sudojudo

Another commenter pointed out that company culture is most likely the underlying issue with people not being honest during their post-hire interviews. If that's the case, then the culture is already damaged.

Maybe they could begin to repair the culture with the suggestion box, by asking why everyone is so hesitant to critique during face-to-face interviews. That alone should show that they're making an effort, and acting on any of the suggestions will further the cause. Basically, use the anonymous suggestion box to get rid of the anonymous suggestion box.

The Independent isn't a reliable news source and it has no place on Hacker News.

Their advertising is over-the-top because it's a dying business. They don't even print anymore, they're just an online tabloid, and when they're not getting enough views, they start making up their own news.

It's too bad, because at one time they were one of the few British papers that was able to stand up to Murdoch's right-wing print empire, but in the end Murdoch had bigger pockets, and the Independent scurried into the shadows to create garbage.

3) Lose the reputation of being a scummy company (or just stop being scummy).

After seeing what Walmart does to small town economies, and knowing that my taxes help compensate for them not paying a livable wage, and reading about their awful lobbying, and their abusive purchase practices, and on, and on, I want nothing to do with them.

Being in a rural area, I have to go well out of my way to avoid physically shopping at Walmart; avoiding them online is easy.

All of that said, the vast majority of consumers don't care about ethics in business, and even if they did, Walmart has their propaganda game down pretty well at this point. They'll do fine.

Oh yeah, and screw Amazon too. My last two orders have been Chinese knock-offs of the products I actually ordered. You know they're in the shitter when you need to reference a third-party website [1] to help avoid forgeries.

[1] http://fakespot.com/

You guys have digressed a bit from the original topic, but I wanted to jump in and say that I agree with you, and so do a lot of other people.

I go to great lengths to keep Google and the like out of my life, and I find it really strange how accepting, and even defensive, people are with these intrusive services. It's a Brave New World, and Stallman was right.

There's evidence that multivitamins are useless, and that they actually cause health problems [1].

As for OPs theory, it's strange to think of such a thing happening during an obesity epidemic, but many people do seem to be lacking basic nutrients in their diet. I'm not sure how much we can trust our own guts when it comes to seeking out nutritious foods; the majority of people go for sugar and fats when they're hungry, instead of the fruits and vegetables that contain the nutrients they're lacking. It seems our stomachs are not looking out for our best interests.

[1] https://hub.jhu.edu/2013/12/17/vitamins-might-be-harmful/

Ever heard of the Panopticon [1]? The NSA is a modern, digital, version of it.

There was a time when a person could go online to look up recipes or shop for backpacks [2] without thinking twice about it. Not anymore, Panoptes has eyes on us all. Our minds know this, and in turn, our behavior changes.

I realize that this isn't exactly what you're saying, and living under the DPRK is absolutely worse than NSA surveillance. But, there are unseen repercussions to the death of privacy that are often overlooked, or downplayed. Ahead of everything else, the NSA and the DPRK control our devices by controlling us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-polic...

Forgive me if I don't link it, but there is an alternative to the "liberal facts" presented on Wikipedia.

If you want the alt-truth about things like evolution and the Obama administration, I'm sure you can find the site with a few choice keywords. Did you know that abortion causes breast cancer?

Oops, I just vomited a little, sorry about that.

|Not sure where that stands today.

Then why say anything? You're referencing an article from 2014, on howtogeek.

Rural anecdote from the northwest:

The stream I played in as a kid is now polluted by a feed lot. Cattle are everywhere. Invasive weeds are also everywhere. Native insects are dying off, while their replacements decimate forests, one mountain at a time, heading north. The rivers and streams are full of plastic and algal bloom. Finding a tree that's more than fifty years old is neat. There was a giant fish die-off in the rivers last year. Everyone wants a few acres of their own, but they also want water and sewer, in a nice neighborhood, not too far from town. Subdivisions even trump cattle, the only thing that will beat those out is a natural resource that can be exploited. There are a dozen other environmental issues I could extrapolate on, that are happening just outside my back door, and I live in BFE.

