[HN Gopher] Sci-Hub Is Now on the 'Uncensorable Web'
___________________________________________________________________
Sci-Hub Is Now on the 'Uncensorable Web'
Author : rasengan
Score : 724 points
Date : 2021-01-12 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nasdaq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nasdaq.com)
| sumanthvepa wrote:
| All very nice. But SciHub doesn't seem to resolve.
| walrus01 wrote:
| People have been trying to make alternative DNS name systems and
| alternative root nameservers a thing for 20+ years now.
|
| Has never caught on. On the other hand I 100% endorse sci-hub
| having a presence as a tor service.
| troquerre wrote:
| Handshake has a number of mechanics built into it that I think
| give it a stronger chance of succeeding than previous attempts.
| It's similar to how there were numerous failed digital currency
| attempts before Bitcoin figured out all the mechanics necessary
| for success. Some of these mechanics are:
|
| - There is no centralized party that owns Handshake. This
| allows for any party to step in and contribute to the protocol.
| We've already seen this play out in building Namebase (I'm the
| CEO) as numerous unrelated parties have come together to
| further Handshake adoption
|
| - It's not just about opening up the TLD namespace. Handshake's
| main technical goal is to improve the security and censorship-
| resistance of DNS by shifting the root of trust from CAs to a
| distributed ledger. My article on the technical improvements
| Handshake can provide was previously discussed on HN [1]
|
| - TLDs aren't sold for a set price. There's a vickrey auction
| which awards the TLD to the highest bidder. This creates a
| better distribution of names than selling at a set price or to
| the first buyer
|
| - The Handshake coin (HNS) provides an incentive for miners to
| provide security to the network and for holders to support
| ongoing adoption of the protocol, similar to how Bitcoin
| holders have put in massive efforts to evangelize it (I
| recognize that on HN people may find the Bitcoin evangelists
| annoying but I believe Bitcoin wouldn't be where it is today
| without them)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995969
| walrus01 wrote:
| > - TLDs aren't sold for a set price. There's a vickrey
| auction which awards the TLD to the highest bidder. This
| creates a better distribution of names than selling at a set
| price or to the first buyer
|
| for real money, USD or EUR or such? where does this money go?
| or do you have to first mine some cryptocoin, or buy it with
| real money, and it then goes to the entity 'namebase'?
|
| scroll down here to the 'how it works':
| https://www.namebase.io/
|
| this quite honestly looks really sketchy to me. I'd much
| rather take my chances with registering a domain name among
| the myriad of ICANN root nameserver gTLDs and ccTLDs than buy
| some weird, obscure cryptocoin, which can then be used to buy
| 'domain names' that only 0.000001% of the client devices
| presently operating on the planet can successfully resolve
| into IPs.
|
| https://learn.namebase.io/starting-from-zero/buy-hns
|
| all of this just looks like somebody has grafted 'blockchain'
| and 'crypto coins' onto the same alternative root DNS ideas
| that failed twenty years ago:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
| troquerre wrote:
| Great question. All Handshake names are registered with HNS
| through the auction process. Say you bid 1000 HNS on a name
| and I bid 900 HNS. You'd win that name and pay 900 HNS (the
| second highest bid price. Importantly, that fee doesn't go
| to Namebase or any other entity -- the coins are burned on-
| chain so they go to no one.
| walrus01 wrote:
| uhhh, so I'm looking on the website right now, and it
| wants a scan of my passport or photo ID for the privilege
| of buying a virtual cryptocoin, that can be used for
| purchasing domain names almost nobody can currently
| resolve, which vanishes into thin air after the purchase?
| am I getting that right?
|
| "Purchasing HNS with USD is currently limited to those
| with a US passport or ID."
| troquerre wrote:
| Namebase is a service built on top of Handshake similar
| to how Coinbase builds on top of Bitcoin. It's an
| incorporated company that has to follow normal AML/KYC
| laws like other onramps. You don't have to go through
| Namebase to get HNS. Also, you can buy HNS with BTC
| without KYCing on Namebase. You can't sell or transfer
| the HNS without KYCing but you can still register names
| and transfer the names to other wallets without providing
| any passport info.
| mcdevilkiller wrote:
| Can you explain how that works?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >There is no centralized party that owns Handshake.
|
| Historically, blockchains haven't been terribly firm on the
| "irreversibility" point. Ethereum reversed the DAO
| transactions. The BTC rollbacks in 2010 and 2013. Etc etc.
|
| In practice, whoever owns the client update server and
| whoever has 51% of the hashing power can make arbitrary
| changes to the chain. For most cryptocurrencies, a meeting of
| these stakeholders could fit into a phone booth.
| troquerre wrote:
| You're right that Handshake can suffer from a 51% attack
| like other proof-of-work chains. Importantly, the security
| of DNS records on Handshake is strong even with the
| possibility of a 51% attack.
|
| 51% attacks on blockchains used as a store of value are bad
| because an attacker can spend their coins (ie BTC) on an
| exchange, withdraw their profits, then perform a 51% attack
| on the previous block to take back their spent coins.
|
| On Handshake, that same attack exists for HNS, but DNS
| updates on chain take 36 blocks (about 6 hours worth of
| transactions) to propagate, which is significantly more
| expensive and unlikely than pulling off a normal 51% attack
| on a single block (it gets exponentially more unlikely).
| Furthermore this wouldn't even be an attack per se. An
| attacker may be able to undo a DNS update, but they
| wouldn't be able to falsify DNS records because only the
| owner of the name who controls the private key would be
| able to submit valid UPDATE transactioins.
| Fnoord wrote:
| .onion caught on.
|
| Plus there's a myriad of questionable TLDs. In my world _these_
| are 'alternative DNS'.
|
| Also, something like DNSCrypt can work for clients regardless
| of DNS root servers.
|
| I get what you mean though, and in that regard you're right.
| input_sh wrote:
| IMO not enough "useful" content is not reachable via "normal"
| DNS for anyone to care about the alternative DNS systems.
|
| Sure, sites like TPB and Sci-Hub need to switch to a different
| domain from time to time bringing some annoyance to their
| users, but that's about it. Only if all domain registrars at
| once started actively removing "shady" domains would an
| alternative DNS ever come to spotlight.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Also, wouldn't those in audiences for sci-hub be motivated
| enough to trade in direct IP addresses?
| generalizations wrote:
| Seems like sci-hub might be the tipping point for useful
| content on alternative DNS.
| dempseye wrote:
| Not much useful content needs it. The intersection of
| "universally criminal, such that it requires a censorship-
| resistant DNS alternative" and "valuable enough that normal
| people want to see it" is very very small.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| What about individuals living under a dictatorship or
| within a regime that censors political speech? I could see
| there being billions of people in the world that would
| benefit from an internet that resists censorship.
| xyst wrote:
| Instead of having it persist as a service on a laughably slow
| network, why can't we use this outrage to galvanize the public
| to lobby for change of a broken system?
| azernik wrote:
| I am continually shocked that sci-hub still does not have a
| working .onion address.
| teekert wrote:
| Hmm, this [0] used to work for me but doesn't load atm. What
| happened to it? Wikipedia also mentions a or website (without
| an address).
|
| [0]: scihub22266oqcxt.onion
| azernik wrote:
| I don't know, hasn't worked for at least a year.
| troquerre wrote:
| CEO of Namebase here. We posted the original tweet announcing the
| news[1]. If any of y'all have questions about how sci-hub.hns
| works or how Handshake works in general I'll be online today to
| chat!
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/NamebaseHQ/status/1348707701744922625?s=...
| Paul-ish wrote:
| Whats the easiest way to resolve handshake names locally
| without a 3rd party gateway? Is there a FF extension I can use,
| something that doesn't require a lot of configuration?
| nickodell wrote:
| How does your service differ from NameCoin?
| Hizonner wrote:
| It's more profiteering-oriented.
| troquerre wrote:
| Handshake has taken a lot of lessons from previous attempts
| at alternative blockchain DNS roots like NameCoin. Here are
| some ways its different:
|
| - Handshake names are not *.bit domains like NameCoin they're
| actually top-level domains. This is because Handshake's
| purpose is not to decentralize domain names per se but too
| decentralize the root zone and create a more secure root of
| trust than Certificate Authorities [1]
|
| - Handshake name auctions were spread out over the course of
| the first year after launch to prevent early adopters from
| hoarding all the good names. For instance, .crypto was
| available in the first few weeks after launch but
| .information isn't available until next week. This is
| important because early adopters hoarding names prevents
| latecomers from supporting the protocol.
|
| - Handshake names are sold via vickrey auction instead of a
| flat fee. Different names are more valuable than others. Flat
| fee pricing allows a hoarder to arbitrage that fact by being
| first whereas auction pricing ensures that names are better
| distributed. .X sold for 311k HNS[2] (about $40k) whereas
| other names sell for a few cents.
|
| - Handshake has a light client[3] that can trustlessly verify
| DNS records on-chain. This is critical because very few
| people run full-nodes, so without a light client the majority
| of users would rely on third parties which provides worse
| security than users resolving names in a decentralized manner
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995969 [2]
| https://namebase.io/domains/x [3]
| https://github.com/handshake-org/hnsd
| Hizonner wrote:
| They're not top-level domains until most people's clients
| resolve them as such. They're off to the side in a niche
| name space that most people don't know about, and to which
| you have provided a brittle gateway that doesn't even
| present them as top-level.
|
| ... and they have a million other little niche name spaces
| to compete with to reach the point of serving as "top-level
| domains". I can create my own alternate name space, too,
| and nobody will care about mine, either.
| troquerre wrote:
| They're top-level domains on an alternative root but that
| doesn't make them not top-level domains.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| I fully expected a TOR or I2P address... do they have one?
| pluc wrote:
| > sci-hub.hns/ could not be resolved by HNS.to. Please try
| another Handshake resolver..
|
| Can't censor what you can't reach, checkmate.
| rasengan wrote:
| Resolves for me:
|
| $ host sci-hub.hns
|
| sci-hub.hns has address 186.2.163.57
| pluc wrote:
| Doesn't resolve for me on Cloudflare DNS:
|
| $ host sci-hub.hns
|
| Host sci-hub.hns not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
|
| And the web frontend is unable to render anything, echoing
| that message I quoted above.
| [deleted]
| rasengan wrote:
| Cloudflare doesn't yet resolve handshake names, but
| hopefully this changes soon.
|
| Paging @jgc !
| [deleted]
| zoobab wrote:
| Next step is to censor the IP address.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| This article (really it's more of a press release from the
| interested parties) seems to confuse the role of DNS from the
| role of certificate authority, making it hard for me to
| understand what they're talking about.
|
| These days sometimes the same entities provide both SSL
| certificates and DNS, but they are different services.
|
| > Handshake is "is effectively a decentralized domain name
| server," Roquerre said. Instead of using the web-standard
| certificate authority to authenticate user connections to a
| server, Handshake stores references to the IP address of the
| websites registered in its system. Namebase is a platform that
| offers users access to the Handshake network
|
| That makes no sense at all. But it sounds like handshake is
| simply an alternate DNS protocol? Or does it also serve as a
| certificate authority somehow? Is it actually more decentralized
| than DNS (which is already of course decentralized in one axis,
| but not the relevant one for keeping a lookup available if the
| entity hosting DNS decides to remove it).
|
| Very confusing.
|
| It seems like tor .onion address would be an actually mature
| solution to this problem, instead of this thing that seems like
| press release babble?
| troquerre wrote:
| The article has a few technical mistakes in it (I've found most
| publications do that when it comes to a technical subject I'm
| familiar with...), but in short Handshake is an alternative
| decentralized DNS root hosted on a blockchain. It aims to
| replace Certificate Authorities as the root of trust by pinning
| TLSA keys directly on the blockchain instead of relying on
| trusted parties for verfication.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| So it aims to replace both DNS (a way of looking up IP
| address for a hostname) as well as certificate authorities (a
| way of knowing if the SSL cert being used by your connection
| is 'good')?
|
| Its an alternative DNS, with a method to use that alternative
| DNS as a way of authorizing ssl certs too?
| troquerre wrote:
| That's right! Though the infrastructure for HTTPS without
| CAs on Handshake is still nascent (the community welcomes
| contributors if you're interested!). This article covers
| how to set up HTTPS on Handshake using DANE
| https://medium.com/@ca98am79/how-to-view-dane-tlsa-
| websites-...
