kinsomo

> So to summarize you: rights are not inalienable but dependent on if people get annoyed.

You're not being reasonable, but rather reading your own straw men into what I wrote.

Based on your misunderstandings, I can pretty confidently say that "rights" are a lot more complicated and multifaceted than you seem to comprehend. There are more kinds of rights relevant here than just property ownership rights and those created through contracts.

To put it another way: these Japanese regulations can be thought of as an articulation of preexisting rights that hadn't previously been codified.

I'm just going to ignore all the ridiculous hyperbole in the rest of your comment, because it's not worth a response. You seem enchanted by an over-simple toy mental model of society (with an admittedly seductive simplicity), and angry that it's not normative in a world that's too complex for it to fit.

> What does violence have to do with any of this, unless some of the noise-related altercations are getting out of hand?

I think this guy is one of those hyper-libertarians who equates government regulation with violence.

> Seeing as the proponents -- of regulations regarding who can trade what with whom -- first cited issue is "Affordability", categorically, yes, these regulations are about making things "cheaper".

> How successful has the US government been at balancing trillion dollar bailouts for the banking/political class and endless wars of murder? Building a system where the minutia of liberty can be taken away with a stroke of a pen unless millions of dollars are spent lobbying the political class is not what I'd call a "great place to balance competing interests".

It's not very promising to start a conversation by ignoring the actual circumstances under discussion, so you can get on your hobby-horse to rail against your favored straw men.

So, as a helpful reminder, we're talking about a specific set of Japanese regulations meant to help people who are annoyed because they never chose to live next to a hotel room. We're not talking about hotel costs and we're certainly not talking about US bank bailouts.

> “The government knows how to segregate us properly”

The government is great place to balance competing interests, especially if it's more democratic.

> And “Everything will be cheaper by limiting people the ability to trade”

That's missing the point. The goal with regulations like these isn't to make things "cheaper," but to control negative externalities. There's more to life than the price of goods.

Unfortunately, prices are easy to quantify and that fact irresistibly draws certain kinds of people blind themselves to all non-quantitative observations and engage in the McNamara fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

> alleviate whatever hypothetical issue the OP is referring to

That "hypothetical" the OP referred to is the VPN provider keeping logs (or more logs than they advertise) and providing them when asked to the authorities.

It's not really that hypothetical. There was a link here today about a "no log" VPN service that apparently did that.

> I understand that sentiment but a technological work around (that probably also has captured data points)

Tor is a technology that specifically answers the issue the OP brought up, which is over-trust in a single entity to preserve anonymity. Nothing's perfect, but Tor is better than both the "VPN provider" option the OP was warning people away from and from your snarky "what and use Comcast?" option.

> but a technological work around ... seems at best naive to this layman.

You'll have to elaborate why the use of better (if imperfect) technology is "at best naive."

> True. But Tor has pwned people too. Most recently, there was the bug that CMU researchers exploited, and then shared with the FBI. Also, many users of Tor browser have been pwned by phone-home malware, which leaked their ISP-assigned IP addresses. Hitting Tor through nested VPN chains would have protected them.

It's better, as in closer to trust-no-one, but of course it's not perfect. Especially when we're talking about endpoint security concerns.

> I want to say I take your point. I wouldn't use this in formal writing, but as far as I can tell this is an accepted western way to emphasise something.

No, it isn't. Using "them" in the way you did makes you sound like a hillbilly.

Just some advice: it's wise to avoid using any words or usage listed in the dictionary as "dialect" unless you're very familiar with the particular dialect it's from. Likewise, you should be very careful with "informal" terms unless you've actually been introduced to them informally by someone who knows how they're used. There's a lot of cultural context that needs to be mastered with those, and you won't learn that from a book, let alone a dictionary.

> So a better option would be to use your Comcast / AT&T / Verizon connection to leak data to the press?

A better option is to use technology that might be better able to provide some verifiable anonymity guarantees, like Tor.

> Those other countries have developing economies and populations. It won't be long before the other large countries stop seeing the US as significant -- they'll be trading with each other where appropriate.

Which is why the US needs to redevelop its economy to be able to produce more things that those countries might actually want to buy besides agricultural products. The IOU-based trade-deficit policy isn't going to cut it long term.

> It will never happen. There will always be some lower labor cost region where manufacturing jobs can be sent, and there will always be some loophole which corporations can use to get around restrictions.

It will have to happen. IIRC, the US has trade deficits with pretty much every country it trades with. At some point, those places are going to get tired of trading real goods for IOUs and IP, especially once there are competing providers of IOUs and IP.

