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You seem to have a weird understanding of web services. All of pinboard's servers belong to pinboard. All of pinboards hard drives belong to pinboard. All of t

by idlewan 12y ago

You seem to have a weird understanding of web services. All of pinboard's servers belong to pinboard. All of pinboards hard drives belong to pinboard. All of the bits on those hard drives belong to pinboard. Your private data on pinboard's server belongs to pinboard. This is how web services work. If the web service couldn't access its own data, it wouldn't be able to operate. You can only assume that some bits are yours (to use your terms: your private belongings) when it runs on your own service/when your programs are the only ones with access to it. Pinboard is not a hosting company (a la DigitalOcean), it's a web service, i.e. it's not a hotel, it's not a bank giving you a safe.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
If the web service couldn't access its own data, it wouldn't be able to operate. He intentionally created a program to trawl through data which was explicitly marked by users as private. He didn't do that for operational reasons.
- tptacek 12y ago
  No, once again, what you just wrote is a lie. You can be cavalier with logic, consistency, tone, thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and even basic correctness. You cannot be cavalier with immediately evident facts. No amount of squirreling back to how Pinboard actually touches private links in this experiment will ever make what you wrote here truthful. It is much better to lose an argument, even one you're right about, than to be a liar.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    This is the most hurtful comment I've ever received on HN, and it's the only one that's ever made me want to leave the site altogether. You didn't even explain how, precisely, I'm a liar. You know what a liar is? It's someone who deliberately goes out of their way to distort the truth in order to gain some kind of advantage, even when they know they're not being truthful. Do you think I'm sitting here trying to win this debate merely because I have a problem with being wrong? If that's the case, then I had no idea you thought so lowly of me. This isn't about even about me. Fact: When a user submits a bookmark to Pinboard and flags the bookmark as 'private,' they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That includes privacy from the admin: it's acceptable for them to use the data for debugging or to test new features, but not to write a script whose purpose is to delve through data marked as private. Fact: The owner deliberately wrote a script whose purpose was to go through private data. You can read the original blogpost on the topic. It doesn't matter that it was for an experiment for the betterment of all of the web. The fact is, he didn't seek consent, and users had no idea their data that they flagged as 'private' were being examined by his script. Now, you can call me a charlatan, a dilettante, or whatever other harmful thing you wish to call me, but I have no idea how this case warrants me being called a liar. Normally, I'd let this drop, but you have publicly targeted my character and reputation. I'd like an explanation, please.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Yes. I'm saying you've gone out of the way to distort the truth. Exhibit A: your second "fact": not a fact. What the site is actually doing is right there in the link the guy who runs the site showed you. You have options available to you besides seething about this and leaving the site. Curiosity: what's your Pinboard account name? Mine's the same as my HN name.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        From the blogpost: "The data we will examine will include private bookmarks, which make up about half of all Pinboard bookmarks." It's not a direct quote since I'm on mobile, because I had to get out of the house and go for a walk after one of my heroes called me a liar. But it's factually accurate. What part isn't? I'd like an answer to this question: Would you hire a liar? Someone you believe would go out of their way to be deliberately untruthful? Rather than even try to figure out if there was some sort of misunderstanding, you went straight for calling me a liar. You, of all people. I am not seething. I'm quite hurt. Also, the fact that half of all Pinboard links are marked 'private' should give some indication that people commonly use Pinboard as a repository for links they don't want to associate with themselves publicly. That's what we're paying for. EDIT: Here's the full quote, from https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/ To run the experiment, I am going to be drawing a few thousand links at random from the entire pool of Pinboard bookmarks. This will include private bookmarks, which make up about half the Pinboard collection.
        tptacek 12y ago
        And here is what you wrote: He intentionally created a program to trawl through data which was explicitly marked by users as private. And here's what you wrote earlier: you'd specifically and intentionally create a program whose sole purpose was to analyze private user data and report on the results. He did no such thing. Perhaps, instead of directing all your energy into maximizing the feels you generate from being called on something, you could instead introspect and re-evaluate and consider that maybe you said something very wrong. People do that all the time. They do not ritually kill their accounts when that happens. The older, wiser ones are likely to just acknowledge it and apologize. Some of the somewhat younger, dumber ones, like me, have done that too. We are both crudding the thread up now, so I'm going to stop posting about this.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I could have worded this more carefully. I apologize.