| rhacker wrote:
| decentralized in the sense of not under the control of one
| organization.
| buffrr wrote:
| I think what they meant is that with decentralized DNS, it is
| possible to replace certificate authorities by using DNSSEC +
| DANE RFC6698[0], but I agree the way it's mentioned is
| confusing.
|
| [0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6698
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| ok. obviously you can replace cert authorities with those
| systems on present DNS too, it doesn't require a "(more)
| decentralized DNS", right?
|
| Replacing cert authorities with something DNS-based (or
| alternative decentralized DNS based) doesn't actually seem
| relevant to the problem they are highlighting, of sci-hub's
| DNS records being removed by private or government actors
| making it harder to find sci-hub... no?
| buffrr wrote:
| To answer your first question, with the present DNS, If you
| use DANE, the trust is centralized since you have to trust
| the root DNS keys and the registrar (imo still better than
| trusting a large number of CAs. letsencrypt already relies
| on DNS to issue certificates).
| leephillips wrote:
| I agree. I found the article pretty incoherent, and gave up
| after a few paragraphs.
| rasengan wrote:
| > But it sounds like handshake is simply an alternate DNS
| protocol?
|
| Handshake [1] is the next generation of DNS, as opposed to the
| ICANN controlled legacy system. It is more decentralized since
| a single actor does not control the system. You cannot be de-
| platformed without the consensus of the community and a fork,
| as opposed to a decision made by a single or small group of
| actors.
|
| > Or does it also serve as a certificate authority somehow?
|
| Since you can verify a certificate against a DANE TLSA record
| which is retrievable from a DNS zone with DS records stored on
| chain, the CA is no longer required for trust -- only
| cryptography. Checkout the paper which goes into far more
| detail [2]. The entire system actually incentivizes the
| Internet to become more secure -- which is pretty exciting!
|
| > Is it actually more decentralized than DNS
|
| It's more decentralized than DNS in that the root becomes the
| blockchain instead of ICANN. This project simply finishes the
| beautiful DNS ecosystem, which was already decentralized, other
| than the root.
|
| Now we are all root, democratically.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3QbXMFjro0
|
| [2] https://handshake.org/files/handshake.txt
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This appears to be just another commercialisation of domain
| names, trying to create another "Gold Rush" for the most sought
| after "vanity" names. Winner-take-all. A few profit at the
| expense of the many.
|
| It perpetuates that problem of ICANN DNS becoming a "business"
| instead of solving it. (ICANN DNS domain names were originally
| free.) The potential for censorship is only one problem of
| ICANN DNS.
|
| Also, this project introduces a new problem of wasting energy
| on mining tokens.
| rasengan wrote:
| > This appears to be just another commercialisation of domain
| names, trying to create another "Gold Rush" for the most
| sought after names. Winner-take-all. A few profit at the
| expense of the many.
|
| This is a major problem that the project has made a sincere
| attempt to address. Through scarcity certain sybil
| protections are afforded, which has been inherently
| architected into the consensus protocol [1]. Additionally, an
| airdrop to many internet pioneers and open source developers
| was built in as well, giving everyone similar resources to
| participate in the auction system which, in turn, affords
| everyone more equality in participation. Finally, the top
| 100k names as per alexa were pre-reserved for the holders in
| the alexa list, and these sites are incentivized to properly
| setup DNSSEC, as that's the only way they can claim their
| name on handshake.
|
| This is a win for internet security and internet users. It's
| absolutely a big win for freedom of speech.
|
| [1] https://handshake.org/files/handshake.txt
| notorandit wrote:
| ... untill they take down those "root servers".
|
| There's alaways a way to kill an online system!
| workOrNah wrote:
| And just like that, free speech is back
| yters wrote:
| Not sure about sci hub, but these open archive like arxiv and
| bioarxiv are still biased. I know one world renown scientist who
| cannot submit his article to bioarxiv even though Nature has no
| problem with his paper (but won't publish it either). The paper
| points out a certain bacteria did not in fact evolve the ability
| to consume the synthetic compound nylon, since the relevant
| genetic material existed before nylon had been invented, which
| can be easily demonstrated with a BLAST search.
| aj7 wrote:
| It's not pirated. The vast majority of this research has been
| paid for by the public. Eykaban is a hero, and has liberated it.
| Aaron Swartz died for this cause.
| justmyname wrote:
| One correction. Her surname is Elbakyan.
| BrawnLongHaul wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I had heard of Handshake before but forgot
| about it. After the events of the past few days by so-called "big
| tech", I will be looking into this more seriously.
| marvin wrote:
| We're inching closer to realizing the "reductio ad absurdum" of
| censorship.
|
| Someone actually got censored, and took "well, if you don't
| like how the DNS does things, you can just make your own!" as a
| literal challenge.
|
| Wonder if this will eventually lead to further fragmentation.
| Hopefully encryption will keep it out of the lowest levels of
| infrastructure, I'd hate to see separate fiber lines put down
| to share controversial communications.
| jquery wrote:
| I wonder if the author of xkcd is ever going to apologize for
| his comic on free speech.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Why would he? I think he's even more convinced of it today.
| "Free speech" is a pretty right-wing issue nowadays and
| people assume it's a dog whistle for hate speech. If you
| want to be a progressive leftist like Randall Munroe, you
| can't advocate for free speech without hurting your
| reputation in the current environment.
| the_af wrote:
| If this [1] is the xkcd strip we're talking about, and
| don't see how Randall Munroe isn't advocating for free
| speech, nor how it is a left vs right issue. He's simply
| saying "free speech means the government cannot arrest
| you for what you say", nothing more, nothing less. He
| furthermore argues that the right to free speech doesn't
| mean everyone else can't criticize you, have your
| shows/books/whatever canceled, shout you down, etc. He
| says "[free speech] doesn't shield you from criticism or
| consequences".
|
| Now, you may or may not agree with his position (I
| certainly don't agree with some key aspects of it) but
| Randall is explaining what free speech is, not arguing
| for censorship.
|
| The alt text is pretty thought provoking, too.
|
| [1] https://xkcd.com/1357/
| baggy_trough wrote:
| You are confusing the 1st Amendment with 'free speech'.
| Free speech is a value that is broadly applicable to
| society, far larger in scope than prohibition from the
| government.
| Karunamon wrote:
| A comic response to the original comic:
| https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-
| speech/in...
| metabagel wrote:
| I think this concept of freedom of speech is in
| opposition to freedom of association.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Society already makes inroads on freedom of association.
| Businesses aren't allowed to turn away customers based on
| race and so forth.
| the_af wrote:
| This is more like what I think, thanks for posting!
|
| I was merely correcting the misconception that Randall
| Munroe from xkcd doesn't advocate for free speech. I
| didn't say I agreed 100% with the comic itself, though I
| do find parts of it thought-provoking.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Free speech is a value that is broadly applicable to
| society, far larger in scope than prohibition from the
| government
|
| The idea of free speech is the ideas should succed or
| fail based on their ability to convince private actors
| tomhold and relay them.
|
| Compelling actors to relay speech they disapprove of,
| unless those actors are the State or agents thereof,
| generally violates that principal.
|
| Free speech is not an entitlement to third-party
| magnification of your speech, it is indeed the opposite:
| the idea that such magnification must be earned by
| convincing the party whose magnification is sought.
|
| "People who disagree with me aren't relaying my speech or
| speech I like" isn't a violation of free speech.
| the_af wrote:
| > _You are confusing the 1st Amendment with 'free
| speech'_
|
| I'm not Randall Munroe, how am _I_ confusing anything by
| simply explaining he doesn 't claim to be against free
| speech but rather is clarifying what he thinks free
| speech is?
|
| I'm ok if you disagree with him, but please don't make
| claims about what _I_ think, when I didn 't say what I
| think.
|
| I was replying to a comment arguing that xkcd doesn't
| support free speech because the author is leftist. I
| showed the author does support what he believes is free
| speech. That's all.
| jsonne wrote:
| I have no idea why you're being downvoted because you're
| completely right. The petty legalism around the issue
| does nothing to further the conversation. The 1st
| amendment is about the US government censoring people. It
| doesn't own the concept of free speech as a whole in the
| same way the constitution doesn't own the idea of God
| given rights, or democracy, or republic, or numerous
| other concepts mentioned.
| anonunivgrad wrote:
| The petty legalism is just a technique for people to stop
| thinking about their flagrant hypocrisy. As if the people
| screaming "they're a private business, they can do what
| they want" have ever entertained that as a serious
| argument for any other issue.
| jquery wrote:
| I'm sure the CCP finds the alt text pretty thought
| provoking, too.
| the_af wrote:
| I'm sorry, but "guilt by association" is not a compelling
| argument. If the CCP agrees with something, this alone
| doesn't make the something they agree with automatically
| bad. Also see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
| jquery wrote:
| They don't just agree with it, they explicitly use that
| alt text to justify their oppression.
|
| Also, I never made a "guilt by association" argument, you
| inferred it. You just committed the fallacy fallacy. Also
| see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
| morlockabove wrote:
| Free speech isn't synonymous with the first amendment.
|
| "Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences!" is
| one of the most infuriating lines I've ever had the
| displeasure to hear parroted. What else could it possibly
| be, but the general idea of not being punished for saying
| things? The only thing that matters to the principle of
| freedom of speech is those consequences.
|
| Who cares whether it's a government that decides that
| when you express a certain opinion, you lose your job- or
| twitter?
|
| Funny, but not surprising, how even self-proclaimed
| leftists will side with capital when it's treading on the
| right people.
|
| You might say "but you can't force people to
| platform/associate with those they find odious!", to
| which I reply 'of course you can'- there's laws against
| unlimited free association, with the argument that bulk
| group dynamics end up diminishing individual freedom on
| net.
|
| You might say opinions are a different category from e.g.
| ethnicity, as they can be changed, while race can't.
|
| In that case, in the future when we can change our bodies
| in a day, will it be alright if 'race', no longer
| existing as such, becomes as acceptably targetable as
| speech?
| the_af wrote:
| > _Who cares whether it 's a government that decides that
| when you express a certain opinion, you lose your job- or
| twitter?_
|
| I actually agree with you. I think the narrow definition
| that "only the government has the ability to censor
| speech" isn't useful, especially in an age where some
| businesses, platforms and corporations have so much
| power.
|
| I was just correcting the perception that xkcd had a
| comic "against" free speech (and because "he is a
| leftist"). It's not against free speech. The author
| clarifies what he thinks free speech is.
|
| Some people apparently thought because I linked to a
| comic to correct someone's claim about that comic, that
| said comic represents my opinion. Puzzling.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| If one is against freedom from (in this case corporate)
| censorship, one is against free speech. 'Explaining' that
| free speech is not actually freedom from (one's
| particular preferred form of) censorship is de facto a
| attempt to excuse that particular form of censorship from
| the general principles of free speech that would
| otherwise condemn it, and is therefore in favor of
| censorship and against freedom from censorship, aka free
| speech.
| ajkjk wrote:
| It seems more correct than ever, no?
| jquery wrote:
| No.
|
| It conflates the principle free speech with a narrow
| legal reading of the first amendment. Whether on purpose,
| or accident, I cannot say. The alt-text is also only
| illuminating in the sense that the CCP might heartily
| agree with it as well, as they see their crusade against
| free speech as nothing more than maintaining the public
| order and peace. In publishing the comic and leaving it
| up, Munroe has done more to damage the principle of free
| speech in the West than any opinion article I can think
| of, because it chains together several fallacies in a
| clever and funny way.
|
| A comic response to xkcd -
| https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-
| speech/in...
|
| A legal rebuttal to anybody thinking AWS's actions were
| legal (they were not, and hopefully a judge will agree
| soon) - https://cdn.pacermonitor.com/pdfserver/SGS7Z4Y/13
| 7165184/Par...
| ajkjk wrote:
| Hm, that fails to land as a criticism. Depends whether
| you're talking about (a) "free speech, the legally-
| protected institution" or (b) "free speech, your right to
| be awful and not suffer consequences". The xkcd is saying
| that people saying "but my free speech!" are defending
| (b) by describing it as (a), which it's not. That's
| basically true. Afaik the part xkcd definitely gets wrong
| is the part about "can't arrest you for what you say",
| which isn't really how it works (for instance
| https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-
| referred... discusses the case of how it enters into
| civil suits).
