HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

DisjointedHunt

904 karma · joined May 14, 2020

submissionscomments
DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
"remedy the error"? Care to put that in a sentence like "Remedy the error of using the internet"

You expect a business that's invested in the AWS stack to up and move overnight because some illiterate morons in Brussels decided that?

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
Either you don’t understand technology or you’re a dunce. You’ve made a strong case for both in this thread.

By admitting data flows to us resources are illegal, you’ve just said that what you’re doing right now can be construed as illegal activity on the part of the website you’re on. HN is indeed hosted on us resources. You touch Microsoft excel and guess what? Us resources get your personal data.

So you’ve just basically admitted that under GDPR, all regular internet activity is illegal if it touches a US server. Hence “coverage”. Hence, everyone living under really, the discretion of the monarchs.

Thanks for playing. Dumbass.

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
If you’re illiterate or deliberately avoiding the issues I’ve highlighted, then all the best to you and your kind.

We’ve established that there is presently different outcomes for the same actions under European law. Ie, if you send IP addresses today to AWS, you could be deemed to be doing something illegal overnight subject to 4% of global revenue or 20 million euro fines.

This isn’t about cents or decimals, jackass. You know very well this is about coverage.

Under the FDA or any US agency, you have an option to appeal to an independent branch of government whose decisions are binding. Here, we see the opposite take place in France. Lawlessness. Monarchy. Being run through the bureaucracy. You can’t even bring yourself to admit that the CNIL arrogantly brushed off effectively the SUPREME COURT OF ADMINISTRATIVE JUSTICE. You say it’s a “mistake”?? Are you fucking kidding me? Deliberately doing to opposite of what your oversight agency rules is abuse of power.

Can a European citizen simply ever say “yeah, fuck the GDPR, I know that’s a law, but I won’t follow it, doesn’t apply to me?” Of course not. So what gives the CNIL the power to ignore their responsibilities under French and European law?

Even after being blocked by the Council of state, they chose to target an individual company with the exact thing that they were instructed is legal and they should not be interfering with. Respect laws only when you like them?

Clear abuse of power, horrible precedent for democracies and rule of law everywhere and most European assholes connected to politics i speak to behave the way you do, try to brush it under the carpet? Anyone with half a brain will be aghast at what is happening is the EU and if you clowns think discourse that defends assholery from the bureaucracy wins you any favors or makes Europeans lives any better, you more stupid than I’m giving you credit for here.

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
> Of course, everybody knows that

Lol. Thank you for agreeing. You're completely wrong about the fines part, it is discretionary. ie, if tomorrow, there is a negative press cycle, you will certainly be hit with any punishment of their choosing. The incremental warning and fines approach has no practical or legal basis.

If it does, get it in writing from __ANY__ entity entrusted with enforcing the GDPR, you will be laughed out of the room. Europe is a clown show. Ambiguity rules.

> These are the legislative and executive branches of the EU, not a bunch of unelected bureaucrats.

Oh really? Read my comment again. These assholes in the executive are directly changing the letter of the law. ie LEGISLATING.

They are further doing so with the stated objective of harming a single company. I can point you to the statements of a hundred or so elected officials, not least of all the president of the European Comission who said so in no uncertain terms when she was in the US for SXSW.

> It seems that you are very agitated because

I didn't ask you to diagnose anything, Dr. Phil. Sit the fuck down and read the comment again. The Council of State in France is who the CNIL reports to. They are the administrative justice Supreme Court.

When an agency goes fucking rogue against their oversight body while trying to kill a company, what else is it other than abuse of power? The very fact that you choose not to call this out makes me question your motives and judgement.

We have laws for a fucking reason. Not to print them out and hang them on the walls like ornaments but so there is discipline in the exercise of power entrusted in people with the power of Government. We can't have personal vendettas run through governmental office.

> I will point to Proposition 7 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and I won’t indulge you further on this.

Fancy. Should i be impressed? Does that disqualify all the abuse of power in your eyes?

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
The fact that you still can’t bring yourself to admit here what you did in another comment says more than I ever could.

ie, that any small or big business inadvertently sending even an IP address that isn’t even stored to touch a US based resource in something as innocuous as AWS.

