superobserver

Absolutely, but the underlying feature of that omission is that it is _clearly_ directed by a particular party at a specific audience.

It's a whitepaper made for the establishment by the establishment. Appeal to reputation is _not an argument_.

Google has a long-standing bias that is comparable to other Silicon Valley tech companies. Their Newsstand app is like a certified stream of mainstream propaganda.

> I don't blame the article for not including it because left wing disinformation has been mostly ineffective and uninteresting though.

So ineffective that a Bernie Bro shot a few congressmen? Give me a break.

The rest of your commentary is similarly dismissive in a way that suggests an underlying bias unworthy of further comment.

As would I.

A security company commenting on these matters suggests undue interest in manipulating the infosec community. I would be interested to learn who paid/funded for this slanted whitepaper. The absence of commentary on left-wing disinfo actors (Media Matters, Correct the Record, Shareblue, etc.) and principally those that operate according to yesterday's mainstream media methods is most telling.

Highly recommended book by Lakatos. The history and meta-mathematical aspects of proof-theoretic constructs are so often neglected that one can only imagine that there's a latent desire to attain a priestly purity to the proof-theoretic process that serves only to hamper true mathematical maturity in the field and individual learning.

Which is just about everyone outside of the Silicon Valley, San Fran, and establish ment bubble. Stifling free speech in this way will hopefully bring a cornucopia of anti-trust lawsuits against Google.

Ask Trump to veto it. He may oblige.

Real hacker news on HN. Love it.

FYI we're close to this with the use of acronyms and abbreviations, not just emoticons, given English's phonetic basis, etc.

To me, a proof would have to be a Turing complete procedure for verifying a theorematic result. Often times, proofs, however, only amount to convincing arguments (convincing to adepts, that is, who have not yet discovered a flaw in the proof). Furthermore, yes, I truly believe that proofs provided through computational analysis are perfectly legitimate, even if mere humans can hardly cope with them.

Now that Android Apps hit ChromeOS Dev on Asus Flip, Pixel 2015, and R11, I'm not sure what more point there is for a web-version of Skype (on Chrome and ChromeOS) - except that Android Apps will not obviously be available for older devices. Still, glad to see progress is being made, because this has been a long-standing issue for further adoption of the ChromeOS platform.

>some people have already had their natural driven curiosity ground out of them by sour experiences at school or poor home life prior to getting the change to try this.

Somehow I find that extraordinarily unlikely, but I suppose it is possible. From my experience and what I've seen in other people, it's never that the curiosity in them gets pounded out of them, rather it is that they're not ideally granted the opportunities to capitalize on their curiosities.

Yes.

This is one of the reasons why I wish Google implemented aliases for accounts anchored to a UID instead of requiring a persistent user account name. This is how Microsoft does it, actually. Then there might be a way to control for accounts that have similar names.

This is really cool. It reminds me of what happened to me when I turned 15 and my family was first able to afford a computer and an internet connection. I basically started teaching myself all kinds of stuff (e.g., physics, mathematics, philosophy, etc.). Self-directed learning can take you really far, but it isn't right for everyone: mostly individuals who can truly direct themselves and have the kinds of interests that are condusive to broad understanding and knowledge.

The problem I had with the educational system in my time (about 20 years ago) is computer knowledge wasn't taken seriously, so I missed out on having some guidance to push me towards my ultimate interest - electronics, computers, programming, things in tech. Of course, I still like knowing about a lot of other things, but school really doesn't grab your interests. Ideally, it should be setup so students can capitalize on areas of interest.

On second thought, if computer and tech knowledge had been made available to me early on, I probably wouldn't have had the life course in the educational system that I did. Depressing to think about.

Best of luck and I hope it is legitimately successful for the students.

Congrats. Love Polymer (when I get to use it). Looks good.

Schools are a way for parents to send their kids to a reliable daycare service. At a certain level, some don't really learn anything there. I did as much as I did (college) to pass among the clueless as normal but wish I had more opportunities to avoid it altogether.

I recall even Snowden dropped out of high school.

And again here's why Google needs to force manufacturer's (and carriers) to agree to required updates to the latest Android OS on a regular and ongoing basis, insofar as their hardware is not end-of-life.

Since the money-market system is fundamentally based on debt structures, circumventing any kind of crash will be tantamount to preventing any kind of overvalued market. In other words, no amount of mathematical juggling will alter the underlying sine qua non of the (global) financial market. Frankly, any newly put forward mechanism suggested should be subjected to serious analysis and scepticism if the true goal is to avoid a crash. Looking over the history of the financial markets, however, given anyone who works within the system, I would doubt that they would care to envision, let alone implement, any kind of method that would not have a necessary relationship to their securing their bottom line.

Right you are, and the unfortunate reality is no one particularly cares either. Common Core (in the US) adds to this in its focus not on the problem, not on the solution, not on the method(s) to approach the problem, but rather on a seemingly sensible and internally coherent explanation for arriving at some sort of (not necessarily correct) solution.

An important point made in longevity research like SENS (cf., http://www.sens.org/ ) is that it should also improve youthful characteristics. This is important, because we shouldn't want to live into our 200's and be as though we're in our 80's (feeble, weak, etc.). True longevity means longevity of youthful biology, including all the attendant benefits that come with youth. In other words, we should seek to reach a point where we reach full maturity (mid 20's or so given some variation) but do not begin deteriorating.

Cf. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ad_iram

This reminds me of how "propaganda" was euphemised as "public relations".

Mods, please flag this and remove/delete if possible. It is clearly a misguided post.

That much is obvious to anyone here, but I'm noticing an odd spate of downvotes that contradict that post. Any insights? I'm seeing at least 6 downvotes to my posts alone.

You can hate the argument all you like; although such an emotionally charged term being levelled against the argument itself is curious but probably not particularly informative. It also doesn't change the way Facebook violates norms of privacy in a number of ways that should give people pause for thought, at any rate. RMS has put forward excellent reasons that detract from the use of the platform.

You're only emphasising the legitimate use of "useds" by RMS. The notion, in any case, is that being a used of Facebook undermine's one's claim to privacy. Potatoes and cars don't apparently do the same thing, so they qualify as red herrings at best - having no relationship or bearing on the larger claims RMS puts forward.

C'mon. It's no secret that Facebook doesn't give much concern to users/useds privacy. Any claim to the contrary is highly suspect.

This is only to reiterate that the target market of Facebook does not include those who wish to maintain a greater level of privacy by not using it.

But that's what Facebook users are - useds. They're targets for Facebook's platform, namely, delivering ads. You've actually made a strawman of RMS' argument by attempting to draw the false parallel between ex1 and ex2.

The appropriate understanding of RMS' use of language is similar to how any philosopher might use language with idiosyncratic coinages thrown in. In other words, it is simply a manifestation of a particular philosophical outlook.

Edit: it would appear quite a few other responders to your post are making this point as well. I think you should seriously reconsider how you're attempting to characterise RMS' way of making a point.

What is the intent of yours? Are you not able to understand a simple interrogatory sentence? That seems unbelievable, given that you clearly know how to write them.