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brymaster

1,312 karma · joined September 30, 2009

“People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.”

― Max Barry, Lexicon

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brymaster··on Inside the NSA's War on Internet Security
Your sarcastic and denialist schtick got old about a year ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6469701

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360115

brymaster··on Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs
> The best resource-friendly browser on OS X is Safari.

You may find others having an opposite experience:

http://i.imgur.com/qfwwXhw.png :)

brymaster··on Nigerian Billionaire Commits $100M for African Entrepreneurs
> These jokes perpetuate a meme that makes Nigeria poorer.

That's absurd. 419/Yahoo-Yahoo and corruption are a big problem there. That makes Nigeria poorer, not jokes.

brymaster··on Twine, the Video-Game Technology for All
Nope, nope, nope.

This is a thinly veiled attempt to rope the reader into a one-sided narrative about GamerGate. The author, Laura Hudson, has a history of this already. You can google her and find the Wired article or tweets.

If you really want to learn about Twine, just go here: http://twinery.org

brymaster··on About the OS X Yosemite v10.10.1 Update
Transparency is definitely an eye candy-only thing that provides no benefit and comes with a performance hit too. This volume indicator wasn't fixed in 10.10.1 though http://i.imgur.com/Unh3EA1.png
brymaster··on Apple Event October 2014 Live Stream
Your reply wasn't a technical one regarding the question, but I think you've been unfairly downvoted as there is actually truth in what you're saying. These are exactly the types of conversations that marketing teams at Apple would have about creating the perception around their brand.

Note: before a fervent product enthusiast thinks about hitting that downvote button, I've typed this comment from my very own MBP.

brymaster··on Behind OS X’s modern face lies an aging collection of Unix tools
> So yes, GPL 3 is hurting open source more than helping it.

It comes at no surprise that Microsoft, a company that vehemently spoke out against Free and Open Source Software for so long, would have these views.

GPL'd code is about keeping that code open source forever. Hence clauses in GPLv3 like anti-Tivoization. Little sympathy for companies that want to take without giving back.

brymaster··on Behind OS X’s modern face lies an aging collection of Unix tools
Actually, it's in Apple's best interests to simply post the sources online and not play fast and loose with licensing as you're suggesting.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#Wh...

Source is not distributed along with their binaries nor is a written offer to receive source code that I've seen. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1761 & http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

brymaster··on Behind OS X’s modern face lies an aging collection of Unix tools
Really not much to see here, as the author originally did not know Apple uses stone age FOSS tools because of GPLv3.

Sources here: http://opensource.apple.com

Apple doesn't seem timely in getting sources put up. Wayback Machine shows that 10.9.5 was posted around October 7th even though that update was distributed to users on September 17 (~20 day gap), so they're not exactly adhering to the license as they should.

Also there is no sources for 10.10 and does iOS 7 and 8 really use no GPL'd or other FOSS'd code?

brymaster··on Not on a Social Network? You’ve Still Got a Privacy Problem
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926275
brymaster··on AppleID password brute force proof-of-concept
> Anyway, I hope the FBI gets this freak and put him in the can for as long as they're able to.

If only people shared the same feelings about illegal mass surveillance and the lax security of the companies responsible for these breaches.

brymaster··on How Sega Planned To Crush Nintendo, 24 Years Ago
I'm halfway through the book right now and I share your same thoughts on this. Most of the dramatizations on the marketing side of things are just cringeworthy. If you haven't already, you'd probably rather read http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20523933-service-games and definitely http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68571.The_Ultimate_Histor... if you want to know the history of the entire industry from the very beginning.
brymaster··on Apple on medical tech hiring spree
> From 4 years working leading teams in an electronic medical software shop, I urge consumers to not assume that vendors will be good stewards of personal data. forget the boilerplate and assurance that data will only be used in an anonymous way.

Thanks. I'm concerned that practices are now using these custom Facebook-style portals for communicating between doctors-patients and viewing medical records and test results with even companion smartphone apps (https://www.healow.com/app.html).

One called eClinicalWeb.com (https://www.google.com/search?q=eClinicalWeb.com) provided by a company called eClinicalWorks comes to mind that many now use. With no oversight and total disregard that people working in the social space have for user data and privacy, I'm terrified that these small medical software shops are just as negligent.

brymaster··on Adblock Plus for Safari released
Yes. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
brymaster··on Adblock Plus for Safari released
The real point is that ABP originally pushed an update that enabled Google Ads by default.

