The amount of comments talking smack about the post because of its author is really astounding. The article is an okay read, why not judge it based on its own merits?
It did seem a bit gratuitous the way the author mentioned they were a furry; it had nothing to do with whether one should delete their Patreon account.
This post was written primarily for a furry audience, whom has been a bit panicked over yesterday's news that Patreon did such a head-ass move.
After I tweeted that I deleted my Patreon (to which I paid like $700/month to various creators), several people asked me (publicly and privately) whether they should follow suit. I wanted to offer a calmer take.
Since there was discussion on HN about this topic yesterday, I thought the folks here would appreciate the perspective.
More power to the author , or being their own individual, but it made me feel a little uneasy. I dont mind people being a furry or expressing themselves, but I do feel like I was made a witness/part-of someone's kink and I'm not into that. I thought it would be dry infosec blog stuff and unfortunately opened it at work.
It's the same feeling when seeing a leather clad lady hauling someone's granddad on a leash around town. I respect it, just don't make me part of it against my will. I'll make a note to skip this site in the future.
multiple times in that article it's admitted that being a furry is sexual--because everything is. comparing it to Tupperware parties, as if the rate of sex at Tupperware parties is in any way comparable.
If everything is sexual, then the distinction becomes meaningless and only something that is significantly more sexual than the baseline is worth remarking upon.
My argument is that furry isn't inherently any more sexual than anything else. To call it a sex/kink thing is not a meaningful argument.
It is distracting, unappealing, impossible to miss, and doesn't require a lot of thought or explanation to comment on. Of course people are going to comment on it.
When people post websites to Show HN the majority of the comments are usually not more insightful than "I don't like this button, make it a different color."
Its not an ok read. It hypes stuff without any objective basis. Its argument for Patreon firing their security team being bad is that Patreon 'has been cutting on their security vendorS' as well, so security is going to suffer.
What's visible once you are past the hyped language in the article is that Patreon had a 5-person security team, and MULTIPLE security vendors up until this point?
Doesn't that look like too much for a small startup to start with? And if one argues that 'No amount of security is enough', then HOW many security vendors does anyone need?
Is there an objective measure? Like, does the amount of manpower that a security vendor should determine whether that vendor is enough? Or the number of industry-renowned personas that work in that vendor?
What happens if one player buys out all those security vendors and combines them into one single large vendor? Will that be enough?
...
So basically there is no objective criteria for this. The proposition is 'less security is bad', but nobody defines 'the right amount' of security objectively. So even if Patreon or anyone else is using a top-notch competent security vendor that handles all their stuff, it wouldn't be enough because... well, this is a chance to do some hype, obviously.
The proposition of the article in canceling Patreon and 'moving somewhere else' is also very dangerous and it feels like self serving.
Cancel Patreon and go where? Set up a subscription service yourself? And deal with all the chargebacks, fraud, refunds, financial compliance, and gasp sales tax collection and clearing? Or, one of the much smaller Patreon-competitors who have even less backing and organization behind them? So move from Patreon to... 'smaller Patreon'?
Which would easily put someone in hot water regarding actual legal responsibilities that can land one in large fines and even court sentences, by the way. People think that just because they have been making some side money here and there on the Internet and this was not something that the tax agencies and governments would bother to look into, things will stay the same if they start making such regular, noticeable income. It doesn't work like that. Things get serious.
Because now the money that you are making with your creative activity is not occasional 'gig money' that is paid you in cash somewhere, totally unaccountable. Its regular, trackable income that may land you in very hot water if you end up getting called up by your tax authority randomly in a few years. There is always the chance that your government may start a major sweep to weed out tax-dodgers so it may not be even random.
So such propositions like in the article 'Cancel and do something else' feels like random retorts from people who don't actually know what they are dealing with - laws and other people's money.
...
Even the prospect of having to set up and maintain a billing system should make people shudder at such a proposition. Its all fun and games at the start when you are setting up stuff. Not so much when keeping it updated and compliant takes a considerable chunk of time 2 years down the road. Forcing you to do deal with those instead of doing your creative activity.
Despite what the other commentators on this thread seem to want to believe without evidence, I'm not at all attracted to children, and I'm offended that someone would drop such a gross accusation in a HN thread.
