It just allowed unrestricted trade outside of regular economy. In a world where the governments themselves are corrupt and criminal, you could argue over the ethicality of the concept. But comparing it to drug cartels is unfair I would say.
I was curious how they might handle something that isn't ready yet, but in the process of being built. But that answers it, it's not eligible. Oh well :( Plenty of good open source out there deserving as well.
You seem to be mistaking that a startup is a business and an open source project doesn't need to be. One can simply want to build something and give the code away for free because the world benefits far more from that than trying to monetize it as a business and having fewer people use it.
So while this effort is commendable, it will do nothing to help open source projects that are good, but just have not become popular yet.
It makes you wonder how many projects are out there which have tremendous potential but still lack a critical feature or two that a bit of funding would help bring to fruition.
This is the most obvious reason why Verisign is a monopolist and should be regulated like a utility. They make false claims about choice and not being locked in. You buy a domain, you use it, you're locked in forever. And they know it. That's why they fight tooth and nail to protect their monopoly.
It’s worse if you stop using the phrase ‘buy’ and instead use the term ‘rent’. A DNS provider could 10,000x your domain cost and there’s nothing you can do about it.
This actually happened to me, but fortunately I never actually used the domain. I registered tweed.dev intending to use robert.tweed.dev as a personal blog. It wasn't classed as a "premium" domain and the first year was £5 or something IIRC, which was half price compared to the normal renewal fee.
The next year they decided it was premium after all, and wanted to charge £492,000 for renewal. I still have a screenshot of that, although needless to say I don't own the domain anymore.
They operate the registry, but are not a registrar (bad choice of terminology) since they sold off that part of their business to Squarespace. Unclear to me who actually raised the price here since you can register a .dev domain with many registrars.
That's insane though, I assumed renewal prices were more or less locked in after you own a domain. Even the premium ones that go for thousands say they renew at the standard $12 or whatever.
Yea, but in this case the property is very special. I don't think anyone has a right to own a "name" for perpetuity, especially such a short one—that's just extending property rights to a nonsensical place.
Granted, I also have zero respect for people who think that trademarks, patents, and copyright are still working to promote rather than stifle the arts and sciences, so I can understand why my above sentiment might rankle.
Ok please stop posting as darby_nine. I’d like my turn with that identity. I think it fits with some objectionable conspiracy theories I’d like to promote.
Countries owning their ccTLDs seems basically correct to me. If you rent a `.tm` domain, you're doing business with the nation of Turkmenistan: might want to think about whether a TLD pun is worth taking on that relationship.
There are a bunch of different domain types all commingled together; non-premium gTLD domains, ccTLD domains, 3rd level domains, registry premium gTLD domains and, as added complexity, aftermarket domains which could be any of the previous listed types.
ICANN provides some protection for standard gTLD domains, but it's minimal. You're guaranteed identical pricing to all other standard domain registrants on the gTLD, so they can only raise your price by raising the price of everyone else at the same time. That hasn't stopped some registries from 10x price increases though. The only thing it does is ensure they can't single you out and massively hike your renewal fee.
However, that does not apply to registry premium gTLD domains. When you register a registry premium domain you waive those protections and the registries can technically do anything they want.
If you register a ccTLD domain, you're at the mercy of that country's registry. If you register a 3rd level domain you're at the mercy of the 2nd level domain owner and they're regulated by either ICANN or a country based registry.
It's actually somewhat complex when you get into it.
To be clear, that's because the country that represents that ccTLD has sovereignty over it. That's also why they can have arbitrary, unusual requirements on them.
See also personal phone numbers, which are now "portable" and thus "required for every single identity verification you will ever perform", without being regulated, which means your identity is one $30 bill autopayment or one dodgy MVNO customer service interaction from being lost forever.
What if you need to stop paying for a phone bill entirely though? Maybe you're living paycheck to paycheck and money is just too tight this month. That's what I think GP was talking about.
Is it possible to "park" your phone number until you can start a new plan?
It's now possible. I work for a mvno that was recently acquired. We have a $5 pause plan. It has no data, voice or text, it just keeps your line active.
Germany is not exactly known for cheap plans, but apparently it’s worse in the US and you can only get comparable plans if you pay yearly, which I guess might just barely make a $5 parking contract worth it.