That's not an ad blocker. The trust is gone.

In the future they can just push more updates with new "features" enabled by default that allows more kinds of ads from their whitelist.

brymaster··on Facebook Gets it. Google Doesn’t.
The website keeps tracks of "reasons" why using Facebook is a bad idea. That can mean privacy violations (which there is a clear history of and are overwhelming) or issues as a result of a user sharing too much information. Either way, all real issues, "opinion and conjecture" aside. Even what you claimed to be "5% genuine privacy issues" is damning.

Instead of dismissing the list as mostly irrelevant, you could have pulled out the important issues for discussion as I did.

brymaster··on Facebook Gets it. Google Doesn’t.
> it's not fair to forever judge them by the same set if historical facts

Disagree. The spots on the leopard don't simply change and there's no such thing as "anonymous" to Facebook. That's antithesis to their business. This is purely a PR play.

By the way, we learned from the AOL data breach in 2006 that "anonymous" doesn't actually exist on the internet[1]. So let's not pretend Facebook is trying to do us all a great favor.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?page... "A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749"

brymaster··on Facebook Gets it. Google Doesn’t.
And the issues you don't consider issues somehow make all the "genuine" issues irrelevant? You know, Facebook's entire history of not giving a shit about privacy. Not only stepping up to the "creepy line" (like your employer, Google), but blazing past it in complete disregard.

The game is: see how much you can get away with and deal with the consequences later through PR or other distractions. "Move fast and break things."

brymaster··on Facebook Gets it. Google Doesn’t.
Not even close. Even the EFF archives and acknowledges a lot of these cases.

Not every link is weighted equally. Let's talk about:

* Partnering with data brokers

* Deliberately changing users privacy settings

* Beacon (remember that?)

* Shadow profiles

* Everyone searchable via Graph

* Charges from the FTC

* "Deleted" information not actually deleted

* Like buttons on websites tracking you

* User profile data (photos and names) being used in advertisements

...it goes on and on.

You're employed by Google who also deals primary in the data of users. Are any of these issues relevant or important to you?

brymaster··on Facebook Gets it. Google Doesn’t.
Perfect observation and you're right - the outcome of this social media explosion will be terrifying. Couldn't help but think of:

"People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are."

― Max Barry, Lexicon

brymaster··on Facebook Gets it. Google Doesn’t.
> Facebook is addressing a strong desire for privacy by its users

This is some serious horseshit by Arrington. Only a fool would believe this[1]. Facebook's entire history is anti-privacy from the very beginning (here's a nice list: http://pleasedeletefacebook.com) and they do their business a disservice by not collecting as much as possible. Facebook users don't care about privacy; it's the reason they still use the service even after every privacy violation.

Trying to spin this into a Facebook vs Google match is absurd. Facebook wants all of your data just as much as Google. They're called Big Data for a reason and information is their currency.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7675962

brymaster··on Michael Lewis: The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street
And here's his retort to these brash blog posts attempting to portray him as sinister: http://www.salon.com/2014/04/11/michael_lewis_hits_back_at_c...
brymaster··on Firefox and Flux: A New, Beautiful Browser is Coming
> there is no need to start making up excuses for it.

This seems to come up a lot, but a Mozilla dev already explained it's to protect privacy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5590988

I'd take their word for it :)

brymaster··on The Worst Part of YC
Huh? By your own admission this was once happening.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008267

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008829

So when did this change and stop happening?

brymaster··on What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
This article is ancient (pun intended) in terms of paleoanthropology research and apparently comes with some criticism from people in the field:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskop_Man#Criticisms

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/return-amazi...

Recommend this story and discussion instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6849223

brymaster··on Michael Lewis: shilling for the buyside?
To quote te_chris:

"On most articles like this it just feels like a bunch of doe-eyed, aspirational men who really want to be rich one day, so don't want to spoil the fun for their future selves."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7257140

brymaster··on Firefox 28 Release Notes
This is to protect user privacy as explained by a Mozilla dev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756582

Otherwise every keystroke you made would be sent to Google.

brymaster··on Researcher: Array of Apple Apps Vulnerable to “Gotofail” Attack
Not that interesting, as this was introduced in Mavericks.

http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-126...

brymaster··on Apple's SSL/TLS bug
Who said anything about Android?

You might find this article a good read: http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5307992/inside-the-mind-of...

brymaster··on Show HN: Check if your browser is vulnerable to the Apple SSL bug
This bug was introduced in Mavericks.
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