bandushrew

yeah, the problem with these kinds of discussions is that each of us has had their opinion coloured by their different experiences of software.

Overall, my experience of ref counting as implemented by the Apple frameworks has been very positive indeed.

My experience of ref counting in other contexts/frameworks has been patchy, usually depending upon the quality of the developers responsible for it.

The thing I really do like about ref counting is that it is deterministic, unlike other approaches, ie garbage collection.

"the ref counting is dangerous"

hmm?

Because they still wouldn't win.

The point is that Upshot wasn't granted an 'exemption' in any sense of the word.

Salesforce had already decided that they were going to win, and now they are being forced to justify that decision in the context of the rules.

Going forward, there is every reason to assume that future hackathons/competitions run by salesforce will be likewise pointless to participate in, unless you have been given the nod by Salesforce.

They haven't just set a bad precedent, they have totally trashed their credibility.

I am taking bets that the next time they run a hackathon there will be (anonymous) stories of Salesforce leaning on their 'partners' to ensure they get a sufficient number of entries.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US.

it is a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to deliver.

"Whatever else this is, it cannot be mere vaporware. "

I am unclear on why not, exactly? 4-5 years before it appears, with the obvious possibility that it never does for regulatory reasons, technology reasons....

At this point I wouldn't call it vaporware, its not that far along.

It is still a fantasy. A nice fantasy. I loved the idea. but, for now, just a fantasy.

Check back in 4-5 years (or 5-10 years?) when something has actually been delivered to the market, and lets have a glass of whiskey and be amazed at the futuristic technology.

it is, on the face of it, a weird thing to say.

given english is his second language, I think it is possible he meant one of two things:

(1) he does not think the question will be helpful to other users

(2) he is embarrassed about having his name attached to it.

my money is on (1), although it still seems mildly weird to me.

ok, I do understand the distinction you are making.

I am not sure how you are so confident that the NSA was not at all involved in this capture, and that parallel construction was therefore entirely unnecessary.

When reading that article, and various other sources, one thing that stands out is that even after arresting an administrator - which did lead to various other arrests - they still had no direct link or identification for Ulbricht.

Ulbricht was careful enough that although the police were apparently communicating directly with him, and arresting a number of others that were more directly involved, there was no way for them to locate or identify him.

Note, that this remains true even after he believes that one of his contacts has murdered someone on his behalf. He maintains the firewall between himself and that contact.

Frankly, that is fairly impressive, he must have been a careful man.

Suddenly they find a link buried in the forever webs between a nickname he uses and his actual name and bingo, they have him.

Now, it entirely could have gone down like that. It is completely plausible. Most likely the link was there all along, just waiting for someone to stumble on it.

BUT, that is rather the point of parallel construction, isn't it? to bridge the gap between the information they have and the information that they can present in court, in a totally plausible way.

I am not claiming the truth to be one way or the other, who knows (hell, who cares in this case), but I am claiming that to disregard the possibility and maintain that it is absurd is to ignore the fact of parallel construction and the fact of its frequent use.

the entire point of parallel construction is to construct a legal explanation for the presence of data needed for the conviction.

ie, I would use illegal means to obtain proof that you have convicted a crime, then I would use parallel construction to provide a legal explanation for how I obtained the proof.

iee, parallel construction is what they use when they did not have probable cause.

I am having trouble believing that you do not understand that? what am I missing?

(a) it really is trivially easy to work around the notification so it doesn't get sent.

(b) yep, as you said, even with the notification it is trivially easy for someone to take any picture that you send and post it to the forever webs.

So, I reiterate, do not send anything via snap chat that you do not wish to one day become public.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you are sending pictures (or text) via snap chat that you do not want the world to see, then you are making a mistake.

It is trivially easy to capture screenshots from any screen, and the 'protection' that snapshot puts in place does absolutely nothing to stop this.

I would think twice before trusting that anything you post is not going to be widely available.

I have seen this banded around a bit, and it really isn't a solution. I 'firewall' different social networks, my YT access and my Google+ access are usually performed in 2 very different contexts and I have no interest in people or personalities leaking from one to the other.