Good times in rural America, nature is really holding up.

This whole city vs. country argument is silly. It's not another species out here; some people care about the environment and some don't, just like anywhere. Will rural populations stay behind the curve on some issues? Of course, but they're still people, like you.

Could the next person please source their comment. Kratom seems a bit controversial.

It's really nice that you share, and encourage an open community, people like you have certainly helped me out in the past.

Open wireless routers were far more common 10-15 years ago, when ISPs first started pushing them. Most people hadn't warmed up to the technology yet, and security was barely on the radar; similar to what we're currently seeing with IoT.

Maybe you have no enemies and trust your neighbors, that's awesome. But, anecdotes aside, someone could cause some very ugly problems with your open wifi, without much skill or effort -maybe just for the lulz.

I feel like cheering you on for giving people free internet, but at the same time, I want to pull you aside and say "hey crazy person, please put a password on your WAP." Because, it's a bummer when bad things happen to good people.

There are workarounds (e.g. the key is also the dongle, like with many cars) but for the sake of this argument, yes, you'd need to carry both.

The car analogy is a good one, actually, because keyless entry has become commonplace in that arena. It's less secure, but so darned convenient. These days, it has become nearly impossible to get a mid-tier, or better, automobile without keyless entry; though it won't happen as quickly, we can expect the same trend with our home door locks. After that, we'll be replacing our locks every 4-6 years, or at around 150,000 miles. Yey, more stuff to go obsolete and throw away!

Generally speaking, the privacy and security concerns that industry continues to ignore are turning me into a Luddite, so I won't be in line for an off-the-shelf IoT device anytime soon, if ever.

My point was that anecdotes are pretty useless. Some installations run brilliantly, others are a huge pain. After all, we're not talking about a single distro on identical hardware.

To answer your questions- Linux is my primary OS, at work and at home. I don't recall every single issue, especially way-back, but traditionally, I create problems by doing something stupid.

Maybe I'm just lucky with updates, but I stick to popular distros, and I specifically seek out Linux-friendly hardware. Others surely have a different experience. It just felt like OP was painting with too broad a stroke; their statement was valid in 2003, but not so much these days.

I've been running Linux on all of my home machines for many years, including an HTPC, and I've yet to have an update break anything.

Should we trust your anecdote, because it has more words, or mine, because it mentions more than one computer?

The app knows the number of whatever phone it's installed on, it also knows all of the phone's contacts, and much more. The author agreed to share this information when he installed the Facebook app.

Perhaps the wrong number was an error on Facebook's part, perhaps it's something sinister, perhaps the author is just confused. We don't know, because the author of this article lacks a basic understanding of how the app, and Facebook, works. He didn't test his hypothesis, or even read the TOS, he just posted an article full of unfounded speculation. Again, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on user error.

I'm not defending Facebook, they're horrible. I just think this article is garbage. Yes, that's harsh, but bad journalism has a much bigger impact on the world than my dumb comments.

What's the best way to get a correct answer on the Internet? Give an incorrect answer.

>Probably I have accepted all your terms and conditions

Yes, you did accept their terms and conditions. How does Facebook not have your mobile number when you're using their phone app? That thing knows more about your phone than you do (try reading its T&C).

I ignored the terrible ESL grammar, and powered through the "nothing to hide" fallacy, but in the end I'm so frustrated with the technological naivety of the author that his main point is lost. Apologies for being brash, Nitin, but you have to expect some scrutiny when you post on HN; this is a tech forum.

Though I don't doubt that Facebook would play on what's said in my first sentence, the fact that the person who's bringing the issue up seems to have been in a cave since 2013, and is only working with a control of 1, I'm going to write this off as user error until someone savvy verifies the claim.