Seeing your other recent comment here, it seems you’re just a moron with a nationalistic tendency to support your countrymen (and women). Oh well, objectivity dies and future generations on your continent suffer. Who cares, right? You’re retired.

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
Are you. . . For real in this thread? Can you please stop commenting about things you seem to have zero context in and zero interest in following even casually? https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...
DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
Well, read the thread above you. GDPR is so complex that even the people who passed it can’t tell you the scope given the intentional ambiguity.

I have officials in the EU on the record that IP addresses are deemed personal information and if your business uses AWS and unintentionally passed IP addresses over to any resource in the US, you are technically in violation.

Will you be hanged for this today? Probably not. But all it takes is one negative press cycle for the idiots there to interpret and enforce this as they have shown the willingness to do in the past.

The point about unelected bureaucrats isn’t the unelected part. It’s the lack of oversight or consequence or clear demarcation of legislative power from the executive.

The bureaucrats have taken it upon themselves to issue multiple specific rules that go over and beyond the text of any law. See the case of the CNIL in France. They had a court ruling around their rules for cookies on Google go against them and they continued to insist that they would enforce said law. They issued an “FAQ” on their website that indicated threatening language against businesses that flouted their previous comments that were now deemed incorrect by a court of law and had the audacity to press on.

Like I said, the EU is an abusive monarchy

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
> There's a difference between the way French and Germans write laws..(and the U.k.)

Interesting way of saying they are bad laws. If you cannot, as a business have certainty in your prediction of the regulatory environment, you're pretty fucked. I wouldn't expect a piece of the bureaucratic establishment such as yourself to understand the struggles of setting up and running a business. What was your role as DPO again? An ornamental peace offering to the burdens imposed by regulation? Not all businesses have the luxury of throwing money at legal resources.

> Only if they're handling personal data. Most small businesses don't.Sure, if your business is collecting personal data, then GDPR is a problem for you; in the same way as the Road Traffic Act is a problem if you're determined to drive uninsured. If you want to sail close to the wind, then it's probably wise to lawyer-up.

It must take a special kind of asshole to say this. In just another one of your recent comments here you mention that even the mere presence of an IP address that ISNT EVEN STORED would put a business in violation and liable to large fines. So you pretty much agree that all small businesses are in violation if they use AWS in any reasonable way to run their business but you don't want to say it explicitly here since it makes you look bad. Gotcha.

> And, of course, you don't have to use AWS.

And of course, the European people elected you their lord and savior to tell businesses which tech stacks they pick and choose because of your interpretation of arbitrary laws. See the problem here yet?

> That's not how I read it. The way I read it, GDPR is astonishingly lenient.

Is it? So why did other member states of the EU take offense at the decision of the Irish DPA ? The one stop provision clearly stipulates that the onus of enforcement falls to the one stop shop and instead, the arbitrary nature of the law as it stands, other member states and bureaucrats in Brussels seem to deem it necessary to impose their will and personal vendettas against the perceived soft touch approach of an entity fully within their rights to do so.

> If GA involves depositing personal data in US jurisdiction, then you can't use GA in a GDPR jurisdiction

Has there been any warnings against AliCloud for instance? Or all the analytics bundles shipped in Huawei phones?

I can't seem to recall any press release or webpage dedicated to a single company like the CNIL and now Italian authorities have adopted towards Google Analytics?

Is there any oversight to these agencies allowed where these decisions are up to public scrutiny such as the FOIA act in the US to assure the public that these highly paid public officials are not wasting all their time and money chasing personal vendettas as seems to be the case here? Of course fucking not.

Is Google Analytics perfect? Maybe not. But this is the crucial point . . THE LEGISLATURE CANNOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST A SINGLE ENTITY THIS WAY. While turning a blind eye to practices by Huawei and other companies, it is simply against the rule of law.

> Others have argued that GDPR is an attempt by the EU to steal Silicon Valley's breakfast, implying that it's good for European economies.

A weasel through and through. What else did i expect from someone in your position?

So, illegal abuse of power by Government to target a company is fine by you, Mr. DPO ?