Now, you are offering a pseudo anonymous solution, but that is an insufficient firewall for my needs.

Maintaining privacy across multiple networks, some of which contain my personal life, some my work life, some my social life and some my internet life is hard.

There is simply no freaking way I am going to trust a company which cares a LOT less than I do about my privacy be responsible for maintaining it.

BUT luckily this whole thing really doesn't affect me directly, my firewalls have not actually been affected.

I was just hoping to communicate why the suggestion you are making is not actually an effective solution for anyone who cares about their privacy.

yes, they do.

we have a shared email address between us that the kids use, and I use to sign up for some stuff.

My parents have 3 emails addresses between themselves, and use them pretty much interchangeably.

I worked at a distance education provider for a couple of years, and we commonly had entire families using the same email address.

It turns out that when you sign up with an ISP, they give you a single email address by default, and you can - if you wish to, and know how, add more of your own.

Outside of the tech industry, nobody knows how.

I am genuinely interested in what you think the artists lose if I have easy access to the written lyrics of their songs?

I just do not understand it?

I always specify that payment is due on the submission of the app to apple.

So, all of my clients do.

It is the only way iOS development can possibly work.

This seems like a good time to remember that Google has been storing wifi access passwords in plain text on its servers, and (presumably) passing them between its data centers.

It can be assumed that as a consequence of google's decision to store passwords in plaintext, the NSA now have access to every wifi access point that has been used by an android device.

This is a massive security breach. I sincerely hope google notifies android users of the problem.

When ability is no longer a bottleneck on the actions of an individual or group, that is the time that the character of that individual or group is discovered.

The character of the US government in general, and the NSA in particular, is apparently that of a rotten, sneaking, dishonest liar.

I cannot say that I am surprised, human nature being what it is, but I am very disappointed.

On the bright side, it is in good international company.

It would be effective, but maybe not have the effect you are hoping for. People investing in rental homes would invest more into homes targeted at higher incomes, and the quantity of homes available to lower income people would decrease, driving up rentals on them.

I develop for both iOS and Android, but still use a dumb phone.

- 7 days battery life. seriously, I always get a surprise when it reminds me that it does actually run on power.

- I dont know whether it can do email, facebook or twitter. The screen is so small, why would I want to try?

- Can do internet via Opera Mini if needed (its fine for reading forums).

- Never upgrades

- Cannot use it as a distraction when I should be talking to people or working.

Life Is Good, When Your Phone Is Dumb.

Im from NZ. NZ is not a good place to trust your private data.

The NZ government has no hesitation in breaking whatever laws it needs to in order to satisfy US requests.

They did the same thing with the bank info.

who knows what happened for those stories. <shrug>

I dont know? surely a combination is needed? someone who disagrees, has the courage to act, knows about wikileaks and has access to information in a medium that is amenable to upload. Im perfectly willing to believe that the combination is a lot more rare in Russia or China than it is in America.

I am not clear how they were supposed to 'target' Russia, exactly? How could they control what information is leaked to them?

Thats really weird. IME Recycle places here in NZ tend to be clean, well maintained and effectively managed.

Also the idea that the point of recycling is to give poor people the opportunity to root through trash is a new idea for me.

Maybe there is something that could be improved in the San Francisco Recycling process?

Agreed. I dont think you do.

The wisdom of that could be argued either way, and almost certainly depends on context.

In this specific case however, he isn't advertising that he is subverting the state, so far as I can tell? what am I missing?

what makes you think he is telling the truth? The basic virtue of his character?

"Don't publicly advertise tools for subverting the state."

wait, what? when did subverting the state become a bad thing?

JSON: go with the standard "special delimiters" sounds brittle --> old fart loses

nah. depends on context. given a large existing codebase that already has effective communication implemented via special delimiters, recreating that same functionality in JSON really does not make much sense.

....sad though it is to say...

and yet you do not want to give up your citizenship, so clearly you feel you are benefiting from some of the social benefits that your income tax funds.

what makes you think the number mentioned in the classified document is, or intended to be, accurate?