jbloggs777

This was similar to a trick that a few smaller (less serious) hobby-ISPs did back in the days of 14.4k/28.8k modems to take advantage of the "reasonably priced" business plans for ISDN. They'd register multiple businesses at a single address to qualify for the plans, then balance new egress connections across the pool using squid and other magic. Fun times...

With DPRK it seems pretty simple: Are citizens permitted to leave the country of their own accord? The answer of course is no, and that is extremely telling. Combined with choreographed & escort-only tourism, one really has to question it.

My opinion: Odds are likely that it really is a shithole in many ways and in many places (and for many reasons, sanctions included). That said, people will still live their lives within those constraints, because that's what people tend to do. We won't get accurate and verifiable information from their government about citizen health and longevity, causes of death, etc. so OP's propaganda must be taken as just that.

At some point NK's system will fall, and some historians and archeologists will get to do their thing, and we'll gain some more insights.

I find it pretty useful to help get me over mental hurdle of starting something. So it's faster than me procrastinating for another day. ;-)

Hmm. You are right, but they might not need it for every region. Steam is probably big enough that existing regional companies would come to it and be eager to form partnerships. They could become more of a payment processor aggregator, focused on a low risk market segment. And of course they can do CCs directly too - that's the easy part.

The challenge will be to get consumers on board. I know that I groan every time I need to enter my CC details online these days.

They would face anti-competitive behaviour from Peepal though. So it's a risk.

Internally, they are probably already working on ways to appropriately segment their catalog based on payment provider. "Sorry User, you cannot purchase title X using Paypal. We recommend $Competitor instead."

It sounds like some payment processors are treating mastercard's contractual requirements as a hard risk in this case - maybe it's justified, maybe not. Try getting corporate lawyers to be risk averse in the finance world. Mastercard doesn't seem to want to soften their wording but talks platitudes in public statements. Shrug.

They could do it with significantly fewer people, for themselves and even for GOG, Itch and potentially others. Their use-case is digital payments for games, which is limited in scope and risk. PCI and compliance is a PITA, but manageable.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hacker

"The media's definition of the real term malicious cracker. A hacker used to be a well respected individual who loved to tinker with gadgets.", plus a few other definitions.

It's time for Steam to launch their own payment processing company, and apply pressure directly on the card networks and the future competition.

It won't be nearly as profitable as their current business model, but sometimes industries need a shakeup.

Judges usually don't know this stuff, but they primarily work with systems and software supplied by the state...whose experts should know what they are doing.

My bet is that this guy decided to work on personal equipment, probably in violation of the rules. Being a judge, he's unlikely to be sanctioned for it, and will certainly learn from the experience. If anything, there may be some internal discussions which we'll never hear about.

Law is an area where AI can add value, though... searching through past rulings and legal opinions is tedious, and anything that can assist to find needles in haystacks would be welcome. It shouldn't be used to write legal judgements or arguments though...

Just wait until they release the list ... it'll have a few holes.

Unfortunately, it's very hard to trust any such list. If he had any sense, he would have also added a few extra names over the years of people who he just didn't like, or those he wanted to manipulate. Scumbags be scumbaggy, whether rich or poor.

That said, all implications and accusations should be thoroughly investigated, and if corroborated by victims and/or witnesses, and then be brought to public trial or just made public if the reasonably accused is dead.

What do you have against the project and the people behind it? It sounds personal.

There are plenty of non-commercial Linux distributions. Some managed better than others. Some generic, some with niches. OpenWRT is a favourite of mine.

They could. The protocol also supports IP spoofing, so doxing could also be a thing.

For individuals, it is a time consuming and costly legal process, whether justified or not. For the law firm, it costs a few cents per letter, but they get a few hundred (or more) euros when some sucker pays.