 or so, and then the registrar would also apply their own markup, which is pretty standard.

Also - all registrars are contractually obligated to send out multiple notifications to the admin contact email, and even though this wouldn't necessarily apply to .DE (because it's overseen by DENIC, not ICANN) - most registrars use the same notifcation workflow across all TLDs. Usually something like 90, 60, 30, 10 days and -5 days.

I will say that the rule in .DE that you can't renew past T-5 is pretty weird though.

Yes, sorry I meant interest rates. Maybe a poor choice of words. I wrote another article years ago positing that once you hit zero on interest rates, it's looking like you may never be able to normalize again (see Japan).

We're at 2.4% (In the US) but that's still too low and the Fed is trapped. They can't go higher, they've paused and depending on what happens over the next while, they may very well have to cut.

So I use the phrase trapped at the zero bound because once you actually touch that bound I think you get stuck there.

That old post was: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-14/trapped-inside-zer...

Make no mistake, the bailouts were a catastrophe and NOT fine. The author says as much:

"Compared to what I see as the inevitable “dual death spirals of MMT”, letting all those banksters fry in 2008 looks a lot more palatable in retrospect. David Stockman’s Great Deformation shows how the economy would have fully recovered by 2010 or 2011 instead of being where we are now: trapped at the Zero bound and headed toward democratic socialism and MMT."

It's called "kicking the can" and the only reason it looks like a sustainable system is because we haven't hit the end of the runway yet. But now that we're trapped at the zero bound and cannot normalize, the next few years should see the beginning the end of the debt supercycle and the USD as world reserve currency.

The author has written on that extensively, spanning years. See the GC blog and my old one at rebootingcapitalism.com

Deplatforming fuels polarization, so one thing I would look at the PEW research study that shows how the center has collapsed, making it impossible for moderates to win elections: http://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/

What material new information is that?

No, flagging is not like "downvoting", this isn't reddit.

As somebody else here already pointed out:

> From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

This isn't spam and given the interest it's garnered it's obviously not off-topic.

So if you're flagging it you're basically throwing your opinion over it and preventing others from seeing it and from upvoting it. That's imposing your opinion over everybody else's.

If you don't like the post, then don't upvote it or better still, post an erudite missive on why the author is a brain-dead moron, but don't mis-label it as spam or off-topic.

So what's your point?

Article flagged. Nice. Love the tolerance and receptiveness to discussion here.

Jeftovic here.

I actually wasn't aware of many things you cite above, having cursorily examined, then abandoned Gab I never followed their twitter feed, etc.

Without having seen any of that myself, I wrote the article extending a certain benefit of the doubt, trying to look at it from a neutral (ostensibly) vendor vantagepoint.

You could probably create your own smart contract (not under the .ETH registrar) that had absolutely zero censorship, but it would probably end up being overrun by scumbags and unusable across the wider network as everybody else builds filters around them...

I've just been reminded that the takeaway at the conference was that the second level filtering was intended as a voluntary layer implemented via filtering. I had my doubts around that, but there you go.

Parenthetically... I notice that the comments on this thread which provided the address the dailystormer domain in a ccTLD and the .onion address, have been completely removed. Not downvoted, but they look totally gone to me.

This is an excellent point, it is something I worry about and something we've blogged about in our two previous posts about this topic.

It's one of the reasons I'm so wary when flashmobs try to force other businesses to dump specific clients.

It's one thing if your views or actions or so repugnant that all suppliers voluntarily refrain from doing business with you. Maybe one would reconsider their actions faced with that prospect?

But the phenomenon today, where flashmobs form and demand vendors sever their clients because the mob is demanding it and for the reason that the target is politically or ideologically at odds with the mob, that can play out exactly as you fear. Where does that stop?

This is one of those cases where there wasn't an easy answer, unfortunately. Dreamhost unknowingly wound up with a Dailystormer domain on their system last week and they got DDoS-ed into a crater. Also not good.

> That is an odd position for a man in a mixed-race marriage with a mixed-race child to take, because not too long ago it would have meant his child might not be served or seated.

That's not an odd position at all. Would I want to force some white supremacist line cook and their inbred waiter to serve my wife and child in their restaurant? No thanks. I'll go somewhere else.

lol. Exactly.

Bummer. We (easyDNS) were pursuing the idea of acquiring Zerigo, I guess that isn't going to happen now....

https://www.easydns.com/blog/2017/03/14/our-efforts-to-acqui...

flagged again

The one on easyDNS keeps getting flagged. Both here and on /. it's that super-tolerance for free speech and dialog at work.

There was a public outcry to have him ejected from the FB Board because of his political beliefs. That is no different than wanting to get somebody fired from their job for theirs. The attempt failed, "the Zuch" was criticized for defending Thiel's right to having his own opinion.

That would actually make me feel better if you're right.

That said in my mind it's on-topic for HN since YC themselves have been on the receiving end of what the article talks about (it does mention the outcry to remove Thiel from the FB board, but not that YC also faced pressure to cut ties to Thiel)

The point is: Thiel is completely within his rights to endorse Trump. It's not like he forfeited his humanity by doing so.

This post has been repeatedly [flagged] ... which is exactly what the ENTIRE ARTICLE IS ABOUT.

I think munnin_ has it right. We once killed a sizeable deal here (at easyDNS) because it included providing DNS for the Westboro church domains. We just didn't want any part of it.

Again - our decision, no coercion.

Westboro has a right to speak (although not to disrupt the activities of others). But nobody has to agree to give them a platform.

The big distinction is: are you acting under your own volition or under coercion.

But what do you mean by "online signing" ?

What do you mean?