Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mako.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 400 posts

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

#391

Post by dang »

jamiek88 wrote: post #298
abiloe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter No I don't see how their post allows one to infer that Namecheap "immediately" resold the domain. Their policy is a 30 day grace period, and within that 30 days the domain should become non functional, so if you're actively using it then you would know something is up. Sounds like jamiek88 was squatting on a somewhat desirable domain and is just sad they couldn'…

Quoted post unavailable.

Breaking the site guidelines like this is definitely not ok and will get your account banned, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

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

#392

Post by rglullis »

immibis wrote: post #390
rglullis wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Yes. Just fill out a form selling your house to Tokenized Blockchain Corp. and have Tokenized Blockchain Corp. manage it based on the blockchain.

What is the jurisdiction of "Tokenized Blockchain Corp"? What happens if you live on a country that is under economic sanctions? What happens if there is any type of rug pull? What happens if the Corp gets "too big to fail" and its managers corrupt it? I surely don't want to end up with another Tether in our hands.

We don't need to completely disrupt the current institutions, when they are functional and work in the interests of the people. Quite the opposite, when they are functional they are more efficient (time- and resource-wise) than any decentralized system.

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

#393

Post by immibis »

rglullis wrote: post #392
immibis wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Just fill out a form selling your house to Tokenized Blockchain Corp. and have Tokenized Blockchain Corp. manage it based on the blockchain.

What is the jurisdiction of "Tokenized Blockchain Corp"? What happens if you live on a country that is under economic sanctions? What happens if there is any type of rug pull? What happens if the Corp gets "too big to fail" and its managers corrupt it? I surely don't want to end up with another Tether in our hands. We don't need to completely disrupt the current institutions, when they are functional and work in the…

Skipping the middleman doesn't solve any of these issues, except for the possibility that Tokenized Blockchain Corp is corrupt. So write an iron-clad contract with Tokenized Blockchain Corp regarding how your house is to be managed, and the courts will enforce it for you.

It can't be Tether because you can see that only one NFT is minted for your house.

The jurisdiction is, of course, where the house is.

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

#394

Post by rglullis »

immibis wrote: post #393
rglullis wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the jurisdiction of "Tokenized Blockchain Corp"? What happens if you live on a country that is under economic sanctions? What happens if there is any type of rug pull? What happens if the Corp gets "too big to fail" and its managers corrupt it? I surely don't want to end up with another Tether in our hands. We don't need to completely disrupt the current institutions, when they are functional and work in the…

Skipping the middleman doesn't solve any of these issues, except for the possibility that Tokenized Blockchain Corp is corrupt. So write an iron-clad contract with Tokenized Blockchain Corp regarding how your house is to be managed, and the courts will enforce it for you. It can't be Tether because you can see that only one NFT is minted for your house. The jurisdiction is, of course, where the house is.

> write an iron-clad contract with Tokenized Blockchain Corp

The legal costs for such a contract and the insurance to cover the damages of each possible novel use case would make it impossible.

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

#395

Post by hilbert42 »

cglan wrote: post #26

Having your own email/domain isn’t about privacy. Email has become essentially the key to almost everything in modern life. If I lose access to my email I lose access to basically everything I own and it would be a massive hassle to switch emails. Banks, schools, apps, etc. Often times these services won’t even let you change to a new email if you don’t have access to an existing one. Some use email as 2factor. It’s…

Heaven forbid, how did you become so utterly dependent on this technology? You're probably one of those who insists in using your phone instead of paying cash or using cards. You also probably use Twitter, Facebook and Google's Gmail too.

If so, then you can't be helped.

If you organize thing right you don't need to be so dependent on ephemeral technology (unless you're in Communist China, governments haven't made email compulsory yet. If they ever do then I'd demand free hardware to participate).

BTW, I'm not an email Luddite, I have and have had email addresses since the late 1970s (in the days before the internet) using The Source etc. and after that I've run my own email servers and so on. Right, I was in the vanguard of the email service but I've never let it rule me or my life.