|
| Of course _philosophically_, yeah, the people who
| included (a) in the constitution were interested in (b).
| Everyone's on board with free speech as a concept here.
| But at some point if someone is yelling Nazi stuff, I'm
| gonna punch them for it. It's not a legal question at
| all; my actions aren't governed by laws, just what I feel
| is right to do. That is the same point xkcd was making. I
| don't know enough to say whether AWS or whoever has the
| same right because they are operating in a legal system.
| But as a _person_, yeah, I can do whatever I want to you,
| including 'show you the door', if you're awful.
| jquery wrote:
| > Everyone's on board with free speech as a concept here
|
| No they aren't, including you. I don't trust your
| judgement of who is a Nazi, and even if I did, I
| especially don't trust everyone who hears you say that.
| However, despite your endorsement of political violence
| (terrorism) I don't believe that it would be right for
| you to be deplatformed, especially if it's breach of
| contract (like what AWS is doing). Nor would I want HN
| taken offline despite them not moderating terrorist
| comments such as yours.
|
| Edit: you're confusing my clinical label of terrorism
| with name calling. I am not calling names, except insofar
| as I'm making a point about how easily it is to make
| content seem unacceptable when we strip away context,
| which is why due process is so necessary. We are all
| terrorists to some group, however disfavored... if child
| molestation was somehow legalized, anyone who attempted
| it would face severe extra-legal consequences for
| example.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I'm not asking you to trust my judgment of who's a nazi.
| I get to decide who I think is a nazi and do what I want,
| _as a person_, and so do you. Of course I will try to
| convince you that I'm right, but if someone's being a
| nazi and can't be convinced that they're saying nazi
| stuff and they get banned from society, that's their
| problem, not society's. They should have listened.
|
| The point is that while free speech might be protected as
| a legal concept, it's not protected as a personal
| concept. I espouse free speech, until someone really
| screws up and gets super evil, and then I don't want them
| to talk anymore (especially not to rally people to their
| evil causes). I'm not a government. And that's completely
| consistent with wanting a government/overall society
| which defends free speech.
|
| (also, you're not doing your argument any favors by for
| some reason calling me a terrorist. it's not even clear
| why you're doing that)
| samb1729 wrote:
| Can you please elaborate on what about that comic warrants
| an apology? I assume it is this comic[0] you are on about.
|
| [0]: https://xkcd.com/1357/
| metiscus wrote:
| I am coming to support the notion that ISPs and Internet
| Backbone providers should be treated as first class utilities
| like electrical companies and not be able to deny access
| except for things like non-payment. Otherwise we do run the
| risk of a physically balkanized internet.
| metiscus wrote:
| Stupid question, is this the issue that was at the core of
| net neutrality? I may have misunderstood the entire thing
| if so.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| it's related. ISPs and telecom in the US do not invest
| adequately in infrastructure, and the existing
| infrastructure is overloaded. net neutrality was all
| about how that infrastructure can be utilized; ISPs want
| to profit off the scarcity by allowing big companies to
| pay for priority so that their website would load faster
| at the expense of everyone else (big companies want this
| too, and they want it to be expensive, because that
| increases barrier for entry in a competitive space where
| they already have an upper hand), but the net neutrality
| laws used to prevent this sort of bidding for priority.
|
| some ISPs also wanted to sell "internet lite" packages
| that are cheaper and only allow you to connect to a fixed
| set of websites. presumably they would also take money
| off the back end from those websites that want to be in
| the list.
| skynet-9000 wrote:
| > some ISPs also wanted to sell "internet lite" packages
| that are cheaper and only allow you to connect to a fixed
| set of websites. presumably they would also take money
| off the back end from those websites that want to be in
| the list.
|
| In the U.S.? I thought this was only in India with
| Facebook's non-internet Internet.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| i'm not aware of any ISPs that have taken that step in
| the US, but since the 2017 repeal it is now a legal
| business strategy. it has happened in portugal (although
| that's irrelevant to US law) -- customers get a base
| package and need to pay extra for the "social media
| package" (which unlocks twitter and facebook) or the
| "streaming package" (which unlocks netflix, youtube,
| etc.) (this is on top of the subscription fees you pay
| for netflix, etc.).
| skynet-9000 wrote:
| This proves the point. It is legal, but no one even
| offered such a package.
| morlockabove wrote:
| You think they don't want to implement it in the US?
| skynet-9000 wrote:
| If they wanted, they could have done so.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| It's not a stupid question. In short, this is not the
| issue that was at the core of net neutrality. Sci-hub's
| repeated evictions from their rented, DNS-resolved
| internet names were done by the centralized parties that
| have technical control over the names, not ISPs or mobile
| data providers.
| clairity wrote:
| not even non-payment. poor people are disproportionately
| affected by non-payment cancellations. might be ok if it
| were means-tested, like only allowing non-payment shut-offs
| if the customer is above the mean income (even for small
| businesses).
| jawzz wrote:
| "Poor people are disproportionately affected by not
| having enough money to purchase things"
| hrktb wrote:
| In a number of countries there are legal provisions to
| prevent cutting access to vital resources for non
| payment.
|
| E.g. in winter times booting out renters or cutting
| heating/electricity is forbidden. Applying the same for
| internet isn't far fetched anymore IMO.
| clairity wrote:
| that's a _reductio ad absurdum_ via tautology, but the
| effects are wide-ranging and can include freezing
| /overheating to death (for instance) from not having
| adequate heating/cooling. that's inhumane and abhorrent,
| especially in the richest nations of the world.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| While I agree with you, that's something the US elites
| decided long ago they don't care about. Chilling, really.
| eli wrote:
| "alternative" DNS is hardly a new idea, it's just kinda hard
| to get it to stick.
| marvin wrote:
| I'm almost certain that a sufficient requirement for making
| it stick would be the existence of in-demand, legal/gray
| area (and objectionable) web content that is excluded from
| "legacy DNS", as the article's author poetically describes
| it.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Beyond those institutions that have a financial interest in this.
| What would be the motivation for someone like twitter to ban
| scihub?
| BrawnLongHaul wrote:
| We can only guess their motivations and who pulls their
| (Twitter's) strings behind the scenes. I am not sure that most
| of us here will ever find out.
| llcoolv wrote:
| And even if we do, we will never know for sure.
| balozi wrote:
| And even if we knew, we can never talk about it.
| zerkten wrote:
| > We can only guess their motivations
|
| I don't understand this perspective, but I guess my own is
| built from experience. We can never know exactly what Twitter
| discussed internally before taking this action, but there is
| lots of external evidence and signals as to what happened.
| It's unlikely to be different from the action taken by most
| other corporations with legal teams.
|
| Small organizations with outside counsel can surprise us with
| their decisions since there are more concentrated opinions
| and higher risk taking. Perhaps GitHub and youtube-dl is the
| only outcome that has surprised me recently.
| zerkten wrote:
| Liability and risk management. As soon as a lawyer becomes
| aware of a situation where an individual is using the service
| they are required to act to mitigate risk. There is no
| obligation for anyone to have access to a private service and
| they'll be weighing factors which include what 3rd parties
| might do.
|
| In this case it seems that they would have considered the
| actions of the companies running the paywalls. How likely would
| they be to take legal action (not all of which is public)
| against Twitter? Fairly likely, if they feel that Twitter is
| helping to publicize the service they want to take down.
|
| This is both in the legal and financial interest of Twitter.
| There is no real blow back from kicking off this person and
| their service versus dealing with US corporations. Copyright
| law changes and the impact of court decisions likely play a
| factor too. I find it hard to believe that some court
| somewhere, hasn't held Twitter (or similar service) liable for
| indirect copyright damages (that is likely being appealed.)
| troymc wrote:
| Twitter says they did it "due to a violation of Twitter
| policies, in particular the Counterfeiting Policy."
|
| The precipitating event was a lawsuit in India and the
| subsequent reactions.
|
| This article gives more details:
| https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-sci-hub/
| acdha wrote:
| Elsevier and Wiley have a lot of lawyers who are likely arguing
| that leaving it up is condoning copyright infringement. There's
| a long history of threats for anything related to targets of
| these lawsuits, and other companies taking something offline
| quickly to avoid being caught in the crossfire.
| fjabre wrote:
| Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies
| punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that
| make the publication of research more open.
|
| The science should be funded and free. The applications of
| the science are where the money is to be made.
|
| These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era.
| It's time for them to fail and die off naturally. But it will
| probably take legislation to do so. And I for one can't wait
| to see them gone.
| chalst wrote:
| Biden has been very comfy as a senator with the expansive
| IP claims made by Hollywood. I think he is going to be
| something of a disappointment to you.
| fjabre wrote:
| That's unfortunate. Good thing he's really old with not
| much time left. Not that I wish him harm. He's certainly
| better than a lot of alternatives.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone
| era.
|
| Elsevier is a very diverse company with a lot of product
| offerings that are not antiquated. People here tend to just
| think of them as a journal publication company, but they
| are much more than that. The company sells (through
| subsidiaries) a lot of IT products to governments and law
| enforcement around the world.
|
| They, as a small example, offer a service that allow LEO to
| perform comprehensive background & arrest record checks on
| individuals in custody.
| fjabre wrote:
| Then Elsevier should be just fine when it loses this part
| of its business.
| mywittyname wrote:
| "That part of the business" is still a huge portfolio of
| product offerings in-and-around the scientific publishing
| space. If you cut one head of the hydra, another will
| just grow back in its place.
|
| The company came to be so dominant because their strategy
| of vertical integration is effective and repeatable.
| Identify a market of valuable information; build tools to
| collect & collate that information; build tools for
| searching through the information; build tools for adding
| annotations or otherwise improving the value of the
| information; build tools to enable people to provide
| information directly through the platform.
|
| They've basically repeated this pattern for science,
| medicine, legal, and insurance industries. So much so
| that it's really impossible to pry them out of a space
| because they get so tightly integrated that they actually
| become indistinguishable from the market.
|
| I'm not favoring reed elsevier here, just pointing out
| that their dominance is very well established and isn't
| going to be easy to bring them down.
| no-s wrote:
| >>Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these
| companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws
| passed that make the publication of research more open.
|
| "Yeah, meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."
|
| You write like someone who's never heard of "regulatory
| capture."
| fjabre wrote:
| You write like someone who's a cynic.
| no-s wrote:
| >>You write like someone who's a cynic.
|
| Guilty but history is on my side.
| shakow wrote:
| > Or at least laws passed that make the publication of
| research more open.
|
| Sci-hub was created under Obama, I don't remember neither
| him nor the party making anything to help them, quite the
| opposite actually: Elbakyan has been judged in absentia and
| sentenced twice under his presidency. Were she to put the
| foot on Western soil, she would pay it dearly thanks to
| this.
| fjabre wrote:
| Obama failed in this regard. But Obama does not represent
| all dems. Nor does Obama represent Dems in 2021.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Democrats are politicians with listed policies, not faeries
| that grant wishes because you happen to be more aligned
| with them. Elimination of copyright isn't on their to-do
| list.
| fjabre wrote:
| Who said anything about elimination of copyright? Who
| said I was more aligned with 'them' ?
|
| Most scientific research is funded with grants and by
| universities with billion dollar endowments. They are not
| struggling.
|
| You should not make money on the deaths of others because
| you think it's more important to charge for the knowledge
| that can save them.
|
| I'm in medical. Some of these papers are life saving.
| Please don't discount how valuable that science is to
| humanity as a whole.
|
| This is not about companies making profit. This is about
| science and the freedom of information. Data wants to be
| free and it should be.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| "Data wants to be free and should be" has been the
| rallying cry of software pirates since I've been in high
| school. It might have struck a nerve in a group of people
| who make money off of the sale of software.
|
| I'm not discounting how valuable open research is to
| society as a whole. I'm not even arguing that, as a moral
| right, the research should be freely available! I'm just
| not seeing a _technical_ path there that doesn 't
| retroactively unassign publishing rights to all past
| papers. And I don't see how a change in political
| administration makes it any easier to convince rich
| people to give up money.