To prevent annoying messages about your ad blocker, run a JavaScript blocker.

Nobody else has mentioned this, so maybe I'm an odd-ball, but I don't like giving out my phone number to ad-based services, especially social media sites. What do they do with that information?

It feels like data collection veiled in security. Giving out more personal information is the exact opposite of everything I've learned about privacy and security.

| Is it even possible to use the web nowadays without JS enabled?

Yes, but results may vary. I can do 99% of my daily browsing without JavaScript enabled, and for the sites where it's needed, NoScript can be told to always allow it (one specific script, or everything on the page). This is why you constantly see NoScript being recommended, it allows you to toggle JS on and off, as needed, which is invaluable.

I've been using NoScript for years and how much is blocked never ceases to amaze me. 99% of the script that most sites run has nothing to do with viewing content, or usability, and everything to do with tracking (there are usually multiple instances, sometimes dozens, on a single page; it's astounding).

Another nice feature in NoScript that I just picked up on is the shift+left-click option in the script list. This allows me to investigate what that particular script is for, and choose to permanently block/allow it. Very handy, and also eye-opening in regards to privacy.

It's odd that their browser of choice is from a company that was founded by a couple of Jewish dudes.

Also, aren't these the folks who are obsessed with the New World Order, and wouldn't Google be a key player in that scheme?

Boot to a live CD/USB based OS.

Keep in mind that even outside of a corporate environment, Windows is not private.

Two of them are circa 2012 Samsung SCH-S720C (1GHz CPU / 512MB RAM), running Gingerbread. I don't want to pull the third one down to look, but it's a little newer, maybe a Galaxy S3.

They're not nearly as old as the whitebox, but they're old in smartphone terms, and there are millions of them floating around that can be had for dirt cheap. Mine are just phones that I upgraded from, they were doing nothing but gathering dust.

The advantage over Google is that DuckDuckGo is private.

https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

Though it's not on this level of sophistication, I'm using three old Android phones as wireless security cameras. Anyone else doing the same?

The phones are running a free IP camera app, while in airplane mode, with WiFi turned on. Then, I've got an old whitebox (PIII / 1GB RAM) running Lubuntu, that monitors the feeds via Motion[1]. Everything is isolated on a subnet, where WAN access is denied. If needed, it's easy to allow remote access to the whitebox and/or camera feeds, automatic FTP uploads of captured data, and email alerts.

It was unbelievably simple to set up, completely free, and it works like a charm. The most difficult part was physically positioning the phones. You could get fancy and use ZoneMinder, but Motion's footprint is tiny enough that the old Lubuntu machine doesn't even break a sweat (7-12% CPU / 10% RAM total, including the OS).

[1] http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome

Windows 10 already says this, but with a different definition of bug.

I surely fall outside of where they gathered their statistics, but living in a rural area, and going to small schools (circa 1995), my car alarm was quite useful. It's different when you live in a place where people know one another, and give a damn about crime. 99% of the time, myself, or someone I knew, was within earshot of my alarm.

First off, everyone here knows that default settings often don't suffice. You can't just take the alarm out of the box, hook it up, and call it good. You have to configure it, and sometimes that takes a bit of effort to get right. My alarm would only go off if someone broke a window, crashed into my car (hard), or tried the door handles. I wanted it to activate in each of those scenarios.

Next, the blinking LED. I knew guys that would simply wire in an LED, no alarm at all, because the flashing LED is what said "I have an alarm and it's armed." Nobody here avoided pranking their friend (or nemesis) because they saw that red LED? I certainly did, it says DO NOT TOUCH. Not the case these days, but twenty years back, blinky lights were fancy.

Finally, there are all kinds of alarms, they don't all have blaring sirens. Even in the 90s, there was an alarm that signaled a pager (don't recall the protocol). There was also the option of just flashing the lights, or outright killing power to everything. From sensors to alerts, nothing has improved over the last twenty years? Bah!

