tl;dr we are a vISP that created a quasi-anonymous Tor/OpenVPN chimera; we used to live in the dark net, now we're trying the clearnet interwebs; we're giving out free accounts to those interested. Fire an email to sysop@encryptica.org with subject line "REGISTER REDDIT" and you will be credentialed in 72 hours max.
We use the 2nd Amendment (Cryptography is still classified as munitions by the State Department) to protect your 1st Amendment rights on the Internet. Yet we cannot protect you against alphabet soup agencies such as the NSA and the FSB. It's not that our hands are tied, it's that this isn't the 1990s anymore and cyberwarfare and cybercrime are a nation-state ping-pong game. They are above our threat model, they are one layer of abstraction above us legally speaking, and we do not have contingency plans against them. If anything, being an American non-profit NGO, they are required to protect us as we are an American legal entity. From our experience whatever data they are seeking (depending on importance), they will obtain one way or another. We are not statists either; we simply think a well-calibrated threat model is paramount to running a venture like ours. Last but not least, they themselves may be users of our service to conduct their job online discretely. Note that we are not here to fight the man on your behalf. If you use our service to send bomb threats to universities, we will hunt you down.
What we do protect you against is "Snoopy". Snoopy could be your ISP DJ'ing your DNS requests. Snoopy could be your housemates snooping on the Wifi network or running a rogue AP attack. Snoopy could be your boss or employer blocking certain websites. Snoopy could be services that are georestricted to certain areas for no reason at all. We offer quasi-bulletproof anonymity and privacy on the Internet. Snoopy could be your university banning services like Spotify. Snoopy could be the rest of the world charging Australia 30%+ extra on all services / products because Australia is a continent. Snoopy could be your mobile service provider obstructing VoIP or Skype traffic on their data network. Snoopy could also be your TV provider not happy with your Netflix technicolored bits traversing their wires, and so must be throttled down. We are anti-DPI yet use DPI as well for the benefit of our users (QoS for instance).
We are a vISP, originally from the Dark Net, opening up trial accounts on the Internet/ClearNet to test the waters.
We a non-profit NGO (social enterprise?) that is still in the process of acquiring 503(c) status in the United States.
We are testing out a new quasi-anonymous network design based on OpenVPN and Tor (more connection methods to our access points will follow in the future, such as IKEv2 and SSTP).
Technical Details: Initially one connects to the Tor network via the Tor Browser Bundle, once the connection to the Tor network is established, the user instructs the OpenVPN client to connect to our OpenVPN server (using our configuration file), which is sitting behind a .onion Hidden Service; the traffic is then forced to exit through one of our Tor Exit Nodes instead of a possibly malicious Tor Exit Nodes that tracks users or performs MITM on HTTP traffic or simply tcpdump.exe's your traffic for fun and profit. We provide DNS resolution through our service to avoid leaks and preserve privacy.
We do not know your IP address, you do not know our server's IP address, and nobody can prove that activity exiting through our Tor Exit nodes is our users' activities and not a user on the Tor network not belonging to our vISP (to rephrase: The Tor Exit Nodes are run by us to save the user the trouble of avoiding malicious Exit Nodes, to increase anonymity and privacy they are also shared with the rest of the Tor network; a Tor user may exit through our exit nodes even though they do are not one of our users). Please note that while connected to our network, you will also be able to resolve .onion addresses.
We don't keep logs, we are a decentralized and distributed team of netsec, cipherpunks, activists, journalists, privacy / security / encryption / anonymity / paranoid schizophrenic fanatics spread around the globe, nevertheless our "Foundation" is HQ in the USA as:
a. We're not required to keep logs by law (and we are not able to)
b. We're "protected" by some of the best LE agencies in the world. When you incorporate abroad, these same agencies are in your threat model. In our case, their threat while present, is diminished.
Once we obtain non-profit status by the IRS your monthly donations ($29.95 {note: you are under no obligation to sign up for a paid account after the free month account expires}) will be tax deductible. We are also thinking of starting the "Church of the Free Bits" with a mission statement of protecting users' rights' on the Internet, keeping bits colorless, encouraging anonymous free speech and freedom of expression on the Internet, and enhancing the user's Internet experience via the use of cryptography, encryption, mix-networks, True(tm) Net Neutrality and privacy enhancing technologies.
We used to not have a website, not even on the dark net (word of mouth), now we must apparently. We are sticking with the informal no website policy for now (or WordPress'ing it at some point). Don't judge us, front-end is not our domain nor focus. We are not very Social. We should have a blog soon however.
Don't confuse us with "VPN providers" or "Residential proxies". We are a Virtual ISP, and while we may use some similar technologies, we are in the RiseUp / Telecomix league, not your fly-by-night VPN/VPS provider. Don't confuse us with a solution you can roll yourself either; we have X users, as long as you stick to the Tor browser bundle rules you can remain anonymous. If you roll your own you're the only one originating from that IP address.
