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

Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

translate.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 46 posts

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#31

Post by maukdaddy »

forza wrote: post #9
Yrlec wrote: post #4

Sweden is a really amazing country! In addition to being a well functioning democracy it also has these features: * A flourishing market economy that has created everything from IKEA and H&M to Spotify and Skype. * Free health-care * Free college education * Low corruption * A well functioning justice system (practically no patent trolls!) It certainly has it's problems but compared to other countries it is truly ama…

Sweden is outstanding if you ignore all the equally great countries in Europe and elsewhere. Sweden also used to be the standard-bearer for the Nordic model, this is not true anymore. There's plenty of reasons to avoid Sweden, but here are the top ones: * Everything is expensive. * Taxes are high. * Housing (more or less) can't be rented, buying is expensive. * Weather is cold and/or dark most of the year. * Culture…

I, as an American, decided to move to Sweden for all of the reasons GP posted, and despite your list of supposed downsides. A few observations after six months here:

* The Swedish summer more than makes up for the dark winter. Not that much colder than Chicago either.

* Taxes are high, but the benefits you get from the taxes are astounding, especially from an American perspective. Great roads, clean cities, amazing public transit, free healthcare, etc.

* Six weeks of vacation, over a year of maternity leave, etc. Enough said.

* Yes, the rental market in Stockholm sucks.

Honestly, Sweden is truly a democratic model that other countries should try following. I'm very happy with my decision to move here and wish I had discovered it sooner.

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#32

Post by jlgreco »

im3w1l wrote: post #26
aurelianito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides that, I use to say that I would not put a backdoor in the system used by my spies to communicate. It would be really dangerous for me if it fallen in the wrong hands.

if messageSigned (msg, nsaPublicKey): obey

Now hide that.

Any backdoor in TOR that could remain hidden for so long would have to be a protocol flaw. Implementation changes too much to rely on an obfuscated 'bug' and anything as straightforward as your suggestion would simply be found and removed immediately.

Protocol flaws can of course be found and used by anyone.

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#33

Post by polshaw »

sdqali wrote: post #18
hastur wrote: post #2

Wow, this is awesome. While the world's biggest "democracy" (India) censors the web, Swedish government sponsors means of dissidence.

I, as an Indian am tired of the 'World's Biggest Democracy' label. I feel it is a clever way for India's politicians to mask huge problems we face as a democracy - rampant social inequality, throwing money at problems that need creative solutions cotinuous effort and commitment etc. Except for very few states, turn up for elections seldom crosses 50%. If the number of people participating is the measure for biggest,…

    >huge problems.. social inequality.. turn up for elections seldom crosses 50%
Sorry to be depressing, but that sounds pretty par-for-the-course democracy to me. Particularly the turn out.

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#34

Post by fromhet »

maayank wrote: post #15
forza wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is outstanding if you ignore all the equally great countries in Europe and elsewhere. Sweden also used to be the standard-bearer for the Nordic model, this is not true anymore. There's plenty of reasons to avoid Sweden, but here are the top ones: * Everything is expensive. * Taxes are high. * Housing (more or less) can't be rented, buying is expensive. * Weather is cold and/or dark most of the year. * Culture…

"Housing (more or less) can't be rented, buying is expensive." Is it plain non-availability? If so, then why? If not, then why? (I'm genuinely interested)

(I am merely a layman, but native Swede)

Lots of people want to move to Stockholm, Malmö and Göteborg (Gothenburg), so demand is rising faster than supply.

But also, the laws that ensure that lower class people are to afford to live in nice places also makes it a bad investment to build new houses. It's great because the classes are more integrated, leading to more sense of community, less crime and less 'ghettos' riddled with crime and drugs. But on the other hand, since the government keeps prices reasonable, low prices makes it a less good investment. Sadly we can't have the best of two worlds, but I think a golden middle path ("lagom") is the way to go. Not regulated enough that no one will invest in houses, not free enough that the lower classes will (even more than it's now) have to move to ghettos.

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#35

Post by polshaw »

jlgreco wrote: post #32
im3w1l wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if messageSigned (msg, nsaPublicKey): obey

Now hide that. Any backdoor in TOR that could remain hidden for so long would have to be a protocol flaw. Implementation changes too much to rely on an obfuscated 'bug' and anything as straightforward as your suggestion would simply be found and removed immediately. Protocol flaws can of course be found and used by anyone.

I am no expert, but I thought the weakness of tor was that a goverment could control many of the exit nodes (combied with timing attacks to find the user?), since most users don't want to run them for fear of being arrested for whatever the users were doing on the network?

