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Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

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Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#351

Post by rglullis »

immibis wrote: post #348
rglullis wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if you lose access to your key? Social recovery: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html > The other day someone suggested making real estate NFTs. Looking at the current implementations , it is a terrible idea. But it doesn't mean that the problem can not be solved. > What happens if the "owner" of some real estate loses their key? Just spitballing here: take the idea of social recovery further to…

But then it's just a government database. Might as well just use a government database - much simpler.

For underlying security, of course. The point is that the ability to also tokenize a real physical asset opens a world of possibilities.

Can you take a collaterized loan on a share of your home from anyone in the world, if you have only the government database?

Can we have a "decentralized AirBnB" where you have can the NFT represents who have access to the house with "just a government database"?

Can you pool the resources from thousands of strangers to form a "REIT DAO", who then go on to invest on a scale that is only accessible for the Vanguards and Blackrocks around?

This would be simply too risky to be even considered by people if we constrain ourselves only to digital assets, but if we can have a system where the institutions work as a safeguard, why not leverage it?

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#352

Post by pabs3 »

rglullis wrote: post #209
simias wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why web3 frustrates me to no end. Decentralized services were common in the "old" internet, web3 just takes than and adds a layer of ponzi and speculation on top of them. If bittorent was invented today you'd have to buy into some pyramid scheme to use it. Beyond that having a trusted third party does suck for some things, but at least it means that I have a recourse if something goes wrong. With cryptocra…

Tell me how decentralized services allow applications to be permissionless, censorship- and sybil-resistant without a blockchain. I will make both of us rich.

The GNU Name System does this AFAIK:

https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#353

Post by urthor »

juunpp wrote: post #283
prmoustache wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

I don't think it's true. For 2020, >75% come from individuals; corporate is only a tiny fraction: https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2020/index.html

That's fair.

I think the part of the point about the EFF's political position still stands, my understanding was they're VERY big tech aligned.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#354

Post by ekianjo »

arrrg wrote: post #127
ekianjo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you dont want them to live by their principles? if they dont, who will?

Is boycotting Amazon a principle they even have? Using ring cameras for their offices would be not adhering to their principles. The eff doesn’t strike me as the “you did something bad so now I boycott you“ kind of organization.

Who says boycotting Amazon? Strawman much? Rolling your own streaming solution is not hard these days, you have plenty of FOSS options to do that. But the EFF is too lazy to care.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#355

Post by rglullis »

pabs3 wrote: post #352
rglullis wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me how decentralized services allow applications to be permissionless, censorship- and sybil-resistant without a blockchain. I will make both of us rich.

The GNU Name System does this AFAIK: https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html

GNS is not globally unique. It is censorship resistant, but it is not permissionless.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#356

Post by juunpp »

urthor wrote: post #353
juunpp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's true. For 2020, >75% come from individuals; corporate is only a tiny fraction: https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2020/index.html

That's fair. I think the part of the point about the EFF's political position still stands, my understanding was they're VERY big tech aligned.

That is a bit of my feeling too, funding aside. Often it appears that they are slapping Big Tech on the wrist. Still do great work in general though, just nitpicking since we're on the topic.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#357

Post by kuramitropolis »

danaris wrote: post #342
jesuscript wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, it’s one thing to say “I cannot live without my kids”, and have some asshole say “ditch them. Move, adopt new ones, you’ll see how stupid that attachment is”. You guys are literally acting like e-mail is some cornerstone of a life well lived. I’ll agree with the insufferable part though :) The rest of your comment, I’ll just attribute to you projecting, which we all do, no one is better.

You're the one attaching moral judgements to it. Speaking of projecting. We're just saying that email is either necessary or a massive increase in convenience for engaging in a wide array of common digital interactions, including some that are extremely hard to get away from (utilities, banks, etc), and others that are part of what makes life worth living, rather than just subsistence survival (streaming services, on…

Classic temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Or is that billionaire now

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#358

Post by Broken_Hippo »

themitigating wrote: post #113
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be against something and still find yourself having to use things you complain about. Folks still eat food even though they are aghast at how farm workers are exploited in the world. You can support robust public transportation yet drive a car due to poor-to-no public transit. Sometimes, facebook is the best place to organize demonstrations against facebook. Just because you have complaints about the world do…

I think the food example doesn't work because it's not optional.

Food itself isn't optional, but folks that aren't absolutely poor generally have choices in which foods they eat.

You can spend more on eggs so the chickens are being treated slightly better. You can look for meat that isn't produced using confinement farming. You can buy fair trade coffee. You can check out how the local grocery store treats its employees, and choose the one with the best treatment. You can try something similar with food producers. If you have a local butcher, you might consider buying there instead of a factory meat plant. You can vote for folks that will look out for workers (the ones working the fields and with animals), both in your country and abroad.

Most of these aren't available for folks that are poor enough: You can't very well shop ethically if you are stuck getting food from a food bank, for example, and you might understandably be more worried about getting enough calories for yourself or your child.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#359

Post by THENATHE »

Bakary wrote: post #203
dav43 wrote: post #158

Unpopular on HN, but I just don't see a problem with Google having my email, for what they provide me. Almost unlimited uptime, global redundancy, best search experience, storage all for free. I'm ok with the trade off for now. Its just not worth the hassle.

What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.

I used cloudflare to host a custom domain, and then use their ROBUST email routing service to, plus a send as record to essentially make my personal Gmail use an email address hosted with cloudflare. Then, I set proton mail as a recovery and use it for NOTHING but that. As close as you can get to total security with gmail as far as I am aware. If google ever shuts down my account, I just move to protonmail or MS365 and have all my stuff already linked to my domain.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#360

Post by throwaway_ocr »

rglullis wrote: post #202
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethereum has no "owners". ENS is fully decentralized. There is no "they" to fork anything. I think “They” once forked Ethereum to prevent DAO losses.

No. The "They" that did the fork only managed to do it because there was a majority consensus agreement to switch to the forked chain. If the majority refused to follow, there forked chain would have died or become a thing for the minority. Just like EthPOW vs ETH POS. Seriously, why is it that every discussion about crypto has the same bullshit talking points? Do you guys have a list of "standard basic list of BS ar…

The thing I don't understand is the concept "majority" in the crypto space. There is no way to prove that one person doesn't control the majority of the voting power. If I own a large portion of the supply split across several hundred wallets and I vote one way, smaller owners may be influenced by the appearance of hundreds of votes being cast one way vs the other. We see this in the real world, where some people are willing to just vote for what they think is the majority sentiment when they don't have strong opinions on a matter.

I've heard arguments along the lines of "those with more invested into the project should have more voting power" but that to me just sounds like an incentive to centralize.

If I'm a small player, I either go with the majority or see my investment become worthless, or in a fantasy world where crypto is used for anything other than wild speculation, I see my utility greatly diminished as I'm no longer able to interact with the "majority". Sure, I might still be able to interact with those left behind, but the pressure to move over to the majority fork is going to pull more and more people towards that.

I see federation of content as a much more approachable means to re-decentralization of the internet.

We still rely on centralized DNS. As we still rely on ISPs to make sure our packets can leave our local networks, and on international treaties to make sure we can communicate with networks in other countries, but unless you want everyone to start developing and maintaining a decentralized physical computer network for free, we'll always need to trust a number of institutions to do this thing where we can communicate with someone on the other side of the world within a few milliseconds.

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