|
| I'm not even convinced the government _should_ take
| action here - CS work is done on arxiv, so it 's not even
| as if Elsevier provides a useful service in distribution.
| Why are authors continuing to publish in Nature when they
| could put a PDF up anywhere? _that 's_ what we need to
| address.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these
| companies punished for their bad behavior.
|
| There's optimism, and then there is naivete.
| fjabre wrote:
| Yes there's also people who think they always know
| better.
| ketzu wrote:
| > These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone
| era.
|
| I personally believe this is wishful thinking (similarly
| when I read about how companies have "outdated business
| models"). Publishers sell prestigue and attention, and this
| can't easily be replicated, nor is it unnecessary. The
| increase in research papers makes them even more valueable
| in my eyes.
|
| This is despite me wanting to see many changes to
| publishing and science distribution.
|
| edit: removed part that I deemed unecessarily hostile.
| fjabre wrote:
| I think data wants to be free. Charge for the
| applications not the data. Data should be free.
|
| This saves lives. I think we can all agree there are
| certain things that are a benefit to humanity and we
| should place these things over profits.
|
| These companies are less valuable than they appear IMHO.
| These gatekeepers of knowledge. More like stonewallers.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Like how the opioid crisis was handled.. democrats and
| Republicans are exactly the same thing. American politics
| is WWE with old people in formal clothes..
| fjabre wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. However there are voices at the
| fringes getting much much louder on both sides who are
| definitely not the same thing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The Democrats are on Big Media's side even more so than the
| Republicans. Hoping that they're going to switch sides and
| "punish" big copyright and Media owners for their IP
| trolling and abuse is just wishful thinking.
| fjabre wrote:
| Not all dems.
|
| We all know what we got with the Republicans last 4
| years. Let's see what changed on the other side of the
| aisle if anything.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Not all dems.
|
| I know that we're not supposed to be snarky here at HN,
| but I'm failing to see how #NotAllDems is a sensible
| argument. Especially given President-Elect Biden's track
| record on this particular issue, and Vice-President-Elect
| Harris' history as a "hardline", "tough on crime"
| prosecutor.
| zoobab wrote:
| Finally some fresh air in this censorship atmosphere.
| eythian wrote:
| A note that if you use Telegram, there is @scihubbot which you
| can talk to and will send you papers if it can. In my opinion
| it's faster/easier than using a web interface also.
| oefrha wrote:
| > "The DNS is like a phonebook for the internet. The addresses in
| the phonebook are the server IP addresses. DNS was created to
| give IP addresses human-readable names so with our platform,
| you're finding the IP address through Handshake, _not through a
| certificate authority_ ," Namebase CEO Tieshun Roquerre told
| CoinDesk.
|
| (Emphasis mine.) Did this Namebase CEO just state on record that
| he doesn't know how DNS works?
| Confiks wrote:
| I think the more charitable explanation is that mainstream
| reporting often contains many misquotes, factual errors and
| omissions that you will only notice when you are knowledgeable
| about the subject at hand.
|
| To be forgetful or ignore this when turning the page regarding
| another subject on which you are less knowledgeable is known as
| the Gell-Mann amnesia effect [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
| emacdona wrote:
| Followed by this: 'Handshake is "is effectively a decentralized
| domain name server," Roquerre said.' -- thus implying that DNS
| is NOT decentralized? The article is pretty bad. For his sake,
| I hope they are taking his quotes out of context. Because I had
| a quick look at https://www.namebase.io/ -- and it does look
| interesting. It appears that they have decentralized the
| REGISTRY by putting it on the "Handshake" blockchain.
|
| Can I configure my resolver to use this "Handshake" blockchain?
| emacdona wrote:
| But now that I think about it, the registry IS already
| decentralized. IE: .com is managed by an organization
| separate from .org. And the whole reason for "renting" from
| .com is because .com owns the space. If you "buy" a TLD on
| the Handshake blockchain, do you lose the ability to rescind
| delegations under that TLD once people have "bought" them?
| emacdona wrote:
| Maybe the value is that b/c it's on the blockchain, you can
| see to which IP address a name referred to at ANY point in
| its (the name's) history?
| angio wrote:
| The creation of new root TLD is decentralized, you can
| request a new one and then a bidding process for it starts
| where everyone can bid for it.
| emacdona wrote:
| But you can buy a new TLD in the DNS, right? Granted, for
| more money and pending approval. How is the TLD you get
| from Handshake different? You still control it, right?
| And you have the power to revoke sub delegations within
| it, right? That's what's confusing me... the article
| seemed to indicate that by switching to Handshake, you
| won't get your name revoked ever again. But the detail
| that seems to have been left out is "... if you buy a
| Handshake TLD, as opposed to 'renting' space from a
| Handshake TLD holder".
| troquerre wrote:
| ICANN is expected to re-open TLD registrations in 2-3
| years but you can't actually buy a new TLD in the
| traditional system at the moment. Once the registrations
| open up, there's a $180k application fee (that's not a
| registration fee, you pay that whether you win the TLD or
| not) on top of the registration fee which can cost
| millions. Furthermore, ownership of the TLD is delegate
| by ICANN, which is a central authority as opposed to
| ownership of names on Handshake which are controlled by
| private keys that you control.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| This got me, too.
|
| >a privacy-focused, cloud-based domain name service resolver
| which converts IP addresses into domain names.
|
| Except for being privacy focused, this literally describes
| every domain name service in the Internet.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I notice that sentence too. Don't DNS servers convert
| domain names into IP addresses?
| jaywalk wrote:
| Technically they do both, but domain to IP is the vastly
| more common usage.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I think it's just answering the question in reverse. It
| converts an IP to a domain name in that you don't need to
| know the IP with DNS.
| dwiel wrote:
| This is a case where I find Vitalik's distinction between
| different kinds of decentralization useful. [1] Roquerre is
| talking about political or logical decentralization whereas
| you are talking about architectural decentralization.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-
| decentrali...
| conradev wrote:
| Yes! There are DNS bridges that read from Handshake's
| registry that you can use, like NextDNS:
|
| https://www.namebase.io/blog/how-to-access-handshake-
| domains...
| t0mbstone wrote:
| DNS isn't completely "decentralized" because it still relies
| on root name servers, which are controlled by ICANN.
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| DNS is _not_ decentralized in the sense that matters for
| censorship, which is the most important sense in this
| discussion. I don 't know anyone who believes DNS is suitably
| decentralized to resist censorship.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > I don't know anyone who believes DNS is suitably
| decentralized to resist censorship.
|
| Technically DNS-the-protocol _is_ suitably decentralized to
| resist censorship[0]; it 's the particular canonical
| infrastructure of the main DNS _system_ that 's the weak
| link there. (Edit: by which I mean I think emacdona was
| talking about the protocol in general, and if you meant to
| object to that admittedly-debateable choice of focus, you
| should probably explicitly point out the distinction
| between the protocol (that anyone can use) and the
| canonical system (that is run by (tautologically) malicious
| corporations).)
|
| 0: Although it could use some cryptographic additions for
| better security, and it has problems with global uniqueness
| in the face of malicious actors pushing records to the
| effect of "sci-hub.org IN A some.fbi.ip.addr". But if you
| can find a trustworthy (possibly-suffix-indexed collection
| of) root server to start from, the protocol itself works
| fine.
| emacdona wrote:
| Okay, but how does Handshake solve that problem? It seems
| like the answer is "everyone buys their own TLD", right?
|
| That works great until the only names that are left are all
| too long to remember.
|
| And if you buy space from someone else's TLD, well...
| you've just given someone the power to censor you.
|
| Or am I missing something here?
| troquerre wrote:
| There are two sides of censorship-resistance that are
| important when it comes to DNS. Censorship-
| resistance/seizure-resistance for owners and censorship-
| resistance for consumers.
|
| For owners, it's important that their domain names can't
| be taken down or seized from them. Sci-Hub has dealt with
| this issue numerous times and has had to register a pool
| of domain names to try too counteract this issue before
| getting their Handshake name. Domain registrars can seize
| domain names and there isn't much recourse for the owners
| -- it doesn't even need to be for a good reason[1]. On
| Handshake, ownership is controlled by your wallet's
| private key (similar to owning Bitcoin). As long as you
| control your private key no one can take your name from
| you.
|
| For consumers, it's important that you can 1) access the
| domain name and 2) trust that the DNS records you're
| seeing are authentic. Handshake is a distributed network
| so as long as you can connect to a single node you can
| access it. This mechanic is what gives other distributed
| networks like Bitcoin and BitTorrent their strength.
| Furthermore, you can verify the authenticity of the
| records since each DNS update is reflected on the
| blockchain similar to how you can verify transactions on
| Bitcoin.
|
| [1] https://www.izoologic.com/2018/12/20/zoho-domain-
| taken-mista...
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| > That works great until the only names that are left are
| all too long to remember.
|
| Do you really believe this is a serious problem? I don't
| think it is by any stretch of the imagination.
|
| ---
|
| > It seems like the answer is "everyone buys their own
| TLD", right?
|
| Yeah, why not? The conceptual distinction between a
| domain and a TLD isn't necessary. From the Namebase docs:
|
| > For instance, if you own "nakamoto" on Handshake, you
| can use "nakamoto" as a domain itself. In that case, you
| would point "nakamoto" to your website and visit it at
| http://nakamoto/ in your browser. You can also use
| "nakamoto" as a TLD and issue your own subdomains. In
| that case you can create "satoshi.nakamoto" and visit it
| at http://satoshi.nakamoto in your browser. A Handshake
| name can be used as both a domain name directly and as a
| TLD at the same time.
|
| ---
|
| > And if you buy space from someone else's TLD, well...
| you've just given someone the power to censor you.
|
| Maybe? Buying from someone else's TLD isn't the point of
| Handshake, for the reasons I mentioned above. But if you
| wanted to buy a subdomain for some reason, and still
| wanted it to be uncensorable, you should buy one from
| someone who revokes their censorship capabilities
| programmatically.
|
| And that point is the big picture: reasoning about
| transparent code for very important things gives you a
| level of control you can't obtain through trusting
| people.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Ooof. blockchain
|
| https://xkcd.com/2267/
|
| https://xkcd.com/2030/
| z3t4 wrote:
| Newsletter quotes are guaranteed to not be what you said.
| troquerre wrote:
| Namebase CEO here. The article misquoted me (and some of the
| data I shared) in a number of places. See this tweet where the
| writer incorrectly stated that Namebase created Handshake when
| we only build on top of it (similar to how Coinbase builds on
| Bitcoin)
| https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1348801310498443264?s=20.
|
| I'm happy to talk through how Handshake works if you have any
| questions about it. I also wrote an article on how Handshake
| can improve the root of trust for DNS which was previously
| discussed on HN [1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995969
| rasengan wrote:
| I think what he meant was that the domain resolution can be
| validated using the blockchain as opposed to needing a
| centralized/single actor certificate authority.
| dlor wrote:
| I think the point is that certificates are built on top of
| DNS, not the other way around. Domain resolution does not
| require certificate authorities.
| rasengan wrote:
| Exactly. It doesn't require strictly from a protocol sense,
| but from a security perspective you do want to validate
| certificates ON TOP as you said.
| [deleted]
| slightwinder wrote:
| What is wrong with that explanation?
| sudobash1 wrote:
| > The DNS is like a phonebook for the internet
|
| We are going to have to come up with a new metaphor soon. I
| haven't seen a phonebook in ages. Honestly I would be more
| likely to tell my kid "Phonebooks were like DNS for telephone
| numbers."
| blincoln wrote:
| It's for the best. A phonebook is a single list compiled by
| one organization. DNS is more like asking a librarian for
| information on a subject, and the librarian handing back a
| reference book. The librarian may or may not know anything
| about the subject, but they know where to go to find the
| information.
|
| Just like DNS: - Which librarian you ask can result in being
| pointed to a different reference book. - If the librarian is
| already familiar with the subject, they may be able to give
| you the answer directly to save time instead of pointing you
| to the reference book.
|
| The phonebook metaphor was a good one to give to completely
| non-technical people, but technical people used it as well,
| and so often didn't intuitively understand that DNS involves
| clients exchanging data with arbitrary servers on the
| internet, using their own DNS server as a proxy. As a result,
| they often leave s significant communication channel open to
| the internet even from supposedly secure environments.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > A phonebook is a single list compiled by one
| organization.
