rfrank

Something something it's literally impossible to hire engineers who aren't showered in toys and treats.

But yeah, I generally agree with you. I like my fancy chair because I spend an awful lot of time in it every day, and I'm tall (6'6"), so most chairs are pretty uncomfortable for me and my lower back already sucks.

Embody, also by Herman Miller.

I've done the same thing by monitoring Craigslist in the towns/cities where places are closing. Ebay probably works too.

When money is equivalent to speech, it's very easy to shout people down.

Yeah, lets take autonomy from people who don't think like us! They don't deserve it anyway!

Definitely all valid points. For me, using bike share systems is ultimately dependent on how long I'm in a given city. I use bike share when I'm in Boston for conferences, because like you my trips there are point-to-point and rack (station?) coverage aligns with my routes. Back home in the bay I don't feel any urge to use the bike share.

The fleet of bikes being poorly suited for SF is really my biggest gripe with the system out here. A heavy bike and upright posture make hills very unpleasant. Security is a huge plus for bike share, not having to think about where to lock up my bike semi-safely would be great. Seems dependent on rack coverage though, which is tricky.

You're not wrong, I shouldn't comment on hn in the morning haha.

Your participation in the thread is just attacks on the working class, you think you deserve better? For real though, keep it up. People like you are why Republicans are as strong as they've been since the 1920's.

This post is such a perfect case in point for why people hate tech employees it's almost impressive.

How often do you go over the 30 minute limit for a trip? Between the high price of a yearly membership, and heavy bikes that aren't well suited for the hills of SF, buying a used bike on Craigslist seems like a more viable option for most. Especially if overtime fees happen even semi-regularly. I'd take any of these [1-3] over a bike share bike for city riding.

Owning your own bike comes with its own concerns, biggest one for me being that they can be a pain to lug around on BART when its crowded.

1. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/6045792156.html

2. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/6042939864.html

3. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/bik/6042321891.html

> going out and engaging the world is potentially dangerous

Do you think this is reasonable in the context of expressing your support for the leader of your nation at your workplace? I certainly don't think so.

That the blowback from tech employees is a real thing which directly contributes to lack of dialog between people with different political opinions, and not caring about the individual while imploring the community at large to engage is a ridiculous and contradictory position.

A pair of riots in Berkeley within a month, San Jose during the election, the Brendan Eich situation, myriad letters from CEOs post election. To quote sama's recent post [1], "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting “targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him”. One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter."

Care as much or little about the concerns of people not like you as you want, just don't act like you want to have a conversation with them too in the same breath.

1. http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters

>Bay Area and for the matter the greater tech community needs to engage the world, not withdraw from it.

> Be afraid all you want, doesn't matter to me.

One of these things is not like the other.

I work in marketing. Not selling data direct to people like you or I does not mean they don't sell data. Depending on how hard you try, you can get enormously specific with just the data you are supplied by them. I perceive their business model as fundamentally bad (I would use the word wrong or repugnant), and their willingness to comply with us intelligence agencies is worse. I realize this is an increasingly uncommon sentiment in the bay, that sort of idealism died here a long time ago.

https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...

Yes. Giving the NSA direct access to their databases doesn't seem like caring about user privacy to me. I don't perceive the 'consent' issue the same way; sending an email or uploading a picture to the internet shouldn't require 100 different data points on my device and location. YMMV, but I find working for companies who's business model is to exploit other people's personal information for profit is an enormously distasteful thing to do.

The whole discussion is a farce at this point. Tech workers who literally created the incentive to make clickbait content, filter bubbles, and data silos are now upset with "fake news", social polarization, and a "closed" net, while flatly refusing to acknowledge their role in getting us here over the last 20 years. Ajit Pai is the last person to blame when wondering who broke the net.

Why not Google or Facebook founders, executives, and employees whose salaries are paid with the profits of selling other peoples' information? Why not the C-suite of the ISPs who will happily sell user data? Why not the entire adtech industry? Ajit Pai is one actor in a very corrupt system, and a lot of that system is based in San Francisco.

And the process of creating said legislation out of public view in the first place, and the courts which oversaw challenges to the constitutionality of the US surveillance state who deemed it acceptable. Much like the doctors, lawyers, and others who oversaw approval of US torture programs, they're all reprehensible.

From 1979 to 2013, the FISA courts have denied 12 warrants [1]. That a FISA court actually denied the initial surveillance on Trump Tower, and Obama's DOJ then pushed it through, should be an enormous red flag to people.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

It's a reality of the data vacuum cleaner era, the house that adtech and social media built.

NYT defends its source of leaked information on Trump's White House, regardless of what they do. More news at 11.

> ...these "techniques" do not actually allow the CIA to bypass the encryption...

The definition of the word bypass is, "a secondary channel, pipe, or connection to allow a flow when the main one is closed or blocked." How is a rootkit not bypassing encryption? It doesn't break encryption.

> Unlike the NSA the CIA is also not interested in mass surveillance...

Why do you believe this to be true?

> Overall the problem with this leak specifically it that there is so far nothing damning

The wholesale violation of 4th Amendment protections isn't damning to you?

Almost certainly.

And if pirating music involved breaking into the office of a record company and stealing a CD off their shelf, the comparison to piracy might be valid. But it's not.

> Name a fucking job that a mexican worker is currently doing that you would do? Would you pick tomatoes? Lettuce? Will you cook me a burrito? Will you wash my dishes? Will you make me sushi? I have long said, if the Mexican Rapture happened, you will starve to death....

I understand them perfectly. If you want a discussion, try entering it in good faith, with someone who hasn't already expressed interest in avoiding the subject further.

> Name a fucking job that a mexican worker is currently doing that you would do? Would you pick tomatoes? Lettuce? Will you cook me a burrito? Will you wash my dishes? Will you make me sushi?

I've had a variant of all those jobs, so.. yeah. Don't project your hesitation to do physical labor onto other people.

How many music pirates have murdered someone this year? The point is still garbage, even in longform.

> I have long said, if the Mexican Rapture happened, you will starve to death....

That you consider this an actual point is a fucking joke.

That comparison is ridiculous, but this is the worst possible forum to address your points. I'll leave it at that.

Paying for it is different than a request, NSL, or other means of coercing a company to do what the government wants.

There are significant barriers to the CIA picking the locks of everyone in the world's door, that don't exist when it comes to spying on the whole world. The analogy isn't meaningful.

The people ICE picks up actually committed a crime.

> What, exactly, have we learned here other than a spy agency knows interesting methods of spying?

That the US government pays software companies to keep their products insecure [1]. Why do you believe that they aren't spying on American citizens?

1. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/839168025517522944

Nothing will stop them from using their tools anywhere, which is my point. When the agencies themselves are fundamentally untrustworthy, as they have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be, the distinction between surveillance domestically and abroad isn't meaningful. Especially with the data sharing rules Obama pushed through at the end of his presidency.

I don't think it's possible to value open and free societies while spying on the entire world for the purposes of asserting your geopolitical dominance. Freedom for me but not for thee.

What's that Sincliar quote people like to throw around on here again? Oh yeah, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Given the track records of the US intelligence community in that regard [1-4], I honestly don't understand how anyone could possibly believe them when they say they aren't using their tools domestically. There is insufficient oversight of their activities for anything they say to be believed, given their long history of lying directly to the American public. Saying the CIA doesn't use their hacking tools on the American public is like arguing the sky is green.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensor...

2. https://www.thenation.com/article/cias-student-activism-phas...

3. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000538627....

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)