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
Do you have a point, asshole? There's more in that comment above than the bait you took.
DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
"iTs nOt aT aLl oNeRoUs" said the DPO. lol, what a clown. So all these companies scrambling to hire lawyers to document every single aspect of the "legal basis" or whatever nonsense is in the language are just crazy in your books?

And that's just ONE sub clause of a hundred or so.

The overhead is both in the arbitrary nature of the requirements (Good Laws are objective, not subjective) and the sheer lack of consistency in the enforcement is ridiculous for any European business. Consider the adequacy clause that's taken decades to litigate and is still fucking criminal as of this writing.

Answer this simple question: "Can I, as a small business use AWS services that may or may not have a compute instance located in the EU?". You know pretty well what the answer is there, so, basically every small business in the EU is in violation right now. And it's bureaucratic assholery that keeps this deliberately inconsistent so they can choose to enforce it at any point of their choosing (read, a negative PR cycle) - Monarchy, inconsistency, arbitrary and ambiguous rulemaking that has tossed out the interests of businesses.

The vendetta against Google is well documented and it's insulting for you to even say otherwise. Look at the most recent example of the CNIL (Frances privacy enforcement body, a part of the executive) choosing arbitrary standards and refusing to even elaborate on concrete standards for recommended analytics solutions that businesses may use. They have gone full psycho with not even wanting to give Google the opportunity to come into compliance with standards that they choose not to reveal and instead openly ask industry to turn Google Analytics off. Its ridiculous and bad for their own economies.

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
Bad law for the reasons above.

Ie, onerous toward regular businesses Ie, used to greatly expand bureaucracy and overhead Ie, used by unelected bureaucrats to wage battles of personal vendetta against specific companies instead of doing what laws do, which is set unambiguous standards for all

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
I mean, before accusing someone of looking at this politically, please read the comment fully.

You’re taking pains to explain why GDPR is a compromise? Why? If it’s bad law, it’s bad law.

Nothing you said invalidates the assertions I’ve made. Unless you’ve directly experienced the onerous system of regulations in places like Germany, I’d urge you to do more research before the armchair dismissal.

DisjointedHunt··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy. Using the power of the state to go after a single private entity since they have a blood feud with said entity and are now finding all sorts of excuses to hit them economically.

I’ve been following the cases with regard to privacy in the EU and it’s a complete joke. You have all these onerous rules against any web technology making it near impossible for startups to function without an army of lawyers. Think I’m exaggerating? Look up the provisions under GDPR for any business, big or small, to set up a website and then process a single user request for their data even without sign in.

The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them.

DisjointedHunt··on Stuxnet is embarrassing, not amazing (2011)
Exactly. The cost of failure was deemed greater than the cost of success with attribution. It's just the way covert ops works.

If you asked the leaders of this op, in retrospect, if they were starting off from scratch, would they accept the result we saw where Irans nuclear enrichment capabilities were delayed long enough for more information about their secret work to be known with more certainty. . .all of them would take it in a heartbeat.

DisjointedHunt··on AirPlay and Touch Bar = Network Disaster
This is wild! Duet Display, an app built by ex-Apple engineers has a curious toggle in the settings menu to turn off Airdrop, Handoff etc as well since it apparently screws up the remote desktop experience.

Apple also has introduced a beta feature called "Universal control" which allows you to use your keyboard and other peripherals across all devices nearby (ipads, other macs etc) I wonder how much of a performance tax these other features levy and if Apple tests the regression explicitly.

DisjointedHunt··on Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings
$100k - $5 Million is a valid range
DisjointedHunt··on Internet Filtering in Canada: Rogers' NHL Blocking Order
Let me rephrase that for you:

“We haven’t figured out how to prosecute criminal theft in the open on the internet where we choose to allow ad networks and hosts to blatantly flout the laws our societies are built on”

And I’m the one making an argument with a lack of imagination?

DisjointedHunt··on Internet Filtering in Canada: Rogers' NHL Blocking Order
I . .agree. I opened my comment with the line “What’s the recourse, then” for precisely this reason.