|
| There are mutiple phonebooks worldwide, each compiled by
| different organizations. There is just not one phonebook,
| similar to how there is not just one DNS-server.
| cratermoon wrote:
| For many years in the US there was THE phonebook
| published by the regional Bell Operating Company.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Exactly, regional. Each city/region has it's own
| phonebook and dialing-code. This is also quite similar to
| how DNS-hierachies&zones are working.
| vezycash wrote:
| Dns is like contact app that's managed by a central
| authority.
| blincoln wrote:
| But it's not. Only the first tier of servers is managed by
| a central authority. Everything else is delegated to tiers
| further down the tree.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _" Phonebooks were like DNS for telephone numbers."_
|
| thanks I'll be stealing this quote 100%.
| eternalban wrote:
| The word you are looking for is 'directory'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory
| ghaff wrote:
| "Telephone directory" is a term that pretty much no one
| uses for phonebook.
| shripadk wrote:
| I'm a 90s kid. From India. Always called it Telephone
| Directory. We also called it Yellow Pages.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US, in larger cities, you'd have separate "white
| pages" (aka the phonebook) which lists just names and
| addresses and "yellow pages" which had business listings
| and ads. In smaller locations, they were often combined
| into one with both white pages and yellow pages in the
| same book.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I'm not sure what the GP means by it being the metaphor
| to replace phone book ("contacts app" would be my off-
| the-cuff suggestion), but I'm not that old and I've heard
| it referred to as a directory. I haven't heard it
| _recently_ , but that has more to do with the disuse of
| phone books, I think. Maybe it's a regional thing?
| ghaff wrote:
| >Maybe it's a regional thing?
|
| That is probably fair. Anywhere I've lived in the US,
| someone would know (well, maybe not if they were young
| enough) what you meant by "telephone directory" but
| almost everyone would say "phonebook" at least in casual
| conversation. It's also true that when you would dial 411
| for a number, that was called directory assistance. (And
| a listing of phone numbers for the staff in an
| organization would probably be called a staff directory
| or a telephone directory or something along those lines.)
| Symbiote wrote:
| Unless you're an expert on worldwide English use, it's
| best not to make such sweeping generalizations.
|
| A straightforward search for the term brings up large
| sites in the UK, India, Malta and Hong Kong. "Directory
| Enquiries" was (is?) the name for the service in the UK
| where you pay a fee for someone to look in the telephone
| directory for you.
| monocasa wrote:
| Tell that to Active Directory.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| > A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book,
| telephone address book, phone book
|
| "Phone[ ]book" is the 12th word on the page you linked, and
| described there as a synonym to "directory". There's no
| need to be that pedantic.
| eternalban wrote:
| It is not "pedantic", rather literate, to note the word
| directory instead of grasping for DNS.
|
| "A telephone book was a directory for telephone numbers"
| is clear and accurate. Unless knowing what the word
| "directory" means is asserted to be the domain of
| pedants.
|
| _" By providing a worldwide, distributed directory
| service, the Domain Name System has been an essential
| component of the functionality of the Internet since
| 1985._"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System
| xnyan wrote:
| >It is not "pedantic"
|
| It's quite pedantic.
|
| I'm the same way, here's an interpersonal relationship
| tip I've had to learn: If someone calls you an asshole,
| you can't say "No, I've thought about it and you're
| wrong, you don't really think I'm an asshole." Well, you
| can say that, but it just makes you come off as even more
| of an asshole.
| jessaustin wrote:
| That escalated quickly.
| jcytong wrote:
| > "Phonebooks were like DNS for telephone numbers."
|
| A floppy was like the save icon on old software. :)
| a1369209993 wrote:
| "Why do you have a bunch of 3D-printed save icons on your
| desk?"
| vagrantJin wrote:
| "Oh cool, are those real save buttons?"
|
| I suspect these jokes are more reality than we think.
| llcoolv wrote:
| It is worth noting that this is exactly what Aaron Swartz was
| bullied to his tragic death 8 years and a day ago. May he rest in
| peace. And kudos to Alexandra.
|
| P.S. Corrected the date, seems like I still live in 2020. Thank
| you, lazyant.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Reddit has conveniently left him out of their about page,
| despite being a cofounder: https://www.redditinc.com/
|
| About Aaron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
| meragrin_ wrote:
| According to the Wikipedia page, he did not join Reddit until
| 6 months after Reddit launched. He was fired a year later.
| There is also a tweet from 2011 saying he was not a co-
| founder:
| https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/93374221685755904
| agumonkey wrote:
| Yeah I've dug a little and it seems Aaron got himself some
| idolizing 'free net knight' bubble distorting things a bit.
|
| He made a webapp, and partnered with reddit founders to
| maybe merge things but AFAIK conflicting (technical and non
| technical) visions made the next step impossible.
| cleansy wrote:
| Reddit's founders seem to be pretty spineless for doing so. I
| didn't even realise that they removed him..
| meragrin_ wrote:
| I don't believe the Reddit founders ever considered him a
| founder. Tweet from 2011:
| https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/93374221685755904
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| Aaron was arrested January 6, 2011. That tweet is from
| July 2011. Anyone who was active on both HN and Reddit at
| that time quickly saw the community divided around the
| issue.
|
| Then Reddit was still trying to figure out how to
| generate revenue years after a conde nast acquisition and
| you could tell that the "leadership" team very quickly
| wanted to distance themselves from any controversy.
|
| Anyone active on Reddit or HN in the early days would
| have been surprised to here that Aaron was not considered
| a cofounder. It wasn't until after his legal trouble that
| the Reddit team tried to distance themselves from him and
| an his cause as fast as possible.
| cleansy wrote:
| > For Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combination who worked
| with Swartz, Huffman and Ohanian, Aaron Swartz is right
| to call himself a Reddit founder.
|
| > Speaking on Reddit a few years ago, Graham said: "The
| company behind Reddit was a merger of two startups...and
| in that situation the founders of both startups are
| considered founders of the combined company." [1]
|
| sounds pretty clear to me..
|
| 1: https://www.thefocus.news/tech/aaron-swartz-reddit/
| ehsankia wrote:
| This may be unfair as Aaron isn't there to give his side
| of the story, but the way I understand is that the YC put
| these 1+2 people (who were all talented) together to help
| build reddit, but Huffman and Ohanian were far more
| interested in building reddit as it was originally their
| project and they had been working on it for 6 months, and
| it seems like Aaron wasn't as interested in it.
|
| So yes, while Graham did forcingly merge these two
| together, I don't think it necessarily makes Aaron a co-
| founder and contributor.
|
| EDIT: Just to add, Aaron's project was "infogami" which
| seems to be a CMS system, and I'm not sure how much of
| that actually contributed to reddit. It seems like his
| project was mostly scratched and the project that Huffman
| & Ohanian were working on ended up being the real
| success.
| Zak wrote:
| Early versions of reddit's wiki were more or less
| reskinned infogami.
|
| As to the co-founder question, Aaron was definitely a co-
| founder of the merged reddit/infogami company, but he
| didn't contribute much after that, leading to his
| departure. I think that, rather than any controversy over
| his arrest is why Steve and Alexis didn't really consider
| him a co-founder.
| dpritchett wrote:
| Here's Swartz detailing how Reddit was rewritten in his
| own Python framework a scant six months after launch:
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit
| llcoolv wrote:
| Well, they should not have given him such a job title
| then.
| gowld wrote:
| Suppose you get together with someone to found a company
| as cofounders, but then your cofounder nearly immediately
| leaves the company to pursue other projects.
|
| Why is it wrong to annul the designation?
|
| Swartz contributed technology (web.py) that Reddit used
| briefly, and deserves as much credit as other technology
| contributors of the same scale.
| adolph wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Wayne
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Sutcliffe
| shubb wrote:
| That doesn't seem to be a fair description - it seems
| like he originally ran a software house that were paid to
| build a lot of the original reddit, was acquihired and
| given the title founder, and then stuck with the company
| through acquisition before being re-assigned to another
| of the acquirers properties.
|
| Founder, not sure, but your narrative of someone barely
| involved doesn't stack up either.
|
| Also, early on, it seems he brought the technical
| knowhow, acting as an outside CTO, and also had high PR /
| name recognition value, so I think they owed him some
| recognition for sure.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Reddit seems pretty unprincipled in general. Their
| decisions wouldn't be so bad if they appeared to stem from
| a coherent principle but overall they seem to only be
| reacting and doing whatever is politically expedient in the
| moment.
|
| Not unlike most orgs I suppose.
| Bakary wrote:
| Sounds like a principle to me.
|
| edit: to make this answer less of a throwaway line: it's
| a principle that underpins most of the MMR-based ideology
| on this very same website and animates most of the tech
| scene in general, "making the world a better place"
| statements notwithstanding. How many of you here can
| genuinely pretend otherwise in your professional life? A
| portion perhaps, but clearly the minority.
|
| Beyond the simple cynicism of pointing it out, this
| principle seems to be quite stable and efficient in the
| face of an audience that shifts its priorities every two
| seconds. Perhaps the better question to ask would be why
| the system of incentives that we have cultivated rewards
| this behavior. The crowd rewards certain behaviors, and
| in an increasingly postmodern world moral statements are
| usually lost in the noise or take the shape of a parody
| of themselves.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| I view a principle as being a belief held that one will
| hold the line on, even if to do so would be potentially
| costly. A principle isn't necessarily popular or just.
|
| Optimizing for traffic, revenue, or whatever else is
| certainly a strategy but I don't think it's a principle
| in the sense of someone or some people having principles.
|
| And I would add that the effective output of such a
| strategy, if it were the behavior of an individual, would
| probably be described as sociopathic.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > I view a principle as being a belief held that one will
| hold the line on, even if to do so would be potentially
| costly. A principle isn't necessarily popular or just.
|
| To be scupulously fair, "never hold the line, especially
| if it would be costly to do so", is still a principle by
| that definition, albeit a vacuous one. Just like "zero"
| is a number of apples you can be holding.
| Bakary wrote:
| I agree with your general stance, but I do wonder if this
| strategy hasn't morphed into an ideology in itself or at
| least what we'd recognize as principles (which can indeed
| cost people by their definition, but not necesarily so)
| At least that is what I see with much of the content
| shared here. The world view that percolates across all
| those articles is one that praises hustle culture, a
| mechanistic optimization of life, rationality fetishism,
| "hacking" social relationships, founder/mogul worship and
| many other ideas that support entrepreneurial success as
| the fundamental arbiter of value and moral worth. I even
| saw a few people sincerely believing thar systemic
| poverty could be alleviated with some bootsrapped startup
| concept. Essentially a mix of sociopathy and technocracy
| that can also paradoxically function as a guiding light
| for non-sociopathic people.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| And they've explained this multiple times. Aaron was given
| the title of co-founder, but he joined well after the site
| had launched, and then proceeded to go AWOL and not work for
| months until he was fired. Given that he was only very
| briefly involved in the site, it doesn't make sense to call
| him a co-founder, even if that was his de jure title.
|
| E: At the same time, I feel like I should state - Aaron
| Swartz was a martyr, and I don't mean to disparage him or his
| legacy.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Ostrich effect at work. He joined a whole 4-5 months later.
|
| > Ohanian launched Reddit in June 2005.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit
|
| > When Infogami failed to find further funding,
| Y-Combinator organizers suggested that Infogami merge with
| Reddit,[32][33] which it did in November 2005, resulting in
| the formation of a new firm, Not a Bug, devoted to
| promoting both products.[32][34] As a result of this
| merger, Swartz was given the title of co-founder of Reddit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
| jancsika wrote:
| Tell me if I'm understanding this:
|
| A company with the mendacity to misrepresent an employee as
| a co-founder in order to attract said employee wasn't happy
| with that employee's performance. So they boldly refuse to
| continue misrepresenting him as a co-founder on their
| _about_ page.
|
| If so, I would like to nominate Reddit for the Silicon
| Valley Courage Award. (However, I think Facebook is the
| clear front-runner for clamping down on "Stop the Steal"
| disinformation now that both houses of Congress and the
| presidency are under Democratic control.)
