If the keys are encrypted, maybe. The bank is using this to store bills and bank statements. This storage doesn't need to be secure, it just needs to be more secure than your letter box. The bank doesn't need to keep the storage private from its employees, as its employees already have access to your bank statements and bills. About the worst thing you could upload there is your internet or phone banking password in cleartext, as it would be visible to exactly the people who know how to best exploit it.

I see it as a requirement rather than a flaw. If my data can be decripted after I have lost my key, then other people had copies of my key. It is a well known and documented fact that we can't trust everyone with access to the other copies of my key.

You never see my requirements or feature requests or responses on user serveys, or those from people who ask me for help, because your product doesn't meet my needs and gets discounted in the first round (along with almost all of your competitors).

Yes, the escrow solution has exactly the sames flaw as Backblaze's model. Security is fundamentally flawed as soon as users lose control of their key. All that effort ensuring keys are never writen to disk provides some protection against hackers, but can be completely bypassed by authority. The list of people and organizations that can gain or already have such authority is always surprisingly large. You are doing the very very best job you can for the model you have chosen to implement.

Fixing key loss problems requires guiding or ensuring that the user to keeps copies of their key. Maybe you can even offer to keep a copy for nieve users, or make some pocket money selling keyfobs, but if you start from the position of compromiable keys you can't support people with a healthy dose of paranoia. And that is becoming more and more of us. We are stuck with encrypting *before* we use your service, which makes your service less usable and less attractive.

I always find it sad when people advocate blacklists to protect their sensitive data. 'Encrypt your most sensitive data first'. It doesn't work, as it assumes you know what your most sensitive data actually is and don't make mistakes. You need to protect *all* your data by default, and open up data you determine to be not sensitive when necessary ('Share this photo with friends', 'Sync with Contacts').

"Search and stream torrents. Towards anonymous streaming."

Because of the focus on streaming? Streaming simply doesn't work across of this planet and for less popular content, unless you are YouTube and have invested in a global network of proxies. When I read streaming, I translate it to broken. I look at the front page, see what seems to be a tightly integrated app designed for first world consumers of popular content, and move on.

But since you prompted me to look deeper, yeah, it looks very interesting. It might even be useful for getting that obscure movie from the one seeder in Brazil into my media player in my backwater on the other side of the planet.

Publishers in all industries like preorders because it creates a spike of sales on release day. This is required to get on best seller lists, because they are usually about total sales over the last week or month.

The people who will be running the show in 20 years from now are not on Facebook. For a while now, the people running the show have been groomed for power. If you are a senator wanting to continue your dynasty, you send junior to private and exclusive schools and now days certainly don't let them near the Internet using their real name or real face. That embarrassing photo of your son would not only throw away everything you have invested, but also torpedo your own position of privilege. Not all trust fund kids are Paris Hilton.

Well done. I've not heard Python descripted as 'scriping language du jour' for a decade. I tend to date the time when Python started getting taken seriously at version 1.5.2, April 1999.

Of course, if real code is written in C/C++, then no true scotsman would ever consider scripting languages the right tool for the job :)

There are many services that tackle parts of Skype's functionality, but I have yet to see one that tackles them all. Not only does Skype to chat and client-to-client video conferencing, but it also gives you access to a global POTS gateway both outgoing and inbound, and is available to customers outside of the USA. Viber, Line, WeChat, Google and tox don't have the functionality to take away Skype's business. So we remain stuck with Skype, despite their ever worsening service and dubious allegence.

Ubuntu Kylin is pretty viable. Ubuntu 14.04 specially localized for China, produced by Canonical in partnership with one of the (many) ministries. By bringing in the experts, you avoid all the problems you cite, and it is open source so a Chinese group can take the drivers seat and salvage any lost pride whenever it is viable.

China is huge and the government is huge. IIRC they have had several customized linux variants in development simultaneously (of which we generally know of Red Flag because it had the coolest name).

The other gaping hole is that Amazon are going to screw their product suppliers so much that there won't be any supply.

"At which point the screws can be tightened indefinitely. And after a while, there will be no more Charlie Stross novels because I will be unable to earn a living and will have to go find a paying job."

Yeah, it would be a fantastic business model for Amazon to kill off the supply of quality books.

Every Open Source opearting system has support for as long as you want to keep making fixes for it. It isn't like China lacks people capable managing this process and patching the code. And if they somehow can't, it isn't like Canonical or Red Hat or a hundred other companies wouldn't do it for them for peanuts compared to Microsoft licences.

My landlord owns the fixtures. I own the lightbulbs.

Line took over nearly completely from WhatsApp in my region.

Right, few people care about the init scheme. systemd would have had much less of a battle for acceptance if it was just an init scheme. The major objections seemed to be about all the other stuff it takes over and plans to take over.

Funny? Insightful. We knew what would happen, and Australia voted them in anyway.