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Swiss Researchers Describe a Faster, More Secure Tor
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and University College London published a paper this week describing a faster and more secure version of Tor called HORNET. On one hand, the new onion routing network can purportedly achieve speeds of up to 93 gigabits per second and "be scaled to support large numbers of users with minimal overhead". On the other hand, researchers cannot claim to be immune to "confirmation attacks" known to be implemented on Tor, but they point out that, given how HORNET works, perpetrators of such attacks would have to control significantly more ISPs across multiple geopolitical boundaries and probably sacrifice the secrecy of their operations in order to successfully deploy such attacks on HORNET.
As I look upon the Slashdot front page today, I see only one story with more than 100 comments. Most submissions here routinely get only 50, if not much fewer. One submission from yesterday only has 20 comments!
This very submission has been on the front page for over 30 minutes, and there wasn't one single comment when I started writing this one!
To really see what I'm talking about, look at Slashdot as it appeared a decade ago on July 25, 2005. Or compare it to the nearest Saturday to then, July 23, 2005.
Almost all of those submissions had at least 100 comments. Many of them had far more. In fact, it was routine to see submissions with 400 or even 500 comments. So clearly something is extremely wrong today, when 100 comments is considered a lot.
Dice, we need to have a talk about this existential problem, and how to remedy this situation.
The first thing to do is to stop with the -1 moderations that plague so many discussions here. Too much perfectly fine content ends up at -1 right away. We're pretty sure it's somebody affiliated with Slashdot who is responsible. Even if it isn't, Slashdot should not be giving mod points to whoever is engaging in this harmful moderation.
The second thing to do is to get rid of the posting limits. They made sense when submissions here routinely got hundreds of comments. Now that the numbers of comments is measured using tens, the limits should go. Users should get an unlimited number of comments a day, and the time between comments should be at most one minute. Remember, this is a discussion site. Putting up artificial barriers to discussion, like rate limits, only causes harm!
The third thing to do is to avoid the social justice submissions. Yes, they get lots of comments, but they're extremely low-quality comments. 500 of those comments are worth less than even just 10 good comments about a legitimate topic.
It's not too late to save Slashdot. With some simple and sensible changes, this site could easily be restored to its former glory. Get rid of the bad moderators, get rid of the posting limits, and let us actually converse here! Help restore this site to a place where people actually want to come and visit. Please, Dice, do the right thing!