| Technically wrote:
| I don't know why the term is so valuable. Musk went so far
| as to buy the title for Tesla.
| egroq wrote:
| > Aaron Swartz was a martyr, and I don't mean to disparage
| him or his legacy.
|
| Who killed him? According to wikipedia it was suicide. Did
| he have a mental issue?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| He was under threat of prosecution from the FBI.
| vmception wrote:
| US prisons are so full because people do the time.
| aplummer wrote:
| They're full because of the prison industrial complex.
| vmception wrote:
| and because people didnt commit suicide when the district
| attorneys and federal agencies came after them, which is
| my point
| krspykrm wrote:
| Industry has nothing to do with it. Every country has
| industry. The reason the US has so many in prison is
| because its people are the more hair-on-fire moralistic
| crusaders in the civilized world and they _want_ people
| in prison.
| aplummer wrote:
| Industry is not what the prison industrial complex is.
|
| The prison industrial complex is a deliberate lengthening
| of sentences and increasing of mandatory jail time for
| non-violent offenses designed to increase the for-profit
| prison population to increase profit.
| krspykrm wrote:
| "Prison industrial complex" is verbal sleight of hand to
| blame a system rather than people, but in reality these
| market forces are merely the revealed preference of what
| people want. If people wanted these inmates free - and by
| wanted I mean wanted in the revealed preference sense,
| not the virtue signal on the internet sense - capitalism
| would have them free tomorrow.
| egroq wrote:
| So he suicided without mental issues, just to "make a
| statement"? Sorry that's not a martyr.
| [deleted]
| egroq wrote:
| It is, but it's no excuse for suicide.
| Shivetya wrote:
| the pressure the US DOJ attorneys put upon him became
| unbearable. their high pressure tactics which involve
| piling on charges and threatening the target with so many
| years in prison as to be lifetime for some can had
| adverse affects on people. Sadly this is par for the
| course as the prosecuting attorney and their office do
| not get called to account for their methods or out comes.
|
| this is very difficult to correct as many times the
| target is politically acceptable to many and therefor
| they just give the DOJ free reign to apply it to anyone
| they choose.
| rmrfstar wrote:
| It's important to understand the historical context.
| Aaron was arrested in 2011, when a lot of other internet
| politics was happening. Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring,
| LulzSec (remember Fuck FBI Friday?), Wikileaks, SOPA.
| "The block was hot" so to speak.
|
| The attitude in DC was, "those people on the internet
| think they can do whatever they want, we'll show them."
| Well, they showed us and we lost a truly inspiring
| person.
| lazyant wrote:
| _8_ years ago
| calimac wrote:
| RIP Aaron Schwartz. You are a patriot for truth and freedom.
| jrimbault wrote:
| It's not about "patriotism".
| ainiriand wrote:
| A true hero that believed in a free internet and died because
| of his ideals.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| I read that he committed suicide after trying to steal a good
| chunk of the content on JSTOR and getting caught.
| alienlid wrote:
| Tweet thread on his death that was illuminating for me
| https://mobile.twitter.com/hides_minimally/status/1348704670...
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| It's ironic that the author is using the tragic and abusive
| results of authoritarianism as a means of advocating _FOR_
| the very authoritarianism that Aaron Schwartz opposed.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The tweet author? Nah.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The first Tweet attempts to coopt the memory of him to
| legitimize an unsubstantive jab in an ideological battle that
| is adjacent to academic literature. That's sickening.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| Yes, this bothers me so much about whenever people bring
| him up. He seemed like a brilliant, kind, and unique
| person, not just a totem of "our side vs your side"
| vixen99 wrote:
| He could be both unless someone actually says 'just ...'.
| llcoolv wrote:
| Yes, my interpretation of his actions is also way more
| moderate.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately deemed
| lawful.
|
| But, without passing judgement one way or the other,
| Aaron's beliefs about free speech and information freedom
| which informed his activism cannot be reasonably
| described as moderate.
| breck wrote:
| > cannot be reasonably described as moderate.
|
| I would agree with this. I knew Aaron, at least in terms
| of our mutual involvement in the intellectual freedom
| movement, and worked with him on various things (though
| not well, I was a pretty shitty python coder back then).
|
| His positions, like mine, were definitely in the
| "extreme", in the sense that 99% of people either 1)
| don't agree that we should abolish copyright and patents
| OR don't have an opinion on it.
|
| But there can be a negative connotation to the word
| "extreme" that I don't think applies here. Our stance is
| extreme in the sense that the Internet was extreme in the
| 1970's, or the Web extreme in the 1990's, or civil rights
| extreme in the 1950's, or women's right to vote extreme
| in the 1920's.
|
| Another way to put it: he was far ahead of our time on
| issues of justice.
| llcoolv wrote:
| I meant more moderate than burning a Target store or
| starting a revolution as in the tweet. And if we stick to
| objectivism, then they definitely are more moderate than
| even the status quo - semi-obsolete middlemen holding a
| rent-seeking/regulatory capture over some of the most
| important information available to mankind.
| [deleted]
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| > without passing judgement
|
| > cannot be reasonably described as moderate
|
| Are you aware that you're claiming not to pass judgement,
| and then do so in the very same sentence?
|
| I think it seems immoderate to you because, like many
| others on this website (including me), we were all on the
| inside of the knowledge-monopoly walled-garden that Aaron
| talked about, where most research isn't accessible to you
| unless you join the capitalist academia-industrial-
| complex (that last part is my own description, not
| Aaron's), such as attending a university with a huge
| endowment (Harvard and other Ivy League schools), or
| living in a tech-cluster that the government has invested
| in for many years (Stanford&Silicon Valley) - why else
| does the most 'exciting' research happen at private
| institutions like these?:
|
| _"The world 's entire scientific and cultural heritage,
| published over centuries in books and journals, is
| increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful
| of private corporations. Want to read the papers
| featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll
| need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed
| Elsevier."_ [1]
|
| What makes it so one person is allowed to privatize
| knowledge and charge another a rent to access it? Why
| have governments allowed this enclosure of the scientific
| commons (amongst others), which is really an inheritance
| that belongs to all?
|
| Privatization of knowledge is artificial scarcity that
| does not have to be there. It keeps the majority of
| society locked out, especially the working class, as well
| as people who live in the Global South.
|
| This beautiful story from a few days ago is just one of
| many that shows the incredible power of Sci-hub:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25685819
|
| I think that most intellectual laborers who themselves
| have conditional access to trade secrets and patents due
| to their employment with the capitalist/propertied
| classes (who are the so called 'owners' of this
| privatized knowledge), underestimate how difficult it is
| for others to follow in their footsteps, to try to copy
| what they did (myself included). In other words, we fail
| to see and acknowledge how much contrived scarcity is
| created by the US-'led' global Intellectual Property
| system and agreements, which allows capitalist firms to
| claim ownership of knowledge through trade secrets,
| patents and copyrights - which are then used to control
| where scientific research is done and where it is not. It
| ultimately holds back innovation, and the sharing of all
| kinds of emancipatory and empowering technologies locked
| up by capitalists under capitalism.
|
| The most violent and advanced form of this capitalist
| enclosure of knowledge is the criminal enforcement of
| 'trade secrets'. The use of this mechanism, and the state
| institution that allows it, is the biggest capitalist
| perversion of science and technological development
| humanity has ever seen. [2]
|
| Instead of contributing to firms and institutions that
| privatize knowledge, I hope we will continue joining in
| efforts to liberate science and technology from
| capitalism, creating an unconditionally available shared
| commons library that is accessible to all around the
| globe.
|
| As we are currently part of the small group of people who
| are privileged recipients of this inheritance, I believe
| we have no excuse to not contribute to this battle for
| universal access, on all fronts, especially considering
| the fact that digital technologies have brought with them
| the possibility for a zero marginal cost of reproduction
| of knowledge. Sci-hub and similar efforts are a fantastic
| start to this.
|
| For another strategy that helps reclaim technology from
| capitalism (and which really blew my hair back), check
| out the work of Bob Haugen, Lynn Foster and Pospi
| (Mikorizal) on Valueflo.ws / hREA. [3]
|
| [1] https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifest
| o/Goamj...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25447697
|
| [3] http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingto
| commons...
| alienlid wrote:
| This is great, thanks for writing this and citing
| references. Love the Manifesto that Swartz wrote
| gowld wrote:
| > His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately
| deemed lawful.
|
| Can you provide a citation of that? Swartz was
| overcharged, but clearly unlawful (a breach of contract
| at the bare minimum).
| criddell wrote:
| Isn't a breach of contract a civil matter rather than
| criminal? I don't think violating a contract is unlawful.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| With passing judgement: Not moderate, but sensible.
| jenwkejnwjkef wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty weird how he uses him to further left-
| libertarianism. How do you know Aaron Swartz stood for
| anarchism? He seems like anti-intellectual property to me,
| but you know right-libertarians oppose intellectual
| property too. I find it despicable to use someone to
| further an ideology without giving them the chance to
| actually state their own political beliefs.
| DeafSquid wrote:
| Who is shimmy and why should I care what they think?
| andromeduck wrote:
| It's a bit weird to blame capitalism when it was the state
| and not the actual IP holders that wanted to press charges.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Only after the IP holders contacted the state and told them
| a crime. had been committed.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Was he an anarcho-communist? Sounds dubious.
| obblekk wrote:
| I'm supportive of free distribution of scientific knowledge, BUT
| HN has a significant bias against believing in the power of legal
| systems.
|
| No matter how good the technology, it can eventually be censored
| if the law is strong enough.
|
| In the past, it was hard to separate "useful" internet activity
| from "illegitimate" because things were changing quickly. Today,
| a government might say its simply illegal to use end to end
| encryption without government ability to tap (with warrant and
| court approval) and even if you have innovative use cases that
| get killed, that's ok because 99% of the value of the internet is
| available.
|
| Some say that math triumphs law, but you can see with Parler's
| experience (ignoring political affiliation) that once a large
| group of people are organized against you, it's simply in
| feasible to rebuild decades of infrastructure in isolation.
|
| All of this is to say, it's a good start to restore sci hub, but
| it's important to win the hearts and minds of society and
| lawmakers to legitimize free information. Otherwise, eventually,
| it may become suppressed for practical widespread access,
| destroying most of the value.
|
| EDIT RESPONSE TO RESPONSES
|
| Thanks for the thoughtful responses. A few counterpoints:
|
| * *Past encryption bans didn't work.* Yes I agree. But I would
| argue it's because lawmakers of the 90s really didn't
| understand/care of the significance. Bans on pirated content in
| the 2000s worked well enough that my parents never really got
| into pirating, it was a young/hacker thing for the most part.
| Consider that just because hackers (in the PG/RMS sense of the
| word) can get info, doesn't make it as useful to society as
| everyone getting it.
|
| * *Parler's mistake was using AWS.* This is my broad point - it's
| impossible to be an island unto yourself. At some point, they
| have to use fiber laid in ground, buildings cohousing data
| center, electricity from the grid, peering, LTE networks, etc to
| transmit information. Either you argue that every single layer
| can be vertically integrated into a parallel universe of thought
| (which certainly doesn't sound friendly to new idea entrants) or
| acknowledge that we need some kind of rules to ensure equal
| access (requiring law or some other consensus mechanism).
|
| * *Law is different than public opinion.* Short run yes, long run
| not really. If the majority of people believe it's more important
| to police child porn than ensure distributed ownership of the
| internet (whether they can articulate it as such or not) that
| will be the direction of law. If most people don't care, but the
| ones working in lawmakers offices do, that'll become the law. The
| purpose of law is to formalize social conventions and uniformly
| enforce them.
|
| * *We can hack/route around law.* By all means, please do
| continue. My point is just to also view law itself as something
| that is malleable. Do both. Build censorship resistant tools, and
| advocate and change law to reduce censorship. Both are necessary,
| neither one alone is sufficient. Information both needs to be
| technically accessible, and actually widely available for a
| democratic society to function well.
|
| I appreciate deeply that HN as a community can have thoughtful
| discussions on this topic. I'm glad I found you all.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Legal systems failed often on internet topics and does so
| again. DMCA comes to mind. It arguably doesn't serve any
| constructive purpose. Some artist have been made believe they
| need giant content rights holders.
