From reading the article it seems like their co-operation has largely been snitching on their friends in the DDOS community and a crypto-currency analysis app.
The tool doesn't matter so much, if something is encrypted with, say, AES and a specific mode of operation with one tool, it can be decrypted with a separate tool given the same key and mode. Assuming the implementations of the encryption and decryption are done properly.
I've had panic attacks my entire life.Fortunately they're few and fair between these days and I can for the most part calm myself down when I feel one oncoming (they're almost always triggered by some event fortunately, very rarely just random ones).
I wouldn't wish them on anyone. That feeling of "I'm trapped, this is forever, I'm going to die, this is overwhelming, I need to escape" is genuinely the worst thing I've ever experienced. The brain misfiring the trigger that gets pulled when you're in a life or death situation is terrifying.
Fortunately recognizing that it's just a chemical response and I don't have an infinite supply of those chemicals and it will all be ok in a moment is one of the most calming thoughts and one that I always turn to when I'm panicking. Also remembering that I've felt amazing between panic attacks reminds me that soon I will feel that way again.
Just a few thoughts I turn to when I need to white knuckle that wave of panic that might be able to help someone else out.
Yeah autism occurs on a spectrum, from very low-functioning people who can barely verbalise or take care of themselves, to relatively high-functioning individuals who are capable of taking care of themselves, and given the right tools, even thrive.
I don't know if I'm on the spectrum or not but I empathize a lot with the experiences of autistic people, most stories I read could almost verbatim be applied to myself. Including this womans experience (minus the stripping, but finding a comfortable environment where all but the rules are stripped away).
This entailed years and years of awkward social experiences, and terrible self-loathing and embarrassing gaffs. The single biggest benefit I ever gained was learning that people actually have emotional basis to almost everything they say, as the author herself identifies in her post. For me I never had really any emotional content underneath my words unless I was being overwhelmed by emotion, and because of that I never saw that in other people.
Learning that people are emotional first and rational second has led me to rapid improvements in my social life, including developing a group of friends and even a romantic relationship. I stopped trying to mask myself and instead approached every interaction knowing that the other person was experiencing some emotional reaction to it, and just behaved as myself with that knowledge. I'm still off-beat and I still get called weird but I have friends and a romance and it all seems to be going well, people will adjust to who you are. People I've found normally seek a positive interaction, and acting friendly and seeking more details for what they've said, as well as talking about your own similar events or experiences is the way to pull that off.
I've found a good ratatat is to ask about something (normally people will lead off with some experience they've had or story they want to tell, but you can ask to kickstart it) inquire about a detail you would like them to elaborate and then chip in with your own similar experience or somehow pulling the focus off them and back onto yourself before the conversation inevitably bounces back and returns. Before long it's flowing naturally and biology sort of takes over and you're engaged in conversation. Too many questions or too much on yourself and it will all get uncomfortable or rude, so balance is key but if you keep bouncing around like this you will learn the balance for that individual and yourself. I still struggle with identifying what emotion people are trying to convey if it's not a simple and easily visible one like happiness, sadness or anger. But people I've found will normally pick up on the fact you've missed it and be more direct. It's very exhausting if you don't have a natural instinct for emotions, but it is rewarding because we are still emotional creatures.
This is the basis of conversation. Understanding this has also allowed me to attach emotion to my words and people are very receptive to this, and very importantly it has made me feel a lot better and manage stress. More importantly conversation has become much easier as time has gone on and I've begun learning the hints that forever eluded me because I was not interacting on the same foundational base as most other people.
There's more I've learnt about engaging with people than I can write here but they're subtle details that I learnt in the moment. I still over anaylze and I still struggle with my emotions and filtering information but I think I'm on a good path and I think that many neurodiverse people would benefit from similar realizations to what I have had.
That version is very, very old however and doesn't reflect current gameplay style or mechanics, however the stories still unfold pretty much the same way.
... which is exactly the problem. The issue is the tactic, not the company employing it. It’s just this company has a serious habit of employing those tactics, hence the distrust.
