Hacker News Reader

betterunixon Facebook experiments had few limits

Quite a few conferences now require that experiments involved human subjects be reviewed by an ethics committee of some kind before being carried out. Universities have such committees and they do oversee themselves pretty effectively.

So no, I do not think that Facebook overseeing its own researchers is so far fetched. The ethical review board would probably consist of a combination of lawyers, PR people, and people with research backgrounds. The lawyers and PR folks would not have seen this experiment as a "great opportunity for research that was previously impossible" so much as "lawsuit bait" and "PR nightmare."

betterunixon Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations

"One expects that judges will sort this mess out"

Who expects that? Judges failed to stem the growth of militarized police forces for decades.

betterunixon Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem

"it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create"

More efficient for what, exactly? Because it is much more efficient for me to just assume that nothing is copyright when I creating something new that incorporates the work of others. It is overwhelmingly more efficient to just ignore copyright on the Internet -- our computers are the greatest copying machines ever made, and spending our time trying to figure out if some data is copyrighted is nothing but a retarding force.

betterunixon The YouTube Contract for Indies

"Illegal digital downloads disrupted everything, and cut profits substantially"

Only because a decade beforehand the RIAA decided that instead of working on ways to monetize the Internet, they would work on ways to make computers less useful for music distribution. Basically the recording industry's shortsightedness and failure to embrace the greatest communications revolution since the printing press led to everything else you described.

To put it another way, the RIAA could have pushed for Congress to set up a micropayments system for music downloading, before most people even knew about music downloading. Instead they lobbied for the DMCA and spent their money developing DRM schemes that failed before they were ever deployed. Their "bad karma" is a result of their response to the complete failure of those efforts: abuse of the legal system on a massive scale.

betterunixon The YouTube Contract for Indies

"labels really do have a bad situation here"

Are people expected to feel sympathy for these companies? Have we forgotten that people turned to big centralized services for their music as a direct result of the recording industry's aggressive effort to kill P2P? This situation was created by the labels' own actions, their failure to embrace the Internet early on before these kinds services existed.

"Its disappointing that while technology is making it easier than ever to record and produce music, its becoming tougher and tougher to make a living off it."

It did not have to be that way. We could have set things up so that when a song was downloaded, the artist and recording studio that produced it received a small payment automatically. It could have been a truly innovative revenue stream.

betterunixon Alexander Shulgin has died

In other words, legalizing MDMA and regulating the production process could help to save an endangered species.

(What, we can't turn the propaganda around?)

betterunixon Inside the FBI's Fight Against Chinese Cyber-Espionage

I can't help but to be amused by the irony of the NSA systematically weakening computer security and swooping in to help the FBI when American companies become victims of foreign spies that exploit poor security.

betterunixon LAPD adds drones to arsenal, says they'll be used sparingly

Just like SWAT teams are used sparingly...

betterunixon A Statement About Mahbod’s Annotations on Elliot Rodger’s Manifesto

He's a little narcissistic, but limited it to talking about his being a "perfect gentleman" and things like that.

There is also this part:

"I am Elliot Rodger...Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent, Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god."

betterunixon A Statement About Mahbod’s Annotations on Elliot Rodger’s Manifesto

It is a mixture of psychopathy and megalomania. He expresses a belief that women exist to provide men with sex, and his anger stems from a belief that women have been given the power to choose who to have sex with yet failed to choose him. He believes that he is better than everyone else and is angry that women are having sex with "inferior" men. He does not think killing other people is a problem; he thinks that his own death is the worst outcome of his plot, made necessary only because the alternative is to live in a jail cell. He also describes killing his roommates as necessary, lest they get in the way of his plot (which included torturing people in his apartment).