|
| I don't think any government could disallow end-to-end
| encryption at this point. I think they are careful because it
| could seriously undermine their authority if they fail, which
| they very likely would, which would lead to severe
| embarrassment.
|
| They could still do significant damage of course.
| hobofan wrote:
| > that once a large group of people are organized against you,
| it's simply in feasible to rebuild decades of infrastructure in
| isolation.
|
| Time will tell. Right we are on day 2(?) of Parler being banned
| from major platforms, and their main problems seems to be being
| banned from app stores and not necessarily infrastructure
| problems. thedonald.win seems to be doing just fine and Voat
| also seemed to sustain a significant userbase before shutting
| down (financing a platform is a whole other thing entirely).
| tsm wrote:
| They've been booted from AWS, which is a significant
| infrastructure problem.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| I think it depends on the goal of censorship. If you're trying
| to prevent a site (or service or group) reaching a certainly
| level of mass use then censorship definitely can work. There
| are a large number of piracy sites blocked in the UK by court
| order. The blocks are trivial to get round but they are
| probably effective for a good proportion of UK users.
|
| But if the goal of censorship is to completely prevent a leaked
| fact from being communicated - that's much harder (and I'll say
| it's practically impossible after a certain point).
| lucideer wrote:
| > _No matter how good the technology, it can eventually be
| censored if the law is strong enough._
|
| I won't repeat sibling commenters here giving examples of where
| this is not true (US encryption mainly). I'm wondering if you
| have any examples of where it is true. What has been censored
| effectively?
|
| As far as I've been aware, legal censorship has never worked.
| "Cultural censorship" (a.k.a. "taboo") can be quite effective,
| but I'm not aware of any examples where the law has been in any
| way effective at all in this area.
|
| > _you can see with Parler's experience (ignoring political
| affiliation) that once a large group of people are organized
| against you, it's simply in feasible to rebuild decades of
| infrastructure in isolation._
|
| There's two issues with this. Firstly, you're conflating "a
| large group of people", with "the law": these are not the same
| thing. Far from it.
|
| Secondly, Parler is not exactly a shining example of technical
| competency. I wouldn't hold them up as "the example" of
| technology -vs- legal censorship purely because there are much
| stronger/actually competent representatives of the
| technological side out there that would fair far better than
| Parler.
|
| It's also notable that many of the learned "techie" individuals
| who might rally to defend some other technology were it under
| siege from powerful state & corporate censorship, in this case
| actually rallied against Parler. So Parler were up against far
| more than just the forces of legal censorship.
| dash2 wrote:
| Not by censorship alone, of course, but here's J. S. Mill:
| "But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over
| persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men
| repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces,
| but which all experience refutes. History teems with
| instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed
| for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only
| of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least
| twenty times before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of
| Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola
| was put down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vaudois were
| put down. The Lollards were put down. The Hussites were put
| down."
| _jal wrote:
| Depends on what exactly you mean by 'censored'. You don't
| need to suppress every mention of something to have an
| effect.
|
| The most recent US example I can think of is that the Trump
| administration has been reasonably successful in suppressing
| hospital C19 images:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2020/12/27/covid-photography-
| hospit...
|
| But every administration in living memory (and probably
| without that qualifier, too) has suppressed something.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State.
| ..
| kofejnik wrote:
| > As far as I've been aware, legal censorship has never
| worked. "Cultural censorship" (a.k.a. "taboo") can be quite
| effective, but I'm not aware of any examples where the law
| has been in any way effective at all in this area.
|
| Sorry, but this is extremely naive. Russia routinely jails
| people for merely liking (not to mention, reposting) improper
| things on social media.
| endominus wrote:
| > What has been censored effectively?
|
| >As far as I've been aware, legal censorship has never
| worked.
|
| If you hold "worked" to the impossible standard of
| "completely eradicated its target" then no, just as basically
| no policy or initiative has ever "worked." Hell, polio still
| exists![0] By the much more reasonable standard of
| "suppressed the dissemination and popularization of its
| target" then there are a plethora of examples:
|
| - Libel and slander laws successfully limit outright lies
| reported by the media.
|
| - Various governments censor and punish criticism of
| themselves or specific officials.
|
| - Copyright law successfully limits propagation of media.
|
| - Certain content - typically sexual or graphically violent -
| cannot legally be broadcast.
|
| - You are legally barred from lying about, for example, the
| ingredients of a product you produce or its efficacy.
|
| - State secrets are heavily censored, and those who
| circumvent this censorship are heavily punished.
|
| Not to mention individual cases of censorship, such as
| whether a man may publish his own autobiography.[1] That
| particular case was eventually decided in his favor, but
| there was no guarantee of that.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/10/30/9290
| 806...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/20/concert-
| pianis...
| myWindoonn wrote:
| Sibling comments are being ignorant. The most famous born
| secret in the USA is how to make breeder reactors and nuclear
| weaponry; even if somebody independently rediscovers it, the
| government will censor them.
|
| But, that said, our profession has never attempted a
| revolution where we explicitly try to breach this born
| secret. It's not clear whether we'd succeed, and the victory
| cup is literally nuclear waste, so it's not exactly desirable
| either.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| To be fair, breeder reactors are used to _recycle_ nuclear
| waste. The secrecy around them is due to proliferation
| concerns.
| simias wrote:
| Squashing something completely is extremely difficult, but
| you can make it inconvenient and risky enough that most
| people won't bother. See the Chinese internet for instance.
|
| There's often this fallacy when discussing governmental
| action that if it's not 100% effective it's useless. It's of
| course not true.
| obblekk wrote:
| I agree that it's likely impossible to completely sensor
| information. What is much more feasible is to add so much
| friction/risk to spreading it, that it defacto is unavailable
| to 99% of people.
|
| I would argue that legalizing marijuana massively increased
| consumption (because so much friction and risk went away),
| legalizing encryption massively increased adoption on the
| internet (compared to a world where it was formally illegal
| and ISPs were used to enforce mandatory cleartext), bans on
| medical drugs without prescription have reduced how much
| people develop experimental drugs, bans on child porn have
| massively reduced number of people ever exposed to it, etc.
|
| I think most information bans can be enforced with such high
| effectiveness that it becomes difficult to consider a society
| in which that weren't the case. Much of "regulatory reform"
| is actually about legalizing and normalizing
| behavior/information that was always doable but banned.
| Rarely does the government invent a new type of behavior
| (patent law is a good example of that).
| root_axis wrote:
| > _doesn't sound friendly to new idea entrants) or acknowledge
| that we need some kind of rules to ensure equal access
| (requiring law or some other consensus mechanism_
|
| We used to have that, it was called "net neutrality" and it was
| killed by Parler's political party.
| rasengan wrote:
| I do understand your point, but it's hard to win the hearts and
| minds of anyone if you're censored and cannot be heard.
|
| Secondly, this is hacker news. Our culture is to route around
| these kinds of things. ;)
| d33lio wrote:
| I think it's fair to say that there's an equal belief
| implicitly _in_ the power of legal systems - but only when it
| 's convenient for a point OP is making.
|
| Thinking how a quick decision now will possibly turn in ten
| years down the road is how we can retain our rights but still
| move our democracy forward. A perfect example is championing
| the destruction and banning of all right leaning social media /
| twitter users... but when SciHub gets banned all the sudden its
| a travesty of free expression. Unfortunately, this line of
| reasoning is not a two way street. Even as a staunch liberal
| try my best to not let my anger at the other side get the best
| of me and play into the hands of the corporatists and statist
| who actually want to recreate what many refer to as fascism
| (melding of the state and corporate powers).
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| On the other hand, if you want to talk about the power of the
| law, you can look at the war on drugs. Billions have been spent
| fighting drug cartels in Mexico, tens (hundreds?) of thousands
| have been killed... And they unfortunately still manage
| regularly ship cocaine and meth to the US. For some people, the
| potential financial gain makes it worth the risk to dodge the
| legal system.
|
| Knowledge is maybe not as addictive as meth, and people may not
| be willing to make the same sacrifices to get it across, but
| the risk required to run an encrypted network without
| government approval, and the efforts the government is willing
| to take to squash it, are also less.
| srean wrote:
| My cynical view is that these laws are working as intended.
| wolco5 wrote:
| Encription was banned in the US but it didn't work out so well.
|
| Parler build itself on Amazon which was the big mistake the
| next company won't follow.
|
| It's a wakeup call to anyone using the cloud that one day it
| might decide you are not welcome.
| nathias wrote:
| Yea except its the same with servers, and if you host your
| own ISPs... we really need the cloud in space or somewhere
| else outside of the influence of countries.
| harperlee wrote:
| > Parler build itself on Amazon which was the big mistake the
| next company won't follow.
|
| There are servers you can host yourself, and there are
| networks (payments and communication) from which you can't be
| independent, in practice.
| llcoolv wrote:
| Even this you can overcome - there is always crypto and
| while you're ultimately dependent on communication
| infrastructure, there are ways to make it infeasible to be
| blocked.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| The risks of using cloud servers are now well documented,
| but, out of curiosity, do they extend to colocated servers?
| Do data centres turn a blind eye to their colocation
| customers?
| brazzy wrote:
| Most don't.
|
| Those that do command a premium ("Bulletproof hosting")
| ...and are sometimes shut down themselves:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberBunker
| Proziam wrote:
| Unfortunately, even if you go to extremes, all (ISPs,
| Browsers, etc) have to do is choose not to connect to you.
| shivpat wrote:
| Tor - there's always a way
| ghaff wrote:
| A very limited way. Ways for savvy individuals to
| secretively exchange information and communicate are one
| thing. Running a site that has a large data footprint and
| is intended to be accessible to a large unsophisticated
| audience is something else.
| bluGill wrote:
| The shut down silkroad. Or whatever it was that tried to
| use tor to anonymously allow selling illegal products.
| toolz wrote:
| Which has been replaced by bigger sites every time they
| are shutdown and often within the same month.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Boy, if only we hadn't insisted on browsers becoming so
| ludicrously complicated so we could kludge applications
| onto them we might be able to solve at least one of those
| problems.
|
| But I guess that plane has sailed. All hail the one true
| platform: Chrome.
| metiscus wrote:
| So long as there are open source browsers, involuntary
| censorship via the browser will be difficult. One can
| always fork and start again. The most real danger comes
| when utility functions like access to an ISP or internet
| backbone interconnection are threatened.
| nradov wrote:
| Encryption was never banned in the US. There have been
| restrictions on _export_ of encryption technology.
| programmarchy wrote:
| DeCSS, which was an algorithm that could decrypt DVD
| content, might be more apropros. Sites were being sued for
| hosting the DeCSS source code, and there was resistance to
| that like printing the code on t-shirts.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Wasn't it limited to only using weak form of encryption
| though?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That was due to the export controls. Basically, you could
| (as a US-based software provider) have a US edition that
| offered stronger encryption, but for anything _leaving_
| the US were limited to weaker encryption (principally
| measured in key size, not necessarily encryption method).
| If a user could verify they were in the US, then, you
| could offer maybe a 128-bit encryption package, but
| outside only 56-bit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from
| _th...
| some_random wrote:
| Unless you're talking about ham radio, encryption has never
| been banned in the US
| trianglem wrote:
| He doesn't know. All that comment is trying to get across
| is "woe is Parler"
| trianglem wrote:
| It's a wake up call to read the TOS and not promote what
| amounts to an open market for contract killings.
| darepublic wrote:
| This competition between technology and law is ongoing, and
| they effect and influence each other's development. Makes sense
| some people are more invested in promoting the strength of one
| force versus the other. A bit of a simplification, but I see HN
| as largely a place for people who believe in what technology
| enables (creative, individualistic, free expression) versus the
| law
| xyst wrote:
| Where is the effort to get these articles published freely
| without having a private entity act as a middleman?
|
| This problem of publicly funded research only available behind a
| paywall is a bipartisan issue. The main issue is that there
| appears to be no movement or effort to push this forward so the
| public is largely uninformed.
| [deleted]
| srean wrote:
| There are some comments here that note that sci-hub or Aaron's
| action on JSTOR data is/was illegal.
