HN should let brand new accounts comment once a week for the first 6 months.
The current system is fine for controlling new accounts that just show up to spew invective. They're quickly downvoted and/or flagged, even banned when they go too far. Multiple times I have seen article authors or project creators register a new HN account to specifically comment about work of theirs that has reached the front page of HN. They may write a dozen posts on their first day here, all of them useful.
Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism. Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes. It's a special sort of odd neoliberal fantasy where capitalists or technologists can route around an authoritarian social movement that seizes the power of the state. Do you want to know what happens to people who think they can route around an authoritarian regime with cl…
We are long beyond that point, sadly. We are right now in the process of a) becoming legally required to own and carry a particular kind of device and b) being legally unable to fully control said device and c) having that device explicitly working (again by legal requirement) against our own interests It will be interesting to watch how things will progress and whether governments or corporations will be the ones ho…
What in the world...?! What's in everyone's coffee this morning?
A life without a smartphone is already difficult. Possible, but difficult; it involves knowing people who have smartphones, and using fragile hacks, and doing without. With only “show the screen of your smartphone” proof-of-whatever being used, and the phasing out of paper documentation, it's not unreasonable to think we might end up in a situation like this. (Though, it definitely hasn't already happened; I don't think this is the case in any country.)
I honestly don't think deploying surveillance resistant systems now will help against an authoritarian government. Imagine if WhatsApp, Messenger, and Apple Messages were all fully end-to-end encrypted. An authoritarian government comes in and demands that Facebook/Meta and Apple release a new version that is either not end-to-end encrypted or somehow allows the government to be able to see the messages. Do you reall…
> An authoritarian government comes in and demands that Facebook/Meta and Apple release a new version
That is why a surveillance resistant system should 1) have open protocol 2) have free & open & fully auditable implementations 3) be sufficiently simple that disjoint groups (and individuals) can maintain and audit compatible implementations.
It's easy to make demands when the system is centralized; I don't think such a system can resist surveillance (or censorship or much else).
Snowden is twitting from Moscow. Russians in a similar position have been formally labeled "foreign agents", imprisoned, or worse. I'm wondering how Snowden managed to avoid a similar fate.
Because he is their agent. Remember Russia has been the undisputed world champion of dezinformatsiya for centuries - they did a good job of making him appear as the "disgruntled principled whistleblower" they wanted. But most of the stuff he stole had little to do with the NSA activities they publicized, and much to do with key intelligence damage to the USA, including likely loss of lives. That's not protest, it's treason; do not expect him ever to leave RUS soil. I had vaguely thought of him as a good guy too at first, until I looked into it a little deeper.
Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism. Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes. It's a special sort of odd neoliberal fantasy where capitalists or technologists can route around an authoritarian social movement that seizes the power of the state. Do you want to know what happens to people who think they can route around an authoritarian regime with cl…
When authoritarianism comes around, it wont just be surveiling. An a11n regime needs the buy-in of private leadership because the goal is to turn the state into an all-encompasing master of peoples lives, and work is a large part of peoples lives (especially in an a11n regime!) Whether or not the state can surveil is a moot point if the owners of the tech are in on the game.
> a11n
I'm not sure what this means, assuming weird auto-correct from authoritarian?
> An a11n regime needs the buy-in of private leadership because...
Only if that leadership is necessary to seize or hold power.
An authoritarian regime in the US would not need buy-in from major tech companies.
Of course, restricting people's movement across imaginary borders is very silly indeed. The point I was making is, I see plenty of frothing about vaccine passports, but not one single one of those people having conniptions about them is able to articulate what they would enable a government to do that they can't do already with your normal passport, driving license, tax ID etc.
The difference is that passports are only required for fairly rare activities (international travel, certain kinds of government interactions), whereas COVID passports are required for a lot of every-day things. A driving license is a license is a certification that you've proven yourself capable to meet the minimum requirements to operate a potentially dangerous device, and more akin to doctor's license, lawyer lice…
This doesn't address the rather hysterical slippery slope argument that was being espoused. That's the one that I've never has a sane answer to - anything the government might want to do in the future with a vaccine passport, they can already do now with the plethora of unique identifying information they have on you.
The TV show Upload [1] has a group of people dubbed the "Ludds" (i.e. Luddites) that refuse to be party to the turn that the technological revolution has taken and stick to traditional ways of doing things. I strongly believe if that were to happen in our world today, much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds", while a mass of non-tech people would happily welcome our new technological overlords. [1]: https://www.imdb.c…
I'm about as technical as it is possible to get. I fucking hate technology these days. It all sucks, it tries to insert itself between everything human and sane, and extract value for its masters. People are serfs in closed silos. They own nothing, just like the serfs of old: not their farmlands or cattle (laptops, phones and data), nor their homes (accounts in the 'cloud' subject to AI shutdown without human recours…
> It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this.
We'll see about that, I guess. Revolutions in the past were successful because you couldn't control people so strongly and you needed the to work to be able to tax them.
With our new surveillance tech and automation I am afraid this has changed for the worse
> My bank has made it (almost) impossible to make payments without a phone, btw My bank has several buildings full of people, all within driving distance of my house. Any of those people will happily accept a stack of paper bills. If you don't want to use digital forms of payment, why on earth are you using a bank that doesn't have physical branches located near your home?
Any of those people will happily accept a stack of paper bills. Have you actually tried depositing large amounts of cash on a regular basis? Sounds like a good way to get your account flagged and suspended. Not to mention the Treasury's seeming animosity toward cash as an instrument of payment.
There's a middle ground here that has existed for a long time. Mail hand-written cheques for your bills, deposit your paystub into your bank account, withdraw cash on a periodic basis for daily spending. You don't even need to use a banking card for any of this.
I haven't been to a store that has refused cash and have never been required to use a banking app.