morninj

1,032 karma · joined January 24, 2012

morninjon Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case

Where do you see Newegg asking for the troll's patent to be invalidated?

morninjon Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case

But Newegg isn't suing to invalidate the troll's patents. Newegg is asking for a judgment saying that Newegg hasn't infringed the troll's patents.

morninjon Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case

That's often true, but this action is limited to the patents belonging to Newegg and the troll. It won't create legal precedent that other companies can use to slay trolls.

morninjon SSH tunnelling for fun and profit: AutoSSH

Yes, though a plain SSH connection is likely to close periodically. AutoSSH is meant to prevent that.

morninjon The DNC data breach

Having actually used NGP-VAN, I think it's far more likely that this was a bug, not a conspiracy. The VAN is a real clunker in many ways, so it's not surprising that a bug like this would appear; and public exposure of a conspiracy to sabotage Sanders would be so catastrophic to the Clinton campaign that I think it's highly unlikely that NGP-VAN would do it.

morninjon Congress has added CISA to the federal budget bill

> (I don't support CISA, but if you asked me which I'd rather get rid of, CISA or Techdirt, I'd have to think about it.)

Why? Techdirt often has great coverage of tech policy issues.

morninjon Show HN: Jukedeck – create unique, royalty-free music for your videos using A.I.

"Just sharing with friends" is still copyright infringement. The owner of the copyright--not you--gets to decide how the work is reproduced and distributed, unless you have a defense like fair use. (I'm not saying this is always a good thing; it's just how the law works.)

morninjon EU’s new copyright framework could introduce “Google tax” on snippets

The proposal tries to limit Google's power, but I think it would have the opposite effect: Google (and other behemoths) can afford the tax, but upstarts will be kept out of the market—so it'll be harder for new entrants to challenge Google's dominance.

morninjon We ditched Google Analytics

Maybe http://haveamint.com/ is what you're looking for? (I'm not affiliated--just a former user.)

morninjon Someone left my Gmail in debug mode

OK, though plenty of illegality is not very creative.

morninjon How Google Is Bankrolling Friendly Academics

Brett Glass's head just exploded.

If you're not familiar with him, Brett is a small ISP operator who dependably interrupts internet policy conversations to accuse pretty much everyone of shilling for Google. Lessig took the time to write a full rebuttal: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/90048838607/on-the-curious-cas...

morninjon Defense Claims Courthouse Was Illegally Bugged

Unless you're talking to an undercover informant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._White

morninjon Misusing Bootstrap

    Bootstrap was never meant to be used as a website development framework

This seems odd. Most Bootstrap styles aren't namespaced, so it's a nightmare to add Bootstrap to existing projects of moderate size. In my experience, it only makes sense to incorporate Bootstrap at the early stages of a project as a "web development framework."

morninjon Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

If so, they should say so. Silently pulling the article and redirecting the URL is a little misleading.

morninjon Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

I'm happy that my bank uses encryption. I bet most people with bank accounts would agree.

morninjon Show HN: Mechanical Turk cost calculator

Thanks--good idea. I'll add that.

morninjon Death by a thousand likes: Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web

On mobile, this page has a sticky banner at the bottom of the screen with a Facebook "like" button and a message asking me to "stay connected."

morninjon Apple doesn’t allow Chaos Computer Club tvOS application

This kind of commentary helps users decide which companies to support. If Apple's behavior causes it to lose customers, it will change how it acts. So, it makes sense to be upset while acknowledging that Apple is profit-motivated.

morninjon Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice

How would it work?

morninjon Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice

Unfortunately, changing the text on your end has no legal effect. It's not a contract unless the other party agrees to your change.

morninjon Getting to “Philosophy”

Maybe Wikipedia's "Portals" are what you want? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Portals

morninjon Using wget and grep to explore inconveniently organized federal data

Well, sort of. In the Manning case, the government argued that wget was unauthorized on government-owned client machines. Their argument in that case wouldn't apply to the public's use of wget to send requests to government-owned servers.

morninjon Is it futile to un-Google?

But the cloud does provide value to me. I can spend a few bucks and a few minutes to set up Google Apps for email on my domain. It takes hours of futzing to configure a home email server. My time is valuable, so the cloud service is worth it.

I'd love to have a comparable platform that I could run from my closet, but that's still in the distance. For now, cloud services are usually the best way to minimize cost.

morninjon Reducing workplace burnout: the benefits of exercise

Original: “Besides, it is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. But you cannot see that, if you are careless; for it will not come of its own accord.” (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname...)

morninjon A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

I think the idea is that you store only part of the key with each service, and you're the only one who knows which services have which parts--so, you're the only one who can reconstruct the key. Of course, the UI is still a problem.

morninjon A Case That Has Microsoft, Apple and Amazon Agreeing

Some actors in the US government have been trying to outlaw consumer cryptography for decades, and so far they haven't succeeded. See, e.g., the Clipper Chip battle from 1994.

morninjon One in every 600 websites has .git exposed

Probably not, but it depends on the court and the skill of the lawyers.

morninjon One in every 600 websites has .git exposed

Better yet:

    $ rm -rf .git/

It's way safer to delete the repo history from the production server than to rely on Apache rules copied from a forum.

morninjon Your Ubuntu-based container image is probably a copyright violation

You're confusing "distributing a copy of Ubuntu to run on a server you own" with "distributing a copy of Ubuntu for the public to download." The former is not a trademark violation. Nor does it violate the terms of the Canonical IP policy quoted above.

morninjon Your Ubuntu-based container image is probably a copyright violation

Yes, and moreover, there's no trademark violation when you push an Ubuntu container to your web server.