The internet is the new TV. It stopped being a paradise for freedoms and ideas once it became popular and commercial. It’s rife with propaganda, politics, conspiracy theories, scams, advertising, and generally speaking average or below average content. The question is what is the next form of communication we can create or where can we take refuge from all this noise, until that becomes average. All guns are on the US because of the political situation but the internet in various countries is already censored or even more aggressively regulated. For those of us who want a free medium we need to create a new medium. Ideally not one where freedom means hate speech or dubious conspiracies, but one where, as the internet was in its original form, borders and censorship dont exist.
I am in a similar financial position but in Europe. I considered buying a property, expecting prices to collapse, but instead prices are going slightly up - the EU overall has a 10% GBP drop compared to the IS’ 30%. Cynical as it may sound I was expecting a sharper downturn. Seems like people are back to work and thus there is no collapse in sight.
Here is a feature i would like to suggest: a mechanism for change reviews, so that any non tech person can make DB changes, but have them reviewed by peers (much like a github review) and approved before having them applied. Can save a lot of headaches.
We already have automated railways - metro trains in copenhagen have been self driving for over a decade now. While I am not personally sure about airplanes, automated trains should become more popular.
Also as a rule of thumb never ever expose anything but port 80 and 443 if hosting a webapp.
If you must expose services other than http/s then be sure to not leak its version, have it secured properly and _always_ up to date. The user running such services should also be a non privileged user, the daemon chrooted, and the OS should have appropriate process and filesystem permissions in place.
Those comments i replied to ticked me off. I just cant understand how such a great country has been revealed to be a fraud. I simply can’t. Also I didnt call America a shithole. I am referring to the US and the current dangerous path its taking. Other countries in America, i.e. Canada seem to be fine - albeit not perfect. If you can clarify how many on HN dont find the current state of affairs problematic I’d give you a few beers. I love the US for what i thought it represents but right now I feel let down.
Edit: I am genuinely looking for answers. Many times when the topic of the US as a democracy has been brought up in conversations with either brits, french, germans, i had to defend the us as an example of how things should be and had faced strong disagreements, many supporting it is what we all see today the US is, and this was years before 2020. I feel like a clown for having been so passionate in my defence of that country. Heck i wanted an EU modeled around it. Now we see an utterly corrupt, potentially authoritarian, country with serious disregard for human rights and a total lack of respect for it’s own.
Well they wouldn't be homeless if their government (and by extension society) would have taken care of them during a pandemic the likes of which we havent seen since the early 1900’s. As we did in Europe because you know being patriotic doesn't mean bombing nations in the name of freedom while throwing your fellow people under the bus first sign of trouble. So yes, I would like many of the new homeless americans to be given the chance of a new life in an EU country of their choosing.
A planet colonised and dependent solely on high tech for its own survival is a potential catalyst for radical innovation and trade. We could turn it into a place free or our earthly issues. Antarctica is just a cold place which we may colonise once it melts, start a few wars over it maybe, destroy it, exterminate its tiny wildlife and so on. Mars is already dead, hopefully not stimulating enough for our primitive instincts and will let us focus solely on tech advancement.
Given many will be made homeless and denied basic human rights such as health care, the EU should seriously consider welcoming American economic refugees. With population ageing in most western europe we need workers anyway and we generally speaking do welcome those seeking a better life and the freedom of having access to healthcare, decent housing and jobs.
I am not sure how such posts make it in here, but if the author thinks the writer of a complex API should posses the skills of a CSS and usability guru then the writer is simply wrong. Also the notion that backend devs do more “serious” stuff than front end devs may be common in toxic work environments, but not so much in proper teams. Front end work is not just creating buttons and setting styles. It is also about understanding users, a whole range if devices, browsers, screens and many more things that simply cam’t be mastered at the same time as one masters heck knows how many layers of apis services and what else goes behind more than just a word press app.
In the United States, much like in similar authoritarian countries, the police appears to be able to arrest journalists without probable cause. Happened live where journalists reporting live have been arrested and / or beaten. A sad state of affairs.
Oh please, we are now debating which country is less authoritarian. Any Russian or Chinese government troll will launch similar comparisons in defence of Putin or Xi: but at least we are not doing [x]. Kidnapping is kidnapping. Some of you have gone quickly from freedom of speech and democracy to at least we only disappear people for a few days. And we only beat journalists we dont torture them. And we only persecute minorities we dont put them in camps. And we only let them rot in ghettos not gas chambers. Be serious, you are part of the problem.
Temporarily? Let’s face it - the US is not what we were lead to believe. Had it been any other country, the UN would have condemned it long ago for being an authoritarian country. Certainly we all watched in awe how china abducted HK protesters, beat them, threaten them with death and calling them terrorists for simply spraying grafitty on buildings.
In my mind the US is just a 2nd world authoritarian country with money and weapons. A danger to the free world.