P.S.: it really isn't that hard, for years I successfully ran a large IT department in a well-known organization and I refused to have an email address because I got damn sick of the CEO defaulting to email when all he had to do was to walk out of his office door and into mine—or use the good old POTS telephone! Yes, there are still many alternatives if you look (that is, unless you actually like being ruled over).

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

#396

Post by hilbert42 »

jesuscript wrote: post #45
cglan wrote: post #26

Having your own email/domain isn’t about privacy. Email has become essentially the key to almost everything in modern life. If I lose access to my email I lose access to basically everything I own and it would be a massive hassle to switch emails. Banks, schools, apps, etc. Often times these services won’t even let you change to a new email if you don’t have access to an existing one. Some use email as 2factor. It’s…

Go through that exercise of ditching that email. You will find out the 2-3 things you need absolute plan a/b/c for. Seriously, reset your email password to something you can never remember and write it down and have someone hold it for a month (don’t tell them what is it, tuck it in an envelope). Let your mind run circles around your fears and you’ll find out how little that email account owns you. Freezing one credi…

Exactly! Good one. People just don't realize how much of this stuff is just jetsam and dross.

What the hell would happen if the service ever seriously failed for long periods or GPS failed overnight (which it easily could)? People would have to resort to what they did pre-internet. Back then, the world still worked (and some would argue even better because the internet 'toy' wasn't around to distract everyone and wreak havoc on the world).

Believe it or not, we actually built the modern world without email and the smartphone.

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

#397

Post by Tepix »

denton-scratch wrote: post #167
Tepix wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowdays, even unencrypted email can be private, thanks to opportunistic encryption. Not when you're using Gmail of course.

Opportunistic encryption only encrypts mail transport between mail servers. Both the sending and receiving servers can read the plaintext.

As long as both parties run their own mailservers, it's cool!

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

#398

Post by immibis »

rglullis wrote: post #394
immibis wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skipping the middleman doesn't solve any of these issues, except for the possibility that Tokenized Blockchain Corp is corrupt. So write an iron-clad contract with Tokenized Blockchain Corp regarding how your house is to be managed, and the courts will enforce it for you. It can't be Tether because you can see that only one NFT is minted for your house. The jurisdiction is, of course, where the house is.

> write an iron-clad contract with Tokenized Blockchain Corp The legal costs for such a contract and the insurance to cover the damages of each possible novel use case would make it impossible.

Doubt.

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

#399

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Eben Moglen, law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, gave a talk on privacy that discussed exactly this. I believe it was in 2011.

    I would urge you also to consider that privacy is an ecological rather
    than a transactional substance. This is a crucial distinction from what
    you are taught to believe by the people whose job it is to earn off you.
    
    Those who wish to earn off you want to define privacy as a thing you
    transact about with them, just the two of you. They offer you free email
    service, in response to which you let them read all the mail, and that’s
    that. It’s just a transaction between two parties. They offer you free
    web hosting for your social communications, in return for watching
    everybody look at everything. They assert that’s a transaction in which
    only the parties themselves are engaged.
    
    This is a convenient fraudulence. Another misdirection, misleading, and
    plain lying proposition. Because - as I suggested in the analytic
    definition of the components of privacy - privacy is always a relation
    among people. It is not transactional, an agreement between a listener
    or a spy or a peephole keeper and the person being spied on.
    
    If you accept this supposedly bilateral offer, to provide email service
    for you for free as long as it can all be read, then everybody who
    corresponds with you has been subjected to the bargain, which was
    supposedly bilateral in nature.
(Full transcript available at [0], video at [1].)

Interestingly I see I'm not the first to quote this at length on HackerNews [2].

[0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qflooj...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs8ZPbHtos

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747916

(Link-rot has eaten the original [0] URL, and archive.org is seemingly down, but I realise the irony in linking to Google's cached page, as well as their copy of the video.)

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

#400

Post by mro_name »

jeffbee wrote: post #305
mro_name wrote: post #99

what is the thing with gmail in 2022 other than lock in?

Price? Best-in-class search? Availability?

> Price

I think one should let the suppliers live and pay for what one uses. 0 is a stupid price, you will be farmed.

> Best-in-class search

I don't use web-clients to read email, so wrong class.

> Availability

the track record of google+ and google-reader isn't convincing.

Post reply on HN