This wouldn't be surprising. It's sad they've let it atrophy the way that they have. My understanding is that they purchased it to train their digital assistant on the voicemails (where we would correct the transcripts for free)
Though AFAIK there's no law or contract term preventing Google from starting to charge a monthly fee in the future.
And after some time — for me it was 5+ years, porting from a baby Bell land line to a postpaid T-Mobile family plan for a couple years and then to Google Voice — your number will be tarred and feathered as a "VoIP" number and rejected for identity verification by some parties until it's ported back to a paid service (again, after some time).
Even so, it's nice that Google lets me keep the number I was born with for $0/month for as long as it lasts.
Google has already killed my sister's business's Enterprise Workspace plan, because they decided to change their mind, and make "unlimited storage" not a thing. She was paying $200/month and they now wanted $1,600/month. I decided to build a NAS for her instead.
This is despite written emails from their support confirming the use case (videography) and storage needs were suitable, and a written statement that she is "permanently grandfathered" once Google stopped offering the plan to new customers.
To make matters worse, they gave her 30 days to download all data before everything would be deleted permanently. This is how Google treats "enterprise" customers.
> your number will be tarred and feathered as a "VoIP" number and rejected for identity verification by some parties until it's ported back to a paid service (again, after some time).
Where things get fun is when Google Voice IS your paid service (e.g. google fiber's phone service, popular with a certain demographic that used POTS for most their life and want to continue having a similarly behaving service).
You can port your number to NumberBarn and park it for $2/month. Other services probably exist, but I signed up to NumberBarn ages ago and haven't had any issues the handful of times I've used them.
Lose access to your number by any category of errors on your part or your carrier's part, and see what happens.
They're not tied to your person with much more permanency than a DHCP IP address. There's no process to verify your identity or recover your number or help you regain your accounts. The actual process for migrating your number is "Sign up with this other brand you've never tried before and tell them to politely ask your former brand to release the number to them".
If I lose my phone to a trash compactor, the process to change anything in my phone carrier account with regard to SIM cards is going to forward things to my Gmail account, which at random times for random reasons is going to begin to demand 2 factor identification for logging in on a new device via texting my phone number.
There are all sorts of crazy scenarios that can arise with double binds like this.
If we had a resilient authoritative identity verification (say, the DMV, or US Passport Office), or if we had a diverse variety of low-trust identity factors that we could check multiple aspects of ("text my mother" / "Here's a bill showing my address" / "here's a video of my phase saying my phone number"), there would be a way out, but all of corporate America heard "2fa is required for security now" and said "So we just text them right?"
That makes your phone not "another thing that people can use to talk to you in circumstances when you're not accessible", which the FCC's portability plan was maybe sufficient for, but a fragile single point of failure for your entire identity.
I'd assume regulated in the sense of identity verification and transactions. There's no legal basis for needing a north American phone number, but good luck with any US obligations if you are without one.
I’m wondering how feasible would it be to just use a SIM card from another country (e.g. in Estonia, you can get a prepaid card for 1 € that works in EU roaming just fine, with domestic-like prices on local calls). How many services in Germany require you to use specifically German number?
It depends of course how far you are. I used to use an orange Spain SIM before the EU roaming deal because they had free roaming on sister networks. But I didn't go there so much.
There is an alternative to such regulation though. In the Netherlands, all registrars are required to support automatic transfer between registrars. You can lookup your "transfer code", which you can enter at a new registrar, and they will handle that your domain is transferred (with proper DNS etc) and your old subscription stops.
GP is referring to the registry, not the registrar. There's lots of competition between registrars, but the registries have a post-sale monopoly on all domains.
Put another way, as soon as you register a .com domain, the only registry that can sell you a renewal is Verisign. If there weren't price controls, Verisign could increase the price of a .com renewal to $100 and there's nothing anyone could do but pay it.
This whole thread back to the root is right. Verisign has a monopoly, you can never drop a domain once it's associated with your business, and all of it should be regulated like a monopoly.
Yup. Think about what happened when the Internet Society almost sold the .org TLD to Ethos Capital and they were planning on raising the registration prices by a lot.
If you really want to get upset, go look what the NTIA did with the 2018 renewal of the .com agreement. Prior to 2018, the US DoC had a significant amount of oversight and control. The 2018 renewal pretty much gave .com to Verisign. The only thing the US DoC can do now is renew the contract as-is or withdraw.
That's the case in some European countries and it seems fair. If you don't want me competing, you pay for that privilege. Otherwise, the non compete is just an abuse of power.
