> Why would it plunge instead of re-focusing on things that are intrinsically important?
Because a lot of the economy is focused on creating and maintaining a surplus[1]: make people buy things that they don't really need, make them discard and replace things that they've been convinced are no longer worth it.
That's the current state yes. But that doesn't mean it's the only possible state. If that wasteful consumption disappear, would anyone be worse off? Hardly. But it would free up capacity to do more actually useful and valuable things. Sounds like a win to me.
> Years on, our primary data source is literally holding dozens of subscriptions to every commercial provider we can find, and enumerating the exit node IP addresses they use.
Assuming your VPN identification service operates commercially, I trust that you are in full compliance with all contractual agreements and Terms of Service for the services you utilize. Many of these agreements specifically prohibit commercial use, which could encompass the harvesting of exit node IP addresses and the subsequent sale of such information.
Those are pretty old cases that I think the courts have moved away from and even in those cases it was a TOS violation and explicit c&d that the company ignored.
Maybe the tables could be turned and we can build a service with dozens of subscriptions to every VPN detection service and report them for ToS violations ;)
... "the owner authorizes patrons, customers, or guests to access the computer network and the person accessing the computer network is an authorized patron, customer, or guest and complies with all terms or conditions for use of the computer network that are imposed by the owner;"
There's a little secret that most of the business world knows but individuals do not know: You don't have to follow Terms of Service. In most cases, the maximum penalty the company can impose for a ToS violation is a termination of your account. And it's not illegal to make a new account. They can legally ban you from making a new account, and you can legally evade the ban.
Unless you're the one-in-a-million unlucky user who gets prosecuted under the CFAA's very generic "unauthorized access to a protected computer" clause, like Aaron Swartz. It seems the general consensus is this doesn't apply to breaking a website ToS, and Aaron was only in so much trouble because he broke into a network closet, as well as for copyright violation. But consult a lawyer if unsure. (That's another difference: A business will ask a lawyer if it wants to do something shady, while an individual will simply avoid doing it)
The stylus and cartridge needed to play the record were included on each spacecraft. The instructions to assemble the record player were included on a protective aluminum cover.
This title is misleading. As explained in the comments, there are still non-free binary blobs in the firmware. Please reserve phrasing like "100% X" for things that are indeed "0% Not(X)."
Dongle-based license management or DRM isn't the same as product tying; each dongle just validates the license for the use of a piece of software. But forcing customers to only use ink cartridges from a specific brand, deliberately rejecting or invalidating third-party refill options? That is a form of product tying, and it is being deemed illegal in more and more countries.
I believe it would be redundant to explicitly grant freedom of speech to an organization such as a union, as its individual members inherently possess this right.
And you will find similar reasoning in the Citizens United decision with respect to corporations:
> If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. If the antidistortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it would permit Government to ban political speech simply because the speaker is an association that has taken on the corporate form.
Corporations can be held criminally liable, but they can't go to prison. And while lots of countries have gotten rid of the death penalty, a corporation can actually be "executed" by getting dissolved.
Note that you need to be on a paid Google Workspace plan before pointing your DNS MX records at Gmail as provider, or else your emails will either be rejected at best or simply vanish into thin air in the worst case.
Oops yeah I forgot to state that, thanks for pointing it out.
There are cheaper options than Google Workspace (which is £11.80/month) for quality email hosts for your custom domain though - like FastMail (£4.50/month), ProtonMail (£8.19/month), or Microsoft 365 Business Basic (£5.52/month).
Personally I think it's a price well worth paying for knowing you genuinely own your own email address (while not having to manage both the software and the reputation of your own email server) - even more so if you either have friends/family to share the cost with (one domain cost between you, and potentially discounted per-account cost for multiple users depending on the plans available from the various email host options, such as Fastmail family going as low as $2.33/user/month), or if you also want other services bundled with email (such as Google Workspace's other tools, or Office 365 software, etc)
But for anyone who can't afford it, the free alternative of Option 2 from my comment above is still a big upgrade on just relying on a single account for everything.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fcSviC7cRM
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