General Data Protection Regulation don't exist in vacuum, other laws are regulating data handling. Most importantly, accounting related regulations.
So, if you request your account deletion, all billing related information is still hold - that is probably 7 years in all EU countries. Sending unwanted mail for those addresses is different issue though, but having contact data as part of billing data is legal.
uk.com is second level, pvt.k12.ma.us fourth. I think you really look words for denoting political separation (instead technical), but I don't know any good terminology for that. Public suffix is probably best term to differentiate between "shared" and "dedicated" namespace.
Technically though, root servers have information only about TLD-s. co.uk may be special for some people, but a.root-servers.net. don't care, it's still sends you to uk TLD nameservers, like for every other second level domain.
That political separation or what counts as "registry" is itself very tricky. Are dynamic DNS services registries? How about hosting (like blog) service provider, who gives subdomain/hostname for every client?
Geoff Huston paper "Interconnection, Peering, and Settlements" is older, but still interesting and several ways relevant.
I suggest "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet" - generic and talks about Internet history, but mentions several common misconseptions.
That "many of which overlap with those of Apple" needs to be more specific. I can only think examples, where Apple and Android phone manufacturers are clearly different. Like forcing to use specific app store: Samsung has Google Play and own thing, modern Huawei (models without google) have support for several app stores.
Moreover, there are several "feature phone" manufacturers, phones without iOS or Android.
But if you are single lost sale amongst billions, maybe market is voting and doing it differently, than you.
Apple products are often more appliances, than real general use computers. They never hide their philosphy "Apple knows best". Many people like that; buying Apple products exactly because limited choices.
I hope I don't sound combative, but "most people can't handle that imagined level of control in reality" don't seem very fact based. All companies used to self host, because there wasn't cloud. Many organisations still self host, like shared hosting providers, governmental institutions, banks.
I have two counter arguments against "big cloud can do better":
1) There is often assumption, that people behind cloud services are smarter than anyone else and don't make mistakes.
In reality, they still are humans. Big names attract some bright people, but not anyone is genius with good working in team skills.
2) Cloud companies have much harder problem to solve. They have two hostile fronts, outside world and clients. They need protect themselves from malicious clients and keep clients separated.
They offer generic services for everyone, so there is unused functionality for your use-case. You can disable/uninstall things in your self hosted setup (infra as whole, not meaning inside your virtual machine), filter aggressively in network perimeter and so on.
Self host don't only mean "running in some closet somewhere or in some random colocation center". I can't say, how things are done in US, but in my country government has several DC-s/server rooms for governmental agencies. There is on premises hosting too, sometimes with very good physical security.
Video needs huge amount of storage and network capacity.
Google is one few players, who don't need pay for their Internet, they change most of traffic by mutual settlement free peering.
If you go with making your own youtube, then you are seriosly disadvantaged by that.
Secondly, they can buy their disks directly from manufacturer, probably using bidding. So, even their storage costs are much lower, than you can hope.
Documents are two way streets. You need them to prove your rights. You need document to prove your identity to bank or notary. If you are younger side, document helps validate your age in liquor store.
I trying use "american" examples here, but other countries can have other regulations or customs. Document, especially digital one, is very useful.
For example, I like do encrypt with id card, when sharing materials over untrusty medium. You don't need worry about key exchange, you don't need to teach or install software to other party devices: they already have knowledge, how it works.
It's also very comfy that I can send digitally signed documents and that isn't fringe thing, there is knowledge and bureaucratic processes, how to handle it.
ID card is mandatory by law, but there aren't sanctions (in my knowledge). You need some kind document though, in US that is usually drivers license. I don't see big difference here.
Those are influencial in local culture, but probably don't mean much for foreigners.
"Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel" in other hand is good international film.
Reading Lem in early age spoiled Matrix movie for me. I hated movie, it seemed unoriginal and weak, compared to Ijon Tichy story, where one professor created artificial universes in lockers or chests. Later I have learned appreciate Matrix series, but my first impression was negative.
Lem has several really cool stories, "Return from the Stars" is one my favorite.
They were influencial back in time. In alternative reality, where web stayed in original form, we probably have some other and more designed to specific problem solution.
From article:
"This was great. In fact, the invention of the cookie was the single most important thing we have ever added to the internet. It changed the internet from just a passive place for us to read things, to an interactive place."
There was several interactive protocols, like telnet or IRC.
Maybe that cookie implementation is one reason, why people confuse web with Internet?
So, You point out that gmail was opaque and unpredictable in thread about google being dangerous? Seems fitting.
Sadly, that is on google, you aren't really safe anywhere, if gmail is involved. You think that using big provider protects you, but in reality some people are complaining about spam marking issues even gmail to gmail communication.
Postfix has flexible configuration system with many knobs. I would say though, that official documentation is nice and detailed. Last time I checked Debian defaults looked pretty good, so you don't need fiddle too much to get reasonably useful and secure setup.
You can self-host. Don't use cheap VPS providers, spammers like cheap VPS too. I can't give US specific advice, but in EU business Internet connection with static IP is good enough. If your finances allow, reputable colocation provider is good way to go. Now you can make your own little digital home; file storage, mail, homepage and so on.
That is worked for me over 15 years, over 5 ISP-s.
Additional bonus: instead well known "+" trick in gmail address you can make real throwaway addresses.
10 000 RPM SAS drives absolutely still exists and are relevant. I got my last batch 2 months ago or so.
Those SAS drives have nice capacity (2,4TB) and you don't need to worry about DWPD.
Unix graybeards selfhost. That saying "cloud is someone else's computer." is relevant here.
Now, you can ask, what self-hosting really means and that is complicated. Does rented server count? Colocation? Or only way is own premises? I have worked places, where last one is hard requirement.
Generally though, I am pleased with colocation, some places even have customer provided locks on racks.
But even if you have cheap VPS, at least you can backup it (regularly and before troubles) and restore some other place. With SaaS, you can't always have export in nice and useful form.
Funny, that google UI change finally pushed me to set DuckDuckGo to default search provider in my work computer.
Few times I have been little bit dissapointed with search results and did another search in google, but mostly ddg is pretty smooth experience. So, thanks google for that UI change.
YTMND is up, at least partially. ytmnd.com says: "As of 2019-12-01, YTMNDs and the search are back online."
Random example (http://picard.ytmnd.com/) works.
I felt similar, except in creater scale. There used to be forums and portals, where people share their experiences and knowneledge. Now many forums are almost dead, some are spam towns, some are closed. Few weeks ago was closing party for biggest local music community website. There was heathy forum but owners saw bigger picture and didn't want wait, until place dries up.
Facebook seems taken over all kind communication.
That is not really about buyer, but seller. If seller hides price, that is usually good indicator. They know that they don't compete on price, that showing price frightens potential clients.
Because NAT. Most commonly used as port address translation (One-to-many NAT), so operates with TCP and UDP.
That is not only home router issue, mobile netoworks use sometimes Carrier-grade NAT (NAT444).
Any new IP protocol has problem with that, so nobody wants to implement something that is going to be broken for most customers.
CJefferson probably refers that GvR comment (Though I don't see that strong language here):
"""
Since I was asked: The project's name (and its binary name) need to change. They are misleading. The rest looks acceptable according to Python's license. This is not an endorsement (far from it).
"""
I like those posts. Big providers are idolised by clients. Those posts help me little bit with fighting against unreasonable expectations and faulty comparisons.
Indeed, but your question wasn't about Chromium ftp support.
Note, I am not lazylizard, so I don't really know, what he meant by "Ftp is fast", but I have my own thoughs and general dislike to webify everything on internet.