kingofhdds

From communist viewpoint socialism is an intermediate stage before achieving communism. And in Soviet Union propaganda both terms were used interchangeably to describe their side in the Cold War. And many self-described socialists in the West sympathised strongly with Soviets (even not being friendly with hardcore Stalinism), believing the USSR, and its satellites are the counterweight and alternative to the capitalist alliance united around the US.

So there's no mistake, it's just a historical practice.

You are refuting the statement I never made. There's no such thing as general threat. So who's data? If you are Julian Assange you should be afraid of US spying agencies, but if you are an Uzbekistani dissident it's your gov't repressive machine you should care about, and tracking possibilities of your direct adversary will be diminished with the discussed Mozilla's move. If you are an average Joe in a small town you may find it safer to trust faraway commercial entity rather then your neighbor's nephew who works in a local ISP.

There are many countries where ISPs are obliged by law to spy on users, and retain logs for many years. DNS manipulation also used as a cheap censorship mechanism. So Cloudflare easily can be a better option for hundreds of millions if not billions of people. As a rule, local actors present way more serious threat compared to US agencies for majority of the planet's population. That said, Mozilla, of course, must be very transparent with such big changes, and explain them to users not using just "more secure" wording.

We all know that even a composition of words used (or avoided) to report a fact may be very loaded. And it just how it happens in all media, big and small, because apparently journalists are humans, and editors are humans. There are worse, and better cases, but there's no such thing as 100% neutral reporting.

>Germans also used to be stereotyped as dishonest, thieving, dull and overly emotional before their country industrialized.

Any links on this?

I don't think we are talking about libellous content: as you noted yourself it is already covered by existing laws, and there's no need to invent additional regulations for that.

As for thing you call "self-censorship" there are two very different parts: pursuing correctness is not, actually, self-censorship, it's building reputation, and a long-term trust with an audience - and done essentially for commercial success. But there's self-censorship in media, of course, it exists because if political pressure, sponsors' influence, and last, but not least because most of journalists are not magical creatures, they are humans too, and naturally biased as all of us are. And I never heard anyone claiming this self-censorship to be good for society, and worth expanding.

The logical consequence of the belief in people being unable to defend their minds against elaborate ads is that we should abolish democracy. How can you trust those stupid voters to make any choice if this choice is predetermined by ads?

Personally, I think people can defend themselves against lies (though it doesn't happen instantly) if they have alternatives. And that's why we should resist censorship, and not prescribe filtered news to societies.

What I see in your comment: people are too stupid to understand what's right for them, so we "as a society" should make commercial entities to censor their platforms to pre-filter information available to general public.

Few questions arise: If you believe that people can't be trusted to decide if not guarded against unwanted information, do you really believe in democracy? Who are "we as a society"? Apparently, you are not talking about all people, or even majority.

You can buy a cheap prepaid sim, and save yourself from data roaming tariffs. And it is the moment when smartphones shine - you'll have the same IDs/handles/usernames in messengers. With a feature phone your identity (your number) will change.

>Humans have evolved to produce social structures that mitigate the need for violence in all circumstances.

It doesn't contradict the notion "humans are violent". Social structures are often used to prevail collectively in conflicts, often violent, and one may say that's why they evolved.

Do you believe that humans in general should not be trusted to read/hear certain things? If yes (I guess), do you believe the censorship cannot be exploited politically by those in power?

Incentives -> someone will.

"Someone uncovering things" appears because in an environment where free speech is not suppressed political, economical, and ideological competitions create incentives to do it. Is it a newspaper, a TV channel, a blog, social network, telepathy, or something else which is used to disseminate information then is a purely technical issue.

"Press" is just a technical method of information dissemination which certainly can become outdated. Democracy needs freedom of speech and expression.

Of course it does.

If taxi drivers were in the same way connected to social studies people as journos are, we would be reading laments about oldschool taxi services as a cornerstone of society now.

This argument implies the public controls gov. organizations/departments which is in most cases not true (unless there's some scandal to attract attention).

I understand why you feel bad about them, and certainly I would feel the same in the same situation, but it's hard not to admit that revealing bugs to the public is very often the only way to make coders pay attention. So even if their intention is only to squeeze money out of targeted companies, at the end of the day they force devs to eliminate bugs this way, or another. Which is good for users, I suppose.

>narrow case of making >transfers that are illegal

Exactly, except I don't see why do you think it's a narrow case? Legal ways are burdensome, expensive for those who can live a week for $10, and sometimes don't work altogether because of political reasons which are unlikely to disappear soon (I don't even sure they have to disappear at all). And economic migration is huge, so it's safe guess to say that number of people who need to send money back to home country is very significant. And now it's already being done via gray, and illegal schemes, in fact. (Please note: "illegal" is used as morally neutral term here because laws could be wrong, or simply inefficient.) In many places around the world you can find a sort of alternative banking in a medieval fashion - as a trusted network of individuals, and families. One may expect regular online bank should beat this system, but it just doesn't happen, because of reasons I mentioned.