The state exists in it's current form because we don't trust private enterprise to perform those functions, otherwise we would. So you're agreeing with me, although I could have phrased it better.
>What do you need to make a modern enterprise? You need tools and you need labor. Some people provide labor, and others provide the tools. Some people who can provide tools, don't necessarily want to provide labor. They are shareholders without being workers.
But the thing is, this only needs to exist this way in a capitalist society. In all your points, you seem to not grasp that the underlying economic system of an anarchist society would in no way resemble the current state of affairs.
In much the same way the economy under a feudalist society does not resemble a capitalist society, and yet fields were tilled and walls built without shareholders.
The fact is that if you abolish capital (by returning collective control over the means of production to the workers) there is no section of society, no "other that provides the tools". The people who provide the tools are other workers, working in other fields, and they supply the workers in the field which uses the tools with the tools. There is no unproductive segment of society such as there is today which lays claim to the wealth without doing any of the labour. This means that there cannot be the accumulation of wealth that we see today, as instead of being horded and spent on the whims of a few, it is immediately pumped back into society.
The state and capitalism are symbiotic. The state only exists to keep capitalist enterprise in check, that is why the state perform functions that we do not believe should be performed for profit (why so many countries have welfare systems, healthcare systems and militaries to maintain the states primacy).
Otherwise everything would be performed by private enterprise (i.e. your anarcho-capitalist ideal) which would very quickly lead to corporate feudalism and private armies.
There is no way for the state to not exist and capitalism to exist at the same time, and seeing as both structures are the root cause of many issues in society, the abolition of both is necessary through decentralization and worker led confederations of labor, rather than the current system of capitalist led governments and businesses.
>Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is
In my experience Anarchists are some of the most well read community of political activists around. May I suggest that you don't know what capitalism is and should spend some time actually reading some theory? Or perhaps engage in conversation with some anarchists? I think you'd find their views and philosophy much deeper and valid than you've conceded in your post.
Capitalist liberal societies will always peg communist countries wrong, because in liberal societies there is a fundamental lack of understanding about Communism. Which is quite obviously the guiding force of Communist countries.
Understand Communism (and I mean genuinely understand it, not this Red Scare, Fox news ignorance you've been force fed your whole life) and you will understand Communist countries. It's really not a tough concept.
What choice do you have once every single provider is doing this? Seriously are we supposed to build our own car? Businesses only care about profits, so if one manufacturer sees other manufacturers doing this and making money, they will follow suit, until all cars are just another data mining machine.
What possible motivation would a car manufacturer have not to do this? It's all about $$$
>The more forcefully and loudly people try to suppress certain ideas, the more they are afraid those ideas might be right.
What bollocks, most "ideas" people are trying to surpress like white nationalism and sexism aren't being surpress because people are secretly scared that whites are the master race or women are inferior, they're being surpress because they're objectively harmful ideas that have caused enormous suffering throughout human history.
The idea that people are trying to stop the spread of these ideologies because they're "secretly scared they're correct" is nothing but a way for people who hold these harmful views to justify having them through defending some self delusional "truth" they've substantiated purely through nonsense.
Agreed. The wide spread of experts who come out and give first hand accounts of the event/product being discussed adds a tremendous amount of value to the discussion on the site.
Discussion on this site is by no means perfect but it is miles ahead of the alternatives out there.
> But if America’s access were further restricted, it would be a blow to the site, and to many of the “capitalists” that use it.
The Verge are definitely misunderstanding Elbakyan when she says this:
>"the capitalists have started blocking Sci-Hub domains, so the site may not be accessible at the regular addresses."
Elbakyan is referring to Elsevier and the ACS and the other major publishes putting pressure on SciHub and making it inaccessible. No capitalists are using the service in the Marxist sense of the word "capitalist" which is definitely what Elbakyan was going for.
The Verge's writing here misrepresents what she's saying, and truly does change the message of what she has said. I think they need to edit and fix that.