I’m calling the rogue elements of the internet, ie ad networks that behave in a scummy manner with zero transparency, integrity and self regulation , as the bad nodes. I don’t advocate for the blocking of IPs , I advocate for legal challenges that provoke a wider response (regulatory, policy, etc). The judicial system staying largely silent instead of issuing rulings in favor of the plaintiff that at least find the Content to be of a stolen and illegal nature while dismissing the petition to block the IPs , gives them some recourse in law. . .right now, the status is ambiguous , so allowed. Which is really pathetic of us as a society.

DisjointedHunt··on Internet Filtering in Canada: Rogers' NHL Blocking Order
Isn't it a chicken and egg problem? The existence of this illegal market can never allow legitimate sales to exist sustainably.

When people can just google " f movies <insert_movie_name_here>" and watch the movie series you mention in HD, unfettered, and ad networks reap the reward of turning a blind eye. . . this makes a sustainable market for legitimate goods impossible because the scale simply does not exist for enough people to subscribe to a streaming service or to invest in paying to watch so the costs drop at scale etc.

DisjointedHunt··on Internet Filtering in Canada: Rogers' NHL Blocking Order
We aren't reducing the argument to your simplistic depiction which is misleading at best.

We have businesses investing legally in producing and securing rights to content. We then have internet ads businesses incentivizing unverified actors to convert any impressions to hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts even if those impressions occur on stolen content. How is this fair?

The legitimate businesses are losing their ability to re invest proceeds into their business thus permanently impairing them since who's to say the high price of streaming and linear TV is not a consequence of stolen revenue thanks to these illegal streams?

We will never know since society has turned a blind eye and has decided "Just too bad, let those assholes die, it's not my problem" while Ad networks and criminals laugh their way to the bank.

DisjointedHunt··on Internet Filtering in Canada: Rogers' NHL Blocking Order
The business model relies on societal guarantees against serious crime.

You can't be serious when you claim that illegal streams raking in tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for popular sports through plague like ad banners are the innocent party that should be allowed to operate freely.

Why not punish all the ad networks that, in retrospect allow their ads to be shown on these illegal streams? Don't they have an obligation to ensure their ad models aren't supporting illegal businesses?

The dual standards by intelligent tech workers who should know better is one of the biggest shames of our time.

DisjointedHunt··on Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?
Way to bury the lede and avoiding the main point:

If you plan to build a Nuclear plant *TODAY*, there are financial requirements and regulatory uncertainties that mean you're sitting on high interest(and risky) loans/credit lines/asset pledges etc that increase over time.

Very few banks or financial institutions are remotely interested in setting up financing an endeavor that has an almost 0 chance of success to completion since the 90s.

Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist militants to derail and progress in energy. These organizations are SO short sighted that they have been weaponizing the judicial system against simple projects such as high voltage transmission lines for the silliest of reasons which assures America that her infrastructure will forever be stuck in the past.

The cost of operating a plant come after all this is considered. All plants running today are roughly HALF A FUCKING CENTURY old. What the US needs is easy access to cheap credit for people willing to set up Nuclear plants.

We need incentive to invest in audacious increases in energy output in exchange for meeting thresholds of performance. Right now, you can kill yourself by filling out thousands of pages of ridiculous review, hire some of the most expensive attorneys to represent you in court to be granted to privilege of even having basic clearance to START building while sitting on a fast bleeding pool of credit, it makes NO sense.

DisjointedHunt··on Internet Filtering in Canada: Rogers' NHL Blocking Order
Well, what is the recourse for legitimate businesses then? When pirates can set up shop and distribute content that is expensive to produce, how do these businesses evolve to a more flexible model when an unknown large chunk of their rightful proceeds are directed elsewhere?

>DNS blocking is a way of basically taking a phone number out of the phone book...then we're going to be back here five years from now talking about why we need to implement deep packet inspection,

How about we make it mandatory to enforce transparency on the assets of the bad guys? Who are the ad networks that are allowing the blatant monetization of illegal content?

Why are the hosting providers who presently find it easy to detect and kick off workloads deemed damaging to their infrastructure such as crypto mining unable to detect illegal video hosts?

Don't get me wrong, i'm staunchly in the bucket of the free transfer of information, but i simply cannot turn a blind eye to crime.

