Hacker News Reader

GHFigson What if Quality Journalism Isn't?

It seems that people don't want a factual news source.

Ding ding ding! What we call news is mostly consumed for entertainment and identity-reenforcement/social currency, so that's what the news business serves up. It's made out of real-world events and facts, but the actual end product is to reality as "frozen dairy product" is to ice cream.

GHFigson How can an introvert Asian engineer like me make friends?

Based on this: ...it's really painful on times when I have a lack of self-confidence. I think it may even become dangerous later.

I suggest reading these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anxiety_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapist

Being introverted doesn't have to be painful, and you don't have to stop being introverted to stop hurting. A good therapist (and/or medication) can help with that. Part of that will involve changing how you think about yourself, and part of that will involve practicing the things you aren't confident about. Talking to people will become easier that way.

In the Bay Area there's a good chance you'll be able to find a therapist that speaks your native language. If you find it hard to open up with them, start by showing them this post.

GHFigson An even slimmer pdf.js

<fanboy>With MuPDF it peaks at 15MiB. http://www.mupdf.com/ </fanboy>

GHFigson Why we're suing the CIA

Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly != freedom to be completely ignored until you do something wrong.

I'll inline my other comment: Mass gatherings of any kind are a public safety issue, and an organized nation-wide protest with anarchist overtones is hardly the least likely to result in violence and property damage. For police to not gather and share information on what to expect would be stupid.

You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.

GHFigson Why we're suing the CIA

That's bullshit, though. Mass gatherings of any kind are a public safety issue, and an organized nation-wide protest with anarchist overtones is hardly the least likely to result in violence and property damage. For police to not gather and share information on what to expect would be stupid.

GHFigson Everything you need to know about cryptography in 1 hour (2010) [pdf]

youtube-dl also has a --recode-video option that takes ogg or webm.

GHFigson Why we're suing the CIA

"Cracking down" is a gross exaggeration of what the documents actually describe. Naomi Wolf's column is essentially blogspam of a press release by the "Partnership for Civil Justice Fund", which cherry-picks and sexes-up excerpts from the pretty dull documents they got through a FOIA request. It's nowhere near COINTELPRO. It's documentation of exactly the kind of mundane police work you would expect to be associated with a nation-wide protest movement.

GHFigson KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

You can't not-fight in here! This is the Internet!

GHFigson Bro Network Security Monitor

But I do think that occasional undeserved distractions because of the name are inevitable, and I could imagine them being a real problem.

Have you considered the possibility that you're being that distraction and creating that problem?

GHFigson CNN runs bogus story saying asteroid has 1 in 2.04 odds of destroying Earth

They're okay with it because the competition (e.g. Huffington Post, Business Insider, BuzzFeed) built their brands on aggregating terrible content. It works.

GHFigson An open letter on feminism in tech

What are you trying to say, exactly? If you're trying to say I'm unfamiliar with feminism, you're wrong. If you're trying to say that feminism isn't an ideology, you've made the poor choice of suggesting an article that uses the word ideologies in the first sentence. If you're trying to snipe at me for using the singular instead of the plural, I shall have to say Q.E.D.

GHFigson An open letter on feminism in tech

Article conflates feminism with women. Not all women are Feminist or seek to be. Women are human beings and should be treated as such. Feminism is an ideology and should be treated as such. Why confuse people by taking about them like they're the same thing?

GHFigson Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds

Getting into Harvard.

GHFigson “Check Your Privilege” is Actually Just a Lousy Argument

usually isn't this to counter an argument like "poor people think/act/do certain ways"

No.

Privilege is by definition[1] not something you can control, ergo not something you say or do. It doesn't have to be something you're aware of[2], or that has helped you at all[3], or that has anything to do with you personally[4], or that you can shed by admitting[5], or denying[6]. To check your privilege means you acknowledge someone else's perception of you[7] and shut up[8] while they judge you[9].