In his ideal world, there would be a benevolent dictator -- "benevolent" in this context includes exterminating women by starvation, save for a few that are kept locked up in labs where they exist only for reproduction -- and he suggests himself as this dictator. According to his theory if there are no women there will be no sex, and men can rise to higher levels of achievement (notice how he blames his shortcomings on others). He also believes that there would be no love in such a world, though he seems to have a poorly developed notion of love as an emotion (he speaks of love in terms of sex, and never associates love with any specific person other than himself).

betterunixon Tehran tracked, captured, studied, copied RQ-170

Not all Jews are Zionists and most American Zionists are not Jewish. Stop referring to a "Jewish lobby" when you mean an "Israel lobby" or "Zionist lobby." The term "Jewish lobby" is misleading, easily misunderstood, and mildly antisemitic.

betterunixon AT&T’s GigaPower plans turn privacy into a luxury that few would choose

This is not offering you a discount in return for your viewing targeted ads, because nothing here actually requires you to view ads in the first place. This is more like saying, "Pay us more and we won't sell your browsing history to whatever company offers us money."

betterunixon Tell HN: Call your mom

The history of mother's day is rather informative:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day_%28United_State...

betterunixon Co-routines as an alternative to state machines (2009)

Actually, I think coroutines are easier to understand in higher-level languages that support call/cc -- Scheme, for example. Yield is just another continuation, no different from return, throw, restart, etc.

betterunixon The Morality Police in Your Checking Account

"They remove the gatekeeper for financial services"

Hardly. Even if you ran your entire business on Bitcoin, you would still need to find an exchange when the tax man came around demanding fiat currency (unless you are dealing in such tiny amounts that you can rely on people you find online, but then your business is probably not very successful). Exchanges are the gatekeepers of cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin, Litecoin, and every other "coin" would have just been worthless toys if exchanges had not been set up.

There is also the reality of cryptocurrency use that must be considered: almost all businesses (legal and illegal) that "accept Bitcoin" actually "accept $NATIONAL_CURRENCY via a Bitcoin exchange/service." Illegal businesses try to decouple their Bitcoin payments from the exchange i.e. they attempt to launder their money (no surprises there); legal businesses proudly announce which Bitcoin service they are using to "accept Bitcoin." Those services and exchanges are gatekeepers in practice, and are increasingly compliant with money service laws and regulations (just like banks).

betterunixon The Morality Police in Your Checking Account

"Something that just came up to me: why is making porn movies for money legal, but prostitution is illegal?"

The law is not a strictly logical system (this is usually a good thing, despite the common negative perceptions). Pornography was once illegal; then the interpretation of the law changed so that it would be considered "protected speech," unless it is being displayed in certain contexts. Prostitution is illegal in most of the USA, except for certain forms which are not illegal (e.g. it may not be illegal to have sex with your boss in exchange for a promotion).

betterunixon The Morality Police in Your Checking Account

Not that I want to that guy, but...

"If this president is established and takes roots"

betterunixon Comcast response to Netflix

I think Comcast, owner of NBC Universal, has little ground to stand on here. Streaming is an inefficient use of the Internet that is popular only because people are too terrified of lawsuits to use better technologies like BitTorrent. Comcast has worked hard to set up the legal environment that created this situation; they will see no sympathy from me.

betterunixon Comcast response to Netflix

"Evolving business strategies" like fighting new technologies to maintain a decades-old business model? Interesting perspective you have there...

betterunixon F.C.C., in ‘Net Neutrality’ Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane

It's more like asking your neighbor to fetch two burgers, and then give you one of them. Except that your neighbor has a burger-multiplying-machine that can keep giving you burgers once your neighbor gets their first one.

There is no reason we should sit around worrying about HBO. HBO pays people lots of money to figure out how to monetize their entertainment. Let them figure out how to monetize BitTorrent and similar P2P systems. If they choose instead to ignore those technologies, well, they can suffer the consequences when someone else figures it out. The rest of us should not have to worry -- we do not worry when we turn on the radio or use a VCR, so why should we be so concerned here?

betterunixon Comcast response to Netflix

It is worse than that. "15 Mbps peak speeds" is actually "15 Mbps bursts."

