timsally

This is a step in the right direction but my question is what information derived from your data do they retain? Getting rid of the raw data is great but there are still serious privacy implications if they retain highly sophisticated models trained on the data. The simplest example would be retaining a feature vector of your face while deleting the raw photos.

Thanks for chiming in. I would also add that he put aid workers and activists at risk [1] and caused potential harm, torture, and death to dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq [2].

Indiscriminate doxing to accomplish a radical agenda is not journalism. My view-- which I admit is broader than the point you made-- is that he is a criminal and should be tried and convicted. It makes me sick to my stomach that he cloaks his actions in the hard work and bravery of our free press.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37165230 "Human rights groups have asked Wikileaks many times to do more to censor information found in documents. They fear reprisals against aid workers, activists and civilians named in the leaked data."

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51616077 "Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at 'risk of serious harm, torture or even death". The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people' around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them."

Tracy, I haven't participated in HN for about two years. This article hit me so hard I had to log in to say thank you and express my sincere appreciation.

I remember seeing an interview with you when you first started PlanGrid and it was clear you were going places. Telling this part of the story is deeply important and takes incredible courage.

Incorrect. He (1) had more than one extramarital relationships at work with people under him in the power structure, (2) repeatedly lied about it, and (3) was given a second chance by his board after he was caught the first time but did it again anyway.

Why is the most upvoted comment on this article a false characterization of this executive's conduct that downplays its severity?

> We should pay them every dollar we owe them. It isn't their problem if they paid in every year and the government did not meet its obligations.

It's a lot more complicated than that. School districts can unilaterally give raises to teachers, which increases the tax-payer's burden via additional pension obligations when that teacher retires. The most egregious form this takes are large raises in the few years before someone retires to "supercharge" their pension. Should the tax-payers be on the hook for obligations that were unilaterally created by local school districts? If a school board creates a new assistant/associate/full superintendent/principal position and elevates an existing teacher to that position, they've just added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the tax-payer's bill in the form of additional pension obligations with no approval whatsoever.

People on public pension systems are owed a fair deal that gives them a secure retirement. Obviously at a minimum they should receive what they paid in, compounded yearly at 6.7% (adjusted for inflation). But they're also going to have to bit the bullet for the greater good, just as I'm going to have to do when I lose at least 25% of social security when I retire. We've got a fixed pie of blood and treasure and we owe it to all people to spend that pie wisely, even if it means adjusting pensions.

> Moreover, the public can't be forced to raise taxes to bail out underfunded private sector pensions, while courts are doing just that with public pensions.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (a government agency) explicitly exists to bail out private sector pensions with tax dollars. These taxes are already "raised" so the public isn't being forced to do anything in addition. This is just to say that we do spend tax revenue backstopping private pensions beyond just social security.

One other thing I would point out is that the courts are forcing the public do pay pensions because the public wrote it into law (the frickin' state constitution in the case of Illinois). It was truly an idiotic idea, but the public and the lawmakers need to undo it, not the courts.

> The fact is, that if you were an employee whose private sector employer went bankrupt or you didn't put enough into your 401k, then you're stuck with whatever you get from Social Security.

Plus PBGC payouts, as mentioned above.

> I love paying my taxes, but I don't want to see that money go to giving former public employees a standard of living beyond that enjoyed by those who worked for private employers that failed.

Definitely. The yearly caps for PBGC coverage of private pensions (http://www.pbgc.gov/news/press/releases/pr14-12.html) would be a good place to start for public pensions. More serious reform is probably needed though. The math doesn't lie. We can't be mortgaging our future to fund unsustainable retirement payments. Cap existing payouts, close the plan to future participants, bolster self-managed retirement options like 401ks, and strengthen the social safety net by injecting some capital into social security. It definitely would be a raw deal for many people, including some people who are very close to me. However, there's just no other way to make the numbers work out.

Can you be more specific? If you have a partial piece of data (say because the data was streaming and a rocket exploded), the parser for that data is unlikely to work out of the box. Hence the use of a hex editor.

How about we both draw out our positions more explicitly? I present two scenarios where someone is selling a harmful product to people-- one in which someone is selling a product that US citizens have an unassailable right to in an illegal fashion and one in which someone is selling a product that people have a weaker claim to in a legal fashion. I support jail for the former and not the latter simply because my position is that the peoples' right to have product is irrelevant, it's whether you are selling it legally or not. If you're selling someone harmful in an illegal manner and you do multi-million dollars of business per year you should go to jail for a long time, even if the people have a right to said product.

Interesting, I stand corrected. That said, to legally carry out the act with a car that might actually hurt someone else (driving it), you need to be both licensed by the government and compliant with a suite of regulation (insurance, etc). So I think the point still stands.