|
| Just leaving this thought out here -- if laws are considered
| unjust, it is ok, even noble, to break them. That is how one got
| rid of apartheid, how colonies became independent and LGBT
| marriages came to be legally recognized.
|
| If not for lawbreakers we would still be living in a world that
| approves of Turing's treatment post war.
| vinckr wrote:
| Restricting access to scientific material just to make money is
| holding us all back and I wouldn't consider people who leak
| such material criminals.
| mellavora wrote:
| Correction: restricting public access to scientific material
| paid for by public funds...
| Grustaf wrote:
| That's possibly true. It doesn't follow that all illegal
| activity is just though.
| toxik wrote:
| How fortunate that this was never claimed.
| dang wrote:
| Please follow the site guidelines when posting here. They
| include:
|
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| toxik wrote:
| I was not being snarky, I pointed out that the argument
| was made about a statement that was never made.
| dang wrote:
| It's fine to point that out, but the way you did it lands
| with me as snarky. There's a spectrum of how readers
| interpret such things (some would find it snarky, as I
| did, while others wouldn't)--but what's for certain is
| that the reader spectrum skews far more in that direction
| than commenters think it does. Objects in the mirror are
| closer than they appear. Since you only have to hit a
| small section of that spectrum to start a flamewar, we
| need comments to err on the side of not coming across
| that way [1].
|
| There's another guideline that helps with this:
|
| " _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead
| of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3"
| can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_
|
| Although "How fortunate that" isn't exactly calling
| names, your comment could have been shortened in just
| this way. "This was never claimed" would make the same
| point without hitting any of the snark spectrum.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disambiguate%20burden%2
| 0by:dan...
| green_on_black wrote:
| And the opposite is how Nazi Germany rose and continued.
| young_unixer wrote:
| And who decides which ones are _unjust_?
|
| I think intellectual property laws are always unjust, but most
| people disagree with me and they probably think that what sci-
| hub is doing is wrong.
|
| There are probably some murderers out there who think that
| murder is justifiable in some cases.
| bluesign wrote:
| I agree that "if laws are considered unjust, it is ok, even
| noble, to break them." But it is kind of dangerous position at
| the same time. I am sure, people who stormed the capital are
| sincerely believe that situation was "Unjust" for them.
| srean wrote:
| There are nonviolent ways to break the law, usually that
| suffices. In a democracy/republic it should then come down to
| the numbers.
| Funes- wrote:
| Why not host it on I2P, Tor, ZeroNet, etcetera? I'd like to see
| anyone trying to take it down permanently there.
| Triv888 wrote:
| Didn't last long?
|
| > sci-hub.hns/ could not be resolved by HNS.to. Please try
| another Handshake resolver..
| troquerre wrote:
| Per the announcement tweet [1], HNS.to is just a gateway with
| limited uptime guarantees. It's much better to connect directly
| via NextDNS.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/NamebaseHQ/status/1348707701744922625?s=...
| rasengan wrote:
| It resolves for me! Try installing a handshake resolver
| directly like hsd [1] for full chain or hnsd [2] for SPV.
|
| [1] https://GitHub.com/handshake-org/hsd
|
| [2] https://GitHub.com/handshake-org/hnsd
| tasuki wrote:
| http://sci-hub.hns/ resolves for me too, but I get a 503 -
| Service Unavailable.
| Bancakes wrote:
| Neither of those have binary releases. I just wanted to
| install some handshake addon to nextdns and visit sci hub. Is
| this possible at all or is there non-zero configuration
| required?
| StavrosK wrote:
| I enabled Handshake in the NextDNS settings and it resolves
| fine for me.
| pedro2 wrote:
| If you have NextDNS just enable Handshake in settings.
| tmoravec wrote:
| I have NextDNS, enabled Handshake in settings, and still
| doesn't resolve.
| Nition wrote:
| If you're on Windows, try flushing your DNS cache. Open
| the command prompt and type:
|
| ipconfig /flushdns
| Bancakes wrote:
| It still doesn't open the link to sci hub.
| tim333 wrote:
| Didn't work for me either. I'm not that impressed compared with
| my usual technique of going to the site's Wikipedia page to see
| how to access it. Works for thing's like Sci Hub, Popcorn Time
| and the Daily Stormer.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > Daily Stormer
|
| futurama_fry_not_sure_if.jpg
|
| This is actually an awesome tip for sci-hub though that I'll
| be using.
| tim333 wrote:
| Not really a fan but it's a bit of a poster child for 'I
| disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
| your right to say it' discussions. I figure while that's
| still up there's adequate free speech on the internet.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not sure if what? Say it out loud.
|
| Vaguely implying that you're considering a drastic remark
| about someone else is barely better than an accusation.
| It's like "no offense, but".
|
| Or if you don't have something specific in mind then just
| leave it out of the comment.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > It's like "no offense, but"
|
| No offense, but this was a strange micro-rant.
| stevespang wrote:
| Just tried to download and install handshake. Requires docker.
| Just tried to download and install docker on windows 7, failed
| install, requires more stuff.
|
| Opinion: This will never become a realization until these people
| realize the average Joe is not going to jump through all these
| hoops just to get an alternative browser up and running. It
| should be simple and seamless. Less than 1% will bother with all
| this.
| carlsborg wrote:
| Get a VirtualBox VM running Linux, and take it from there.
| searchableguy wrote:
| You can use nextdns.io which has an option to resolve handshake
| domains.
|
| Other options also provided in the docs:
| https://learn.namebase.io/starting-from-zero/how-to-access-h...
| C4stor wrote:
| Does the average Joe really reads articles from sci-hub ? The
| target public of sci-hub should be able to understand how to
| install a couple programs imo.
|
| Windows 7 has reached EOL a year ago (minus two days), so yeah,
| maybe it's not very well supported...
| eythian wrote:
| Define "average Joe"? I haven't been in academia since I
| finished university years ago, but I'll sometimes want to do
| some digging around on some topic and get a lot of mileage
| out of sci-hub then.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| > Does the average Joe really reads articles from sci-hub ?
|
| What a ridiculous statement, do you truly want to live in a
| world where they can't? Most authors on sci-hub themselves
| would struggle with containers.
|
| If a mechanic mocked a room full of people for not being able
| to change their own oil what would you think of them?
|
| Please reconsider such an ideological stance.
| C4stor wrote:
| Well, no, but they actually can, so it's not the question.
|
| I doubt that most people able to read and publish complex
| scientitic papers would "struggle" to follow what is
| overall a one page sequence of instructions to enter in a
| computer. You don't need to understand containers to run
| docker.
|
| I don't really get the analogy with the mechanic
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| > You don't need to understand containers to run docker.
|
| Maybe we live in different worlds but the average (non-
| cs)professor would very much struggle with this stuff.
| I've seen some barely being able to use basic programs,
| they are skilled in very different domains and no one
| will bat an eyelid if they slowly click on the mouse to
| copy/paste every day of the week. Rocking the command
| line is certainly not in their job description for the
| most part.
|
| Even comp-sci academics do work that is horrendously bad
| and not even close to what would pass in the workplace
| for an entry level graduate.
|
| > the analogy with the mechanic
|
| Essentially an adult saying to a group of children "this
| is so simple for me, what are you a dumbass?"
| [deleted]
| rasengan wrote:
| It doesn't require docker! You can install directly on windows,
| Mac and Linux [1]. This is how I have it running (for the past
| 8 months)!
|
| https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't see any Windows installation instructions there.
|
| Is it really that hard to distribute an application? A
| statically linked executable, or a portable directory with an
| executable in it. Thousands of projects do it every day. Why
| do so many developers insist on making a simple thing like
| actually running their software so complicated?
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| The installation instructions say to use npm, which is
| pretty simple? Everything's javascript anyways.
| Jonnax wrote:
| So I've not had a look at this software before.
|
| I had a look at their website: https://hsd-dev.org/guides/win-
| install.html
|
| It doesn't say that you require docker. Docker is one of the
| options.
|
| You could either build it from source using NodeJS or use node
| JS's package manager NPM to install it.
|
| Docker is a containerisation platform that requires
| virtualisation support:
|
| https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install/
|
| The system requirements are as follows:
|
| * Windows 10 64-bit * Hyper-V and Containers Windows features
| enabled
|
| So of course this method is not going to run on Windows 7 and
| it clearly has stated so.
|
| Plus it's not a web browser. It's a blockchain DNS.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Docker does not work on non-professional versions of Windows.
| Was very annoying as a student.
|
| EDIT: Seems that progress has lead to this no longer being
| true.
| oneweekwonder wrote:
| you can run docker using WSL/WSL2 but you will need to enable
| hyper-v on win10.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Good to know. Glad that was fixed. Thank you.
| dsgriffin wrote:
| What are the advantages of this compared with ENS (Ethereum Name
| Service) and Unstoppable Domains?
| harryvederci wrote:
| I accidentally clicked on the link in a browser without an ad
| blocker, worst mistake of my life. I forgot what a monstrosity
| the internet has become...
| xbar wrote:
| Who should be allowed to charge for peer-reviewed scientific
| research?
| drocer88 wrote:
| The copyright holder.
|
| Real problem is a lot of this research is funded by taxpayers
| and should be public domain.
| aj7 wrote:
| Why is there so much babbling about Reddit here? It's mainly a
| porn-sharing site, having taken advantage of the demise of that
| function at Tumblr. I can't think of a single topic where the
| Reddit forum is not done better, much better, somewhere else. Am
| I wrong? Illuminate me. I'm looking for a USE for Reddit.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Instead of using this complicated custom thing, you could do
| something simpler.
|
| Serve an initial website on a regular domain. The website only
| displays a standard _hosts_ file. Copy and paste it into your
| local system 's _hosts_ file. Now browse to the site listed in
| the _hosts_ file.
|
| You can change the domains used in the _hosts_ file at any time,
| and get real certs for those domains so you can use TLS. If the
| public browses to the IPs in the hosts file, they 'll get
| nothing. But someone with the hosts file can see the actual
| site's content.
|
| This avoids domain takedowns, and allows changing IPs and domain
| names.
| pdevr wrote:
| Essentially, isn't this just another domain registrar
| (Namebase.io) providing a few TLDs, following a much more
| complicated process, the advantage being a much more solid DNS
| entry substitute? If you run a high-traffic site, won't you still
| be at the mercy of hosting providers, CDN providers, etc.?
|
| Related question: Is there a true uncensorable (sic) protocol for
| hosting a website?
| owlmirror wrote:
| freenet comes to mind but it's manyyears ago that I've looked
| into it. the experience than was rather lacking. other means
| might be an .onion site but I'm sure that a high traffic site
| is another beast
| [deleted]
| janandonly wrote:
| Well, I2P and TOR come close, i think...
| rasengan wrote:
| Handshake and Sia Sky together delivers a decentralized
| website.
| pradn wrote:
| The link didn't work for me, which gives me pause about the
| availability of this technology. For most, simply going to
| Wikipedia's Sci-Hub page to get the current domain is easy and
| good enough, as the domain rarely changes.
| troquerre wrote:
| Did you use the HNS.to gateway or connect directly via NextDNS?
| Per the announcement tweet [1] the gateway has limited uptime
| guarantees -- it's much better to connect directly and only
| takes a few minutes to set up.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/NamebaseHQ/status/1348707701744922625?s=...
| Hizonner wrote:
| It'd be funny if hns.to got taken down for providing a path to
| Sci-Hub.
|
| At the root, the problem is trying to use the highly centralized
| legacy DNS system for purposes contrary to the wishes of those
| who control that system. To be "uncensorable", you need to change
| clients to use something other than DNS to resolve names.
|
| Anyway, the property you usually want to abandon for global names
| is "human-meaningful". Just use key hashes as names. "Human-
| meaningful" strings should be reserved for local nicknames, for
| the simple reason that the same string will often have different
| meanings to different humans, for reasons predating your system
| and entirely outside of its control. You have no way to guarantee
| that what you list as "Sci-Hub" is actually what the user thinks
| she's looking for as "Sci-Hub", and you have even less certainty
| of that for any less famous name.
| evbots wrote:
| you only need hns.to if you haven't set up your system to
| resolve handshake names directly, or (theoretically) use a
| browser that has support baked in.
|
| It's on Brave Browser's roadmap to resolve handshake DNS
| directly.
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