I am fine with getting less than my maximum speed; I understand that the connection is shared and that my neighbors' service can interfere with mine. TCP can deal with congestion. What grinds my gears is that ISPs are not content to sell me a maximum speed; they want to oversubscribe, then claim that they are selling burst service, then call it "unlimited super-awesome Internet!! 15Mbps!!" then penalize customers who fail to limit their use of the supposedly unlimited service.

betterunixon Comcast response to Netflix

It is actually rather simple:

* Netflix cannot make money if individual Internet users cannot connect to Netflix and stream their movies. Netflix brings in a lot of revenue from its customers, and even after the cost of its own Internet connection manages to turn a handsome profit.

* ISPs stand between Netflix and their users. Many ISPs, such as Comcast, are also involved in the business of selling subscriptions to TV channels (usually with plans that require people to pay for hundreds of channels they do not watch) -- a business that is dying because of Internet streaming. Since Netflix relies on ISPs to have customers at all, ISPs want to demand money from Netflix (as well as from their customers).

* Somewhere in there are the actual users of Netflix, who have no particular say in any of this. Most of those users would have been happier with BitTorrent, but are too terrified of lawsuits (and even if they did turn to torrents, certain ISPs -- i.e. Comcast -- have been known to deliberately interfere with their customers' traffic to thwart torrents).

If your reading of this is, "ISPs are greedy and want to double-dip," well, yeah, that's what is happening here.

betterunixon Comcast response to Netflix

Yeah I stopped reading at that point. An ISP with a history of interfering with certain traffic and lobbying against net neutrality is not a supporter of an open Internet at all, let alone the "strongest."

betterunixon F.C.C., in ‘Net Neutrality’ Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane

Maybe HBO should embrace an innovative distribution model, instead of clinging to the obsolete premium-cable-channel model. HBO itself would have been impossible if the media establishment had been success at killing cable; why should I feel an iota of sympathy for HBO's unwillingness to embrace newer, better technologies? Why shouldn't I use better technology to access entertainment, regardless of whether or not HBO has bothered to try monetizing those technologies?

betterunixon F.C.C., in ‘Net Neutrality’ Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane

"To strike a contrarian tone, how much is this going to matter a handful of years from now as the internet at large and bandwidth to the home continues to increase?"

Who will enjoy the benefits of the increase? If you are only getting 9.6kbaud unless you pay millions of dollars in fees to every ISP between you and your peers, then all that bandwidth is useless to you.

"In a decade is it unreasonable to expect that "really fast" home internet is 1 gigbit?"

One gigabit to Youtube, unless you are on a Comcast connection in which case it is 1 megabit for Youtube and a gigabit to NBC's streaming service, and 256 kilobits for anything else.

"Does this make it harder for Netflix"

Oh you wanted to have access to Netflix? Well that will be $300/per gigabyte for a business line that has real Internet access. For a mere $20/month, you can have unlimited access to the best of Comcast, now partnered with Microsoft!!!

betterunixon F.C.C., in ‘Net Neutrality’ Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane

Nobody is talking about taking away HBO's right to sell entertainment in ways that make them money. They can and should out-compete BitTorrent.

betterunixon F.C.C., in ‘Net Neutrality’ Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane

That is why distributed storage would be so much better. You know, if 10 people download a movie, I should be able to download it from any of those 10 people. Or all of them could send me part of the file, improving throughput.

Oh, wait, we already have that technology. Too bad we have people who have worked for twenty years to kill it.

betterunixon How do spammers harvest your e-mail address?

Does it matter? Email addresses are harvested by spammers all the time. The key piece of the puzzle now is that spam filtering is advanced enough that we do not need to care. I almost never see spam in my inbox, and I almost never see ham in my junk folder.

betterunixon Digging for answers: The “strong smell” of fraud from one Bitcoin miner maker

The most obvious answer is this: you sell the money printing machine for more than the money it would have printed. In other words, anyone selling a mining rig believes that they will make more money from the sale than they would make from actually using the machine. If you buy the rig, you are making the opposite bet.

It is similar to futures trading.