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brymasteron Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

Just because something gets talked about a lot doesn't mean there's a real issue. The problem is with perception and it's not the reality.

Looking forward to a dataset to show me otherwise. One that clearly defines the subjective nature of "quality" and "degradation" of comments.

brymasteron Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

Ugh. These meta-HN topics about the "quality" of the discussion come up every six months or so, even dating all the way back to the beginning. Cut it out already.

> Poll: How do you feel about making HN invite only? (5 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373789

> Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? (4 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604

> Why people complain about the quality of Hacker News (4 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777813

> Ask HN: (Yet Another) HN Comment Quality Going Down? (3 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041

> Hacker News Needs Honeypots (2 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166209

Edit: The moderation on this site is as iron-fisted as ever. The problem here is perception.

brymasteron Wikileaks publishes 500k new Stratfor emails

Yes it does matter. The right thing to do is transparency and that's what's happening here. If Bad Person & Associates are doing evil, they're not going to get a break just because their messages also contain personal love letters.

brymasteron Wikileaks publishes 500k new Stratfor emails

These "people" are looking to profit from misery (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6742844).

Wikileaks is attempting to provide transparency in a world where that doesn't much exist so boo-fucking-hoo if somebody's Mastercard gets leaked in the process.

Mass dumps aren't adding any more "ammunition" for their detractors than some sort of filtered dump would. Detractors don't need much of a reason to dislike what Wikileaks is doing beyond the fact that they've been exposed.

brymasteron A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used

Warning: Don't click it. This fiddle spams infinite javascript alerts.

brymasteron Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users

No, fingerprints are only suitable as a unique ID and not a password. You leave your fingerprint everywhere you touch and that cannot be changed.

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/10/fingerprints-are-user...

brymasteron How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

> This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative.

YC has stake in Soylent (http://blog.soylent.me/post/64789154918/soylent-funding-anno...). I think people sometimes forget who's website this is they're commenting on.

brymasteron Dear Facebook: You Suck

> If someone wants to use a website, they should use the website.

…except when that website first make you use facebook.

> If your belief that Facebook logins are a bad thing is widespread, people will stop only implementing Facebook logins because it's a bad business decision.

These things are a slow process.

> Stop whining because the market doesn't agree with you.

Luckily, my "whining" (the part about the social logins that you could only argue against, my privacy points were bulletproof and spot-on) is backed up by evidence:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Privacy-Concerns-Keep-Users...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408735

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4603204

brymasteron Dear Facebook: You Suck

Missing the sentence where the parent comment mentioned "using the activity feed to keep up with friends." Seems your rebut about my rebut failed, actually.

brymasteron Dear Facebook: You Suck

If one wants to log into a website that isn't facebook, one shouldn't be forced to have a login from a "social network" they don't use.

brymasteron Dear Facebook: You Suck

> optional and no one is forcing you to use it.

Optional like the sites that have "sign in via facebook" and no other option?

Optional in that they track your every move from "like buttons" all over the web?

Or optional that they develop shadow profiles on users that aren't even users?

Which optional is it?

brymasteron TWTR

Facebook is also a good example of a company with its business model out of whack, meaning this ride isn't going to last.

brymasteron TWTR

> Just because they aren't making money now doesn't mean that will always be the case.

This is dangerous speculation.

brymasteron TWTR

> borderline breach of fiduciary duty.

That's not a real thing.

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-com...

brymasteron TWTR

I think you accurately described the Greater Fool and the nature of this tech IPO climate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

How else could companies with no revenue go public?

brymasteron 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

I think the point was the interconnectedness and how these firms have large stakes in other large corporations.

They don't have to be "operating companies" to be controlling. Real economic power as the article states.

brymasteron 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

No, that's not what the study says.

brymasteron 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

Yeah, this is one of those infographics that have been circulating for quite a while. More interesting and in-depth are these stories where you learn about the interconnectedness of large corporations:

> "Three systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have taken a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide and analyzed all 43,060 transnational corporations and share ownerships linking them. They built a model of who owns what and what their revenues are and mapped the whole edifice of economic power."

The 147 Companies That Control Everything

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/10/22/the-147-co...

Original source, but site is currently down: " Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed-...

