clicks

So now we know of one model of e-mail systems that's secure. I hope more e-mail service startups pop up that use similar techniques of managing e-mails.

Are there any more like it right now out there?

> There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among people pursuing different ends

That is true only for a few set of issues, like abortion, immigration, etc. I'm socialistic-inclined and my neighbors are mostly republicans, I usually start conversations with them by saying "Look, we both want the same thing: we want the greatest amount of people in America to be eating well, being well-educated, living in dignified places... we just disagree on how we can get there". Then we discuss -- and we get along surprisingly well.

That's missing the forest for the trees. There are probably lots of factories that treat animals more humanely than others but we still should be investigating alternative methods of creating meats. Ultimately you're going to have to meet problems of scalability down the road in some years, and/or other unforeseen problems with antibiotics and such. It's probably best to start heavy research/experimentation in preparation now than later.

Well, it's a good indication you chose to make a throwaway account for that post, as it suggests that you yourself are aware to some extent how uninformed and ignorant the question is.

But, to answer: These animals are brought up in very inhumane conditions -- in crowded spaces, with no light, no freedom. The whole process is unsustainable, what happens when the world population reaches above 10 billion and demand for meat keeps getting higher? Do we have enough space to keep these animals, enough food to sustainably feed them without having bad environmental implications?

It turns out there are alternative methods, and they may prove to be well worth the cost of investigating them. So here we are, doing science, in the hopes of a brighter future. Experimenting with food, to make it taste better, healthier, cheaper, more environmentally-friendly.

> I can see people writing software for love, but who writes all the documentation?

1. People like me? :) I genuinely love writing documentation. Though I should mention it's easier to write books/tutorials than to write detailed documentation of the software you are yourself not writing, which brings me to point 2.

2. Writing documentation is very much a part of software-writing. It's usually best to do write documentation as you're writing the software... I haven't met anyone yet who really hated the process, so I wouldn't consider this to be a big problem at all.

Sure thing, would be happy to.

It's wonderful to see the problem of depression being targeted in a new and interesting way, but I'm very scared for the chance of this being exploited in 4chan-style raids. They've trolled everything from cancer community forums to lgbt support forums to whatever else you can think of.

Are listeners first going to be vetted? Is there going to be some push in associating listeners with their Facebook accounts, to have them authenticated as the good folks. Any comments in general about making it resilient to these types of attacks?

A perverse and scary outlook they might possibly have: keep prison conditions in a way so that you continue to see high recidivism rates. Because if the prisoners keep coming back, that means you have easy repeat business.

There is of course concrete evidence to the contrary, as experiments in Scandinavian countries show. Treat prisoners with respect, give them a dignified place of living so they can think about what they did, and you'll find that actually both improves their mental condition and makes them very well suited to rejoin society.

Reminds me of this video: http://www.wimp.com/sanfrancisco/ -- uninterrupted San Francisco footage from 1905. Very surreal, extremely captivating.

Looks beautiful. I look forward to the book. :)

Funny, I also happen to think that the idea you took away from my comment was the opposite of the idea that it communicated.

Okay, forgive me for getting even more meta here, but: You're operating under the assumption that I would doggedly stick to my misinterpretation (if it were the case), or maybe that I have some agenda to distort the messages in your comments? My comment history suggests otherwise: I'm more than happy to back off, apologize, and recant any misguided statements I make if it's pointed out rationally. Why doesn't the idea of calmly, non-abrasively trying to explain the breakdown in communication occur to you? Why are you so quick to elevate differences into an us-vs-them orientation on a personal level?

Rayiner: your comment is marked as dead, I think because you used the word circle.... Perhaps try re-posting without it.

Edit: actually here, I did it for you:

False dichotomy.

Rallies in San Francisco are just excuses for like minded people to have a merry old time. It's a politically irrelevant city, because it has no votes in play. Want to have some actual impact, some actual chance to change hearts and minds, go protest in Utah, where you can connect the cause to the site, or DC, or heck Iowa, where you can take advantage of their natural libertarian streak and there are votes to be swayed.