[0] http://groupthink.jezebel.com/to-the-princeton-privileged-ki... [1] Ibid. "Privilege is when you get conscious or unconscious benefits from a demographic trait about yourself that you cannot control." [2] Ibid. "These benefits may be overt or they may be covert." [3] Ibid. "...it can simply be the lack of something negative." [4] Ibid. "You have privilege because you are part of a group that has privilege. [...] remember once again, this isn't a personal conversation." [5] Ibid. "Looking deeply at things you're offering up as the ways in which you are privileged are going to show you that you are in fact privileged in the ways that you just denied." [6] Ibid. "All you'd like to do is keep staring at Megan Kelly's breasts and being blissfully oblivious that the world is a sad, fucked up place and dealing with your feelings of guilt that you got an okay deal?" [7] Ibid. "So when someone says "check your privilege", what they mean is embrace and admit that you have preconceived notions and a specific world perspective..." [8] Ibid. "...and to set those aside for a second and just listen." [9] Ibid. "Otherwise you'll just look like a complete fucking asshole when you write a hypocritical article completely missing the point of everything."

GHFigson The New Aaron Swartz Documentary Looks Powerful. Here's the Trailer

Even if he wasn't actually facing it - he was still being pressured with it

GHFigson NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

Especially when the story broke there was a lot of outrage about (accidentally) spying at US citizens, but spying at non-US citizens and breaking foreign law in peacetime is deemed acceptable.

What did you used to think foreign intelligence services did?

GHFigson NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

Sure, who knows what the BND is up to.

Just a reminder:

"In an interview with Der Spiegel , Snowden claimed that the NSA provided German intelligence, with analysis tools to help the organisation monitor data flowing through Germany. “The NSA people are in bed together with the Germans,"” he told the magazine.

He added that the NSA’s foreign affairs directorate, which is responsible for relations with other countries, had set up a system whereby political leaders “could be insulated” from the backlash if spying became public and helped to play down how grievously they were “violating global privacy.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nsa-in-bed-wi...

GHFigson Cisco to release BSD-licensed H.264 stack

Hundreds of dollars on licensing?

GHFigson NSA stores metadata of millions of web users for up to a year, secret files show

The issue here is that only a tiny percentage of the information transmitted is of interest to someone doing surveilance.

Yes, exactly! And the document in question even states what that percentage is.

GHFigson NSA stores metadata of millions of web users for up to a year, secret files show

nobody has data accurate enough to determine them with any real certainty

You mean, other than, y'know...a classified document by the NSA describing what proportion of estimated total internet traffic they look at?

GHFigson NSA stores metadata of millions of web users for up to a year, secret files show

I read the article and rejected its assertions as speculative horseshit, yes. What of it? The original document cites a figure (1862 petabytes) and two percentages (1.6% and 0.00004%) of that figure. The math is not hard.

GHFigson NSA stores metadata of millions of web users for up to a year, secret files show

"The net effect is that NSA analysts look at 0.00004% of the world's traffic in conducting their mission – that's less than one part in a million."

Weird how direct quotes from leaked documents sound less bad than the articles about them.

GHFigson Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence

Can nobody see the cause and effect here?

Danger! Danger! Narrative fallacy ahead!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_fallacy#The_narrative...

None of their infrastructure would be getting forced exposure from their own employees if they had not gone down this path?

Careful! Note that Snowden was not an analyst. He didn't actually have access to the programs he has leaked information on. They weren't part of his job. (Similarly with Manning, as it happens.) The people that have first-hand knowledge, and those that are actually involved in the work, aren't the ones leaking.

GHFigson Global Government Requests Report

21,000 Users Impacted in the US

The report does not tell you the country of the user accounts impacted, only the origin of the request.

GHFigson Global Government Requests Report

Per capita is misleading, as the report does not tell you the country of the user for which data was requested. If, for instance, Facebook were providing data on a non-US user, that would be counted as a US request.

GHFigson Global Government Requests Report

Note that this includes all requests from local, state, and any federal agency, for any data. It also only tells you the country of origin for the request, not the country of the user for which data was requested.

GHFigson Lord Blair: we need laws to stop 'principled' leaking of state secrets

I've got a better argument: Go back to Reddit, because things are better there now than they are here.

GHFigson UK and Sweden veto espionage talks between US and Europe

The slug says "us-blocks-espionage-talks...", while the actual title is: "UK blocks crucial espionage talks between US and Europe."

GHFigson Venezuela, Bolivia offer asylum to U.S. intel leaker Snowden

obviously a political manhunt

Are you suggesting that Snowden was charged with a crime for his politics and not his actions?

GHFigson US sends pre-emptive warrant to Ireland to stop Snowden flight refuelling there

For the sake of background: people bring up the prospect of the death penalty for espionage often in these cases, but it's not something the US has actually invoked since WWII, even in very clear-cut situations where money changed hands or people died as a result.

For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noshir_Gowadia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kendall_Myers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_James_Nicholson