How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#341

Post by NetStrikeForce » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:33 AM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #332

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recursion ends where people wants it to end. Can your neighborhood struck trade deals with India? Then maybe your neighborhood wants to team up with others around to do that... See where I'm going?

Could Catalunya strike trade deals with the EU even?

Sure it can.

It already meets all the requirements to be a member, EU law is ingrained in Catalan law, it has the ability to negotiate and state structures. It just needs to be an independent country.

It would be better to be in the EU, but meanwhile that happens some bilateral trade deals with the EU should be relatively easy to accomplish.

If you're referring to recognition as a country, that's a separate and huge discussion. If Catalonia is not recognised it can't take its part of Spanish debt with it (might be up to 20% of the total) while being a rebel region not paying taxes and maybe under military occupation. How is Spain, which is still in critical condition with a debt of the size of its GDP, going to fare? This month Spain had to get a loan to pay pensions. This month!

So if Spain loses 20% of its GDP while keeping all the debt, how is it going to survive? And if Spain can't pay and falls, what's going to happen to the EU? You thought Brexit was bad? This is much worse!

A situation were the outcome of a YES vote is negotiated and Catalonia pays his dues is a win-win for every stakeholder: Catalans, Catalonia, Spaniards, Spain and the EU. Striking trade deals after that is pure pragmatism.

Just go through old papers about Slovenia or even the Baltics. It's all about realpolitik at the end and Catalonia has to be able to show its value to the world.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#342

Post by farresito » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:34 AM UTC

pipio21 wrote: post #99

mabbo wrote: post #61

I just left Barcelona a couple hours ago, the capital of Catalonia. Everywhere you look, Catalan flags, signs demanding 'democracia', demanding freedom. I'm told this is just normal for the region, but if this is normal then independence is eventual.

Well, it is normal since independentists have controlled Catalunya since 40 years ago. It used to be that 20% of the population was independentist through, now is over 50%. For example, they choosed school principals among independentist so now over 85% of them are Catalan language teachers that tend to be independentist. This way kids could be directed to be independentist too. The same happened with the local media…

You have never lived in Catalonia, have you? Sad to read things like that. Sounds like the speech that the Spanish government gives every other week. Deplorable comment.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#343

Post by NetStrikeForce » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:34 AM UTC

TheLugal wrote: post #337

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind technically explaining a bit more about pinning, how it works and why would anyone do it?

You can't just look at data from the internet without touching it, you need to download it. The same holds true when reading data from the IPFS network. In the process, you make it available for anyone else who ask for it, but only for a limited time; until the Garbage Collector (GC) runs. If I remember correctly, the GC run once every hour or so, so you probably won't reshare the data for longer than that. You need…

That was very clear, thanks!

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#344

Post by oska » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:36 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #204

ukoki wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? If they want independence who are we to deny it? If your spouse wants a divorce, if your children wish to disown you — you can't deny them just because it's an inconvenience — it is their right.

This analogy is repeated again and again but is a bad example. A divorce is not "a right", is an agreement regulated by law between two previously married people to put a legal end to the relationship. The true fact is that I can't divorce from my wife without her permit and she could not divorce from me without me agreeing to sign the divorce papers. Does not match the case of one part splitting unilaterally. A bett…

Divorce is a right and it was a right that had to be fought for.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#345

Post by asdfgadsfgasfdg » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:39 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #326

zanny wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the US has precedent on banning speech that will "incite imminent lawless action". And compared to countries like the UK or Germany they are a bastion of free speech. I agree free speech laws in pretty much every country are unethical because they are arrayed in a way to ban speech that might risk the dissolution of the nation, but every single country has those laws because its governments trying to protect the…

"And compared to countries like the UK or Germany they are a bastion of free speech." Care to elucidate me on what basis that statement lies? I am a UKoGBnNI citizen who has also lived in DE for a few years in the West Germany part in the 70's and 80's and have friends who are native to DE. In the UK we have laws banning inflammatory speech of various types that are clearly categorised and so does Deutschland. Both c…

The UK's libel laws are rather regressive (although they improved a bit recently for the GB bit the NI bit of the UK still has the old laws). There are books and documentaries which are available everywhere except the UK for this reason.

On a government level the UK regularly imprisons people for facebook/twitter posts (that would be protected by US first amendment).