I find that pretty infuriating.

I'm reminded now of some years ago when I was in differential equations class and had trouble understanding my professor (his handwriting was terrible and incomprehensible, and his lesson structure very hard to follow). Khan's videos were an absolute blessing to me then.

In regards to the criticisms: as valid as they may be, don't assert that his offerings are not good -- it's better that they exist vs. not existing. We're at a more evolved state now with having had Khan's videos: now a new player can emerge who can produce better videos with the knowledge of what Khan's mistakes were.

I think it's actually a little bit irresponsible criticizing Khan's video like this in a public and confrontational way: it adds to the hysteria, now you'll have parents actively avoiding Khan's videos because of concerns of their pedagogical techniques. And that's not good: have you opened a standard calculus book these days? It's very hard to follow, don't these folks have some criticism for those (and their high prices, which often make it unaffordable for a lot of folks)? Video form of learning is still rather new, and Khan is a pioneer of it. Give it some more time to find its optimum form.

One, I don't think it's the HN law that all threads should follow in some precise linearity: there's such a thing as free-form debate. Two, my comment did have something to do with your comment. Three, you very often reply like this -- "did you read what I said?" -- not that it matters much to me personally, but can you please start making an effort of at least trying to communicate such things in a little more civilized manner? The tone of such comments is often toxic and inflammatory.

You bring up good points, and I agree that a lot of these issues are very difficult to grapple with: it's difficult to pin down how evil something is, how much you're contributing to it, and whether you should take part in it when you've got mouths to feed at home. But I also think that an informed and learned individual in this day and age will recognize that dragnet surveillance encroaches on fundamental rights of human privacy. If I were an employee at NSA and had been asked to implement some part of PRISM I would protest within the proper confines of law, and ask to be given other work which I would be ethically okay with.

> Refusing to take part doesn't absolve you of anything, according to your philosophy

I think in this context it's fair to interpret a refusal to work on something you deem evil not as inaction but as an act that makes it difficult for evil to prevail. If most good men did this they either would not find persons to complete the work or only be able to find persons who cannot do it well or do it completely.

To further clarify, what I am really saying is one's decisions at work which are detached from any ethical considerations is a problem, they're not just engineering problems -- they affect people, in good ways or bad. I hope everyone would make an earnest effort to determine the morality of tools, laws, policies, etc. they're in charge of creating or maintaining by accessing existing literature, discussing the moral considerations of their work with their peers and others, and then decide if they really want to be a part of that. And, as it happens, the chances are that since a lot of this stuff work requires high competency, whenever you find yourself in a situation where determining the morality of your work is exceedingly difficult, there is good chance you can easily find good work elsewhere that will give you the right engineering challenges without the difficult ethical questions.

I have had nearly the exact same experiences as you on this issue. I came around on my thoughts on CP -- I as well now think that CG CP should be legalized.

But I've been thinking recently: if pedophilia is truly something as legitimate as homosexuality, for example. Or, more specifically, if it should be recognized as an acceptable state of man. I emigrated to United States about 12 years ago, and I've observed a marked change in my sexual preferences (from dark skinned females to lighter skinned ones; I suspect mostly due to western media's influence), so, I'm compelled to think pedophilia is definitely something that could be controlled given that one is in accommodating conditions[1].

I'm these days entertaining the idea that pedophilia is usually a result to childhood issues -- mistreatment by parents, other kids, etc. I'll see if I can find any research that corroborates this.

In any event, I think one thing is for sure: the current mob-lynching fest is the worst imaginable scenario. A more soft approach that encourages paedophiles to consider cognitive behavioral therapy instead of hiding in forced isolation would probably yield the best overall results to society.