Do you apply this logic to alcohol as well? It's a drug and there are many addicts, so similar to other drugs I don't think it should be sold online. Where do you come down on that? I only ask because many people implicitly omit alcohol when discussing drugs, even though it is one.

> Cars and guns also hurt people but pretty much anyone can sell those.

The following applies only to the US. Since 1968 you need a license granted by the federal government to sell guns (https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/who-can-obtain-federal-firea...). The law allowing you to carry a firearm was passed in 1791. Driver's licenses have been around since 1899. You can't sell a car to someone without one.

When thinking about this issue, I've found the following thought experiments useful:

(1) Should someone who ran a multi-million dollar illegal gun operation get life in prison, even though unlike drugs, the right to own firearms is explicitly protected by the Constitution?

(2) Should someone who ran a multi-million dollar website selling only weed in legal venues (Colorado, etc) be convicted of any crime, never-mind sentenced to life in prison, even though it is against federal law?

Personally I answer (1) as YES and (2) as NO, and place Ulbricht's conduct significantly closer to (1) than to (2).

I can't say whether the metric in the article is good or not. What I can say is that Chicago being comparable to UIUC in CS theory is not an unreasonable position. Across CS it would be false, but Chicago's theory faculty are considered quite good. For example, a few years ago their department housed the only known credible effort regarding P!=NP https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1586091. Also, if you look at the two most recent theory hires of the respective departments you'll find them to be of similarly impressive credentials (IAS postdoc, formidable publication record). I don't have the qualifications to really speak more on the subject, but I don't object to the claim.

It's absolutely terrible. I have used 4K and 5K displays in the last year on Windows, OS X, and Linux and the only OS that currently handles these well is OS X.

In general, handling high resolution displays requires a really tightly bound ecosystem so scaling works on all applications. Linux makes it immediately clear what happens when this is not the case. 14.04 is totally unusable because you have to either change the system fonts to be huge or scale text within every application individually, if the application even provides the ability to do that at all.

It wasn't just the USG; the United Nations listed al-Awlaki as a terrorist in 2010, one year before he was killed: http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/AQList.htm. The UN isn't exactly known for being a hawk...

Thomas has already covered this quite well, but I'll briefly summarize again. al-Awlaki was actively at war against the USG. Killing him is roughly equivalent to killing US citizens who fight for other foreign governments. The drone strike was not carrying out a legal sentence, it was simply the use of force in a global conflict.

From the equivalent location in Boston (Beacon Hill) your a 15 minute or less Uber ride away from the gate at BOS. For flights that have dedicated security lines or if I get pre-check I'd leave downtown Boston 1 hour and 15 minutes before takeoff. I've only been bitten by this once in the last few years, in which case you can find an airline employee to get you through the security line ASAP.

However, even if you want to get to the airport early, it's not like that time is wasted. These days I would say relaxing in the airport is just as nice as relaxing in a train car: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/nyregion/improving-ground-.... The last time I was at LGA early I had a huge table to myself and the person I was with, and the table had an iPad I could use to order food and drinks.

The situation with flying is a bit more nuanced than you make it out to be. I fly to NYC and DC from Boston pretty regularly for business. With TSA precheck and dedicated security lines for the regional shuttles, it usually takes me 2.5 hours total to make the trip. Of course, that requires driving to the airport and taking a cab once you land at your destination.

These legs are serious business for the airlines that run them, as compared to Amtrak who isn't going to be able to do anything for you if you get stopped due to freight. For example, the flights to these destinations run once an hour. If you show up at the airport before your flight and there is a seat available an earlier flight, the ticketing machine will automatically prompt you to re-book for free. That flexibility is not something you're going to get on a train.

All of that said, for personal travel I usually take Amtrak. Most people can't risk the multi-hour delays that can result from train travel when they are on the clock. But when I'm on vacation, it doesn't matter to me either way and the train is a much more relaxing experience.

I fly to Montreal once a year from Boston and 1.5-2 hours on either side is a gross exaggeration. The Air Canada flights to Montreal have a dedicated security line at BOS and it takes roughly 7 minutes to get through it. I've also never waited more than 45 minutes for customs in Canada. On the way back, US customs take about 20 minutes thanks to automated terminals they have installed.

> For the opposing view, Google "mosaic theory." As with many debates, this one comes down to a conflict between people who think the Constitution means what it says, and those that believe in "living constitutions" where we should insert things into the Constitution that aren't there, "because change."

