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parent5446

491 karma · joined October 10, 2014

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/parent5446; my proof: https://keybase.io/parent5446/sigs/kZFGG5lH0R7mTxp_6eCmlKVBt2R6lw-SorghoUQtwbs ]
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parent5446··on Open letter concerning Facebook's proposals to apply end-to-end encryption
If the police are outside your house waiting to take you to jail, you are not yet in jail. Your house does not count as jail just because the police are waiting outside to take you there. It's really not that hard of a concept to understand. If you walk outside, are arrested, and brought to jail, then you're in jail.
parent5446··on Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair
>You're free to repair it on your own... If you can.

You literally can't. It's proprietary software that you have a limited license to. This isn't like a deprecated Linux distro that you can always jump in and patch the security issues yourself.

Hell I'm sure if these tractors ran on free software, there'd be a business out there competing against the manufacturer by fixing old tractor software if it meant pulling in consulting fees from the farmers. But they can't, because we live in a world where you don't own software, you lease it.

parent5446··on Open-Source Slack Alternative Mattermost Gets $50M Funding
It's because Slack is closed source.
parent5446··on Gmail is having an outage
Blobstore
parent5446··on Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
That's like saying if I send an email via Gmail, Google should feel free to do whatever it wants with the headers, because it's supposed to be publicly viewable so the mail server knows where it should go. (See also the NSA phone call metadata scandal.)

In reality, when you send a letter, you are placing it into the care of the postal service. Your letter is only handled by postal employees, and mailbox privacy is codified in federal law. There's clearly an expectation that the postal service is not releasing your information to third parties without your consent. The information on the outside of the envelope is not meant for, nor is it needed by, anyone other than the postal service

parent5446··on Ahead of IPO, Airbnb achieves profitability for second year in a row
You're just going to bad hotels. Every hotel I've stayed at in the US in the past quarter (around six of them) had ~16 Mbps free Wi-Fi, complimentary water bottles in my room each day, and free parking (with the exception of hotels in Manhattan or the likes).

I'll admit that gratuity is annoying, but that's a cultural problem with the US, not something specific to hotels. We just happen to live in a country where every person who serves you is expecting a tip. And to be fair, if I was staying at an AirBnB that for whatever reason had housecleaning or other service, I'd probably have to leave a tip there too.

parent5446··on Ahead of IPO, Airbnb achieves profitability for second year in a row
It's not a murderer's responsibility to stop themselves from murdering people. Full stop.
parent5446··on Ahead of IPO, Airbnb achieves profitability for second year in a row
Good hotel still have pools, can be located outside of downtown, and sometimes even in-room kitchens (if that's what you want). They also have maid service, room service, and a front desk.

The only advantage you get from an AirBnB is a unique facade, paired with having to clean up after yourself and possible fire and health code violations.

parent5446··on Feds Can't Force You to Unlock Your iPhone with Finger or Face, Judge Rules
Most people don't have attackers going after them who are harvesting fingerprints to get into their devices.
parent5446··on Robinhood launches 3% checking account
FWIW, Schwab does have portfolio margin, although I have no idea what the rates are.
parent5446··on MongoDB switches up its open source license
Strange, my dictionary has a different definition: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/open-source
parent5446··on Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
Maybe you used it, but overall few people were using it. That's why they got rid of it.
parent5446··on Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews and they're basically useless? Sounds like they're just deleting an unmaintained and unused feature.
parent5446··on Press leaks during Google's all-hands meeting enrage insiders
Don't fool yourself. Google isn't some sort of cult. It's just common decency. One of the big reasons listed is that employees wanted to hear more about the China project, but it was cut short because of the leaker.
parent5446··on She Had a Genius Idea: Air-Conditioned Doghouses, then the City Showed Up
Precisely, it isn't scalable at all. That's why they should get rid of the niche.
parent5446··on She Had a Genius Idea: Air-Conditioned Doghouses, then the City Showed Up
This kind of thing absolutely flys in bureaucracy. I guarantee your local bodega either doesn't have a sidewalk license (if they have stuff on the sidewalk of course) or only got it when the city cited them and forced their hand.