by idlewan 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

If the web service couldn't access its own data, it wouldn't be able to operate. He intentionally created a program to trawl through data which was explicitly marked by users as private. He didn't do that for operational reasons.

tptacek 12y ago
No, once again, what you just wrote is a lie. You can be cavalier with logic, consistency, tone, thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and even basic correctness. You cannot be cavalier with immediately evident facts. No amount of squirreling back to how Pinboard actually touches private links in this experiment will ever make what you wrote here truthful. It is much better to lose an argument, even one you're right about, than to be a liar.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  This is the most hurtful comment I've ever received on HN, and it's the only one that's ever made me want to leave the site altogether. You didn't even explain how, precisely, I'm a liar. You know what a liar is? It's someone who deliberately goes out of their way to distort the truth in order to gain some kind of advantage, even when they know they're not being truthful. Do you think I'm sitting here trying to win this debate merely because I have a problem with being wrong? If that's the case, then I had no idea you thought so lowly of me. This isn't about even about me. Fact: When a user submits a bookmark to Pinboard and flags the bookmark as 'private,' they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That includes privacy from the admin: it's acceptable for them to use the data for debugging or to test new features, but not to write a script whose purpose is to delve through data marked as private. Fact: The owner deliberately wrote a script whose purpose was to go through private data. You can read the original blogpost on the topic. It doesn't matter that it was for an experiment for the betterment of all of the web. The fact is, he didn't seek consent, and users had no idea their data that they flagged as 'private' were being examined by his script. Now, you can call me a charlatan, a dilettante, or whatever other harmful thing you wish to call me, but I have no idea how this case warrants me being called a liar. Normally, I'd let this drop, but you have publicly targeted my character and reputation. I'd like an explanation, please.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Yes. I'm saying you've gone out of the way to distort the truth. Exhibit A: your second "fact": not a fact. What the site is actually doing is right there in the link the guy who runs the site showed you. You have options available to you besides seething about this and leaving the site. Curiosity: what's your Pinboard account name? Mine's the same as my HN name.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      From the blogpost: "The data we will examine will include private bookmarks, which make up about half of all Pinboard bookmarks." It's not a direct quote since I'm on mobile, because I had to get out of the house and go for a walk after one of my heroes called me a liar. But it's factually accurate. What part isn't? I'd like an answer to this question: Would you hire a liar? Someone you believe would go out of their way to be deliberately untruthful? Rather than even try to figure out if there was some sort of misunderstanding, you went straight for calling me a liar. You, of all people. I am not seething. I'm quite hurt. Also, the fact that half of all Pinboard links are marked 'private' should give some indication that people commonly use Pinboard as a repository for links they don't want to associate with themselves publicly. That's what we're paying for. EDIT: Here's the full quote, from https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/ To run the experiment, I am going to be drawing a few thousand links at random from the entire pool of Pinboard bookmarks. This will include private bookmarks, which make up about half the Pinboard collection.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        And here is what you wrote: He intentionally created a program to trawl through data which was explicitly marked by users as private. And here's what you wrote earlier: you'd specifically and intentionally create a program whose sole purpose was to analyze private user data and report on the results. He did no such thing. Perhaps, instead of directing all your energy into maximizing the feels you generate from being called on something, you could instead introspect and re-evaluate and consider that maybe you said something very wrong. People do that all the time. They do not ritually kill their accounts when that happens. The older, wiser ones are likely to just acknowledge it and apologize. Some of the somewhat younger, dumber ones, like me, have done that too. We are both crudding the thread up now, so I'm going to stop posting about this.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I could have worded this more carefully. I apologize.