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b2spirit

53 karma · joined July 13, 2011

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b2spirit··on Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' (2011)
"nothing to hide -> nothing to fear" is a misdirection. It gets the enemy to waste time arguing against something that is obvioulsy stupid.
b2spirit··on Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
This was not a leak. It was a dare.
b2spirit··on Expunging Google
Google's primary objective is not money, but information gathering and control. The move to Google+ is a centralisation of the information repository. Google Glass is an attempt at getting more detailed personal information. The autonomous vehicle development is for them to control your vehicle.
b2spirit··on NASAs Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn...
Because it is.
b2spirit··on NASAs Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn...
The emperor's gorgeous new clothes.
b2spirit··on Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be
Off-the-charts awesome!
b2spirit··on Free beautiful UI elements for developers
Plus One All the Way! Where is the Donate button?
b2spirit··on Show HN: Shortly, a serverless pastebin
Shortly is catchy.

Brilliant idea, by the way.

b2spirit··on Poll: Do you have a CS degree?
Start a startup.
b2spirit··on Lawrence Lessig: What's really wrong with Goldman Sachs
Sachs pronounced sucks.
b2spirit··on My Git Habits
Habits pronounced hubbits.
b2spirit··on Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
In the description, you wrote "in support SOPA", instead "in protest to".
b2spirit··on Windows to Mac to Windows to Mac to... Linux? It doesn't matter.
Ryan said: "it’s not some political statement about free and open source software"

Free and open source software is not motivated by politics, but by a development strategy to get as many people as possible to find and fix bugs.

Free software is politically motivated, by the love for freedom and the hate for slavery. If freedom matters to a person, it will matter to him whether he uses Linux, Microsoft or Apple.

b2spirit··on Mythbusters experiment goes awry, sends cannonball through two houses
Did the canonball also go through cbslocal's server room? That page cannot be found.
b2spirit··on Poll: HN readers, where's your residence?
I am in Pretoria.
b2spirit··on Poll: HN readers, where's your residence?
Please make the list easier to process by rearranging the options in the poll so that related regions are adjacent, e.g. I have regrouped the relevant options:

United States - NYC and SF Area

(Rest of) United States

China

India

(Rest of) Asia/Pacific

Another option would be to arrange the options alphabetically. In that case, "(Rest of) United States" would become "United States - Excl. NYS and SF Area" and "(Rest of) Asia/Pacific" would become "Asia/Pacific - Excl. China and India".

b2spirit··on Poll: HN readers, where's your residence?
I voted Africa, being from South Africa. When I clicked on the up-arrow, the number of points did not increment immediately. I had to refresh the page to see the new number of points. Poor user experience.
b2spirit··on The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
What are PvE and PvP?
b2spirit··on The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
What is AfD, please?
b2spirit··on I quit my job last March and it was a bad idea.
Awesome answer, especially because it comes from experience.
b2spirit··on Ask HN: Why is it so easy for Anonymous to hack websites like that of Sony?
Thanks. That is a good answer.
b2spirit··on Mozilla to remove Firefox version numbers
Your link to Wikipedia includes a closing parenthesis.
b2spirit··on Show HN: New way to search for used cars (my weekend project)
Where did you find the used car data?
b2spirit··on Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain
I also thought is was about OpenOffice.org until I read your comment.
b2spirit··on France Tracks Down 18 Million File-Sharers
France is nuts. Leave the people alone!
b2spirit··on The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer
"Between the ideologues like Stallman, who effectively think it's immoral to make money off selling the software itself..."

Please quote him and provide us with the reference.

I am not familiar with his making such a statement. The free in free software has nothing to do with price, but has everything to do with freedom.

Richard Stallman, Free Software Free Society, 2nd Edition, Chapter 10, page 65, pdf edition: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible - just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on."

b2spirit··on The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer
In "free and open source software", "and open source" is redundant, because "free" implies the availability of the source code.
b2spirit··on Ask HN: is there a place where one could get help with programming in chat form?
There is also a chat facility on stackoverflow.