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#36

Post by bjelkeman-again »

forza wrote: post #30
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite that "everything is expensive", "taxes are high" and "whether is cold" it is actually a very good place to live. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_Index Cultural life in Stockholm is rather quite good for a town of its size, and you have plenty of nature around you to compensate for not having quite as many bars as London. Racism is sadly on the rise, but not as bad as in many other societies. Anec…

That's quite an old ranking and it's hard to compare against any other ranking, but I can't imagine Ireland still being at the top of the list. I do think the "IT-community" (and most people) are awesome. While somewhat underappreciated it's lot more enthusiast/hacker than academic/corporate, compared to other countries. People also generally don't care about hierarchies and titles in the workplaces. I mean getting t…

Well, Ireland having economic troubls hasn't affected Sweden much. The GDP is up: http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_...

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#37

Post by joelhaasnoot »

Dutch government is also supporting similar efforts, seems together with the US governement. http://www.nu.nl/internet/2688855/nederland-steekt-6-miljoen... (Dutch link)

We then proceed to accept new laws regulating net neutrality, but all major ISPs by next tuesday have to block the Pirate Bay. Something seems wrong...

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#38

Post by fromhet »

probably_not_pc wrote: post #29
Yrlec wrote: post #4

Sweden is a really amazing country! In addition to being a well functioning democracy it also has these features: * A flourishing market economy that has created everything from IKEA and H&M to Spotify and Skype. * Free health-care * Free college education * Low corruption * A well functioning justice system (practically no patent trolls!) It certainly has it's problems but compared to other countries it is truly ama…

Yes and that will all change as you continue to embrace multiculturalism. These properties are only possible in a society with high cohesion. People are more than happy to support their own communities. People are more trusting of those who are racially or ethnically similar to them. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/20/148946156/how-do-... The sorts of things you list are not easily attainable in America becau…

Please excuse me as I womit in my mouth. All right, done. Sorry for the stench everyone, but racism has a bad effect on my stomach.

Multi-culti has been part of Sweden for a Long Time. Immigrants one of the big reasons why Sweden prospered in the 1900's. Turks, Italians and Finns are some of the places where large amounts of immigrants have come, and they've been employed by Swedish companies exporting everything from building material, textile, mining, cars. The list is long.

Do you know how many people who aren't immigrants (or 2nd or 3rd generation)? ~7 million. That is less than NYC, in a whole country. We need all extra labour we can get.

But theese things arent the least important. They really doesnt matter at all. There are two big reasons why people immigrate (here, at least): shelter from violence or opression and the hope of affording a decent life.

To reject anyone coming from war who wants to live in peace would be the most inhumane thing to do. Ever. In war-ridden countries, you always live with the risk of you and your family being killed.

And to reject someone who wants to earn enough to live a decent life? And who has the balls to move to a new country to make that dream come true?

Immigration and multi-culturalism has brought so many great things to Sweden, and I am proud that my country let's many into it's borders.

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#39

Post by h84ru3a »

forza wrote: post #9
Yrlec wrote: post #4

Sweden is a really amazing country! In addition to being a well functioning democracy it also has these features: * A flourishing market economy that has created everything from IKEA and H&M to Spotify and Skype. * Free health-care * Free college education * Low corruption * A well functioning justice system (practically no patent trolls!) It certainly has it's problems but compared to other countries it is truly ama…

Sweden is outstanding if you ignore all the equally great countries in Europe and elsewhere. Sweden also used to be the standard-bearer for the Nordic model, this is not true anymore. There's plenty of reasons to avoid Sweden, but here are the top ones: * Everything is expensive. * Taxes are high. * Housing (more or less) can't be rented, buying is expensive. * Weather is cold and/or dark most of the year. * Culture…

"Everything is expensive."

Does that include healthcare and education?

Re: Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

#40

Post by h84ru3a »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #25
forza wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is outstanding if you ignore all the equally great countries in Europe and elsewhere. Sweden also used to be the standard-bearer for the Nordic model, this is not true anymore. There's plenty of reasons to avoid Sweden, but here are the top ones: * Everything is expensive. * Taxes are high. * Housing (more or less) can't be rented, buying is expensive. * Weather is cold and/or dark most of the year. * Culture…

Despite that "everything is expensive", "taxes are high" and "whether is cold" it is actually a very good place to live. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_Index Cultural life in Stockholm is rather quite good for a town of its size, and you have plenty of nature around you to compensate for not having quite as many bars as London. Racism is sadly on the rise, but not as bad as in many other societies. Anec…

"investment community... limited in scope"

But how about the regulatory environment?

Maybe it might make a good base from which to launch a startup focused on reclaiming some standard expectations privacy for internet users, by using original internet peer-to-peer design instead of the prevalent "calf-cow" (client-server) model. Many, like the 60-something Harvard blogger who recently wrote about Facebook's flaws, are calling for an end to this design.

Consider the Skype example mentioned as one of Sweden's startup success stories. (And I believe he did eventually go to London for better access to capital.)

Post reply on HN