And as I said before, she thought she had permission. The government was literally funding and endorsing the project. It's just that not the right part of the government was involved, which is the classic example of excessive red tape.

parent5446··on She Had a Genius Idea: Air-Conditioned Doghouses, then the City Showed Up
Did you read the article? She was working with the mayor's office, and even contacted the DOT to obtain licenses. They just refused and ordered them removed anyway, since the law literally doesn't allow for issuing of licenses for this type of product.
parent5446··on She Had a Genius Idea: Air-Conditioned Doghouses, then the City Showed Up
The problem, though is that there are allowances for many other uses of the public sidewalk (for example, a restaurant having outdoor seating, or a store having coin-operated kids rides). It's just that there's no specific process for this product, and they speculate that it would be impossible to allow doghouses without changing the law.
parent5446··on PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding
The audience of HackerNews is vastly smaller than the audience of YouTube.
parent5446··on Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login
Is there word on whether Yubikey 4 models will support FIDO 2? Or do we have to wait for a new model?
parent5446··on The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
I acknowledge your sarcasm, but indeed they rarely do. It's happened to me only once, and it was fairly easy to report them to the TLC.
parent5446··on The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
One of the sole advantages of NYC taxis: they are required by law to take you anywhere within city limits you ask.
parent5446··on Appeals Court Says It's Okay to Copyright an Entire Style of Music
The purpose of copyright law has never been to protect the public domain. Its explicit purpose, as even stated in the Constitution, is the protect the profits of the IP owners.
parent5446··on GitLab 10.6 released with CI/CD for GitHub
You seem pretty worked up about this one feature.

> 3. A popular enough feature to possibly gate the entire calculus for users to switch services.

I'd say GitLab's CI/CD system is a lot more useful of a feature. At the very least you can use the actual git blame or another git UI as a workaround. Good luck setting up a replacement CI/CD system.

> 4. Obviously useful feature, as evidenced by the gitlab triage engineer being convinced to add an issue with a single paragraph plea.

That's not how triage works. Just because a bug is filed doesn't mean it's "obviously useful". If the employee had immediately given it a high importance, a release date, and assigned it to somebody, that'd be a different story.

> 5. Gitlab is seemingly unaware of this publicly available information, to the trivially rectified detriment of their own bottom line.

Well, since there is another bug already filed for this feature more than six months ago, [0] I'd say they are quite aware, they just don't consider it as important as you do. The particular person that replied to you just didn't know about it (not surprising when they have more than 10k bugs open).

[0] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/37135

parent5446··on FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites
Where is anybody saying the FCC is the universal arbiter of space? As I said, the FCC is only involved because it's a US company. If it was a Russian company, it would involve the Russian government, etc.
parent5446··on Cost of California bullet train system rises to $77.3B, take 5 years more
I'm sure I would, and I'm not blaming the land owners for being angry or litigious. But it's the government's job to decide where the line is drawn and when your options run out.
parent5446··on Cost of California bullet train system rises to $77.3B, take 5 years more
tl;dr - Since in California all construction requires an absurd amount of licenses, approvals, environmental studies, etc., and because local residents can sue for almost anything, the cost has skyrocketed.

Isn't this what eminent domain was created for? Shouldn't California state have the ability to make things happen for its own rail projects?

parent5446··on FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites
I'll bite. They don't, but they very much do have jurisdiction over the operation of domestic corporations engaged in interstate commerce, which this clearly is.
parent5446··on FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites
Not exactly. It's unclear how they were able to launch successfully, but I doubt whatever mistake that occurred is indicative of the Indian government agreeing with the project. It's more likely they used social engineering of some sort to get their satellites on the rocket.
parent5446··on Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage
Not sure what you consider the difference between a "company" and a "corporation", but I know a lot of people who work for small government contractors that definitely have "souls". Not everybody has the same ethical standpoint on military technology.
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