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#346

Post by TheLugal » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:40 AM UTC

reeffflio wrote: post #228

I'm genuinely curious which part ipfs solves here? Given that it's still accessed via browser/domain wouldn't they just block the dns or even ip? In which case this is no more resilient than say multiple domains and dns entries and proxying on from there to a central database (which could be run in a jurisdiction over which Spain has little control and which they would have to discover first anyways)

Data on IPFS is accessed over P2P, not over IP. ipfs.io is just running a gateway. Anyone could do that. In fact; if you were to run IPFS on your computer, you'd probably have your own gateway on your localhost.

Somebody would just make their own public gateway, and the government would need to block another domain. Of cource, running IPFS for yourself would take away any need to use a gateway.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#347

Post by azernik » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:41 AM UTC

gfiorav wrote: post #179

antaviana wrote: post #31

"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption." This is an Easter Egg. Barcelona fell on September 11, 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession and with that Catalonia's freedom as well. September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia. Also, at 17:14 of each and every game of FC Barcelona in Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona fans claim…

Wasn’t this the succession war between Habsburg and Borbon dynasties? I’ve seen some depictions in paintings [1] where you can see soldiers from the Habsburg (wearing the Catalan berretinas) porting a Spanish flag... I believe it was more a war for two different models for Spain, not for independence or anything like that. Sounds like revisionism to me. [1] http://www.msde.es/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2-Embarque-de-…

Generally, nationalist movements appropriate historical events (particularly wars), which were not at the time national in character, in order to create a historic narrative for their nationalism. See e.g. the place of Battle of the White Mountain (Thirty Years' War) in Czech nationalism, or the place of the Battle of al-Qadisiyya in Iraqi nationalism.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#348

Post by gras » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

rnhmjoj wrote: post #270

striking wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty hard to notice, haha.

Off topic: I don't know if it's Firefox, GTK or some other component at fault but all tooltips in the browser last for an unreasonably short amount of time and it's really hard to read something more than a couple of words. I have to either view the page source or freeze the process. I wonder why a tooltip is supposed to disappear in the first place.

My guess would be GTK, I'm on Debian Stretch, XFCE + i3 + firefox-esr and I have no such problem.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#349

Post by drdeca » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:51 AM UTC

ktzar wrote: post #134

elecbit wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think out of the box. Is moral a law that forbids people speaking? Self-determination is in the human rights and Catalonia has more than 1000 years of history, culture and language. Democracy cannot be illegal, so this banning must be disobbeyed. Without disobbeying, woman and black people would not vote nowadays, so history proves it is a good way to take down immoral legal laws. EDIT: UN experts say that Spain must…

I've heard pro-independence people twisting facts for over 20 years... Not surprised anymore. Democracy is deciding new law based on current law following people's desires... Like it or not, every day meter of Catalan soil belongs as much to a Catalan woman as to an Andalusian man... Nobody in his right mind would say that Catalonia is an oppressed region by Spain's government... Quite the opposite actually.

> Democracy is deciding new law based on current law following people's desires

This does not seem like the correct definition to me.

Suppose that a country is an absolute dictatorship, with the exception that the citizens may vote on the color of a bikeshed, and their word goes for the color of the bikeshed regardless of the dictator's preference for the color of the bikeshed, and that this is all enshrined in law.

This would not be a democratic country.

Democracy is based on people voting on the decisions being made.

"deciding the new law based on the current law" is not a fundamental part of democracy?

That is not to say that I don't think that "deciding the new law based on the current law" is valuable. I strongly agree that it is valuable. But it is not, I think, an essential part of what democracy is.

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#350

Post by azernik » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:52 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #37

kilburn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal. At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle. The problem is that it i…

Governments usually do not like to give up the money making portions of their countries and neither does the population of the rest of the country. You never see a poor part of a country seceding (well, other than Quebec maybe).

> You never see a poor part of a country seceding

Ireland from the UK, Slovakia from Czechoslovakia, Kosovo from Serbia, the bits of Poland that were in Austria-Hungary or Germany from those two empires, pretty much every single European overseas colonial possession... Not to mention all the widely-supported secessionist movements that have failed militarily in the Indian northeast, in the Chinese west, or in the Russian Caucasus.

Of course, Americans prefer to imagine that political conflict everywhere is all about money rather than actually confront the idea that people other than themselves have collective identities and cultures.