Hacker News Reader

us0ron Allstate uses social media to check claims

Just today I was going to go skiing but my foot hurt so I'm home. Let's pretend it was something bigger and I've been home and being paid on an insurance claim. My family makes a new facebook post of last years trip with all of us in the photo and no description or anything. Carpe does the happy dance and sends it to Allstate. Allstate says we are not paying your claim and canceling your policy for fraud.

Now I have to prove the claim, can't get insurance cause I'm on a blacklist and hell knows what else due to an inaccurate photo scraped by a company without official access.

You don't see a problem with that?

us0ron How the Guardian improbably put itself on the path to profits

Banks are a great example of this:

"Mastercard, originally known as Interbank/Master Charge, was created by several California banks as a competitor to the BankAmericard issued by Bank of America, which later became the Visa credit card issued by Visa Inc."

SWIFT:

"SWIFT was founded in Brussels in 1973 under the leadership of its inaugural CEO Carl Reuterskiöld (1973–1983) and was supported by 239 banks in fifteen countries"

Several others I can't think of right now.

us0ron How the Guardian improbably put itself on the path to profits

I don't want 15 different subscriptions. I'll pay a premium for 1. I think a lot of people would do the same. Why haven't they figured this out yet and formed some kind of group/alliance?

us0ron Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing (2015)

> If Microsoft does something in the interest of their users it is suddenly "for marketing purposes"?

If Microsoft gave a shit about its users it wouldn't put key loggers in its products, explicitly state that spell check in your word documents is being done in the "cloud" and we are reading it, let you disable stupid cortona who is slurping up hell knows what, etc.

They are so obsessed with tracking you that if you surf their sites long enough you end up with a HTTP 400 - Bad Request (Request header too long) error message. I just pulled up MSDN look at the scroll bar on the right https://i.imgur.com/wlYqVIo.png.

No they don't care about users.

us0ron FBI chief calls encryption a ‘major public safety issue’

>can't be stripping our law enforcement officers completely of the right to investigate what a person did or is doing.

Oh they are far from stripped.

https://theintercept.com/series/the-fbis-secret-rules/

us0ron SpaceX payload code-named Zuma failed to reach orbit after Sunday launch

Pick up a newspaper. Classified info is leaked practically daily.

When you lose a billion dollars you are pointing the finger at someone else. This is true in general business and especially with government money.

us0ron SpaceX payload code-named Zuma failed to reach orbit after Sunday launch

I don't see why its so far fetched that a republican staffer who is anti SpaceX would leak a report (or contents of it) to an anti SpaceX journalist. Northrop is trying to save face so of course they are going to point the finger at SpaceX.

us0ron SpaceX payload code-named Zuma failed to reach orbit after Sunday launch

>The payload was suspected to have burned up in the atmosphere after failing to separate perfectly from the upper part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

>A SpaceX spokesman told the news service: "We do not comment on missions of this nature, but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally."

They are already blaming each other. So if this ends up in court how does that work? Do they find a cleared jury?

us0ron Not Ready for Takeoff: Face Scans at Airport Departure Gates

> The bigger issue is that Congress hasn't issued a specific mandate for this collection (by a private entity) and spending authority for the apparently ~$1B program. The article's concerns are for a more intrusive security state without congressional authority.

Posted about this 200 days ago.

"The first legislative mandate for an automated identity check on departing foreign visitors dates back to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and since 9/11 Congress has passed three laws requiring the Department of Homeland Security to set up a biometric exit system."

Doesn't address the citizen part but they'll sell it as "national security" and of course citizen data is immediately discarded </s>.

https://www.fedscoop.com/cbp-will-implement-long-mandated-bi...

Edit: Apparently they responded to this report a few days ago: https://www.fedscoop.com/cbp-biometric-and-face-recognition-...

us0ron VA’s foray into Internet of Things faced ‘catastrophic failure’

thats not even close to the final price. they'll probably drop another $250 mil then cancel the project. they dont even have this running in 1 VISN and there are over 20.

us0ron 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

> Maybe AWS could improve the way it can secure the S3 buckets

Maybe we can start holding companies accountable?

This isn't someone hacked into their system. This is just being negligent.

us0ron Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

What makes this extra ridiculous is the fact LinkedIn built its business on scraping not publicly available information but private address books of unsuspecting users.

us0ron Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

spamhaus did this and the spammer who sued them got a default judgement. when he went to seize their domain they suddenly cared about us laws.

us0ron Apple Introduces Search Ads Basic

> With Apple's stance on privacy, how effective will these days be?

IMO Apple's stance on privacy is a bit smoke and mirrors when they allow tracking services like flurry to exist in apps.

us0ron Why can't the IT industry deliver large, faultless projects quickly?

Being late on a software project is actually profitable.