10% of our monthly profits go to EFF, ACLU, The Pirate Party. The rest is our salaries and reinvestment in the Foundation. We are audited once a year technically (certified to not be keeping logs), are legally insured, and welcome volunteers.
We are still at the MVP stage and our setup reflects it. Our SLA is far from 99.999%, try 85%-90%. That said we are experimental as f*ck and we break things often and break things fast, yet aspire to be digital Bodhisattvas who do no evil.
If you have any feedback or comments, drop us a line: sysop@encryptica.org. We answer email (for now).
[Gentle Reminder: We're giving away free accounts: email sysop@encryptica.org with subject line "REGISTER HN" and you will receive your credentials in the next 72 hours as well as the instructions. We are offering a one month give away to interested HN users to test out our network and iron out any remaining issues.]
PS. We provide perma-free accounts (aside from this offer) for .edu / .ac.uk / academia / military personnel stationed abroad / veterans, and Australians (no, really).
Ask away if you have any questions, though keep in mind our answers are polymorphic, we are still building our infrastructure, and our policies are still taking shape and form, according to user demand, local laws, and our own paranoia. Our service is not completely secure yet and may be hackable (it's an MVP before we move to big iron), we only ask for an email address at the moment for authentication purposes, your password is automatically generated, nothing more.
Would you please elaborate on this part "...his highly-symbolic visual language demonstrates what I understand as a telltale lack of nuance common to those suffering from certain mental illnesses, but the impressive part to me is that he really maximizes it"? I'm really interested in the intersection of mental health issues with various fields (I've commented elsewhere in this thread), and this is the first time I hear a review in the context of UX+{non-NeuroTypical}.
While we're at it, by "flow", do you happen to mean flow in a "workflow zen" sense [yes, I'm aware that the word zen has been abused to death :) ] know ?
I was told by a doctor friend that one of the side-effects of heightened anxiety is a tendency to view things in black and white. "I'm a failure." "I am a failed human." "She hates me." "I suck at life." "That guy is so perfect and I'm not." etc. Such hyperbolic interpretations are common to teenagers, stressed-out university students, and even more so with people who suffer from chronic anxiety. I know very little about schizophrenia, but I think I recall that it is, or parts of it may be, part of the general anxiety disorder sphere. Along with OCD, bipolar disorder, and more.
One of the signs of less-than-mature visual thinking is a hyperbolically-abstract way of representing things. Sky is blue, people are torso + arms + legs + head, sand is yellow. In real life of course, the sky might use many colors from any part of the spectrum of hues--a sunset might use violets, oranges, reds, all together in a spread of gradients. The color of sand depends on atmospheric conditions (fog, erupting volcano nearby, time of day--what color is sand at night, if you were to paint it?), intermediary surfaces (rose-colored glasses). A human might have one leg (seen from the side), one big fat leg with two feet (three-quarters view), or even three arms (if you count the dark shadow that the one arm happens to be producing at the time due to the light source).
So I'm taking it for granted that a hyperbolic view is pretty much a constant current in this guy's life. It's pretty much always there, and he seems to be coping with it enough that he is not out causing damage to society (well, not physically). But along the way it has informed his entire visual language, which he relies upon in his interface design. Everything you see on screen in his creation has gone through his hyperbolic mental filter to become something very iconic. Because his disorder seems to put a lot of pressure on him to communicate, we are able to see this rich visual outcome. Even the interface chrome is a clue. There is apparently no need in his mind for a refined way to express antialiased curves or subtle lines in the interface. High-contrast, blinking characters will do. In my rather direct reading, I feel like I am seeing his brain open up. Everything goes through this threshold filter before it gets output to the screen, written down, expressed verbally, and so on. So rather than depth, we get breadth.
The sound works the same way. "This basic sound is good enough" probably never entered his mind. My guess, of course. But I'm thinking it's more like, "I am now playing a hymn".
I guess the use of the bible is a great example of this too. More culturally-refined religions that mesh very well with mankind's search for meaning tend not to be the ones that condemn people or rely on the harsh words of the old testament so much.
