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

#501

Post by qiv » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #339

incompatible wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the impression that quite a few conservatives in the US would be thrilled to see New York and California leave, regardless of the economic implications.

I'm sure there are individual Spanish nationalists that think the same about Catalonia. Central governments, on the other hand, generally behave rationally (read: in their own interests) instead of emotionally.

No, the central government is as petty as it gets. For instance when the Canaries banned bull fighting a long time ago there was no problem, but when the Catalans did it recently the ban was overthrown by Spanish courts. Don't get me wrong, the Catalans did not bann it because it is not part of "their culture" or because it is cruel, they just did it to piss off Madrid :-)

Also now for the referendum, the central government sent four thousand police officers in cruise ships to the port of Barcelona to prevent voting. Does not seem particularly grown up to me neither ...

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

#502

Post by qiv » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

tumblen wrote: post #438

gpvos wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, only slightly less than 50% wants independence. They are very vocal though. Also, since education in Catalonia is entirely in Catalonian (also they have their own history books), and use of Spanish in public is heavily discouraged, children will grow up in a mostly Catalonian environment, which makes it likely that that percentage will grow over time.

What do you mean by discouraged? I'm from the US and my wife is from Barcelona. Her family all speaks Catalan between each other but they are perfectly happy speaking Spanish with me (as are all of their family's friends and associates). Between my wife and her friends, they speak probably a 50/50 mix of Catalan/Spanish. I have never heard or seen anyone in all of Catalunya be discouraging or negative in relation to…

Well, the region grows better than almost any Spanish region (except maybe the metropolitan area of Madrid) and they saved their banks when the crisis hit them first ;-)

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

#503

Post by qiv » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 10:03 PM UTC

codewithcheese wrote: post #18

It seems shocking that Spain a member of the EU is resorting to these tactics. Can you discuss some of their justifications for doing so?

Well, do you think it is worse than stationing four thousand police officers in cruise ships in the port of Barcelona? The Spanish government is determined to not let this happen. Period. Fortunately (and to make things more complicated) the parliament did not revoke the Catalan autonomy.

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

#504

Post by qiv » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #231

pvaldes wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I can't divorce from my wife without her permit What? You totally can, at least in most countries, as long as you can prove that your wife did something wrong. Can Catalunya prove that Spain did something wrong? Yeah: Franco.

Except the marriage (i.e. the constitution) came into place way after Franco; and the Catalans approved it with a humongous majority!

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

#505

Post by lllllll » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 10:17 PM UTC

trosop wrote: post #428

elecbit wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Catalan here. Quite a bad description, I think. We should remember that Catalonia had its own language forbidden to even speak in the street for 40 years during Franco's dictatorship. Language and culture was kept alive thanks of people keeping it in secrecy. When "democracy" returned, some of the competences they had before the war were returned to the government. After 6 years of demonstrations of 2-3 million (ou…

Another Catalan here, a Catalan that has lived in Italy and France. In the dictatorship Catalan was forbidden, but now Catalan in Catalonia is the only language used in schools (the teachers are told to only speak in that language even to the parents, search for "immersió lingüística"), the official buildings, hospital papers, and so on. Is this what you would call repression or not-democracy? Now, in Spain other lan…

> but now Catalan in Catalonia is the only language used in schools(...), the official buildings, hospital papers, and so on. Is this what you would call repression or not-democracy?

Isn't this the point of autonomy? You decide what languages to teach/use in your institutions. We can discuss whether this is a good idea or not. Or whether what you say is true in reality or not. But it's the Catalans' decision, that's what autonomy is for.

> So Spain is even more democratic than Italy and France in that issue, but people are complaining in Catalonia because of the adoctrination, and millions of euros spent by the Catalan government.

Comparisons are meaningless in this situations. Maybe Spain is more "democratic" (if you say so) than France(which is not hard to beat honestly, considering the status of non-French languages in France). But one could also say that Spain is less democratic than Switzerland wrt languages, and that would be equally meaningless.

The question is whether the autonomy Catalonia receives is enough for the Catalans. That's for the Catalans to decide.

> Do you really thing this chaos is not premeditated?

Are you saying that all the Catalan citizens collaborating and organizing together have been manipulated by the elites for all these years? When did the manipulation start exactly? Would you mind sharing sources that support this?