[1]: Wikipedia has a lot to say about treating paedophila: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Treatment

Reading what you just wrote reminded me of the famous Edmund Burke quote: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

If it had not been for the acquiescence of engineers who took part in the creation of PRISM, XKeyscore, etc. we... well, we would not have PRISM, XKeyscore, etc. Increasingly there is no such thing as an "amoral" position when it comes to a lot of these things -- you're either an entity who willingly chooses profit over principles, or you do something to defeat the evil as you see it (or, at least refuse to take part in it). In this day and age the conscientiousness of man is one of the last remaining defenses to fight the many evils, new or old, mercurial or familiar. It falls on all of us to think of the moral ramifications of our actions, in the workplace and off, and choose carefully and to the extent we comfortably can to see humanity continue prosperously.

I don't mean this to be a thoughtless, idealistic anti-NSA tirade, I'm frankly very okay with folks working on hip new technology that catches the bad guys, I just think your decision framework which is devoid of any ethical considerations is highly, highly dangerous and I wish for the good of us all that it doesn't catch on.

I'm curious about the storage media they might have... is it just plain old rotational harddrives? Who made them -- Seagate? Western Digital? It's curious that no word has come out from that front -- "wow, this customer is requesting a _LOT_ of storage devices... like, more storage space than what is available in the world".

And really, because of this I think the idea that they might have some in-house innovation is not so far-fetched. We started hearing a lot about inPhase Technologies and such about DVD-sized discs that could store upwards of 6 terabytes back almost 10 years ago, but it amounted mostly to vapourware. We do now have confirmed information from Seagate that they'll start shipping out laptop-sized 2.5" rotational drives that will be able to store around ~60 TB of data within the next 2-3 years. Perhaps NSA has been secretively working with them, if not just producing the devices for themselves?

There are some social residence programs that place minorities/lower-class folks in areas with good schools, high average incomes, etc. If I recall correctly (I heard it on NPR a few months ago) the program had varying degrees of success -- some folks just couldn't fit in and opted to go back previous inner-city residences, while some actually saw measurable improvement in quality of life: children doing better in school, improved outlook and satisfaction.

You probably saw the research results of the crack baby studies -- as it turned out poverty plays an incredibly big role in how children grow up [1]. So I really think this is something we need to continue experimenting with. Sadly, these residency programs cost a lot and most communities are unwilling to fund it. So really the first step is convincing people the reality of these things -- e.g., my neighbor, an incredibly smart biomedical engineer, calls advocates of these programs "troublemakers" who want to "bring socialism" into this country.

[1]: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2013/0725/Crack-...

I'll repaste a comment I made elsewhere, that seems applicable here:

If a company is approached by any spooky three-letter agency, the higher-ups of that company could possibly interpret that as a validation that they've made it 'big' -- and furthermore, they could see in that offer a security that three-letter agencies then have an interest in seeing the company continue to scale up and succeed (because of limited funds, three-lettered agencies can't just go merrily creating tools that work properly with the 'next facebook' every other 9 months... and furthermore, there's no knowing if they'll come across resistance when they solicit 'direct access' to the next company. Also, NSA would have just loved it if China and Russia was a big user of Facebook... so I can even imagine them doing something subtle to try to make that a reality).

Sadly, I do not see this trend ending anytime soon.

Thank heavens this feature has finally arrived.

People are sometimes surprised when I tell them this is _the_ number one most important feature to me. I sometimes need to give my little siblings a ride from/to their workplace -- it's a great thing to be able to use iPhone's 'Find my Friends' to see where they are so I know where to pick them up. Or to see where my significant other is if she's coming from a different city (and when she asks for directions, I can actually be of help because I know where she actually is).

Now, if only iOS and Android had better interoperability... so that I could use my iPhone's 'Find my Friends' app to easily locate my little brother's Android phone.