Somalia remains politically disintegrated by warring factions which I think is a bigger factor then currency rates and still there's internet, that's what I'm saying. Also, myself lived in a country where price of local currency could substantially change during a day, and it wasn't the end of the world. In those times much fewer people used internet, but it was there, electricity was there, no zombies walking in streets, shops worked, and rule of law (even if bad law, and bad rule) remained in reasonable amount. People just started to ignore that part which prohibits use of foreign currencies. Payments were often technically illegal - you see the pattern. Would I use bitcoin then if internet were as available as it is now? I can't say for sure, but maybe. Depends on circumstances like taxes, enforcement of currency controls, availability of US$ cash, need to make cross-border transfers.

Don't know a lot about Venezuela's current condition, but if electricity has become luxury already, an intermediary can solve this trouble, it could still be more efficient than moving cash in bags.

You are making sweeping statements like "most people", or "not real" as if those are some sorts of axioms. To me it seems obvious you never really had to send money to let's call it a less-internationally-respected country. The country could be embargoed, or simply 'suspicious', and local regime probably takes exorbitant taxes from foreign remittances, and it's just a beginning of a long list of possible troubles. So, yes, lots of people world-wide, in spite of not being libertarians, or anarchists, or cocaine sellers, or a tech enthusiasts do have a lot of interest in cryptocurrencies. Though, few people really care if it's blockchain, or green cheese, of course.

Also, you seem to believe that high inflation somehow destroys internet access, and everything around it. I suppose it's something from Hollywood movies, sorry. Even in Somalia (which is typically a first example of failed state) internet is a working thing.

Well, using word 'stupid' to describe things one doesn't understand is a sort of popular fallacy.

For both countries it's a real conflict which involves not only emotions (the way news websites make you see it), but economical interests, political perspectives, and safety.

The attack can only succeed when victim's gpg is run with 'verbose' option turned on. Which is rather unusual situation.

I am on this side of pond, and it still sounds ridiculous to me. I don't think that someone who really wants to pay more for an imaginary taste of authenticity will not be able to read a place of production. Other consumers apparently don't care.

Nothing new with this marketing approach! Many taxi drivers in Delhi charmingly (though a bit too stubbornly) offer to visit a shop of their brother, uncle, or good friend, always "nearby", and surely "very cheap!" Also, in many post-Soviet countries they sell illegal vodka, and cigarettes. Not to deny, it's very convenient if you urgently need to get drunk in the middle of night! Maybe it would work with cosmetics too.

Hi Martin! I respect your effort, and welcome it, because I'm a lover, and collector of maps, actually. You certainly made a lot of work. However (and please don't take it personally) if it's not just a decoration, and you claim it has an educational value, then, sorry, it falls short of even most relaxed standards of accuracy. Let's imagine there was a native settlement in place of modern Washington D.C. Do you really believe it would be correct then to have Washington on a map, which depicts pre-Columbian America? There was no Arkhangelsk, there was no Sarai. There's quite an established (and supported by chronicles) understanding that the former was founded by wish of czar Ivan The Terrible, and latter by order of khan Batu. Both possibly were predated by earlier smaller settlements (although there's no sound evidence for this in relation to Sarai), but, at first, they weren't major trading centers (and that's why you don't know their names), and second, you cannot freely use names from the future without making your map a historic mess, having essentially anti-educational effect. So, it's a noble attempt, but as you said it's a mammoth work, and one have to chew a whole library of historical literature, and look at numerous historical atlases to make it good. Maybe, it's just a chunk too big to digest quickly. Maybe, it would be better to try to start from a smaller part of the world. Btw, crowdsourcing doesn't work in such cases well, because you would still need to verify suggestions, and chose between them. Also because maps are by their nature very politically loaded. Even a question of proper spelling can ignite serious conflicts, and offend a lot of people. I would like to encourage you to continue map making, but I suggest to start from a less ambitious project, and extend it gradually.

And thank you for your calm response!

Thank you! It could be true, but frankly I wouldn't trust ru.wikipedia too blindly, especially when it comes to small towns history, because there are lots of local lore gatherers with original researches, and nobody cares to verify their contributions. I can't check the mentioned act of Sviatoslav now, that would require to search for a real paper book :) But I'm quite sure it should be 1137, not 1138 for starters.

My sources tell the story this way: unknown village of Finnish-Ugric population -> Kholmogory (Novgorod outpost) -> Novokholmogory -> Arkhangelsk. I would be grateful if you share your source of information about alternative name. However, regardless the name, the place will not be a major trading center until establishment of regular sea route to England (when Ivan The Terrible granted trading privileges to English) which is XVI century. There was not a lot of sense in navigating Arctic waters to deliver those furs to the Western Europe before Swedes became rulers of North-Eastern Baltics and imposed tariffs. So map is not correct.

"Some settlement" had it's proper name - Kholmogory, but it was anyway founded after Mongol invasion.

I question the knowledge behind this map. The text states it depicts the state of affairs before "the rise of Mongols", but one can find on it Sarai city which was established by Mongols, and, for example, Arkhangelsk which didn't exist at those times either. Also some names are misspelled. Significant trade routes are omitted. No sources cited. Look too amateurish to me to take it seriously.

Update: there is a list if sources on the picture itself, I tried to look for it in the text at first. However, it doesn't save the work from being evidently incorrect.