Be offended and then clarify - why are so many furries in the infosec field? Do you have a speculative answer?
By the way a person using a dark market to get drugs and then meeting up with other consenting adults to “cosplay” as animals may very well be an illegal and potentially humiliating event for a person. Maybe just growing up with the subculture created an early need in a person to hide/obfuscate and therefore motivates entry into infosec. I don’t know - that’s why I’m speculating. Going straight to the child angle is too narrow/myopic.
> By the way a person using a dark market to get drugs and then meeting up with other consenting adults to “cosplay” as animals may very well be an illegal and potentially humiliating event for a person.
I have no idea what this means, considering:
1. I don't use dark markets
2. I don't use drugs
3. Being a furry isn't "animal 'cosplay'" in the sense your comment implies
> Maybe just growing up with the subculture created an early need in a person to hide/obfuscate and therefore motivates entry into infosec.
This also motivated a lot of LGBTQ+ and furry people to need to learn security just to exist online. What you're gesturing towards is actually self defense against shitty people.
> I don’t know - that’s why I’m speculating. Going straight to the child angle is too narrow/myopic.
It's probably better to ask questions than to speculate incorrectly, especially when it's a nontechnical matter.
It might be better not to speculate online but come on - this isn’t an in person group where you can see there’s a person waiting in the wings to answer questions.
If my blunt speculation motivated you to give the answer you did then it kinda worked, did it not? Of course that point is moot if you would have taken the time to answer the OP’s question.
And I wasn’t that far off anyways, just wrong on the timing in a persons life. From your answer apparently the motivation for infosec comes from an early need to obfuscate online identity from parents/family because of non-traditional sexuality. Is that humiliating for a person or is it trying to avoid feelings of humiliation that discovery would bring up in a parent. Does it really matter?
> It might be better not to speculate online but come on - this isn’t an in person group where you can see there’s a person waiting in the wings to answer questions.
This observation might have any merit at all if you weren't commenting on an HN thread for an article posted on my furry blog wherein I answer questions about the furry fandom all the damn time.
> If my blunt speculation motivated you to give the answer you did then it kinda worked, did it not? Of course that point is moot if you would have taken the time to answer the OP’s question.
This is a silly justification for assuming incorrect things publicly. This is how misinformation and willful ignorance spreads.
Your above response was very judgmental and not kind. My goal with the question was not to shame the lifestyle, and I don’t think that type of discussion is relevant here.
I don't find it enjoyable at al, but I would say it is ironic that back then it was liberals preaching for free speech and conservatives wanting to censor all things (television, video-games, porn, etc). Power seems to quickly change one's ideals.
I don't buy it. For better or worse Japanese studios have proved time and time again to not really care about the west. Just look at how expensive and hard it is to import their (usually not localized) stuff.
Japan lives in its own isolation bubble and western values are of no concern to most Japanese people.
That seems rather out of touch? The vast majority of TV broadcast anime series every season are licensed for simulcast by streaming services in North America and that has been the case for several years now. At a casual glance at the TV tab of https://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2022/spring , I think at least 2/3 are licensed by western streaming services. There's enough revenue that they can't afford not to care.
To date I've only seen smaller budget, little fish studios churn out woke propaganda that performs poorly. In the past, they were the same small-time studios that produced knock-off Gundam, 3d render shounen, unremarkable isekai anime #59, etc.
I live in Japan and one of the most refreshing things about it is that I have never encountered anything that represents even a faint understanding of what "wokeness" is, so I'm curious who these woke studios could possibly be marketing to, if they exist at all.
Woke propaganda? I haven’t seen an absolute ton of anime, but I’ve got nearly 200 items on my list, and I don’t think I’ve watched anything that could qualify. What are you coming across that I’m not?
I don't think "woke propaganda" is a thing in Japan, so it would surprise me if smaller anime studios (which, presumably, have less margin for taking risks) would be "churning out" anything of the sort, as opposed to whatever was most profitable in the domestic market for the least cost. Can you give examples?
Netflix and other streaming platforms have made inroads into anime production committees, but you are correct in that so far very little overall impact is seen in the industry. The Japanese domestic market is still the chief driver of demand for new anime, and success overseas doesn't seem to really inspire a response from most of the anime industry. I wouldn't say they're "isolated", since the market has been penetrated by the west, it's more like they're indifferent to western money.
