austerity

I vaguely remember giving it some consideration. But the bigger point is that my judgement on these things is not to be trusted since I'm just an application developer and not a crypto expert.

Yup, arbitrary restrictions on passwords are a bane. I've thought about adding various modes but then you need to remember the mode you used. So far the most sensible option seems to be falling back to a password manager for those sites.

As for the service name I've had no issues with that in my use. Just come up with whatever rule is easy for you to remember. Worst case you'll have to make a few tries.

It's simple concatenation. The exact algorithm is described at the bottom of the page so that one could reproduce it (and their passwords) independently.

How did this become about taxes when it's actually about corruption? New evidence is uncovered of people at the top systematically abusing their power and disregarding the very laws they instill upon everyone else. Yet HN commenters are telling me the problem is that I am not giving these bastards a large enough share of my income.

It could and it would be wrong. But it's not at all what this leak is about.

Nothing. But some people can't control their urge to cry wolf.

If by "skew" you mean publish some (true or at least reasonably verified) information that could influence the voters' decision then why the hell not?

The wording in that article is pretty telling, but why do you imply they can no longer be trusted? A business that was profitable before became unprofitable due to legal pressure, so they exited it. It doesn't look like they've betrayed anybody's trust in the process.

Welp, it was only a matter of time... Thanks for the info!

First of all, there's no such thing as own server. The trust you are putting into the ISP your "own server" is connected to is exactly the same as the trust you are putting into a VPN provider.

Second, for a lot of people in this world it's a given that their ISP/government is monitoring their traffic. It's vastly better to be potentially spied on by someone abroad then to be certainly spied on by someone who has direct authority over you.

To answer your first question, the most popular use cases for VPN are:

1. Circumventing censorship

2. Circumventing regional content restrictions

3. Hiding your IP while torrenting (note that this is relevant only in the US)

4. Avoiding government surveillance (again, note that US is not the only country in the world, but likely the only one with any meaningful reach outside its borders)

5. Avoiding private surveillance (public wi-fi, etc.)

6. Hiding your IP while engaging in illegal online activities (#3 is a special case of this but it's a vastly larger group so I made it separate)

Note that "weird jurisdictions" can be a significant advantage for cases #3 and #6 (because they are harder to subpoena) as well as #3 (because they don't have retention laws).

I too like to come up with rationalizations of my NIH syndrome.

It's remarkable that you had to preface your argument with "Just playing the devil's advocate here". It appears that the fear of AI taking life and death decisions is so great that merely making an argument in favor of it is seen as immoral. Doubly fascinating is the fact that this attitude has taken roots on HN of all places.

Oh, come on, let's not pretend this is somehow different from the traditional money. I am not particularly ignorant nor reluctant to learn as far as an average person on the street goes and I have no friggin idea how the mechanisms that govern it really work and cannot appreciate the risks. (Nor really can the experts it seems.)

It's the basic reality of human existence that we have to get by without having pretty much any control of the complex world around us. Bitcoin may fail any time and as a casual user you cannot help it and cannot predict it. But you can go buy some drugs with it right now without having to roam shady streets and it's all that really matters.