DisjointedHunt··on US Justice Department accuses Google of hiding business communications
Attorney Client Privilege is abused significantly at tech companies. Remember that the privilege is for a very narrow allowance of cases where the communication is directly between the client and the lawyer with the client requesting legal advice.

Marking an entire group chat with 3000 people [A/C priv] does NOT make all content in the group magically invisible to subpeona.

DisjointedHunt··on How a small nuclear war would transform the entire planet (2020)
Could someone ELI5 why a few hundred above ground nuclear explosions today would "wrap the planet in a blanket of soot and block out the suns rays" when post world war America detonated hundreds of Nukes outside Vegas and nothing significant can be said about the environment there?

Yes, the size of the blasts possibly, but the pacific and the siberia tests by the US and USSR were probably much bigger than anything a ballistic missile could carry today, so . . .what are we missing ?

DisjointedHunt··on A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)
Not a hero, but a fool.

Imagine what would the repercussions for the field be if the surgery went a little worse since it seems so badly planned from the outset? More restrictive regulation against the practice? All major funding either pulled outright or forever tainted with the stigma arising from this endeavor ?

I don't know what it is about HN that this forum praises seemingly stupid pursuits such as a neurosurgeon choosing to operate on himself without (a) Validating the approach better and (b) Having a backup plan in case things went bad (No person in the US to come and care for him etc) and (c) Using antiquated electronics in the eyes of the very experts he was entrusting with the operation.

DisjointedHunt··on Russia’s way of conducting urban warfare bodes ill for Kyiv
Precisely, World War II urban warfare is over romanticized in retrospect. It was apparently gruesome. High attrition, inhuman conditions, really nothing for the people on the ground fighting or defending or just living neutrally.

Any "gains" fall to the brass, the people who would likely never see real fighting, but readily order battalions of men to "take" a town or city to play the probabilities game of death with the objective of "winning" the objective.

DisjointedHunt··on Brandon Sanderson’s advice for doing hard things
Take all advice you see online from successful people with a grain of salt. It is inherently biased.

The software industry, for example is filled with people who are extraordinarily talented at math in high school and thus get into the good schools. There are exceptions where people find the passion to code later on in life, but by and large, the "cream of the crop" fits the definition of the former.

DisjointedHunt··on EU challenges China at the WTO to defend its high-tech sector
Wow. . not a single comment about what is the most important dispute in EU tech legal matters at the moment.

This is the consequence of the world letting China into the WTO and allowing for the recognition of the Chinese "Legal" system. A country where there is no rule of law and arbitrary decisions may be taken at any point with the codified legal rulings always toeing the party line is no place to do business on local terms.

The EU should have blocked the export of or use of all telecommunications technology by these violating companies until those restrictive conditions were taken off by Chinese courts.

China can't arbitrarily decide to lower costs in their favor as they please and issue rulings to block the companies from suing in other courts under threat of immense penalty.

DisjointedHunt··on Privacy Sandbox on Android
If you’re familiar with the mobile advertising landscape, on device identifiers are either OS-provided and deterministic or are computed through a “signature” or “fingerprint” based on unique signals the app has access to.

This move is one where either of those will be removed/made universal so there is no way to identify uniquely, one user from another when they perform actions outside your app or for many scenarios within it as well (such as clicking on an ad that takes them to the app)

Lots of advertising companies (predominantly Facebook) have made an industry standard out of selling ads based on THEIR interpretations of users actions across apps and time leading to a conversion. For example, a 7day “click through conversion” means , if your ad is shown to a user through Facebook on any of their apps or partner apps with the Facebook ad network sdk, and a subsequent conversion occurs in the next 7 day window, that user is counted as 100% credit to Facebook.

Is this logical? Nope.

Advertisers pay for the nice looking metrics they can stick in a PowerPoint and be done with it.

Now, Facebook can’t use their “eye of Sauron” to put out numbers such as these and need to compete with companies such as google and Pinterest and Reddit and snap for where users are looking for things, not just “snipe” the attribution at the last minute when they know the user is about to pull the trigger and buy.

← PreviousPage 7 of 13Next →