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ceolon Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough?

Consider me one of those people. I used to be on here all the time, but now I've only been checking here maybe every few days. I'm tired of seeing "outrage tourists" (thanks tptacek) and frothing adolescent anger.

ceolon London student reported to police: “Enchanted by anarchism and individualism”

Those two things aren't equal in the slightest. "future time orientation is superior" versus "the ability to drink water from your cupped hands without drowning yourself is normal".

> In other words, you are implying that some appreciation of the value of planning is something that only some cultures possess.

Actually, it is something only some cultures practice. (Not possess, just practice. Everyone can view time with a perspective in the future, but not all cultures default to that view.) It's just like how some cultures do not distinguish between green and blue colors (or how we do not distinguish between different types of snow.)

But no, you go ahead and claim the real racists are the ones examining racism. I'm sure that's not what people backed into a corner do or anything.

ceolon London student reported to police: “Enchanted by anarchism and individualism”

Actually, the point is that lots of cultures are collective-oriented, while we as a culture like to favor individualism (even though we are extremely collective in our own ways.)

This is called "cultural bias"; it means that, should a student from another culture come into our schools, they should not feel wrong for being raised in an environment that doesn't promote individualism. Stuff like, "Don't be a sheep!" and, "You are your own person. Don't let anyone take that away from you!" can make them feel out of place and other'ed. Notice how the part you quoted says "as opposed to a more collective ideology." That means they want to get rid of pinning individualism against collectivism; they don't want to get rid of individualism.

I'm not sure what the rest of your comment means, though. Even if that specific phrase is a problem, the rest of the document is all great stuff.

ceolon London student reported to police: “Enchanted by anarchism and individualism”

Kind of proves their point, right? The way your culture views something is "obviously a positive trait"?

ceolon London student reported to police: “Enchanted by anarchism and individualism”

Students represent their school, so no surprise a top law school would crack down on students spouting shit on Twitter, certainly when they also mention the school in their tweet.

ceolon Don't Fly During Ramadan

> Don't you think you're taking this a tad too seriously?

Those words echo through my head every time I click open one of these threads on HN. It's like suddenly the rich white guy is getting oppressed, so we're obviously in a police state! Never mind for the years leading up to this point, the US was doing much worse shit; they just happened to be doing it to minorities.

And you can see it in this thread. Everyone concentrating on the fact he was detained, not the reasons, when the whole damn article is about how the US treats people who look like they're from certain countries like default terrorists.

ceolon Node.js incorrectly parses HTTP methods

Ah, the POTT method. Perhaps it's part of the HTCPCP?[0]

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_P...

ceolon Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

He didn't make a bug report. He didn't specify how he could post to other peoples' walls. All he said was that he could, and that he already broke the ToS by using it on another person's account. This was his original report:

    -----Original Message to Facebook-----
    From: kha****@hotmail.com
    To:
    Subject: post to facebook users wall .

    Name: Ḱhalil
    E-Mail: khal****@hotmail.com
    Type: privacy
    Scope: www
    Description: dear facebook team .

    my name is khalil shreateh.
    i finished school with B.A degree in Infromation Systems .

    i would like to report a bug in your main site
    (www.facebook.com) which i discovered it .

    repro:
    the bug allow facebook users to share links to other 
    facebook users , i tested it on sarah.goodin wall and i 
    got success post
    link - > https://www.facebook.com/10151857333098885
    -----End Original Message to Facebook-----

From that, you surmised that he exploited the "make a new wall post" form by replacing the user ID with another of his choosing?

ceolon Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

It's the general public's opinion about "hacker", not just the media's. Connotations change. Everyone here knows "hacker" to mean "someone who finds a simple solution to a complex problem" but everyone elsewhere uses "hacker" to mean "someone who breaks into another person's computer system." It's not even the wrong usage; it's just a usage you don't personally like.

