Hacker News Reader

WillyOnWheelson How to Get Old Brains to Think Like Young Ones

> So sick of seeing these paywall links.

What's wrong with paywalls?

WillyOnWheelson Once a Model City, Hong Kong Is in Trouble

If I were China I would point out the HK's entire existence is because Britain needed a staging area from which to wage war upon China so that Britain would have a market to sell all the opium it was producing in the Raj, which set the conditions for the Taiping Rebellion, which killed over 20 million people.

WillyOnWheelson Flawed reporting about WhatsApp

I doubt that would satisfy the anti Whatsapp crowd. It's impossible to know what binary Facebook/Whatsapp runs on their servers.

WillyOnWheelson Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

> Hasn't the same thing been said about Walmart?

I completely agree with it.

My hometown's retail business all goes to the Walmart super store on the outskirts of town. It's weird to be living in a Bruce Springsteen song.

WillyOnWheelson Iran 1953 Covert History Quietly Released

A US government agency quietly tweeted about it. What more do you want?

https://twitter.com/HistoryAtState/status/875473063156084736

WillyOnWheelson Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

I don't base my life on them but I think tpacek and ryanlol know more about computer security than I do.

WillyOnWheelson Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

> Is that how you prove something - by reading comments on HN?

I enjoy the comments of tpacek and ryanlol

WillyOnWheelson Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

> Tor has probably saved more than a few CIA agents' lives

Tor's main purpose is to allow agents of US intelligence agencies to communicate back with the home base.

"Giving free access to the Internet being a powerful tool for undermining authoritarian regimes" makes it harder for an adversary to focus solely on intelligence agency agent traffic.

I'm not saying Tor is backdoored or monitored, though it's heavily monitored.

When enjoying the benefits of Tor, it's wise to also remember Tor's main purpose.

WillyOnWheelson Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

I hate to pedantically bore people but Moxie does not work at Twitter. He did for a short period of time after Twitter acquired his 2 person startup.

WillyOnWheelson Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

> Even wikipedia say it's founded by the governement ...

I bet you meant to type "funded".

Most of the funding for the foundation that funds Wikipedia comes from small donations from users.

WillyOnWheelson Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

for people like me who don't understand how the fees work

http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union

WillyOnWheelson Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

Prepaid wireless plans in America are marketed as being cheaper than long term contracts. San Francisco tacks on a 23 percent fee to prepaid wireless plans.

http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2016/03/california-boe-relea...

WillyOnWheelson Tails 3.0 Released

I love Chrome but I'm sure in some way it reports what I'm doing to Google.

Why not just use Firefox?

WillyOnWheelson Tails 3.0 Released

do you suggest I should be running Firefox in Tails?

WillyOnWheelson Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

This article goes into the supporters and detractors of the research

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132026-our-common-ance...

WillyOnWheelson AmiKit X – An emulator engine to run Amiga on Windows or Mac

Will this let me play Shadow Of The Beast or Blood Money or any other Psygnosis games?

WillyOnWheelson A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

Gas stations in the US make very little, possibly zero, from the sale of gasoline.

WillyOnWheelson Puerto Rico files for biggest ever U.S. local government bankruptcy

The Marxist hidden in me says

* listen to Richard Wolff's views on Puerto Rico http://www.rdwolff.com/tags/puerto_rico

* listen to David Graeber https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

WillyOnWheelson No, 'The Handmaid’s Tale' Is Not 'Unexpectedly Timely'

The Hulu series is well written. The colors are amazing.

I think it's perfectly valid to see some parallels in current society with the dystopian society in The Handmaid's Tale. The US has a vice president who doesn't allow himself to have dinner with a woman he's not married to. The President and his team make statements to the media every day that would have been hard to predict in the most outlandish dystopian novels.

It's just a TV show.

I am sad that Elizabeth Moss is a Scientologist!

WillyOnWheelson The Staggering Administrative Bloat of Universities

I decided to explore what else this blogger blogs about, who I believe blogs from Arizona:

"Take the Pledge: Let's Take A Year Off From Giving To Our Universities" http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/04/take-the-pledg...

"How The Left Is Changing the Meaning of Words to Reduce Freedom -- The Phrase "Incite Violence"

Wealth Creation and the Zero-Sum Fallacy

Statism Comes Back to Bite Technocrats

He actually has a few views I can agree with, and links to plenty of things I read every week, but I don't think his analysis is particularly technical or hard hitting.

WillyOnWheelson The Staggering Administrative Bloat of Universities

I love anecdotes! When I was an IT admin at a major UC Berkeley university, all of the admin staff that supported our group worked super hard from 9am to 6pm, then they went home.

There was an extremely old clerk who as far as I can tell had been sentenced to entering in data on a Mac SE. No WoW.

WillyOnWheelson A Hedge Fund Manager Who’s Shorting America’s Malls

Maybe he just read this book and decided to short all malls

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/06/22/seph_lawless_ph...

WillyOnWheelson Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

> I'm all for engineers getting paid, but in this case the guy didn't even have to do what most wealthy engineers do: deliver an actual successful product to market.

Anthony's efforts led to Streetview and Maps improvements. Waymo is still using his LIDAR research. I think Anthony is totally screwed with this lawsuit, but I wouldn't belittle his engineering accomplishments.

WillyOnWheelson Dropbox Reaches Key Profit Milestone

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/857662627496906752

"“EBITDA profitable”, n. Technical term used in accounting for companies running at a loss"

WillyOnWheelson India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

> Hmm, it doesn't appear to be their intention to fuck up education though.

I agree the Gates Foundation does not intend to screw up public education.

WillyOnWheelson Browserprint: Browser fingerprint tool now can guess client OS even when spoofed

dammit you tricked me into googlling 'palecoon'. suckered.

WillyOnWheelson India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gates-educat...

WillyOnWheelson Browserprint: Browser fingerprint tool now can guess client OS even when spoofed

Worked for me on 3 different browsers.

Are you using lynx?

WillyOnWheelson Is Every Speed Limit Too Low?

US resident here. On the local freeway, when I signal I wish to make a lane change, other drivers often speed up. I really don't get it. What did I do to their family?

WillyOnWheelson The Diseases You Only Get If You Believe in Them

My roommate blames everything on invisible mold that I can't see and is impossible to detect.