Hacker News Reader

loteckon Purelymail: Cheap, no-nonsense email

It's possible your definition of mission critical just doesn't match up to that of those responding to your comment.

If the loss of a set of data would threaten the existence of the company, that's mission critical. While having a sophisticated niche tech partner handle day to day operations of that data is one part of managing the risk of data loss, if one put all their eggs in only that one basket, that would possibly indicate one has a lack of experience with tech vendors and hasn't read anything about managing risk.

Every business should have at least one routinely tested, independent path for mission critical data recovery.

loteckon Interview with Andy Yen, CEO of Proton VPN

Proton takes cash.

https://proton.me/support/payment-options#cash

loteckon Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

There's nothing about my question to misunderstand. Are you troubled at the prospect of answering it?

loteckon Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

Virality is not an indicator of accuracy or authority. Do you dispute this?

loteckon The Optimus robots at Tesla's Cybercab event were humans in disguise

100% false headline. Where's the integrity, Verge?

loteckon Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

Where'd you move to?

loteckon Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

The incidental and systemic benefits of the recordings are exciting to people and celebrated with stories. The hazards of this constant "pollution" of data — how it is slowly changing our society, our economy, our humanity — is harder to quantify or build opposition to.

It's a bit like climate change. Slow, invisible poison.

loteckon Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

Privacy and security here are being commingled under the banner of AES encryption at rest, which is apparently disabled by default.

I always wonder, if your marketing pitch involves security features, but those features are off by default, aren't you technically pitching your lack of security?

loteckon Show HN: Pour Decision – Alcohol Tracker and Mindful Drinking Companion

Congrats on the app! I don't think I've ever clicked into a privacy policy so quickly.

loteckon NYC Surveillance Tech on Shootings Gives False Alarms 87% of Time

This tech has proliferated across cities in the US by claiming to be a "force multiplier". That's supposed to mean it makes police more effective at their mission without actually adding any additional headcount.

But if 70-90% of the time the tech is sending police on goose chases that end with no findings, it seems like "force multiplier" falls into one of those marketing buckets where the truth is the exact opposite. The tech actually divides police from the mission.

Many, many cities are siphoning off public taxpayer dollars and sending them to this company.

loteckon Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud

Some good comments on this from cryptographer Matt Green here: https://x.com/matthew_d_green/status/1800291897245835616?t=C...

(I wonder if Matt realizes nobody can read his tweets without a X account? Use BlueSky or Masto man)

Edit: here's his thread combined https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1800291897245835616.html?...

loteckon Google releases smart watch for kids

Sorry but this is just fatalistic nonsense. A generation ago people did not have anything like the current evolution of surveillance technology. The small number of people who care about ubiquitous surveillance right now are early adopters, not a dying breed.

loteckon Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

What makes you think the propaganda won't be pumped in if the US app is sold to a different company?

loteckon Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

Do commenters like this ever stop to consider people who cannot afford to pay higher prices, before encouraging creators to arbitrarily raise prices higher than the creators have already calculated? Do these commenters ever stop to analyze their world view that leads them to believe the litmus test for quality products is whether the product is priced like an Apple product?

loteckon Oregon governor signs bill recriminalizing drug possession into law

Interesting to me that voter-passed ballot initiatives can simply be repealed by the Oregon legislature. Seems to defeat the point of ballot initiatives.

loteckon Why is it so hard to build an airport?

This shouldn't be down voted, this type of arbitrage is common and the parties engaging in it know the baked in risks. It is no different from the common gambit of buying land outside of cities zoned as industrial or agricultural and then waging politics to have it rezoned as residential to dramatically increase its value.

loteckon ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

They are installed outdoors, sometimes on top of people's homes.

https://twitter.com/loteck/status/1760859493133697237?t=AQTP...

loteckon ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

It may incidentally do that? But if it reliably saved lives you would be selling it to ambulance dispatchers.

In reality, ambulance dispatchers would look at the high rate of Shotspotter dispatching a car and finding absolutely nothing and immediately recognize this proposal would harm people by sending emergency services on wild goose chases while real emergencies suffer longer wait times.

loteckon ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

Shotspotter falsely classifies popped volleyball as gunshot:

https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/false-shotspotter-al...

Slamming doors:

https://www.axios.com/2022/04/07/campaign-zero-against-shots...

This list can go on. Jackhammer, nail gun, normal hammers.

https://voiceofsandiego.org/2020/09/22/shotspotter-sensors-s...

loteckon ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

I would request that a crowd as technically sophisticated as HN move past marketing claims when discussing this system. "Gunshot detection" is pure marketing.

The devices are hot mics — public audio surveillance. The software layer triggers alerts on loud noises, which are sent off to a facility that is little more than a call center, for characterization by a human worker there. This system detects door slams and popped volleyballs just as well as it detects gun fire (which is to say, imperfectly on all counts).

loteckon Peter Thiel's Palantir to provide tech for Israel's 'war-related missions'

The number of US municipalities (cities/counties) using Palantir is very high. Be aware, this company and this individual enjoys success in part through your local taxes.

loteckon Researchers uncover on/off switch for breast cancer metastasis in mice

This story is not written by an independent journalist nor published by an independent news organization.

loteckon Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

Hi, privacy and anonymity are different things. Named transactions can still be private.

loteckon Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

While I agree with your skepticism about imprisonment equaling justice, one element to consider is whether a victim of a crime can ever be "made whole." Even if a victim was to receive 100% material reimbursement, the act of being victimized can cause changes in life that look a lot like opportunity costs. It doesn't surprise me then that we as a capitalist society look to imprisonment (the ultimate infliction of opportunity cost) as a sort of ethereal or "karmic" reimbursement (even if I don't agree).

loteckon Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

That number sounds high to me.

Is your contention here that the technology to make this seamless and reliable experience doesn't exist, or are you agreeing with me that it's not trivial to implement?

loteckon Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

That's not "being real," that's being insulting (regardless of whether you're right).

loteckon Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

Proprietary telepresence systems have been around for a long time and they are good enough for keeping international relations going between country's governments, so they probably would be good enough for your company. They are more expensive than you might think they should be until you get into the engineering and understand what it takes to make it seamless and reliable.

The question is, does your organization actually know the value of communication between remote parties? Companies that actually run the numbers on the value of remote collaboration can pretty easily figure out if it's worth it.

loteckon Facebook/Meta blocks accounts for posting link to EFF privacy tips

What if I highly value privacy but also need to function in a world that often doesn't prioritize my values?

loteckon ‘Who Benefits?’ Inside the EU’s Fight over Scanning for Child Sex Content

Minutes after the proposed regulation was unveiled in May last year, Labrador Jimenez emailed his Commission colleagues: “The EU does not accept that children cannot be protected and become casualties of policies that put any other values or rights above their protection, whatever these may be.”

One of the most often-missed problems with the safety vs. rights debate is the claim that the state is best positioned to ensure proactive safety of people by preventing victimization. This claim is probably false, most certainly debatable, and yet the point is almost always ceded.

loteckon Ask HN: Where Are All the Jobs At?

I know someone in a similar situation who is joining an apprenticeship program for a unionized trade. Switching careers may not be ideal, but it sounds like it may be time for you to consider less than ideal options. If opportunities open up in your original career later, you can mix careers.