Wow, a post from 2001 that’s still online today. You don’t see that often any more!

Encryption would prevent it - that’s what I meant :)

I think the trick is to convince someone to send that string, so the modem sees it coming from the computer. Similar to tricking someone into pressing Alt+F4, or Ctrl+Alt+Del twice on Windows 9x (instantly reboots without prompting).

“I’m having fish tonight!”

XFree86 was such a tacky name

+++ath0 is a command that tells a dial up modem to disconnect. I’ve never seen it used in IRC this way, but my guess is that the modem would see this coming from the computer and disconnect.

This was back in the days when everything was unencrypted.

A part of this was that they wanted people to drive far so they’d have to replace their tires more often.

business class data plan that actually allows hosting

You can get a VPS for $30/year with 4GB RAM, 25-35 GB SSD. Still good enough to host some things! Self hosting doesn’t mean it has to be at your house. In some cases, using a VPS ends up cheaper than just the electricity cost for hosting at home, let alone hardware costs, internet costs, etc.

Spam protection is hard given SMTP was never designed with it in mind.

I also self-host my email, but I use an outbound SMTP relay to avoid having to deal with all that stuff. My server sends outbound emails to a company that’s got that all figured out.

Maybe that’s not “true” self hosting, but it’s really no different to people that self-host but put Cloudflare in front of their server, apart from the direction (Cloudflare is for inbound traffic whereas SMTP relaying is for outbound traffic).

I think the most feasible solution is municipal internet, where the city owns its own fiber lines and essentially runs it like a non profit. Good cities that do this don’t see it as a profit center; they see it as providing a critical service to their residents. Some of the maintenance cost comes from taxes, just like roads, public schools, etc.

Palo Alto California is doing this. They’re modernizing their electricity grid, so they’re also running fiber at the same time as running the new electrical lines. Electricity in Palo Alto is run by the city, and as a result, electricity there is less than 1/3 of the price of electricity with PG&E, the investor-owned utility company that supplies most of Northern California.

More community run mesh networks

That’s kinda what settlement-free peering at an IX (internet exchange) is. Multiple networks agree to connect to each other for free. Of course, the networks are usually large ones, so that kinda goes against your other points.

I’ve been self hosting my email for a long time, but I use an outbound SMTP relay so I don’t have to deal with IP reputation. The more interesting part to self-host is the receiving part, not the sending part.

How does Docker reduce security?

Just some parts of it. https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds

I think they’re pretty different cases.

Amazon’s one was essentially a side project for them, likely fully funded in-house using their R&D (research and development) budget.

In Nate’s case, it was their entire product. They received funding from investors purely for the AI functionality that didn’t actually exist or work. They specifically claimed that it did work, which is how they got the money. They spent all the investor money and had essentially nothing to show for it.

At least there’s some competitors now, which could be used as drop-in replacements if Let’s Encrypt were to disappear.

I suspect the vast majority of certificate authorities will implement the ACME protocol eventually, since the industry as a whole is moving towards certificates with shorter expiry times, meaning that automation will essentially be mandatory unless you like manually updating certs every 90-180 days.

They already factored in some amount of tariffs into the US price. It’s not really that it’s cheaper in Japan, but rather it’s more expensive in the USA. It’s also US$65 cheaper in Australia, for example, and even cheaper in the UK.

(keep in mind that advertised prices in Australia and the UK include tax, so you need to subtract the tax to compare with US prices)

The tariffs are just a lot higher than everyone expected. Nintendo were probably preparing for a 20% tariff, not a 54% one.

Maybe! I’m sure there’s loopholes of some sort.

Are there any economies that are truly self-sufficient?

China is trying. I feel like at least some industries there would be fine even if the US collapses.

Check Usenet, or get a friend with a subscription to a Usenet indexer to search for you.

This is a rare case where a piece of consumer electronics is going to be quite a bit cheaper in Australia compared to the USA! Usually stuff costs more in Australia.

The Switch is currently US$450 and will probably go up with tariffs. Meanwhile, it’s listed as AU$700 in Australia, which is AU$630 before tax (all advertised prices include tax), which is US$385.

I imagine this is going to happen for a lot of devices. I’m an Aussie living in the USA and I never thought I’d see the day when buying stuff in Australia would be cheaper. Australia has better consumer protection too, around things like repairs/refunds due to major issues even outside the warranty period.

Do you not like reading the truth?