Already in 2015, Emily Taylor warned [1] that ICANN could become the Internet's FIFA -- a small organization with great power that doesn't answer to any government. Here we are. A private company run by former ICANN people will be given the right to collect massive rent from a locked-in client base on a public resource.
It was already obvious in the 2000's the analogy with FIFFA is a good one as its the some of the playbook ICANT are using holding meetings in out of the way places and leveraging small countries to maintain power.
BTW I was a member of poptel who owned the .coop registry.
"Backroom deals at a organisation that used to be governed by the US will probably be used to extort wikipedia for $100000 to keep the address wikipedia.org. The same extortion will be aimed at unicef.org, (add list of common .orgs here)"
That isn't alien language, and whilst not strictly true, it isn't stretching the truth more than the news already does habitually.
For my small wiki, refusing all submissions with external links eliminated virtually all spam. Yes, it's drastic, but in my case external links were not essential. I still use ReCaptcha to cut down on spam account signups.
Agreed – looks like a fantastic product!
Seconding the question about MySQL support. I use MySQL for everything. I don't want to add extra gigs of RAM to my VPS just to run an instance of PostgreSQL for Commento. Postgres is much slower than MySQL in simple applications and uses a lot more memory per connection. MySQL is also more popular and more people know how to use it and tune it properly. Postgres is probably more stable, but I don't care about that in a commenting app.
There's economic research that shows it's more efficient to regulate (in some sense, "blame") the lenders, because borrowers are often desperate. When you're desperate, you have reduced capacity to objectively judge the consequences of borrowing and are also less sensitive to "blaming", potential penalties for overborrowing, etc.
From this perspective, putting all the blame on borrowers while exonerating the banks is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing as a society, if we want to avoid another debt bubble.
I'd fully agree with you if we were talking about small entities. Maybe we can not expect every citizen to fully learn the details and pitfalls of all those financial constructs available and thus want to protect them with regulation. But when we are talking about nation-states... whom else can we expect that kind of due diligence from to make properly informed decisions and understand the consequences if not governments of nations, representing millions of people?
Lets imagine some democracy votes an incompetent fool into their highest office, who starts making "bad deals". Would you expect other countries to not agree to those deals for reasons other than their own interests?
In your experience, can a tick attach to you if you just brush against it while moving fast (running or cycling)? They're rather slow-moving, so I thought they can't latch onto you that quickly.
YES, especially to any fabric such as socks, shorts, etc. seem especially good for them to snag, considering the number of times I've caught them crawling up a leg or something. I'd guess less so against a shaved leg or something, but still check diligently, since shoes, socks, etc.
Running is probably an ideal speed for them to snag you (think how they'd be snagging deer, dogs, etc), and I've never found biking fast enough to not get them. It seems like they don't grab by any reflex, but just by hanging a few hooks out in the breeze to snag whatever comes by.
Another thing I found that I didn't expect -- I'd guessed that they'd be most active in hotter weather, making motion easier, etc., but it seems that the most active times are moderate temps, maybe 10-25C (50-77F), but we still need to watch out outside of that range. I've seen them all the way down to almost freezing and up in the 30C+/90F+ range.
I've had ticks attach themselves to me cycling off road in Scotland when it was very rough and I was cycling slowly through quite thick and very wet undergrowth on an old unused track.
My mom's pension is $400 / month (Eastern Europe). She browses the Internet on an old hand-me-down Thinkpad. I suppose she should just get off the Internet if she cannot afford to buy website subscriptions. Anything to make the online experience of wealthy IT professionals better.
Nah, that's not what OP's talking about. OP's talking about services we use on smartphones mostly - WhatsApp, Google Maps.
On that Thinkpad thing, I have multiple questions, just because you're trying to induce emotional response here: does your mom uses Adblock? Did you install it for her? Why can't you buy a subscription for her if you care so much? Do you really want you mom trade her and probably other relatives personal data for access to some shady newspaper with dubious quality of journalism?
>So yep, you're suggesting that tszyn's mom should not access content she can't pay for directly.
You vastly underestimate how much content is created for free. Have you heard of Wikipedia? Do you realize how many people do not choose to monetize their creations?
>You forget that most people isn't as rich as you or most HN readers.
This problem was solved before the internet with libraries. If you can't afford a newspaper article you get it from the library. The same could be accomplished with an online library with daily limited access or subsidized unlimited access for the poor.
Poor people are not good for showing ads to anyway. As ad networks get more and more invasive they will be able to discriminate and refuse to pay the guardian for a view from your mom because there is no expected value there.
She probably should, with all the viruses, spyware and tracking. The internet is nowadays very user-hostile, in part because of the toxic behavior of the ads industry.
Still, there continue to exist gratis, ad-free services. If you want to avoid that your mom is taken advantage of, point her to those.
I would also recommend installing an ad-blocker, but let's be honest, she already has one, doesn't she?
