infodroid

I don't think the focus on incentives is the best way to look at the problem.

A different perspective is that decentralized social services fail because of the lack of capital/revenue and sufficient management structure to compete with their centralized, commercial counterparts.

Money can fund a team of great designers, engineers, testers, marketers, sysadmins, writers, translators, product managers, to name a few. Together they can roll out and maintain a service that meets high standards of quality, uptime, usability, reliability, engagement, customer support... The things that actually matter to people.

Decentralized solutions really don't stand a chance against a well-funded company.

Despite the headline, social media isn't the privacy issue or the main story. It's just that we have evidence that social media makes up one of the Bulk Personal Datasets (BPDs) [1].

The actual story is that the oversight body wasn't informed that BPDs were being shared with foreign governments, law enforcement and industry partners. There is no oversight of the process. Partners don't have to meet any standards on use of the data. There are no penalties for misuse of the data. This makes it possible to circumvent UK regulations. These are the privacy issues.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/12/isc-report-privacy-and-sec...

There are several problems:

- It is more than just posts on social media. The databases cover "sensitive medical data" and "financial details" and much more.

- The oversight body was not informed that this data was being shared with foreign governments, law enforcement and industry partners.

- There is no oversight on the sharing of this data with these partners, and no legal penalties for misuse of the data.

- There is no requirement that partner agencies have similar safeguards with respect to processing the data that the UK agencies already have in place.

The headline unfortunately downplays the scope of the data, since it covers a lot more than social media - it can include legally priviliged and "otherwise confidential" information, as well as information on "religion, racial or ethnic origin, political views, medical condition, sexual orientation."

What is remarkable is the absolute lack of oversight over the sharing of this sensitive data with foreign governments and law enforcement, but especially with so-called "industry partners". And that there don't appear to be any legal penalties for its misuse.

I'm not sure what is so retro about the 16:9 display. Surely Lenovo can do better than that?

Even if the default position is to help, it can't be unconditional, there are limits. You don't have a right to expect help when it places an unreasonable burden on the helper.

> everyone has a right to expect help and a right to give help

This might make sense when asking a stranger for directions or for someone to help with your car problem, because the relationship is 1:1.

But this breaks down in contexts where scale is a factor.

When assisting users of your project, the relationship is 1:many. And if the project is popular, it is unfair to expect the author to be helping so many people.

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14925135

Doesn't Redshift work for you? It's not GNOME specific.

https://fedoramagazine.org/safe-eyes-redshift/

The goal is to get to know your coworkers better, so you can see them as people instead of mere job descriptions. It's still a workplace setting, except that you are discouraged from talking about work. The alcohol is there to cut through the inevitable anxiety that such situations create, not as an excuse to be unprofessional.

Please append [pdf] to the title.

This is a more extensive list: https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs#companies-1

There is a significantly better version over at Memory Beta, with full references and fewer typos: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisiti...

Please append [pdf] to the title.

You probably mean companies that are loaded or well-funded or stupidly rich. This isn't the same as fuck-you money, which refers to the amount of savings a person would need in order to retire early and thereby bid their employer goodbye. See for example: http://time.com/money/4187538/f-u-money-defined-how-much-cal...

Although not specific to Middle East politics: cutting all diplomatic ties with a country, closing all the land/sea/air borders with it, banning travel to it, and expelling all its citizens, not just the diplomats... This all sounds like a precursor to war. And then add to that the accusation of "supporting terrorism", a claim that is nowadays used as a pretext to justify military action. Seems like a fairly big deal.

With the Middle East, things are never what they seem on the surface. In this case, what is not so obvious is that Qatar has recently refused [1] to tow the anti-Iranian line of the Saudi-led Gulf states, who consider Iran to be their regional rival and mortal enemy. And that most of the Gulf states are already fighting regional proxy wars [2] using "rebel fighters" (if we are charitable about the wording), many of whom are in fact groups of former or future ISIS soldiers [3]. Hence, the hypocrisy here of the Gulf states accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism, when these states are engaging in the very same activities. Without more detail, it seems that Qatar's actual crime is standing up to the Saudis or just not towing the same line on foreign policy.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/r-gulf-arab-row-rattles-trump... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/07/boris-johns... [3] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileak...