That's not touching on the rest of your posts. They've all been hyperbolic bullshit, and I hate seeing it bleed over from the political discussions.

ceolon Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

Your replies in this thread have been piss poor, anti-corporation, anti-media, hyperbolic shitposting. Please take it back to /r/technology.

ceolon Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

Not between two test accounts or two accounts that belong to you (work and personal, which you are allowed to have.)

ceolon Facebook vulnerability 2013

A very specific message board, it seems like. /r/netsec is having no trouble understanding it.

Which leads me to believe most people commenting are not doing so with an actual understanding of the situation, and are instead viewing this solely as Big Bad Facebook vs innocent hacker.

ceolon Facebook vulnerability 2013

He could have made test accounts with appropriate privacy settings. He could have just told the security team, "Your server does not validate permissions when posting to walls, so if you change this specific HTML form value to anyone else's profile ID, it will post to their wall."

ceolon A green threading library with true concurrency for Python

It should be written 0.0.1[::-1]

ceolon Hyperloop

The US will never have a decent mass transit system due to its sheer size.

ceolon I rewrote my blog in Go

I don't see how he can say, "Well I moved stuff to a CDN and changed hosts off of a shared server and greatly reduced my CSS file size, but surely it was the fact I changed languages that caused my page times to increase!"

No, author, Go had very little to do with your page load times. Both Go and Django are going to serve a simple blog at the same speeds.

ceolon Lavabit Founder Says He Had ‘Obligation’ to Shut Service

> Thats a huge stretch and abuse of logic IMHO. Don't build roads because criminals and terrorists will drive on them.

Just thought those two sentences were funny being right next to each other.

Let's be honest here, though: The percentage of people using his email service for illegal reasons is much higher than the percentage of people using roads for the same illegal reasons. It's the same problem that Pastebin faces,[0] and it's the reason paste.pocoo.org shut down.[1] Services that advertise complete privacy and anonymity get swamped with people who want to hide illegal activity.

[0]: http://www.tgdaily.com/security-features/62490-pastebin-to-p...

[1]: http://paste.pocoo.org/about/

ceolon Lavabit Founder Says He Had ‘Obligation’ to Shut Service

Comcast, AT&T, and other service providers comply with government requests for data.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

Let's just end it here, because nothing I'm saying seems to get across.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sandwich%20Ar...

    2. A person who, in real terms, is unskilled, and cant 
       see it, despite thinking they have a 'talent'. The 
       person often makes inappropriate, obtuse, or 
       simplistic comments, to everyone elses amusement.

So you're saying he's really insulting the people who came up with the phrase "Sandwich Artist", not the people who hold it as a job title? Because that's ridiculous. He used the phrase "Sandwich Artist" to evoke the image of an unskilled person who thinks they're much more important than they think they are. It comes from the fact that Subway employees are called "Sandwich Artists", despite their job being much the same as any other fast food server.

It does not take a degree in linguistics to understand that using someone else's job title in a derogatory manner is shitting on the person with the job title. This is something you should have learned in grade school.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

It's a phrase, which is something the Oxford dictionary acknowledges and defines. His use of scare quotes only excuses him if someone else had used that phrase before him; instead, he's the one who brought it up. It's quite obvious he wanted to use some predetermined meaning he had for it. Arguing otherwise comes off as useless pedantry.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

You were using their job title to evoke the image of a certain type of person in a negative way. That is very much shitting on them, whether or not you care to admit it. It's quite literally how stereotypes are created and perpetuated.

> I could re-use your comment to put down any criticism of any change of any kind.

Sure, if my criticism was about something that naturally changes. If I were criticizing trees for losing their leaves, or tides from moving in and out, or potato chips for going stale, you would be completely correct to tell me, "All of those things happen whether you like it or not." Just like I'm correct to tell you, "It's pointless to complain about words finding new meanings."

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

Oxford doesn't recognize the phrase "Sandwich Artist". You aren't abiding by the rules you hold others to. That's not even touching the fact that dictionaries do not define words; they record their usage. As such, they will always be out of date.