> Its interesting that the USA is strategically trying to go back to being the manufacturing country and China is strategically trying to become the innovation country. Its like China and the USA want to swap places.

Or the US is trying to reduce its dependence on China just like China is trying to reduce its dependence on the US.

IMHO, it's not good for a country to be all manufacturing or all "innovation" and "services." It was a mistake for the US to let its manufacturing sector wither to the degree it did. It's better to strike a balance, especially when your trading partners have drastic political and ideological differences and thus cannot be considered reliable.

> We're not ready to name names at this point, but you're actually correct.

Where do you plan to announce when you're ready to name names? I may have some need in the future to use a VPN in China and would like to be aware.

Also props on your mail service, it's very impressive. If it had been released a bit earlier, I think I'd have been a customer.

> So how do you refer to cryptography? Just fully spell out "cryptography"? This is aggravating to me as well.

Considering cryptography is a far more useful and pervasive technology, I feel it should have dibs on the shorter "crypto" slang.

> Honest question: Is there any reason to believe that PIA is a US intel operation vs, say a Russian one?

I would also like to know the motivation for a US intel agency to want to run a VPN. It seems to me like it wouldn't be worth the bother: VPNs aren't illegal in the US, so it would be too hard to convince everyone to use theirs. Spies, etc. could just use private ones they control. They'd just see a bunch of crap from unsophisticated people.

Seems to me like it would be more likely for US law enforcement to want to do something like that, but I'm skeptical they have the resources.

> ProtonVPN (operated from Switzerland) claims[1]: "Our security team has also identified at least one VPN service which is working on behalf of a state surveillance agency."

> If I had to guess, it would be PIA: the most popular, the most accessible, and the most affordable US-based VPN.

If I had to guess, the state surveillance agency-run VPN would be one that's still accessible from China. I understand (but I could be wrong) there are still a few that manage to evade the blocks and provide good service despite all the crackdowns. Chinese state security has many more reasons to want to watch domestic VPN traffic than the US does. Their motivation is proven by the fact that they've spent the effort to build and maintain the "Great Firewall," and crack down on VPNs that bypass it.

It would be reasonably clever for the Chinese to crack down on all the VPNs that they don't control, funneling all the "illicit" traffic to the few VPNs they do control. It would make spying, monitoring dissidents, etc. much easier for them.

The NSA and other US intelligence agencies probably don't care very much about anyone that's dumb enough to need to use public VPN. Seems like the only people who would care in the US are domestic law enforcement, like the FBI.

> This hesitation demonstrates the often tense relationship between game preservationists and private collectors. According to a screenshot uploaded by Saint, the private collector threatened to pull the entire folder of content from the directory and stop uploading games altogether if anyone leaked Labyrinthe.

I really can't empathize with the attitude of the private collectors. It's extremely selfish to want to keep a work "lost" so that your copy is more valuable and special. This attitude also greatly increases the chance the work will become truly lost, since you'll die eventually and your heirs may not realize its significance. Why not just take credit for finding and releasing it to the world?

>> [...] and you have complete control over who sees it and [...]

> If you have complete control over who sees it, that should mean that no one else has any control over it...

Actually that quote is false: the Facebook algorithm has almost complete control over who actually sees your content.

> It's downvoted because the users of hackernews have an irrational hatred for unions, so anything that justifies having/forming a union is downvoted

Of course, unions are a barrier to "disruption" and there's a lot of anti-union propaganda floating around, a lot based on selective examples of unions' worst behavior.

Personally, I think unions should be stronger, but maybe we need to experiment different models for unionization and employee organization.

> It took over a year to finally hear it from other colleagues that they don't see some posts, which I started telling from the very first day.

I wonder if you have to pay FB to promote them? /s

> The most frustrating change for me was FB (or Messenger later) used to send me an email when I received a message, with the message content inside the email. A few years ago they removed the content from the email and forced me to log into FB or Messenger to see the message. It's extremely user hostile.

You also used to be able to reply to the message by replying to the notification email, so you could be a full conversation participant solely through email without ever opening the app.

> It will be inaccessible until it becomes public domain, but the copy that you download from archive.org will be copyright archive.org. You can get the music from somewhere else, if you can, you most likely won’t be able to.

No.

> For example, if a book published in 1995 is a reprint of a book published in 1900, then it is eligible. However, the onus is on us to prove that it is a reprint, and if it doesn't say on the TP&V that it is a reprint, confirming its eligibility may be impractical.

https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_FAQ#V...

> Yeah, spot on. Governance and durability through org structure is a thing.