The root of the problem as I have mentioned previously is that the propaganda is actually effective. And until you identify the reasons why this is the case, and directly start addressing those reasons, whatever actions you take aren't going to make much of a difference.

Banning propaganda from "vocal jihadis" won't make their words any less appealing. And no matter how good your technical controls, it won't prevent a motivated person from finding such material online, one way or another.

And while there are many reasons why the jihadi message is so effective, I happen to believe that it is sustained not because the ideas are being widely and indiscriminately dissiminated, but rather because the ideas are not being exposed and challenged.

It is bizarre that there are people committing mass murder, motivated by a concrete and well-documented set of beliefs, which nobody is criticizing let alone even willing to discuss in public. Doesn't that sound to you like "they are afraid of us"? I'm sure that's how it looks like to a jihadi recruit.

This sentiment is common but misguided. For one thing, "impressionable people" will always seek out taboo information. Banning jihadi messaging isn't going to make it less appealing to them (when they find it elsewhere) or to make it disappear from the internet (there's always a way). So this is an ineffective strategy.

It is better to target the root cause, which is that jihadi ideas are clearly attractive to a large group of European youths. Just look at the numbers of Europeans travelling to Iraq, Libya, Syria to fight, to sacrifice their lives for this ideology. You can't dismiss all these people as "impressionable". As far as I can tell, they are otherwise normal people who are as rational as you or me.

Sure, there are some truly impressionable people out there. And we should prevent them from being radicalized. But it's like with sex or drugs... We talk to our kids about difficult subjects so they are well-informed and are not so naive and easy to manipulate. But we don't talk about jihadi ideology. Why is mainstream society unwilling to challenge their ideas and expose them as wrong?

You can't defeat an ideology by pretending that it doesn't exist, which is what you're effectively doing when you censor it. It's a knee-jerk yet cowardly way to avoid confronting the actual problem. And the problem isn't going to go away unless you confront the ideology head-on. Radicalization isn't the inevitable outcome of being exposed to these ideas but is rather the result of losing an argument.

Unlike famous mass shootings and stabbings in recent years by depressed or mentally disturbed individuals, most jihadi fighters don't have such problems. The fact is that jihadi terrorists usually turn out to be otherwise normal people. They are as rational as you or me, and people can't seem to accept or understand this. Just look at the numbers of Europeans travelling to Iraq, Libya, Syria to fight, to sacrifice their lives for this ideology. Or the tens of thousands who are already in ISIS. You can't tell me that most of them have mental problems.

A major problem in Europe is that there is no challenge to jihadi rhetoric, except for the far-right freak show, because the whole thing is taboo. You can't defeat jihadi ideology by pretending it doesn't exist, which is what you're effectively doing when you restrict online access and communication. It's a knee-jerk yet cowardly way to avoid confronting the problem.

> Having asked the question of "why do they want to kill random strangers", the answer they arrived at is "because they were brainwashed by religious fundamentalism they found on the internet".

To a reasonable person, it should be obvious this is just a proximate cause and not the root cause. Browsing the internet and then being exposed to hateful ideas doesn't automatically turn you into a murderer.

The deeper cause is surely that "jihadi ideology" is effective at appealing to European youth. But nobody is talking about why this is in fact the case or what are the reasons why it is so attractive to some people.

For one thing, the problem of jihadi terrorism isn't going to go away without confronting the ideology head-on. I think we must have a painfully honest discussion about "jihadi ideology" and to debunk it. Radicalization isn't an inevitable outcome of being exposed to these ideas but is rather the result of losing the argument with friends, loved ones, civilization.

Banning this stuff isn't going to make it less appealing to some people or to make it disappear from the internet. But it does give government the power to censor ideas they deem to be dangerous and liable to "brainwash" the youth. And you have to ask whether you trust your politicians to use such powers responsibly.