Being late on an aircraft or building probably comes with financial penalties.

us0ron Cloud Firestore: A New Document Database for Apps

So read through the docs, decided to give the free tier a go and of course they are punishing me for being an existing customer.

"The Blaze billing plan (pay-as-you-go) for Firebase is required for Google projects with billing enabled.

To use the free tier, you must first turn off billing in your Google project."

I don't want 15 "projects". I want to add this to my existing one. Why on earth is this not possible?

us0ron VCs are suing the US for delay of immigration program

> automatic citizenship for anyone who started and owns >50% of a company that has at least a million /yr in payroll for Americans.

Don't we allow people who make a 500k investment a special visa which can turn into a green card which can turn into citizenship?

us0ron Companies are once again storing data on tape, just in case

Google uses tape. Very cool read/watch.

Summary: http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/3/how-google-backs-up...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM

us0ron On React and WordPress

The last time the PATENTS file was changed was 3 years ago. It has passed the smell test for Microsoft (and dozens of other large companies) with literal buildings full of attorneys who have more experience with licenses, patents and everything between then most.

This issue seems to be a bunch of nothing. What am I missing here?

us0ron Text-only CNN

Google seems to have forgotten this and now thinks its some kind of design company. Everything with the exception of adwords and analytics it has applied material to is now garbage.

News use to be my default homepage but surprisingly MSN gives me a much better product with more then 4 stories on the page on 32" monitors.

us0ron Majority of U.S. consumers still download zero apps per month, says comScore

This is exactly why I don't download apps. I proxied my phone one day and almost fell out of my chair. I'm shocked Google and Apple allow this to go on.

us0ron SoftBank’s $100B fund is in a league of its own

http://www.kingdom.com.sa/investments

My personal favorite is Fox News.

us0ron Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community

[0] is an interesting article about this. It doesn't matter where it is, if they want you they will get you. They have done this private plane on the runway thing a few times now.

> Seleznev, the identity thief who is the son of the Duma deputy, chose to vacation at a five-star resort in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of the Maldives in 2014 precisely because it has no extradition treaty with the United States. U.S. officials got word and persuaded Maldives authorities to intercept Seleznev at the airport, where in a fast-paced operation he was bundled on a private plane to Guam

Personally - I think in this Hutchins case they just wanted a new hire.

http://hamodia.com/2017/04/02/u-s-sweeping-russian-hackers-b...

us0ron Servers Seized at Ukrainian Firm Where Petya Attack Began, Charges Considered

Microsoft has had a patch out for months now. Should Mr. Demydiuk also be charged for not running a simple windows update on government systems?

us0ron European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance

>I might be in a minority here

Nope. It's crazy. You don't go to the most popular restaurant in town and have them tell you to go get desert across the street because the superior food and experience hurt their sales.

Even looking at the commissions fact sheet (Search Engine market share) [0]. 3 of the 4 other companies are billion dollar enterprises. Microsoft decided to make it difficult to switch to Chrome/Google in Windows 10 (no more 1 click). With this consumers are still switching back.

Out of all the bad shit google does, this shouldn't even be on the radar.

For the other end of the story this is an interesting read [1].

[0] - http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1785_en.htm [1] - http://www.foundem.co.uk/Foundem_Google_Timeline.pdf

us0ron Secret Dots from Printer Outed NSA Leaker

> why she had no reasonable choice but to admit leaking

While I didn't make my first year of law school I feel like nearly every criminal defense attorney in this country would disagree with this statement.

us0ron Ask HN: What are some examples of successful single-person businesses?

He was not solo at the end but for a long time he was. I think right before he went PPC he started to hire people. Also where do you get the billions from?

us0ron Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

"server costs" (Google Cloud) is an affordable $450 million per year commitment.

They apparently have 2,360 employees doing who knows what (not growing the user base).

My favorite part:

"Spiegel laughed out loud when asked if he was worried about Facebook copying his features. “Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google.""

We'll check back in a year to see if he feels the same way.

us0ron Official list of phoned-home info revealed by Microsoft

Microsoft is absolutely out of control with this shit. I was recently flipping through BI articles and came across this [0]. “Using data from millions of its subscribers … The findings come from people who use Microsoft Word and/or Outlook”. WTF? Sure enough, I opted out of telemetry but that apparently doesn’t include the content of business documents and email. 7 clicks to find that option. I guarantee you 99% of Office 365 users have no idea this is happening.

Microsoft customers aren’t getting scroogled, they are getting straight fucked. Not only are they slurping everything imaginable up, but actual people are going through the data and doing stories on business insider.

My problem is I actually like their products. I’m cheering for the day the EU (the US won’t do anything so sadly I have to cheer for a foreign government) wakes up and slaps them around. Hopefully it’s hard enough to get them to change their ways.

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-data-the-most-confu...

us0ron Alabama House bill would require Internet porn filters

Very forward thinking like their immigration laws some years back.