> But HN user "baby" recently made a blockchain based image board that was theoretically impossible to control. How would people behave in such a situation? Who would you even punsh?
Probably will get scooped up by pedophiles sooner or later, followed by a couple high profile arrests and everyone will be scared shitless to run a node for that blockchain. CP has always been a good source of scare for Tor exit node operators, thankfully enough Tor nodes don't store the stuff in contrast to a blockchain - so at least the operators didn't have to serve jail time but a couple have had their houses raided by the cops and all IT equipment confiscated for months.
Actually, from a libertarian POV I really like the idea, both behind an uncensorable imageboard and Tor, but the simple fact that pedophiles and Nazis can and will abuse the openness for their vile gains makes me believe that the world will probably never be ready for such a thing as widespread service. For now we as society have to be lucky that many pedophiles, drug dealers and Nazis don't really care about good opsec... but that one is bound to change.
> Actually, from a libertarian POV I really like the idea, both behind an uncensorable imageboard and Tor, but the simple fact that pedophiles and Nazis can and will abuse the openness for their vile gains makes me believe that the world will probably never be ready for such a thing as widespread service.
Similar considerations are why I never ran a Tor exit node, despite my inner geek wanting to as soon as I heard about it because the technology is cool.
The deciding factor was that almost every good thing that I could think of or that people suggested that a truly anonymous, untraceable, non-moderated, anybody to anybody communication system could be used for were things that could be reasonably accomplished by other means that are not as open to abuse.
For example, a common scenario offered is someone inside an oppressive regime working to document the regime's abuses and bring it down. They would be tortured and killed (and possibly so would their family) if their identity became known.
But they just need a need a secure channel to a trusted contact outside the reach of the regime who can relay messages for them. It does not have to be an anybody to anybody channel or a non-moderated channel.
The only things I could think of that really need something like Tor are things where what you are doing is so near universally frowned upon that there is almost nobody willing to be publicly associated with facilitating it.
> What if "emacs" was a smear in Portuguese, or "vim" was an unspeakable slur in India?
You can even get this kind of problem without involving a different language, because words can have different meaning in different fields.
There is a (probably) urban legend about a mathematics grad student working in algebraic geometry returning from a conference, who finds he is sharing the security line at the airport with another conference attendee and they start chatting about algebraic geometry, talking about "blowing up points on a plane". It does not go over well with the non-mathematicians in line or with the TSA agents.
Efim Zelmanov, a noted algebraist, tells of being stopped by the KGB on the way to a conference and being questioned at length because he had books with him about "free groups" and "radicals".
> I've often wondered whether foreign users ever get annoyed with some of our names that happen to acronym to something unfortunate in their native language. Do they just have to live with it, or does it never happen?
All the time, and the response from devs ... depends. Remember the recent Pik image format? Or Pidora linux, which to a russian ear sound akin to "FedoPiLix"? Or Vista, which is exactly "chicken" in latvian?
Mostly you kind of keep laughing and wincing for a few years, then you sorta get used to it.
> Yet this is all very English-centric. I've often wondered whether foreign users ever get annoyed with some of our names that happen to acronym to something unfortunate in their native language. Do they just have to live with it, or does it never happen?
Well we have to live with it, and funny things happen. In Turkish, which is my mother tongue, the English word Scheme sounds very similar to "sikim", which is a very vulgar way to say "my dick". About five years ago having lunch with colleagues (programmers), chattering about programming languages, when I said I liked Scheme, I had some weird looks :) Some more on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421315
> New Geometry Representation might be a fine name for a new format, but you're not going to use its acronym.
I might... the acronym doesn't ring any bells and a Google search doesn't show anything special (if anything, it already shows a bunch of other things - including companies and organizations - using the same letters). What is the issue?
I think they are imagining people trying to pronounce the acronyms ngr and fgt and getting offensive words out of them. I don’t think that would have occurred to me.
