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The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

washingtonpost.com

401–410 of 534 posts

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#401
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are made up prescriptive guidelines, mixed in with some common misspellings. One grumpy person does not get to decide how the rest of us choose to use and evolve language. The "forceful" / "forcible" example is particularly inane and pedantic but hardly the worst on that page. I'll continue to say "being that", "ice tea", "center around", etc. as I please. In linguistics the illustrative analogy is that…

> I'll continue to say... as I please. By that argument, we should all just be able to say and write whatever we want however we want to, even if it's technically or factually incorrect, like Humpty Dumpty or Donald Trump. Why bother hewing to "elitist" rules of grammar and accepted spellings, being that it's just prescriptivism? How does one decide objectively if something is just plain wrong, or merely prescriptive…

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Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#402
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not use Windows. I do not use the kernel or the browser you use. It is not your business what I use anyway. I just said that because it's the only one I can think of people still having around that doesn't support SNI. OpenSSL, NSS, etc. have all supported SNI for a decade. In fact, I can't find any TLS implementation that supports even TLS 1.1 that doesn't support SNI. So unless you have an example I'd say SN…

Do you like to make all sorts of assumptions about users, what software they use, what software they "should" use and what software "no one uses"? I don't. Unlike many forum commenters, I do not try to convince people what software to use. I am not telling any users to stop using SSL. (Even though I strongly dislike it myself.) I am only addressing SNI, an extension to SSL that has become widespread in recent years.…

I really don't care what you do, my only "assumption" was that you claimed, repeatedly and loudly, that privacy advocates should step away from SNI and that SSL was "so flawed". You didn't start making your statements only apply to yourself until you ran out of arguments that people should do just that.

Also I went looking for TLS libraries released in the past ~10 years without SNI, my only "assumption" about users was that there were myriad of other reasons why you wouldn't want a decade old TLS implementation (the biggest one being security). If you have a more recent example, I'd love to hear it.

If you don't want people to ask for evidence when you make general statements like you did for quite a while before you decided this must be a personal attack, then don't tell people quite clearly what they should do if they care about privacy.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#404

Before getting all spun up, I'd dig a little deeper on the issue than what the WaPo does in this piece. These regulations were only voted on late in 2016 and never went into effect. To do the regulations, the FCC reclassified the internet as basically ye olde telephone system, which then made it subject to their purview based on laws created in the 1930s. This is classic overreach. Congress never gave this authority…

So then, surely, the current Republican leadership in government will pass these rules the "right way"?

I thought not.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#405
post #65

To all of you who are you who are saying that it's now vital to use a VPN I have to ask: Why weren't you running a VPN already? This was a vote to head off the implementation of a regulation that hadn't gone into effect already.

I also found it quite shocking at the sheer volume of requests for VPN guidelines; something I already take for granted. Just when I thought 2013 A.D changed everything.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#406
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutism is irrelevant. What matters is whether his assertion is true: are both parties' policies toward the Internet a problem?

No, what matters is tradeoffs. Is one party's set of policies far more problematic than those of the other party?

"The lesser of two evils" is an important consideration in who to support politically, but the "absolute values" are even moreso--otherwise you're merely being blown about by trends, only ever getting closer to good policy by chance, rather than actively pursuing good policy. If neither party's policies are good, that absolutely matters.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I think you have to change the dynamics. Voting ought to better capture citizens preferences, it like we vote with one hand tied behind our backs. Why can't we at least rank the candidates?

Too complicated. Approval voting is much simpler than ranked-choice, and more appropriate for the general public.

The problem with approval voting is that game-theoretically it devolves to plurality voting once everyone understands the system. Approval voting violates the later-no-harm principle: indicating approval for secondary candidates can harm the chance that your primary candidate is elected. Knowing this, why would anyone approve of more than one candidate?

http://www.fairvote.org/why-approval-voting-is-unworkable-in...

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I think you have to change the dynamics. Voting ought to better capture citizens preferences, it like we vote with one hand tied behind our backs. Why can't we at least rank the candidates?

Too complicated. Approval voting is much simpler than ranked-choice, and more appropriate for the general public.

Ranking by preference isn't exactly hard. Most 18+ year olds can handle it.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#409
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC did regulate ISPs, until they sued AT&T over their "unlimited" claims and lost in appeal. In losing, they actually lost the ability to regulate ISPs at all. AT&T wanted this. Here's the ruling: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/08/29/1... Seeing this coming, FCC proposed privacy rules around the same time: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-39A1_Rc... Which did go into eff…

Selling your customers’ private browsing data constitutes speech… Wow. Just wow.

Yeah that statement makes it sound like everyone is using their browser in a public park on a 60' projector making it available for the ISP to sell.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#410
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely something worth pushing for, if you're an American. Figuring out how to shift our system into one where viable third parties can play ball would be frigging grand . I'd like to see the GOP split into the 2-3 parties it shelters, and the Democrats go their 3 or so ways as well. I'd bet it'd significantly stabilize US policy and reduce the zero sum power plays that are becoming quite common.

If you want that, push for your local voting to switch to approval voting. That's the #1 thing that will enable more parties.

just found out about "approval voting" last night, so i'm experiencing baader-meinhof thanks to your comment. found out that The ACM and IEEE use this type of voting system (i think), and maybe there are some scientists out there that could start spreading the word about this form of voting.
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