Whether in art, music, or religion, many of us wish we could be happy with a more basic, gets-things-done approach. We fill our movies with people who make quick, brutal decisions that most people could never force themselves to do. We may listen to hard & heavy music, but simple beats alone will never do--we crave detail, texture, gradations, refinement. We draw simple pictures, then wonder why we aren't happy with our representation of our mother's face as a simple smiling curve and two dots for eyes. These things feel like they trip us up, but our struggle with them is real and important for our maturity. To talk to an artist who creates great abstract works, visually, with music, or with words, but who cannot express his journey through life's gradations, is to hire a novelty artist; someone to whom we can only relate by tangent. I can relate to this OS creator by tangent. That tangent is my childhood; the innocence I left behind some time ago. But I have to acknowledge that I am drawn to it. I can't just let it go because I see part of myself in there, and I wonder if I am seeing in his beautifully abbreviated forms what would have happened to me if I have stayed content as that version of myself for a longer period of time. Why was I in such a hurry to see the gray areas in life? He is in a sort of flow (yes, workflow zen like, or alpha-stage like--and that's where I wonder if, since this alpha-stage, vanishing-fears, creative flow stuff is so sought after--if this stability he found to develop a whole OS rather than harass people in the streets all day is due to his home & family environment / physical needs being met) that is not so scatterbrained--it's focused. But it (unintentionally) sacrifices a closer look at reality in the process.
Well, I went a bit overboard and decided I needed to explore this a bit myself. So nothing definite, but I hope this gets my direction across. I am more of an intuitive personality type so I build thoughts starting from a hazy recollection of learning experiences that seem to align nicely ;)
Erdős was one of the greats, but emphasis on "one of". Again, it's easy to romanticize someone who's different, like a microcosm of orientalism. Erdős may even have been the best mathematician of his generation, but he wasn't head and shoulders above everyone else the way people sometimes seem to imply, and he wasn't (IMO, if the question even makes sense) the best of all time.
I've stumbled upon Terry's work a long time ago...and suffice to say he's been a major inspiration. It's a shame the majority of netizens (Yes, HN and Reddit included) can't look beyond his eccentricity and mental health issues (then again, it takes some digging and google-fu to find out the full story / context behind the man...his posts don't exactly come with a disclaimer).
Going down the rabbit hole of Googling, Redditing, finding out more about him and his story ("a one-man novel, modern x64 almost-but-not-quite-entirely-unlike-retro OS?" type of thing is catnip to my synapses), I've also come to understand a friend's schizophrenic relative a bit better. I've read accounts of schizophrenia and art intersecting, but did not understand what it is, what it's like, *, until I witnessed schizophrenia intersecting with IT, at which point the gates of empathy, admiration and fascination were flung wide open.
His username on HN is / has been some variation on "TempleOS", "LoseThos", "SparrowOS", "TempleOSv2", etc. AFAIK all hellbanned due to un-PC comments posted in his, for lack of better phrasing, "Moments of Un-Clarity".
The irony (perhaps using the wrong word) of being hellbanned when the story of of your life's work..your magnum opus (especially in this case, an objective article that places it in context and with some background) is featured on HN's front page, makes me sad.
While regrettable, his hellban is entirely necessary. Almost every comment he makes refers to "f------- n------" (censorship mine). To quote one from his page of most recent comments: "I spend my days clubbing r----d-n------. CLUB! CLUB! DIE N-----! CLUB! R----D! N------! DIE!! CLUB! N-----!"
Inc ase people weren't aware, there's a 'showdead' option in your HN profile that lets you see dead comments and submissions, eg those from hellbanned accounts. I don't think terry's comments are so consistently offensive as suggested above but he does post a lot of stuff that is bizarre or offensive to the casual reader, so the hellban makes sense.
Other times he posts lucid informative comments on technical topics and usually someone with Showdead enabled will copy them into the thread so everyone else can see them. It's not an ideal system but it's an acceptable compromise between keeping the site usable for as many as possible without completely barring access to someone like Terry.
It would be neat if a sufficient number of upvotes could cause a comment from a hellbanned account to show up as normal. I guess this could be gamed to circumvent bans, but in Terry's case it could lead to his informative/worthwhile comments being visible to more people.
Also I've made a bookmarklet for anyone who wants it, which re-colors the faded comments with shades of red. In my opinion this is a much better user experience, as these comments are appropriately flagged but still readable without much effort:
If you deal with the mentally ill you begin to see the differences between intentionally abusive behavior and behavior that's just highly erratic or unusual. Sometimes the mentally ill are dicks. But also, sometimes they just say or do things that are culturally insensitive without intending to hurt anyone's feelings, or understanding how they could do so.
While I think the above comment is offensive, it also appears to not be directed at any one person, and seems to be a facet of his mental illness. I therefore reason that this person is not trying to be abusive or racist, but is in fact suffering from a disease, and this is a symptom of it. So I don't think he should be held to the same standard everyone else is.
For example, we have flagkilling for comments in addition to downvotes that can be used to remove offensive remarks. Why wouldn't we merely let the crowd downvote his negative comments, and upvote the good ones? Positive reinforcement would actually be a useful to instruct him how to behave in a social environment such as this.
Or we could just hellban all the mentally challenged users.
Internet eugenics^W^W Hellbanning is a lot easier to justify when pseudonymity makes it easy to pretend everyone is a healthy WASP male like you are.
That said, signal-to-noise still needs to be maintained. I think the ability to resurrect a comment from the dead when the quality is verified by others would help people like Terry Davis feel less ostracized by hellbans.