Again, being from a rural area, I'm likely an exception to the rule; I can imagine car alarms causing insanity in the city. But, I've got to say that my car alarm was pretty useful back in high school and college. And, knowing that other people had alarms stopped quite a few shenanigans within my group of friends. I hesitate to say this, but reckless as it may be, some of us do want to go kick some criminal ass when the opportunity presents itself. I tackled a guy and had him tied to a chair when the cops arrived, it was awesome!

I'm not going to argue the math, this article is surely on the right side of things, I'm just offering a different perspective. My car no longer has an alarm, but it also doesn't have five grand in speakers, CDs, and other teenage crap in it. My house now has the alarm, but it consists of all kinds of cool stuff other than a siren; there's no reason it can't be the same with modern car alarms.

If you're a careless user, don't root your phone. If you pay attention, use common sense, and don't have a thousand Play store apps installed; you'll probably be okay. Another way to look at it is by comparing your phone to your desktop or laptop computer. How often do you unintentionally break it with malware? Often? Don't root your phone. Rarely or never? You'll be okay.

The best advice I can offer is to stay the hell away from Google Play. That trash, and the rest of their services, are the first things I strip from my phones. Instead, use properly licensed open source software, from the F-Droid repository (or similar). If it's not a proprietary app (Twitter/Facebook/Snapchat/etc.), there's likely a FOSS version that's better than anything on the Play store. Flashlight apps don't need to access your contact list, or read your call logs, or have an open port in your firewall. The damned bastards.

On F-Droid you'll find (for your rooted phone):

AFWall+, an IPTables firewall GUI. Very nice looking and intuitive. Don't think I've ever used a firewall so easy to configure.

Autostart, an app that prevents garbage from auto-starting. A bunch of junkware usually loads up when you activate things like WiFi and GPS, or reboot the phone. Autostart can be configured to block the bloat, and in turn, make your phone run much more efficiently.

Disable Manager, to disable unsavory services (Play, Facebook, etc.). If you're worried that deleting things will break the phone, this app will put your mind at ease, because you can use it to turn things off and on, like a switch, instead of outright deleting.

AdAway, generic name, but it does what it's supposed to; system-wide ad blocking. It's FOSS, under GPL. If you avoid the Play store, configure your firewall, and use an ad blocker addon on Firefox, you might not even need an app like this one.

There's a bunch of other cool, trustworthy, stuff on F-Droid that's not going to abuse your phone. When it comes down to it, if you stick with FOSS, you won't need to root the phone; a non-root firewall will suffice.

Apologies for the rant, this was supposed to be a short reply, I don't know what happened.

I'm running NoScript, uBlock Origin, and Disconnect. No issues at all. I'd imagine NoScript is to thank for not having the scroll issue that you're coming up against.

>alcohol makes someone more confident, or more likely to do stupid things.

Reminds me of the "say the alphabet backwards" challenge that cops often present in sobriety tests.

Drunk: ZYX... ZYXW... wait-wait... okay, ZYXTW, ummm...

Sober: I can't do that.

Stoned: Oh whaaat? No way, man. I can't even do that sober - shit, I mean...

So true. I've got a humbling anecdote to emphasize this point...

Had a non-tech friend ask me to put some music on his iPhone. I didn't have iTunes installed, so that was step one. I had Windows and IE running because I had been testing something, so I just hopped on Google and clicked on the top link for iTunes. All the while, I was lecturing my friend about how filthy the internet is, and how you have to be constantly vigilant. Yeah, and to prove it, my machine instantly filled with malware when I hit the iTunes executable.

The top link on Google for iTunes, one of the most downloaded pieces of software in existence, was a paid ad that installed a truckload of nasty malware. I walked right into the trap because I was accustomed to using ad blockers.

It used to be that when people had a machine full of malware, they'd been up to something fishy, like downloading free porn. These days, all it takes is a Google search for their favorite product.