Great, soon it won't be enough to block browser cookies. I'll have to avoid glancing at actual cookies lest my search results start filling up with Snackwells coupons and special offers from the local gym.
That is, if you're an internet company. To find out that AT&T is logging your location indefinitely (since 3.5 years ago), you need the FOIA:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/secret-memo-...
The sassy display glasses would be wielded exactly because I want a computer to analyze what I see in some way. It's not merely an extra component.
When you are actually wearing them...
There was a great TEDx talk on the (well-executed) use of humor, and satire in particular, to get points across when they would otherwise be disregarded, or to make bland points more viral: http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_bliss_comedy_is_translation.h...
I don't see a reason to discourage sarcasm out-of-hand, or any other form of humor. Based on the merits of the individual comment, sure.
The problem is part of a larger one, people seem to be generally more interested in pithy, memorable one liners than in starting a discussion -- the easiest way to do this is to say something vitriolically sarcastic. People who agree with you will up-vote you, and you'll get some measure of affirmation from that.
The issue with that approach is that Hacker News should be a place where discussion flourishes. If the parent had said something to the effect of "This presents a troublesome, albeit interesting, avenue for further data aggregation, which could be used to target ads or sold to third parties," it would have likely kicked off an interesting discussion (both about the feasibility of such data aggregation (computer vision, mobile aggregation, etc.) and the societal costs of allowing such aggregation).
Instead, he went for the funny one-hitter, which framed the debate in such a way (by suggesting that it was inevitable and going to be used for evil) that anyone with even a slightly differing opinion is prevented from saying anything.
I don't mean to single out mechanical_fish specifically, many people here are guilty of this, but it essentially makes Hacker News more of an announcement/sharing forum (like twitter) than a discussion forum, which was one of the things that attracted me (and I'm sure many others) to it in the first place.
So I guess my larger point is that we should be more mindful of this stuff. It's more important to frame a relevant discussion than it is to "be right," and we should embrace that by posing interesting questions and answering them deliberately (being careful to stick to facts and being careful with the speculation, which easily morphs into FUD).
The reason I read a comment thread is because I want to find things that experts have to say. If grellas has some comment about the applicability of privacy law to the monitoring of someone's immediate surroundings, then great, let's hear it. But if I don't walk away from the comment having learned something, I would rather it not be there.
I would argue that +1 Funny is uniquely responsible for the decline of comments at /. throughout the years. While I agree that high quality content can rescue a humorous post, the previous commenters are right to be critical of humor for humors sake.
"Humor for humor's sake" is not what I, nor that TEDx talk, was referring to.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, recognized in it a cry of pain: Sarcasm, he said, was "usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."
Beautiful. So, based on that: If what I wrote wasn't technically sarcasm, that's not because I wasn't trying. ;)
And now I'm afraid I must reiterate my clearly-signalled disinterest in yet another lengthy debate about Google's privacy policies. There are plenty of older threads on HN that cover these things, and this week I have more urgent things to do, like try to make up my mind whether or not my past and future YouTube viewing history is bound up with the privacy of my soul.