It's by design, they don't want any regulation. They want government to not work. They are doing their best to make both a reality, at the expense of the average person.
There's plenty of valuable information on reddit. In fact, there's a strong search trend to put 'reddit' on search queries to get better results.
Could this guy be LARPing? Sure.
I looked up a few of the references, they look accurate. They would need to be an excellent LARPer to get that detailed. Or they actually know what they are talking about.
Seems straight forward enough, put a value cap on it. $10 million? 20 million? Is anyone going to feel bad for the poor soul who can't pay the tax bill on a free 20 million dollar home?
We have a limit on gifts and according to this is 13 million. Just make it that.
What would be the downside here other than extremely wealthy having to pay some taxes upon death?
If that home is over 10, 13 or 20m dollars... you can pay tax on it. If you have siblings, I assume it would be divided between you, so multiply value by siblings.
If you got a home worth that much, you can pay some taxes on it.
1,500 homes sold for over 10m in a year. We're talking about the richest of the rich. That's exactly who should be paying some taxes. The people bitching about losing 'their' home this way... are either a) delusional or b) looking for a way to protect their incredible wealth.
Is your family home worth more than 10 or 20m dollars?
I can pay taxes on one dollar. It's the principle.
In my country our threshold is significantly lower by the way - it's around a million, so bog standard houses get hit by it.
I think that inheritance taxes are wholly equivalent to wealth taxes, e.g. "you have a thing, I like that thing, give me that thing", and therefore morally wrong.
I could agree with them on the basis that the money were minimal and solely used for security e.g. police and military, it's an insurance policy against theft, the Government has a monopoly on force and that's better than warlords.
It's not used that way though, so I reject the premise.
Basically, you don't believe in government except to protect you from others who might take, while you have would have to ability to take advantage of others freely. No basic humans should be satisified by the government.
That's exactly what the ultra wealthy seem to generally believe too. Sorry that many of us reject your premise that you should be freely protected to screw over everyone else and think that's a moral decision (it's not, but I won't waste my time).
The greatest privilege I suppose I have is that I am able to consider a bog standard three bedroomed terraced family house as being normal regardless of how much bad Governmental policy has managed to inflate the market value.
There are different things that make house/apartment above normal. One is of course size and age. But other things like location have big influence as well (check apartments in central Manhattan).
Instead of trying to analyze hundreds of different what-makes-house-above-bare-minimum aspects we can simply use the price as a good indicator of the underlying value.
And 1mil house is definitely not bare minimum. It is clearly above average.
I'll hand it to you that a $1mm home is definitely valuable, however in my case, living on an island, it's not like I can trade it for anything much less valuable, so it's pretty much non-fungible if you assume I will move from a home I own to another home I own nearby. Sure, if I sell here and move to North Dakota I'll be a wealthy individual there, but I am not going to be doing that. Also, if I sold this and rented, I would have a payment that's 50-65% of what I have in this mortgage, but then even if I have a large equity gain from selling I still have to assume I'll use that money over time to rent, so I'm even again. Homes here are more of an impediment to financial success than in most places. People move away from Hawaii, where they grew up, because it's so unaffordable for normal folks. I am lucky that I am well-employed when I have a job (not right now) and can afford to pay this huge payment in order to secure my children's future housing. They will certainly be well-off with a paid-off home here, but that's rarer these days with a lot more people with new families renting here. I'm not really sure what your point is about the home value in this situation. On the mainland it's a little different because you can move 60 minutes away from most places and find cheaper housing, even if it isn't your favorite place. Here on the islands, you can't just move to a cheaper place, everything is expensive here unless you want to move into a literal shack.
> I'm not really sure what your point is about the home value in this situation.
Everything started with another account saying "In my country our threshold [for inheritance tax] is significantly lower by the way - it's around a million, so bog standard houses get hit by it."
So my point is that 1mil house is not a "bog standard house", whether we look globally or in the USA-only.
Sure, there are some spots in the world in which the average price of the house is going to be higher. But that's irrelevant. It only means that the location is what making that house exceptional.
I understand your practical considerations/explanations about living in an extremely costly place where everything (housing, food, etc) is expensive. But the decision to stay there is on you. "if I sell here and move to North Dakota I'll be a wealthy individual there, but I am not going to be doing that" - is the crux of the issue.