In short, everything you've said is completely wrong.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

I've done work for the kinds of retailers who have coupon code boxes, and most of the time, the only reason it's on there is because the default WordPress plugin/Joomla template/eCommerce solution has it there. No one ever thinks to remove it, despite them never planning on using it.

The best way for coupon code boxes to stop appearing is for developers and designers to bring it up with their client. A lot of the time, once the client is actually confronted with it has to make a decision, they choose not to have it.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/spellcheck/american_english...

You might want to rethink some things.

ceolon This coupon code is a slap in the face

You have two comma splices in your comment. It's really bothering me, because it ruins your entire argument. I mean, you might as well have wrote everything in Latin! You are stupid and wrong. I am the arbiter of the entire English language; you will abide by my rules!

...See how ridiculous that sounds? If you understood what the author was saying, there's no need to nitpick his use of a single word. Languages change, bud. No amount of bitter internet comments will stop that.

And let's stop shitting on people who work at Subway, kay? Pretty sure they're doing more with their lives than someone who trolls HN to complain about nonsense.

ceolon The Internal Clitoris, which wasn't properly mapped until 2009 (2011)

Exactly. Pointing out that problematic elements exist in a piece of media does not mean that piece can't be enjoyed! Just that one should be aware of those elements and understand why they are problematic.

ceolon The Internal Clitoris, which wasn't properly mapped until 2009 (2011)

...which oppresses female sexuality.

Saying it's the fault of religion doesn't help solve anything. It's individuals who decide to interpret the Bible in ways that harm women, just like other individuals can consider themselves Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, and still support women's right to birth control.

ceolon The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet

I really appreciate your reasonable argument, but if the past few weeks have been any indication, there isn't any room for that here. HN has gone from interesting tech discussions to extremist, us-vs-them political rhetoric, and anyone who takes a different stance is jumped on and downvoted — as you can tell from your post having more replies than the entire rest of the thread.

Of course, you won't see the story about a federal judge ruling NYPD's stop-and-frisk was illegal[0], despite it being a much graver offense to individual rights, because it doesn't affect rich, white techies. But an email service you never used shut down and cited "NSA did it!" as its reason? Put that shit all over the front page!

[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-pr...

ceolon The Internal Clitoris, which wasn't properly mapped until 2009 (2011)

Highlighting this for importance:

    “When I returned to France to treat genital mutilation, I 
     was amazed that they were never tried. The medical 
     literature tells us the truth about our contempt for 
     women. For three centuries, there are thousands of 
     references to penile surgery, nothing on the clitoris, 
     except for some cancers or dermatology -and nothing to 
     restore its sensitivity. The very existence of an organ 
     of pleasure is denied, medically. Today, if you look at 
     the anatomy books that all surgeons have, you will find 
     two pages above. There is a real intellectual excision.“

No doubt someone will try to nitpick it, saying something like, "Well <inconsequential part of a man's body> wasn't documented until <year slightly earlier than 2009> so I don't see why it's such a big deal!"

The fact of the matter is, though, that a body part crucial to a woman's sexual pleasure wasn't even properly documented until 2009, while a pill released solely to make men have more sex was put on the market 10 years earlier.[0] In a world where 140 million women have experienced genital mutilation,[1] and women are still shamed for having any sort of sexual experience[2] to the point where politicians[3] and even pharmacists[4] want to ban birth control, there's no way that's not indicative of a problem our culture still has regarding female sexuality.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut-shaming

[3]: http://www.care2.com/causes/after-banning-almost-all-abortio...

[4]: http://www.prevention.com/health/healthy-living/new-birth-co...

Edit: Of course this story disappears off the front page. Oh sure, an article about a 1912 school test and yet another log on the NSA hate fire sit up at #1 and #3 respectively, but God forbid someone posts about female genitalia. Really just proving the point.