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

#506

Post by lllllll » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

pepon wrote: post #214

severino wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's happening already: half the population does not want to belong to the state. The "democracia" here is you don't vote and never will. What can be worse than that?

No, that is not what is happening. Spain is a state where the majority of the people wants to belong to the state. Catalonia would be a state where half of the people wouldn't want to belong to it. I wonder if the future Catalan government will allow referendums so that such people will be able to split from Catalonia. Besides, not voting is also democracy. Most of the Spanish people don't want to allow these kind of…

One has the right not to vote, but not the right to stop others from voting. - Heard somewhere (?)

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

#507

Post by dane-pgp » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 10:29 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #397

neoscott wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because was a legal referendum from the UK government, it's very different with the Catalonia referendum

The notion of a referendum being "illegal" is farcical. No democracy should prohibit people from deciding to get together and conduct a poll on something.

The idea of a referendum being "illegal" may be counter-intuitive, but I don't think the situation is as simple as you suggest.

For example, secession (not to mention sedition or treason) is illegal in many jurisdictions, and is a natural thing for sovereign countries to want to prevent. It is also natural for the sovereign central government of a country to put limits on what a regional government can and cannot do, with the usual principle being that the regional government cannot do anything outside of the powers specifically given it by the central government (regardless of what powers the inhabitants of that region want).

You're right that "people" could "get together and conduct a poll on something", but if this was informally conducted it would be hard to prevent double voting, and not accidentally disenfranchising certain people, and there would be little recourse against these self-appointed pollsters stuffing their home-made ballot boxes.

At the same time, if a regional government spent money, or used people's personal information, for a purpose they were not legally permitted to, then those would potentially be crimes themselves, regardless of the issue of secession.

The questions worth debating are "How much autonomy should regions of sovereign countries be given?", and "If a region isn't legally given that much autonomy, what is most peaceful and just means for that region to attain it?"

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

#508

Post by euyyn » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 11:32 PM UTC

DigitalJack wrote: post #352

euyyn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know that. The point I was trying to make is that the referendum wasn't deemed illegal because "the government of Catalonia isn't allowed to ask people's preferences". It is allowed and it happens all the time.

You can do it your own way, if it is done just how I say.

Alternatively: You can do it your own way, as long as it doesn't conflict with the law. Like all other things in a democracy really.

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

#509

Post by ameliaquining » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 11:45 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #140

red_admiral wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attack mentioned on the page is brute-forcing someone's details from partial information: "it can be used to “fill the gaps” of information about any citizen. If you know someone’s birth date and the area where they live, you can obtain their government ID by trial-and-error on that website." The mitigation is slowing down the number of guesses/second that an attacker can try. In a well-designed key derivation fu…

Holy shit! People are hiring planes to ship them GPUs!? Jeasus!! Gibson was far more prescient than acknowledged; " the future is already here, but not evenly distributed yet " Wow... I had such opportunity and ability to buy bitcoins in 2012... and I missed that boat.

This isn't as big a deal as it sounds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14887929

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

#510

Post by toyg » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 11:53 PM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #447

guiriduro wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The options then (1970s) on offer were: 1) remain as a Francoist dictatorship 2) accept a new constitution with some democratic principles (but adherence to things like the unity of spain, the convenient 'forgetting' of fascist crimes and torture etc.) Given there were no other options, and few people wanted to return to dictatorship, the new constitution was adopted. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a shotgun, Hobson…

That isn't how things happened. Before the Constitution was even drafted, Suarez had put forward, and the francoist institutions had approved, the "Ley para la Reforma Política": https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/1977/01/05/pdfs/A00170-00171.pdf Read the first two articles of that law; Spain was no longer a dictatorship. The last clause of the law enacts it as supreme law of the land. It is following that law that the firs…

> If the Constitution they wrote didn't pass the popular vote of the referendum, general elections would be repeated and the process would start again.

That's a very optimistic view of the situation. In practice, the instability resulting from not completing the process would have had dramatic consequences. Among other things, there was a Cold War on which could have easily started a new civil war.

> the francoist regime turned itself into a democracy following its own laws and procedures.

But exactly because the prime mover was the regime itself, there was always a chance it could go back on its steps. Compromises had to be made to ensure the transition would go through smoothly, as it's always the case.