"So I don't think he should be held to the same standard everyone else is."
I think you're misunderstanding how standards work. It doesn't matter if he believes it or means it to be abusive or if it's just trolling/performance art or if it's because of mental illness. Racist speech is offensive to the community and the people who repeatedly use it will be moderated.
There are people with mental illness that expose themselves or defocate in public. There nothing inherently wrong with nudity or defocation (hygiene yes but we're ok with dog poop as long as you clean it up) but these acts cross a line society has drawn. And most people will insist that such behavior not be permitted in things they take part in.
In the cases you cite, the way to deal with problem behavior usually involves medication, treatment, care, etc, but they still get to be participatory members of society.
The solution you're proposing would just lock them up in a high tower where the public could remain blissfully unaware that the mentally ill even exist, and never have to deal with them. I'd rather have to deal with somebody shitting on a bus once in a while than ostracize them and force them into a minimum security prison.
Standards are a guideline for how something should normally be. If someone is, by no fault of their own, radically outside this standard, they may require a separate standard to determine how they can be 'normal', and then find and receive treatment in order to live as close to normal as possible. Using the same standard for everyone would result in people being thrown into insane asylums for everything from anxiety to stress-induced nervous breakdown, bipolar disorder, OCD, schizophrenia, etc.
In 2012, there were an estimated 9.6 million adults aged 18 or older in the U.S. with a serious mental illness in the past year. This represented 4.1 percent of all U.S. adults. There were an estimated 43.7 million adults with any mental illness ; 18.6 percent of all U.S. adults. So yeah, I still don't think everyone should be held to the same standard, and I think treatment options should exist other than "hiding or banning from society".
When I was a kid I used to have a councilor that had Tourette's Syndrome, he was one of the nicest people and really helpful and good at his job. However every now and then he would have an attack a spitoff nearly the same vitriol F$%# N%^$#er, C$%k S%#$er etc.. after a few seconds he would recover and apologize. There really are mental illnesses out there that will make you say and do things that you don't actually believe when you're not under it's influence.
Arguably, we do have it on HN, by design. The effect of his ban, and his reputation as a programmer have turned him into a weird sort of mascot. It's possible that simply banning him outright would have driven him off the site by now. It certainly wouldn't have been more effort than hellbanning his accounts. But the system as it is encourages him to stay.
Everyone's talking about Terry like he's not able to see this...
Not aiming this message at you, krapp, or anyone, I just realized this while reading your message that Terry's probably read through this thread a few times. Wonder what his thoughts are on the article.
If you're referring to him saying "nigger" multiple times, then I think that that to him is more like a a kind of a generic bad-word to go with, and that he's not actually using it in a true "racist" sense.
Of course I agree that just using that word to insult someone classifies as racist, but so far I've never seen anywhere in his comments or rants that he actually argumented something against black people.
Right, and the sense of my comment is that this does not necessarily imply that he would not actually work and then fit nice in team with a black guy, for example. That's just how I perceive that..
I don't think he would work and fit in with any person who objects to the casual use of that term, which is hopefully the overwhelming majority of the industry.
Maybe there would be no reason to discuss about that once started working and that habit would probably sink in front of more interesting/important stuff.
One of the features of schizophrenia is creating new words for concepts without realizing how little they match up with other people's definition of those words.
For all we know Terry means nigger as referring to the religious concept of darkness and would insist it has nothing to do with skin colour.
I'm not saying that is the case here, but it very likely could be and I am saying that we're for more clueless when it comes to empathizing with people like Terry than we think we are.
To determine that might require face-to-face contact and since he is a diagnosed schizophrenic, it might still be unclear.
Even if the racism only comes out during manic periods, it would be difficult to parse that in an online medium. Since very few of us are trained to deal with that sort of episode, it is probably best to avoid the issue entirely.
Just about all Americans exhibit some racism, although most of it manifests itself in the form of less-obvious, but still insidious, biases and so on, rather than calling people the n-word on Hacker News.
Yes, there was a guy named TempleOS here on HN, his comments are frequently down-voted, maybe he is even hell-banned. He had some weird views and his comments were a bit off-topic.
It's not that I am not a fan, but it's just strange that we've been seeing so many posts from gwern.net, considering he's been writing for many years. This article, for example, is from 2010.
He explained why he's submitting so many nine days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6466422. He constanly updates and expands the articles on his website, so it isn't so strange for an article created in 2010 to be posted now. This post, for example, was last modified today.
Several of their new technology server motherboards were actually OEMed by Supermicro -- stuff like the boards for testing TXT, etc. Intel is actually getting out of the motherboard industry entirely. I think Supermicro was mainly involved in the server boards, not their desktop boards -- bigger manufacturers usually used intel reference designs but still made their own board, so I think it was a low volume business.