"Earthquakes tend to have the biggest effect on the surface, like waves on water. That's why LA can have a (lame, but getting better) subway."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/824300186834898945

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315446

To put this in perspective, The Merkle estimates that Dogetipbot's creator cashed out between $140,000 and $1.4 million worth of Doge from account holders. Not exactly loose change.

[1] https://themerkle.com/whats-going-on-with-dogetipbot/

Not necessarily. The clause only seems to apply to the binaries provided on the iTunes or Google Play store, and not to the actual source code, which is BSD licensed [1], or any binaries you might build yourself.

I am speculating that the clause is intended to be part of the Keybase terms of service, but because the software and service are tightly coupled, it is phrased as a software license restriction.

[1] https://github.com/keybase/client/blob/master/LICENSE

The linking policy is something I can overlook, because the linked Phoronix article is often a good summary of the original source, and it would actually be hard to find that linked Phoronix article unless the link was given to it, and the linked Phoronix article likely contains the link to the original source anyway.

As for unwanted opinions, you did not say what you found so negative in the first paragraph of the KDE Babe article, since it seems rather impartial to me.

I can only conclude that you felt the article wasn't enthusiastic enough for your taste. But if the real issue is this absence of positive bias then it would be inaccurate to call it a problem of "unwanted opinion". More importantly, such "cheerleader" style of writing, like you might find on community websites, is not good journalism and it is not clear why it is even desirable.

There are reasons why we maintain standards of objectivity in journalism. It gives people the freedom to make their own minds up about an issue and thereby to make decisions based on the best available information. This is not possible if all you read is that everything is great all the time.

Besides, having a widespread "cheerleader" culture is in the end harmful for any community, because it prevents discussing and fixing the things that are broken, which insiders are no longer able or willing to see.

LWN is a fine resource for original articles about Linux technology, and I am happy to recommend it on that basis.

But as a news provider, it is seriously lacking compared to the alternatives, which have at least half a dozen stories per day and cover a broad range of new developments. If you care to look, it should be obvious just how much LWN misses out.

> LWN doesn't require a subscription to read the vast majority of its content. Period.

This is misleading, though. Perhaps it is true if we count each post on LWN as a piece of content. But a lot of posts on LWN are just noise and not really what most people would consider to be content.

For example, there are daily "Security updates for today" posts consisting of just links, as well as frequent one-sentence announcements about new kernel prepatch releases and stable updates. One wonders whether they are automatically generated.

Such posts provide little value to a general reader compared to a dedicated mailing list digest. They don't even attempt to summarize what changed, or describe the context or impact of the changes.

If you exclude such items then a significant amount of LWN content will require a subscription, maybe more than half, especially stories that go beyond one sentence/paragraph in length.

You're just repeating yourself without addressing the points I made. The value in a news site is in summarizing new developments, putting them in context, explaining their impact, performing fact checking.

Phoronix does all of this fairly well. Perhaps the style of writing or length of articles is not to your liking, and that's unfortunate, but that doesn't make the site blogspam.

This article doesn't prove anything at all. The Debian announcement was quite short, and there isn't much more that can be said about it, since most users have Secure Boot disabled anyway.

A significant point of difference with LWN.net is that Phoronix doesn't require a subscription in order to read the content, which makes it appropriate for sharing.

> often basically just repeat source information and add unwanted opinion

I don't think this is fair or accurate criticism. There aren't any Phoronix stories that just republish the whole of the source verbatim. And even when quoting the source material, the site adds a great deal of value by identifying the critical excerpt. And the real value isn't usually in the quote itself, but in highlighting the story as a notable development in the first place. Also, I doubt you will find anything resembling the opinionated style of The Register on there. Perhaps what you criticize as being "unwanted opinion" is just some background information or a summary of the source that did not reflect your opinion?

> A decent amount of Phoronix' content is basically blogspam.

This has not been true for a long time. Phoronix may have started as an amateur site with dubious content but it has now become a serious resource.

These days, it does a good job of (1) highlighting important developments around Linux and (2) providing context and fact-checking for new developments beyond what is provided in primary sources.

If you still hold a grudge against Phoronix for its reporting style from ten years ago, please reconsider.