Full research paper here (36 pages) http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf

brymasteron Web Giants Threaten End to Cookie Tracking

Heise.de started "two clicks for better privacy" that Bruce Scheiner also uses on his blog. http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/ & https://github.com/panzi/SocialSharePrivacy

brymasteron NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

> Snowden isn't a patriot though.

Yes he is. He gave up his life and comfort in order to reveal illegal, massive surveillance by the US Government and friends. That's what actual patriots and heroes do.

> Certainly he has revealed a lot of scary information about the government that the people needed to know about, but opposing the state (which is what Snowden seems to do) does not always equate to supporting the nation.

This kind of statement is a sophists trick used to justify the unjustifiable: "Spying is typically bad but he revealed spying done by our own government!"

> Some of Snowden's disclosures have been directly harmful to American interests without a corresponding harm being done to the American people that would have warranted that disclosure. For instance, his leak of details of NSA hacking attempts against China.

The NSA are the ones causing the actual harm. Also, China boogeyman card.

> Likewise, his disclosures about spying against allied heads-of-state. Knowing what your friends truly think would be invaluable for American interests when negotiating. I certainly agree that spying on friends like that is distasteful, but revealing that can't possibly be said to have helped the American people.

Sounds like 1984 Ingsoc. Diplomacy with "friends" should be honest. Not conducted as "trust but verify" Reagan-esque bullshit.

brymasteron NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

Here, I did your own research for you:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-oper...

> Most addicted city (over 100k visits total) > Eglin Air Force Base, FL

http://blog.reddit.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-m...

brymasteron Apple claim that iCloud can store passwords “only locally” seems to be false

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02Letter-from-Apple-...

> "We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising."

> "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars."

People were actually meant to believe that Apple had a software bug for how they calculate signal strength all the way up to the 4th iPhone and instead not scratching AT&T's back making their network look better than it was.

You know, this Apple with the futuristic wireless testing facility: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/inside-apples-black-lab-w...

brymasteron Firefox 25 is released

Mozilla had postponed turning on the "block third party tracking cookies by default" feature since May, originally slated for FF22 I believe and it keeps getting pushed back. Anyone know the status of this?

brymasteron The Zuckerberg Files - All public utterances of Mark Zuckerberg

That's scary? You should see what Facebook has been up to the last 7-8 years: http://pleasedeletefacebook.com/

brymasteron The Slash Programming Language

Yes, only ;)

brymasteron The Slash Programming Language

All languages have odd quirks. One can cherry pick from any of them: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

brymasteron The Slash Programming Language

> drop code in a folder via ftp and have it "just work"

This is essentially what Zed Shaw was working on for Python:

https://github.com/zedshaw/fuqit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6039146) and here's another for Node https://github.com/ricardobeat/fuqit

I'd love something like this fully fleshed out for Ruby. Some things PHP did "get right" like how it "just works."

brymasteron uTorrent tricking users into changing default browser settings?

Yes, uTorrent has long been spyware/malware.

There was a case where the application started downloading some strange 5GB file that users did not add: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=728504

Other times it threw open a window from the application to a webpage with shady screensaver installers.

Using a closed-source torrent client in this climate is dangerous.

brymasteron LinkedIn ‘Intro’duces Insecurity

> Shhhh! Don't bring rationality into this HN anti-LinkedIn Circle-jerk!

That's a reddit-level comment.

People with technical, ethical or privacy concerns are just as relevant to the discussion. LinkedIn already has a shady history in terms of unauthorized data slurping, privacy and handling of users. No one has to swallow what they're offering now as altruistic if they don't want to.

Plenty of concerns indeed...

6.5 Million LinkedIn Password Hashes Leaked

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073309

LinkedIn sued by users who say it hacked their e-mail accounts

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6425444

Your iPhone calendar isn’t private—at least if you use the LinkedIn app

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/your-iphone-calendar-is...

LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680680

LinkedIn opts 100 million users into sharing information with ads

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2872030

LinkedIn is Evil

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=220138

LinkedIn was also pulling down your contacts/address book through that iOS flaw just like Path and several other apps were at the time.

brymasteron Introducing Cover

I'm referring to the 4th amendment in the Bill of Rights, in the US Constitution that was interpreted by Katz v. United States to protect individuals with a "reasonable expectation of privacy."