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narrowrail

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If you think you are safer from the NSA because a server is located outside the US, I've got some bad news for you: outside of the US, the NSA can do whatever they want as the US Constitution has no jurisdiction. Whether or not they are abusing the law within the US is up for debate, but outside the US there is nothing to stop them except technology.

Owning the domain makes for great email address portability. If I hadn't read so many of your comments here over the years, I probably wouldn't suggest this, but I think a good strategy is to buy 2 domains, one for trusted entities (i.e.people you know or your bank/ credit union) and one for non-trusted entities (i.e. Amazon or commercial entities in general). Use your domain registrar's email hosting for trusted entities (add PGP for extra goodness), and use a commercial provider (e.g Google, Fastmail,etc.) for the non-trusted entities domain.

If most people you email with use Gmail, what's the point of an "encrypted email" provider? Why not just use PGP and stay with your current provider? Thunderbird+enigmail is the way to do meaningful encryption and it is provider agnostic.

Well, given the question asked, we need to be clear that the legality of downloading copyrighted content varies by country. Also, the DMCA[0] has been around for 21 years, so it's not exactly a recent change. The last time the industry went after a torrenter, it was Hunger Games (2010), IIRC; I always attributed to the Streisand affect[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Amazon beating Walmart

Let's not get carried away here. In the most recent quarter, Walmart had revenues of $123B vs Amazon's $38B. Walmart still has time to figure out the ecommerce game.

The idea, I believe, is building camaraderie among your users as they teach each other how to use it.

IMO, Snapchat should be the easiest to decentralize and federate b/c the ephemeral nature allows expectations to be set for simple hosting like Digital Ocean. Who cares if data gets deleted?

Many prominent and respected HNers have laid out the case for why Telegram has security issues. If you use the search function at the bottom, you will easily find these issues raised. I don't personally possess the knowledge to determine the soundness of Telegram's crypto, but there have been enough red flags raised on HN over the years to merit skepticism.

Pistol sights 9 years ago

HN is a news aggregator. A blog is short for web-log:

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

These words have meaning, and your idea of a 'blog' is even worse than those people that don't know the difference between a blog post and a blog (a collection of posts).

In theory MusicBrainz already has metrics

What does "in theory" mean here? Do those tables exist in whole or some part? Is this a matter of indexing an existing data set or hoping some data was acquired by accidental consequence?

Couching the discussion as a la carte channels instead of a la carte shows is some kind of jedi mind trick by studio execs.

Apple Season Pass should be like $3/season, not $5/episode.

Edit: Netflix didn't negotiate certain seasons or episodes of Breaking Bad, nor did it negotiate all of AMC's content. Netflix negotiated rights to specific shows.

nothing about modern society involve choices that only affect the people right around you

This is covered by tort law. If you can prove damages, you can have your grievances addressed.

If we adopt nationalized health care, your argument is that you should be able to dictate my dietary choices? Even if my goal is to do it like my grandfather that never once visited a doctor (died at 68, which is plenty for me)?

Edit: To be clear, the basic premise of yours that I quoted could be used to justify just about anything. That is a power I refuse to grant to any entity, no matter how good their intentions.

When your communities...are full of "entrenched" families/clans—groups of people who, for reasons of proximity or tradition, just won't move no matter how bad things get

This is a really great point, and I am admittedly biased as someone that grew up moving 4 times across state lines. Meeting new people and figuring out the local 'vibe' was part of my upbringing.

Moving is hard, but it's doable. I write this as a much less ambitious person than most seem on HN (and older).

Madison discusses factionalism in Federalist No. 10, and as I read it, basically concludes that all these competing desires/interests and/or beliefs would be best served by a federal republic where locals would be able to solve their problems in the appropriate way for their constituents. So, decentralizing power away from Washington D.C. and putting it in the hands people more directly. Some people cannot accept this and would like to exert control over people living +1000 miles away. There is just too much diversity to manage 300M people from a central authority without sacrificing liberty. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and authoritarian ideas of governance must be vigilantly opposed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10#Madison.27s_...