> The way to solve this is to provide the Internet Archive with enough resources to build out a globally distributed storage system.

Yeah, I agree. I do see a space for other appropriate institutions (such as the Library of Congress, British Library, etc.) to pool resources and facilities with the Internet Archive to achieve that goal.

Ultimately, it'd be awesome to see each national library run a semi-autonomous IA copy that synchronizes with all the others, but can continue to operate independently (scrapers and all), if need be.

> I don't work for them but I think the move towards decentralization is the best way to address those concerns.

How feasible would a reliable, distributed archive be; given how massive amount of data Archive.org has? After all, it was created precisely because the already-decentralized web was too ephemeral and unstable. I don't think decentralization is a panacea in this case.

Some problems are best solved by institutions.

> Google article title.

Oddly, I've had better results doing that with DuckDuckGo than Google.

> There's no real justification for anyone having that right. The device manufacturer/website owner/etc does the work of creating the data, yet you think it's yours?

That's BS. The real justification for anyone having that right is that 1) the data is about them and 2) they own the machine that collected/created the data.

> The device manufacturer/website owner/etc does the work of creating the data, yet you think it's yours?

They did the work of creating a device for sale. After the sale, their rights to the device end and the data should be owned by the new owner.

> Tesla's a new company, either they're holding themselves to a higher standard than the establishment or they aren't. If they're not then I'm going with the establishment. I can overlook a great great great many things in service of the cause of disrupting the auto industry.

They're not. They restrict access to the service manuals behind a ridiculously expensive subscription that's only provided in states where it's legally required. It costs $30 a day or $3000 a year.

Service manuals for other cars cost ~$50 for a hardcopy.

https://electrek.co/2017/01/30/tesla-opening-up-service-repl...

Tesla's attitude is almost like you don't own your car, you're just leasing it in perpetuity from Tesla for a one-time fee.

Common Lisp, I think...

> Or when Blackwater, a private military company, rebranded to "Xe Services" after murdering a dozen-plus Iraqi [civilians].

They've rebranded twice more since then. They were "Academi" and now they're apparently "Constellis Holdings."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

> Successful insurgencies these days are supplied with heavy weapons and training by outside powers. You’re not going to do anything against armour and air power with small arms.

An insurgency has a lot of freedom in choosing its targets. If they don't have the weapons to directly attack armor or air power, they can avoid them. And with armor, there are other options, such as IEDs.

Also, I'd bet that an American insurgency against a totalitarian American government would get outside arms and support, as well as sympathy, support, and defections from actual US Army units. I don't think the US military would be able to maintain the same level of cohesion it has during foreign wars in a civil war.

A totalitarian regime would probably repeal the 2nd amendment as one of it's first acts, the the existing stock of small arms and ammunition would be enough for an insurgency or rebellion to start. I'd be much harder for a disarmed population to begin resistance.

>> The precise cause of the civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime

> https://www.sott.net/article/377588-Syrian-War-for-Dummies-T....

Sott.net doesn't seem like a very reliable source. This appears to be a friendly description of it in a related wiki (https://thecasswiki.net/index.php?title=Signs_of_the_Times):

> SOTT is a research project of the non-profit Quantum Future Group (QFG) and is run by volunteers. The project includes collecting, arranging, and analyzing news items that seem to best reflect the movement of macrocosmic quantum energies on the planet. This research further includes noting whether or not human beings, individually and/or collectively, can actually remember from one day to the next the state of the planet, and whether they are able to accurately read that information and make intelligent decisions about their future based on that knowledge. In short, SOTT is an experiment.

> While the site began as a one-woman operation, this work quickly attracted some truly fine, open minds – people interested in truth, many of whom are scientific professionals and whose work on SOTT is anonymous for their own protection. SOTT and QFG has been attacked, suppressed, and marginalized by the Powers That Be in ways that no other work has been, leaving editors and researchers with the distinct impression that they must be on the right track.

"the Powers That Be" links a page about the "Matrix Control System."

This is a much less friendly description of the person who founded sott.net: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Laura_Knight_Jadczyk.

> and note the nice sidebar on the right "Covert United States involvement in regime change", it's not there by accident.

1) That lists the Syrian civil war. 2) It doesn't contradict anything that I said.

The precise cause of the present Syrian civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime. No one pretends that the US was friendly or neutral towards that regime prior to the war. I would not surprise me if the US took some action against it prior to that, but those actions were unsuccessful and not causally linked to the civil war (beyond butterfly-effect level stuff).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore:

> "Launched in 2012 or 2013"

That post-dates the beginning of the Syrian civil war.