I think Aniplex is in a position to change this, but the difficulty is going to be luring the studios since money doesn't seem to have as big an impact as one would expect.
Like I have said previously¹ about choosing a registrar: If you have regular backups, and if some downtime is not really a problem, it might be fine to use web site hosting, e-mail (and in extreme cases even DNS hosting), from some fly-by-night el cheapo provider. But your domain name registrar? Pick them carefully, don’t skimp, and make sure they have good support. Because when things go pear-shaped, you really want to be able to actually talk to someone to change your web server or e-mail DNS records (or even DNS servers) to somewhere else.
Big registrars can’t afford any support costs since they prefer to squeeze the price down as far as possible, and therefore they prefer to simply lose or outright drop any customer in case of any and all problems. Conversely, small registrars may charge more, but have better (i.e. actually existing, and sometimes even dedicated and personal) support for when things go wrong, and have a vested interest in keeping you as a customer.
A small registrar might also be so small as to know you personally, which will help monumentally against any social engineering attacks.
Full disclosure: I work at such a registrar, but you’re probably not in our target market.
I'm using NetCup for my DNS. They're based in Germany, operate from Nürnberg and expanded to Vienna (Austria) a while ago. DNS can be managed via Web UI (which I use) or API (but no ddclient support). I am not doing much with my domains besides mail, but afaict it worked as reliable as to be expected. I don't know their political views.
Speaking of ddclient, maybe check supported DNS services: https://github.com/ddclient/ddclient I don't think it's a good measure of quality, but if someone bothered extending ddclient for their service, it's probably not that bad. Plus if you ever find yourself wanting to use ddclient, it's nice having your provider supported. (NetCup is not supported, which is why I have to run an extra service on my Linux box instead of simply using the OpnSense).
> Cutting off Russians and Belarusians would only encourage the creation of different closed worlds and digital networks. We have chosen to hold out our hand to these people. We are not at war with them. Only their leaders, and their madness, need to be stopped. We will of course react quickly against war propaganda of any kind.
Few points that made me choose them (though I would probably take Cloudflare if they supported the TLD of my domains):
I've been using Gandi for years and can highly recommend them. They have great user interface that doesn't get in the way and waste your time (as opposed to GoDaddy, which at least back in the day when I was using them would be showing several pages of worthless "offers" you had to decline every time you wanted to just renew a domain name). Gandi also has excellent and easy to reach customer service (although I didn't get much chance to interact with them).
Google Domains is pretty no-frills. My only worry is if they randomly decide to nuke my Google account, as they are want to do to people sometimes, what happens to my domains.
Haven't had any issues with name.com since switching to them in 2018. Their interface leans form-over-function for my taste (massive waste of screen real estate), but I can always muddle through to the DNS record editing interface in less than 30 seconds, which is all that matters to me.
I really like Cloudflare too and have all my domains with them, they take 0 fees as a registrar, so I get domains at the same price as the registry price + ICANN fee.
However one downside with choosing them is, you're effectively locked into their DNS, since they don't seem to expose the ability to set your own Nameservers, which is ok if you planned to use them for Authoritative DNS anyway.
Seconding this. It's the easiest interface I've found by far for domain management. Having only used NameCheap before; it's great. My needs are pretty basic though, just pointing at a couple VPS.
> I was a happy namecheap user until they decided to go all political against Russian citizens
You should be unhappy with the Russian government who are the ones enacting a genocide, not companies that either due to conscience, internal or external pressure, or sanctions, decide to boycott the whole of Russia. Being against war crimes is not a political stance.
I live alone and work from home, sometimes the lack of others makes me feel a bit down, one usual antidote is listening to podcasts, but I also find them to be distracting. What I like to do in these situations is listen to Japanese radio shows, they are upbeat and since I understand very little Japanese they are not too distracting (at least in low volumes).
I quite enjoy the show named たまむすび (tama musubi), this youtube channel posts new episodes (is this the right term?) as frequently as they come out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo6OJrar-0P2rqLqMVomQNw , hope it can help some of you.