And yet, if we actually decide to do Iraq-scale rebuilding of our inner cities you'll see people shouting "SOCIALISM!!!" Makes me wonder how we ever won the populace support to spend that kind of money on Iraq/Afghanistan. I guess probably because it was packaged as a threat "If we don't go over there they're going to bomb us because they hate our freedom". So perhaps one line of campaigning to get funding for social programs for inner cities could be "If we don't go over in inner cities to rebuild them they're going to start coming into your suburb homes and steal your stuff and make your life miserable".

The solution has to be practical and doable. It seems to me campaigning for boarding schools as a solution to the ills of society and getting them open is more doable than somehow getting people to take the initiative.

> Adjusted for our socio-economic demographics, the U.S. performs about the same on international educational tests as western european countries

You've been very perceptive in recognizing the situation on US educational system, but you overlook the fact that the socio-economic class who's doing poorly is increasingly getting bigger. I think therein lies the problem -- and, the continuing streak of anti-intellectualism has this peculiar feature of worsening everything around it ten-fold, and it's extremely seductive because of the capitalistic factor (dumbed down movie/shows dialogues, dumbed down news, etc.). A vast amount of data at this point portends social unrest in terms of class warfare, politics, etc. What'll happen when unemployment keeps going up, when the clamor of "entitlement programs" gets more agitated, when school systems get even more stressed with funding issues? I really think that's where shit will hit the fan.

> The solution is all the middle class people from the Detroit suburbs moving back into the city, stabilizing the social structure of the city, sending their kids to Detroit public schools so as to dilute the influence of social phenomena like gangs that thrive in low-income ghettos, and to build functioning integrated communities with broad parental involvement. Butt hat will happen when hell freezes over, and until then people will complain ceaselessly about the government's failure with regard to education.

Right, exactly. So, the way I see it, there are a good many reasons for alarm. I spent my teenage years in American inner cities, so yes I know just how bad it is, I saw at least 2 fights per week or so breaking out in high school that would end up in police involvement.

Can you think of a solution? The best solution I can think of: boarding schools, that are run like military schools, that get teens away from the bad neighborhoods for at least 8 months of the year, that give them some tough love treatment to discipline them.

You should have taken him to a side and told him to go watch 12 Angry Men when he gets home.

I don't think that quote is so un-serious, Zuckerburg is literally and rather specifically offering his friend private information of the users of Facebook, and ending with calling them "dumb fucks".

To the extent that I am learned about Zuckerburg in his earlier days of Facebook by having read various biographical accounts, I can pretty confidently say that the seriousness of his offer and the seriousness in his calling Facebook users "dumb fucks" goes well with the rest of his persona and doings.

But anyway, this is getting pretty off-topic so I'm stopping here.

To the best of my knowledge, the "Fuck these scammers" statement does not appear officially anywhere on their website -- it was something that was said casually in an interview.

Let me ask you this: do you use Facebook? Because Zuckerburg doesn't just call "bad people" (scammers, thiefs) names, he calls the users of his own site "dumb fucks". [1]

There are greater injustices happening elsewhere in the world right now, save your indignation and outrage for them.

[1]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg

Meh, I'll let it pass.

Two of my elderly neighbors were really badly fucked by these scammers. Actually, I know a lot of old people who were run dry by these scammers. Think for a moment how disgusting this is -- robbing and manipulating people who are at an age where their wits are leaving them... robbing them of money to live their last years on earth peacefully. I say fuck these scammers all the way, they know exactly what they're doing.

To say that those 3 words are 'neutralizing' the work they're doing is a rather ignorant thing to do.

If you're going to go by Taleb's logic, your point-of-view is directly contradicted in his later book, 'Anti-fragile'.

With every occurrence of a black swan event, you are made more resilient in preventing an event of a similar kind. So, now that we know that 9/11 can happen, we're now more mentally prepared than ever to prevent something like it if it happens again. Case in point, pilots now carry weapons and are much more likely to thwart attempts of hijacking. Passengers will also react more violently and vigorously now towards any sign of threat. Note that we actually have a few precedents since 9/11 in which hijacking of airplanes were thwarted in this manner.