156 karma · joined March 31, 2015
The article stretches this idea over several paragraphs of fear-mongering; fretting over the possible Orwellian abuses a tyrannical Internal Revenue Service could impose on mild-mannered tax delinquents.
Counterpoint: the remote workers I've worked with don't do any of the things you mentioned.
I personally think that colocation is the preferred way to perform work. Remote development environments require a conscious attention to the tools, practices, and culture. It is far simpler from a management perspective to be colocated.
Defense R&D spending is way higher but nondefense spending is still keeping up with inflation [1]. There are some agencies who have had reduced budgets, such as National Institutes of Health, while DoE and NSF have enjoyed increased budgets. [2]
Overall I find your post hyperbolic and not consistent with the stats and figures. I'm assuming that your university's research was defunded and that's why you have adopted this world view. It's consistent with your experience but I believe that it doesn't represent funding in general.
I've never heard this take before, can you elaborate?
Through the lens of being a veteran, I find most of it to be overblown, though in the case of the author I think it's perhaps somewhat justified. However, he should admit that his issues aren't systemic; they're personal. His issues are 99% due to psychological issues from his combat service, not a tech-industry imposed Jim Crow Era (the Driving Miss Daisy comment in the article).
I don't think I'd ever comment on a CIB on display, it seems about as appropriate as the proverbial ignorant question, "Did you kill anybody?"
A good half of my friends who returned from combat had significant difficulty fitting into normal American life, and experienced psychological and relationship issues. I wish veterans groups would focus their rhetoric on that specific problem. Pay for servicemembers has increased far beyond parity with civilian jobs for the vast majority of occupational specialties, the Post-9/11 GI Bill truly solves the post-service employment training issue, and the stigma of being a veteran is essentially nonexistent. The hard problem that needs to be focused on is the significant therapy and rehabilitation need for the minority of veterans who actually were in combat.
What gets me is that he's whining about his raw deal as a veteran (pysch issues aside, is nonexistent), but he fails to accept responsibility for his life choices of 1) graduating (for free) with what I presume is a creative writing degree and failing to take internships, 2) failing to live in an affordable city (what's wrong with living in Oakland or Union City and driving over the Bay Bridge?), and 3) lamenting his lack of money as he wastes it at the bar (presumably in SoMa, and expensive).
The reason for the above is not because he's intentionally avoiding reality, it's because veterans often self-segregate in veterans groups. He lives in the TL because that's where his veterans organization operates (originally for Vietnam War vets with a more dire situation than his). Hopefully now that his Vice article has gotten him some more exposure, he'll have more interaction with non-vets and gain some perspective.
How can you assert reporters are vulnerable to influence, when you're replying to a post citing a group of reporters who did the opposite?
Poitras's and Greenwald's behavior support a conclusion that they are not afraid to go back to the U.S.
Your statement still fails to refute any of my assertions.
The Pentagon Papers were broken by the New York Times. The "Deep Throat" espionage controversy with President Nixon's administration was broken by the Washington Post. American filmmaker Linda Poitras introduced the person responsible for the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history (Snowden) to an American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who previously wrote opinion pieces for various American newspapers, including the Cato Institute. At the time, Greenwald was writing for UK newspaper The Guardian, which at the time and still does maintain a significant office in the U.S. [1]
Further pieces based off of the NSA leaks were written by journalists at the Washington Post. Only after a few months did Der Spiegel write any articles. Oh, and the source of Der Spiegel's leaked documents? American software developer and activist Jacob Appelbaum. Hell, he even wrote their most prominent NSA articles. [2]
American journalism is the most robust source of sunlight for U.S. government secrets.
I get it, one can find all sorts of individual cases of American news outlets letting the public down. But in aggregate, no other country's news organization comes close.
[1] (March 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us/contact
[2] (July 2013) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whi...
I'm not asking you what episode of Blacklist you enjoyed the most, I'm asking you about real life. The lavabit company was served a real warrant made by a real judge, served by a real officer of the court. NSLs are served by real FBI agents with real badges. I'm not debating the anti-liberty essence of an NSL, but the "men in black" fear is completely unfounded by the domain of things that are in the public eye.
The strawman of the "FCK agency" agents ordering people with the threat of jail time to put backdoors in their software isn't backed up by any credible fact. We can suppose and assume all day, but you shouldn't take it for granted that everyone agrees or should agree with you.
*the alleged RSA backdoor was reported by Reuters to be a $10M bribe, doesn't sound coercive to me. Not to mention the NSA has no arrest powers outside its facilities, but sure.
Is there a legal mechanism, authority, or track record for such a thing?
If you're talking about Dual_EC_DRBG, that was a non-trivial, poorly-kept secret that failed on launch. An alleged $10 million secret deal, plus development of the algorithm doesn't sound trivial to me.
The whole "there's no Australian Secret or Pets.com" really sounded like sour grapes to me. Do Texans (people from a region of similar population size and GDP to Australia) boast about their lack of spectacular technology company failures?
Why not just say, "Australia is bloody awesome, it's home, and we've decided to stay for that reason. We're living proof you can flourish as a startup in Victoria. It turns out that we decided that we didn't want to move to the Bay Area."? I'd really be interested in the details of how they actually got it to work (marketing, customer relationships, developers).
That being said, I'm very grateful that they posted a blog about it. I've found Australian companies to be fairly tight-lipped in comparison. The more exposure there is to Australian technology companies, the more opportunities for customers and investors will materialize.
Despite what the talking heads may have you believe, crime has dropped significantly in Seattle since its population and economic growth.
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Seattle-Washington.html
api's answer is the most complete response to the question so far.
As of 2013, the FBI was paying $325 per wiretap (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/what...)
I know you can't prove a negative, but ordinarily we shouldn't accept unsubstantiated claims.
Snowden was a steward of the documents, albeit taken against the will of the NSA. Relinquishing those documents to journalists he knew to be technologically uneducated (remember, he had to teach Poitras and Greenwald how to use PGP and adopt the basics of computer security) cannot, with logical consistency, be considered as placing them into authoritatively safe hands.
In most cases, information disclosed to a journalist should be considered to be disclosed to that journalists' readership.
I used to think the same thing, and to some degree I think it holds truth. But after spending lots of time with my right-wing family, I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. Most avid Fox News watchers I've met fail to embrace the entire world-view or vision promoted on the channel, and share maybe 60-70% of the opinions elicited toward viewers. I know, it's just one data point, but I don't have a study handy.
Github would lose significant respect by folding, but unless they're ultimately fighting the U.S. Government's censorship, they don't have a claim in this fight.
> that's how principle flows, you never know when the free flow of information will turn into a larger fight.
Sure, whenever chernevik claims you need to enter a fight, you need to take it ;)
> so-called "official secrets" requiring security clearance granted by party members
It appears that you're not from the U.S. or another Western-aligned country, security clearances aren't granted to or by the dominant political parties, but are an artifact of government and military/defense industry bureaucracy.
Of course that would provide an opportunity for a Chinese counterpart of Github to take market share, perhaps a favorable outcome?
I'm pretty sure that was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
> Post-Snowden, check your premises.
What premise are you making? That the United States conducts espionage?