The fact that all traffic is decrypted at their servers makes possible caching optimizations (what most users care about) and inject content,headers. This is the best example of the centralization of the internet.
Does anyone know what Cloudflare's response was regarding them treating Tor traffic suspiciously by putting up never ending captchas?
> That page argues against your point, even the basic plan does quite a bit to fend of DDOS. In particular, the most common and effective type of DDOS, which is volumetric and based on reflected UDP traffic, is defended against, even on their free tier.
Maybe I'm missing something here, where does it mention that the free plan protects against UDP floods?
> Using a tool like Siege to bring a site behind Cloudflare down doesn't mean it's not protected. A layer 7 attack against a site which can't handle incoming HTTP requests is still possible.
Flooding a site using Siege from a single IP falls under the layer 7 attack (correct me if I'm wrong), which is protected against in the Business plan.
> Cloudflare, or any other service, can't magically make a site scale.
Where did I mention that I expect Cloudflare to magically scale a site? A POST or GET flood falls under layer 7 protection, which Cloudflare offers in paid plans.
If it was not clear, the point was that layer 7 protection is offered in the paid plans(Business and Enterprise), but not in the free plan.
Tangential, but how do you find OVH? Their hardware, bandwidth, uptime, customer service? I ask because of the conflicting reviews of OVH that a quick google search reveals.
> I wish having an advanced degree was a criteria here. A few years ago, I noticed that Britain would give a blanket visa to anyone with an MBA from a list of top international schools.
Care to explain the reasoning? It seems shortsighted to limit this proposal to people with advanced degrees, and why only from the top 50 schools in the world? How does this make sense in the context of startups?
> That said, the proposed rule might mean if one gets into YC/techstars, etc. they would be able to get a visa for the US easily.
The article mentions that this is not a visa, but parole. And with the requirement of $345K in funding, getting into YC/Techstars would not be sufficient. Startups would need to raise additional money, unless they receive $100k from the Government.
> I wouldn't worry too much about what's being said or not said on HN. There are great ideas and topics to be covered here for sure, but they're sprinkled on top of a giant cake made with 1-part self-loathing, 2-parts day-dreaming, and 1-part regular huff-and-puffing.
I don't understand your argument regarding why you would not pay much attention to what is being said on HN. Could you explain?
Interesting interview, but I felt Sam could have asked more probing questions (for the lack of a better phrase) and I don't mean the controversies from the early days of Facebook.
What was the thinking behind acquiring WhatsApp for such a large amount of money and how will they monetize the platform? How is WhatsApp going to be an important part of the future?
Facebook's mission is to connect the world, but in the case of Free Basics, they violated net neutrality principles which is clearly not in the best interest of the users.
Mark Zuckerberg also mentions that he finds it frustrating that people talk about AI turning against humanity, which is one of the things that Elon Musk, Sam and OpenAI are trying to educate the population about. Maybe a discussion about that could have been included in the interview.
If any of the mods are reading this, maybe there could be some way that future interviews can include questions from HN? We could have a discussion about the questions that the HN community wants to ask, and the mods can pick out the questions that generate the most interest from the community?
Looking at the title, I was expecting them to share the juicy details of how they handled the huge amount of traffic, the hacking attempts and the engineering problems they are facing. Instead I was met with some sort of PR attempt to explain the downtime.
The reason piracy is so popular is because it is free and because it's incredibly convenient, in that order.
The convenience factor is basically, if you want some content (movie, game) it's a simple search and download away (streaming torrents seem to be gaining traction). No legal alternative offers this level of convenience.
I suspect piracy will become harder for the average user due to three letter agencies making life harder for pirates, but it won't stop the determined ones.
Speaking of determined torrenters, Peter Sunde, the founder of TPB had something interesting to say about torrent aggregators being shut down [1]. The idea is that even though downloading torrents itself is p2p, finding the magnet links is still centralized and that is an area that needs to be decentralized.
I was hoping Xiaomi would also launch a version with Ubuntu as the default OS. An i5, 8GB DDR4 Ram, 256GB SSD, backlit keyboard and 10 hours battery backup at $750 sounds like a sweet deal.
I know Ubuntu can still be installed on the Windows version, but I expect it to be a hacky path with installation issues, getting the hardware to play nice and the backlit keyboard to work, and finally maybe even battery life issues.
An out of the box solution like the XPS 13 at a lower price point might work.
PG talks about this idea of looking back at the present from the future in this video [1]. Applying this technique to the way power on the internet is distributed, it seems ridiculous to me that Governments have massive surveillance capabilities on its citizens, big corporations exploit customer data at the expense of customers, and that the internet is used as a tool to control political dissidents. So this is something that will eventually change for the better.
As the OP points out, transparency and oversight are the short term solutions. If the present is any indication, implementing these effectively with cooperation from Governments and corporations around the world will likely remain a pipe dream.
The OP also mentions reducing power differences as a long term solution. IMO, one of the best ways to do that would be to educate the masses about the mentioned problems and how it affects everyone involved. Once a sufficiently large population cares enough about the problems at hand, change should not be far away.
I have been following the recent hacks by the OurMine group, and find it all fascinating.
If anyone knows more about the group, their motives and how they actually manage to compromise various high profile social media accounts and websites, please do share it here.
One of the arguments against mass surveillance is that it is blatant intrusion of privacy, and hence it should not exist.
On the other hand, the arguments against encryption seem to be that it cripples the Government agencies in their work against terrorists, which is a genuine concern.
There seems to be no way to address both these major concerns (that I am aware of), and hence the battle between privacy advocates and the camp against encryption in the name of national security will continue.
Banning a single service such as WhatsApp is not a solution to this problem. If someone really wants their communication to be encrypted, they can easily make it happen using the numerous tools available, and there is nothing the Government can do about it.
Does anyone know what Cloudflare's response was regarding them treating Tor traffic suspiciously by putting up never ending captchas?