Live data from Hacker News

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

la3.org

261–270 of 565 posts

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

#261

As an outsider, it's strange that nobody here seems to question whether the referendum really makes sense. Forgetting about Catalonia for a moment, isn't it fundamentally amoral that a part of the country where prosperity has (by mere chance) concentrated suddenly wants to split off? Isn't this taking wealth-inequality to the next level? Of course the people in a prosperous part of the country want to split off. Abso…

On the one hand, look at these maps [1], that show the results of the general spanish elections since the dissolution of the dictatoship. Do you see the upper-right part that is nearly always different than the majority? That is Catalonia. Catalans also have a different language, a strong sense of being a nation (their "local consitution" says so!), etc.. Money is one of the reasons, but not the only one, not even by…

> Catalans also have a different language, a strong sense of being a nation (their "local consitution" says so!), etc..

And none of those things is being repressed, I have to add. As a Catalan friend pointed out, they speak and teach Catalan in schools, have complete freedom to vote on issues of their region, etc. I have to agree with the GP that it's mostly the economy doing a bit better than the other regions, which leads Catalonia to a "why should we have to support these others" mentality.

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

#262
post #20

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?

The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal. At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle. The problem is that it i…

The Constitutional Court hasn't ruled out yet. Just suspended it while they deliberate.

That's why most of the actions taken have been ordered by the Attorney General and not a court... Because the ref is not illegal :)

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

#263
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, has the federal government pumped more resources into Catalonia than it extracted from it, or the other way around?

Maybe it's not zero-sum

Sure, it probably is. But if that is the case, the answer is even more straight forward: Separation is okay.

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

#264
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is listening the majority of a group, without forgetting and respecting the minorities. You don't argument why Catalonia is not opressed. Banning all the laws emerging from its parliament is not respecting. Sorry Spaniards, we will vote. It's not about you, it's about us. It's not about us feeling superior or supremacist. It's about deciding our way, as we think too different in too many things. We can be g…

> [Catalonia is oppressed:] Banning all the laws emerging from its parliament is not respecting. Not all laws emerging from its parliament are ruled unconstitutional by the courts. And unconstitutional laws enacted by any parliament in Spain are banned by the courts, Catalonia or not. It's not really a matter of respect.

That's why Spanish Constitutional Court tore down articles of the Catalan Estatut (sort of regional constitution) that are accepted in exactly the same terms for others and are even covered in the Spanish Constitution.

E.g. "Catalonia is a nation". The Spanish Constitution says "Catalonia is a nationality" while the Andalusian Estatuto says "Andalusia is a nation".

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

#265
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, how do the Catalan constitutions Charles promised to uphold compare to the current autonomy? Also, is it historically accepted that, if Charles had won, he wouldn't have done the same to the other regions with fueros / constitutions?

The Crown of Aragon, which controlled the territories of modern-day Catalonia, was an independent state in all ways aside from military and foreign policy. The union of Castile and Aragon was a dynastic union, with very few shared institutions until the Kingdom of Spain was established in 1716. Aragon itself was a fairly decentralized state with constituent principalities having their own Corts and legal systems (rig…

> was an independent state in all ways aside from military and foreign policy

It was still an absolute monarchy with the same monarch; it's not like the Aragonese were free to choose their own destiny. Still, the Constitutions Charles promised them to uphold must have given them something, I just don't know what it was. That's why I'd like to know how they compare to the current rights granted by the autonomía.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't contribute, they have an independent economic system which comes from ancient times. Basque Country and Navarra have this privilege.

Is that relevant when we talk about GDP ? Even if little money flows from Barcelona to the central government (I don't know if this is or is not the case, since I don't live in Spain), that shouldn't make a difference, since "GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services - that is, those that are bought by the final user - produced in a country in a given period of time (say a quarter or a year)."[1] Ma…

There are 16 billion per year going from Catalonia to Spain without return.

But not only that, the centralisation of government powers and agencies have created a problem where many big companies have to be in Madrid even if most their operations are in other parts of the country. That makes their taxes to be paid in Madrid instead of e.g. Valencia, Bilbao or Barcelona. The amount of taxes lost because of this is HUGE and much worse than the 16 billion per year above.

An independence would bring back 100% of the former and a good chunk of the latter. Hopefully that would help Catalonia grow at the pace its economy can and then it should be able to contribute back to Europe much more than now. Contributions have to be sustainable.

Edit: This comment is now at -1. Please argue instead of downvoting. You're acting against HN's rules.

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

#267

What if ipfs.io goes down? The DNS has always been the bottleneck.

Spray paint 8.8.8.8 on buildings.

For anyone unfamiliar, this has happened in Turkey in the past: https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/21/5532522/turkey-twitter-ba.... Although Google DNS shortly ended up being blocked: https://www.extremetech.com/internet/179074-turkey-becomes-f...

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

#268
post #248
post #2

Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!

You say "the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a password for decryption, and then once more to get the lookup key", however in the code above the search string is computed as var search = sha256(key); , note it's using key and not passkey, which means, assuming that is correct, only one round of sha256, so roughly 1715 times faster to crack. It seems weird that the sensitive part (ID number + birt…

The text was right, but I made a mistake writing key there when it should have been passkey. It is fixed now, thank you for noticing!

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

#269
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Catalonia is oppressed:] Banning all the laws emerging from its parliament is not respecting. Not all laws emerging from its parliament are ruled unconstitutional by the courts. And unconstitutional laws enacted by any parliament in Spain are banned by the courts, Catalonia or not. It's not really a matter of respect.

That's why Spanish Constitutional Court tore down articles of the Catalan Estatut (sort of regional constitution) that are accepted in exactly the same terms for others and are even covered in the Spanish Constitution. E.g. "Catalonia is a nation". The Spanish Constitution says "Catalonia is a nationality" while the Andalusian Estatuto says "Andalusia is a nation".

A 1min Google search gives:

TÍTULO PRELIMINAR Artículo 1. Andalucía. 1. Andalucía, como nacionalidad histórica y en el ejercicio del derecho de autogobierno que reconoce la Constitución, se constituye en Comunidad Autónoma en el marco de la unidad de la nación española y conforme al artículo 2 de la Constitución.

http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/html/especiales/NuevoGobierno...

Unless that's not the most current estatuto, you've been misled.

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

#270
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1714 is in an abbr tag with a title that explains that ;)

That's pretty hard to notice, haha.

Off topic: I don't know if it's Firefox, GTK or some other component at fault but all tooltips in the browser last for an unreasonably short amount of time and it's really hard to read something more than a couple of words. I have to either view the page source or freeze the process.

I wonder why a tooltip is supposed to disappear in the first place.

Post reply on HN