shanewilhelm

Would their plan of keeping the entire archive in torrents alleviate that concern? Like, if a person sourced an index from somewhere privacy-centered, they could directly download from the torrents in whatever private method they wish, right?

Geopolitics. A congressperson is quoted as saying they pose a national security risk.

Pure speculation on my part, but maybe that's better for the environment because it's not being burned as it's used?

You might be thinking of aspirin, which is toxic at fairly low dosages. Acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) is much, much safer.

Some companies, Google being one of them, allow you to opt-out of sharing any data with Equifax. Perhaps there's a more 'global' way to prevent that data sharing, too

I found it interesting that the author phrased their critique so definitely, i.e. "it's NOT this and NOT that", yet concluded the article by saying their whole argument was speculative. That said, I do agree with their premise that it's going to be pretty tough to get a definitive answer as to why 0-indexing won out. And their criticism of others being so ready to declare results is apt, if not a little ironic in this case :)

Other way around