This is an awful and inaccurate characterization of the position. An idea that both Alito and Sotomayor share common ground on can't possibly be as simple as the picture you present. But don't take my word for it; take Orin Kerr's.

http://volokh.com/2012/01/23/whats-the-status-of-the-mosaic-...

What about Supreme Court justices? The impact of an individual appointment is only getting larger: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol29_No3_Cala.... And when you compare the justices Bush appointed to those that Obama did, you can't claim to me that both parties are the same.

Please vote, if only to help shape SCOTUS. :)

Sorry just saw this comment. Work your way through the 6.828 course because the presentation of concepts in that course is as fundamental and bite-size as it gets. Then when you get to real operating systems (which are much uglier than xv6), don't be intimidated by the complexity. For any difficult subject, there's always a point along the learning curve where things seem hopeless but if you push through you'll start to gain glimpses of understanding. These glimpses provide motivation which in turn lets you understand more... eventually process of learning becomes self sustaining.

> Amdahl's law explains why this is wrong.

Amdahl's law doesn't mean what you think it means; it specifically refutes your position. To spell it out: a 100% reduction in 1.7% of the cost is irrelevant to the total cost despite the fact that 100% is a big number.

Money and time aren't always fungible, but since you consider them additive in your argument lets assume they are for this discussion.

Starting software engineers bill out at $100 an hour. If you spend 5 hours a week reading the news, the total cost per year in terms of your time is $26,000. Thus the cost of the newspaper itself is 1.7% of the overall cost. The claim that a price cut to something that only contributes 1.7% to the total cost is going to make reading the newspaper worth it is ridiculous on its face. The same rebuttal applies for differentiating between newspapers.

Also, there is a strong argument to be made that businesses should not be targeting or care about people who think a 1.7% price cut makes a difference.

> If you stop jerking your readers around and give them a good deal, you may be surprised by how many would be willing to subscribe.

If you don't think $450 is worth unlimited online access and home delivery for the Sunday edition, I'm not sure what to do for you. The main cost of reading the news is the time you lose. Why would you spend several hours per week reading something that you think isn't worth $8 per week? It's an inherently contradictory position.

> Yes. It is astonishing how institutes with huge budgets put videos like these (it is quite common with such big names as MIT).

Yes if only MIT spent some money and made high quality videos available for free to millions of people...

https://www.edx.org/course-list/mitx/allsubjects/allcourses

I wouldn't presume to answer for Terry Tao but such a foundation certainly included the usual topics covered in qualifying exams at top departments. For example, Princeton: http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/topic.html. Now that I'm looking at it, these topics actually align fairly nicely which what Chicago requires first year graduate students to take: http://www.math.uchicago.edu/graduate/grad_first_year.html.

If you're looking for some interesting reading, Princeton actually posts write-ups of each student's qualifying exam (http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/index.html), including Terry Tao's (http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence).

Yes I work professionally in the field.

If you're interested in this type of stuff I can personally recommend MIT's 6.828 course (Operating Systems Engineering) as an additional resource. Specifically, you'll want to take a look at xv6, a teaching OS implemented for the course (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6.html). The OS is small enough to print as cross referenced code listing (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/xv6-rev8.pdf) and has a book that fully explains each piece (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/book-rev8.pdf). You are only 9,000 lines of code away from fully understanding basic operating systems concepts!

It's been a few years since I took the class but it was an absolute blast. The offering in 2011 has recorded lecture videos (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/schedule.html).

The job offer is a pretty obvious lie. Full government jobs don't pay $150,000+ until you get to an extremely senior level [+] (private contractors do pay that much, but DHS certainly can't extend job offers on behalf of a private contractor). I think it says quite a bit about the ego and/or ignorance of this person if they thought they were so special that they would be offered this type of job...

[+] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_Executive_Service_(Unite...

Not every technical person is (or even can be) an expert in cryptography or goes into a technical field for their career. It's just not practical. This is why our legal system reaches conclusions collaboratively with experts in both the law and the relevant technical fields.

That said, he's got an MS in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a BS in mechanical/aerospace engineering from Princeton. If his technical background isn't sufficient to you, I'm not really sure what to do for you. It seems that you have mistaken him admitting that he doesn't know something as a sign that he is not technical.

It seems more than one HN user finds it amusing that this guide covers "rudimentary" things like predicate logic and word problems. Keep in mind that these are the skills the Secret Service wants their applicants to actively get better at before applying; it just so happens that already having these skills are common in the HN community.

I'm sure the community of Secret Service applicants finds the skills they are good at for which the HN community needs to actively get better at equally amusing. Social aptitude and physical fitness for example...

Maybe I'm getting old but my preference is to not cast stones at communities that are different than mine.