csilverman

11 ms·

91.
by csilverman 6y ago
Oh good! That's great. I hadn't realized that. I'm glad it worked out for him. I agree about damages. The consequences for this sort of thing should be steep enough that any officer/department who's tempted to do it
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by csilverman 6y ago
My undertanding of asset forfeiture was that its original intent was to target criminal enterprises. If you bust a drug cartel, their (often significant) assets might as well go towards the common good. And somehow, that turned into a syste
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by csilverman 6y ago
I'm neither a national security expert nor a terrorist, but if I wanted to pull off an attack like this, I'd be concerned that a test run—especially of this sophistication, which would likely get a lot of attention in certain quar
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by csilverman 6y ago
Someone else mentioned job security/contracts as a possible motivation. It makes sense. I'm less sure about the terrorist angle. The point of a terrorist act is to advance or discourage a specific political agenda; that only works
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by csilverman 6y ago
Yeah, arbitrary vandalism was the first option I considered. Can't rule it out, although whoever did this seems to have shown more caution/coordination than you'd expect from a couple of drunk idiots taking potshots at street
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by csilverman 6y ago
I actually hadn't considered the idea that they might have a financial interest in grid security. It makes a certain kind of sense.
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by csilverman 6y ago
I always wondered about this. First thing that crossed my mind at the time was that it was (1) idiots who thought it would be fun to cause high-profile trouble, or (2) terrorists, but it sounded a bit sophisticated for #1 and as far as I kn
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by csilverman 6y ago
Funny you mention that. In an earlier comment, I shared a link to the website of Tom Mahood, an engineer/Area-51 observer. Mahood had a theory that the lights seen over Area 51—moving in ways no known craft could maneuver—were, essenti
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by csilverman 6y ago
I was wondering that exact thing, especially after the command to not shoot it down unless it attempted to land. Seems to me that if I had a facility this sensitive, I’d want to see how the people running it reacted to someone—especially se
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by csilverman 6y ago
I have an iOS Shortcut that SSHs into my Mac and runs scripts. It’s pretty simple; I only use it to remotely launch/quit Slack, but I could probably do a lot more if I had a reason to. It’s cool to see somebody else mention Hazel. I lo
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by csilverman 6y ago
There are two parts of this article that stand out to me. "But frankly, I think that information is an important factor in how some people will choose to vote in the fall. And so we want to make sure that information is out there and
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by csilverman 6y ago
There's something called Servo, although from what I understand, it's not going to be presenting any mainstream competition to Chrome any time soon. https://servo.org/
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by csilverman 6y ago
I never get tired of reading this story. I remember spending a lot of time tinkering with Graphing Calculator as a kid—I didn't know how to actually model anything, but it was fun to tweak the demo models. I didn't realize it was
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by csilverman 6y ago
I'd say: - Start with the first one, but in the context of the second one. - Think about what you care about. "Stuff that makes me mad every day" might not be a bad way to at least kick-start your thinking. Your first answer
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by csilverman 6y ago
Honest question: how do people feel about physical keyboards on phones these days? I'm not going to knock this until I know more about it, but I would be a little surprised if there are a lot of folks who, after having gotten used to a
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by csilverman 6y ago
Agreed, although the iOS Shortcuts app did not even bother to tell me the server's response; it simply failed, so even if the server had returned a coherent error message, I think I still would have had to contact support to find out
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by csilverman 6y ago
You know, I could see—if this isn't out there already—a browser based on eliminating visual annoyances; essentially, something that operates a lot like iOS reader view, maybe like Brave but for popups and similar interruptions. My curr
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by csilverman 6y ago
Web browsing these days really feels like wandering through a market filled with panhandlers and pickpockets—you're just trying to look around, and everyone's up in your face demanding stuff in the most obnoxious way possible. As
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by csilverman 6y ago
Not sure if this is the story you're thinking of, but I do recall hearing a while ago about Chinese irons and kettles that came with some, er, undocumented features: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hacked-from-china-i
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by csilverman 6y ago
I look forward to the day when one of these makes an appearance on one of those prototype/collector forums. "So my friend who used to work at the DOE was getting rid of some stuff and he had this iPod, and it looks like a regular
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by csilverman 6y ago
I had an issue a little while ago where I was trying to get iOS's Shortcuts app to post to WordPress. I noticed that doing this seemed to crash every one of my websites within seconds. It was like flicking a switch: I’d run the Shortcu
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by csilverman 6y ago
Not trying to change the subject, but that's kind of an interesting question actually. Can Edward Snowden vote in US elections? As far as I know, he's still an American citizen, and he hasn't been technically convicted of any
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by csilverman 6y ago
Two possibilities come to mind: 1. My uninformed kneejerk guess is that Russia, for whatever reason, wants to be rid of Snowden. It's the only explanation for why Trump—who has no pressing reason to be thinking about Edward Snowden rig
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by csilverman 6y ago
If you're looking at what happened to the business owners in the article and thinking that that's a step in the right direction, I think there are a lot of criminal-justice/police reform folks who would prefer that you did no
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by csilverman 6y ago
Yeah, but calling it "defund" sounds a lot like "no more police, anywhere". I think a lot of the insanity here could have been avoided if this was presented as what it was intended to be—a reallocation of resources based
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by csilverman 6y ago
Tough question actually, because I know what it is intended to mean, and I also know what a lot of its most passionate devotees want it to mean. I didn't disagree with any of the thinking behind it: shifting more funding and responsi
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by csilverman 6y ago
At least it wasn’t the final name of the computer. https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Bicycle.txt
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by csilverman 7y ago
I agree. I can enjoy both, but I get a particular energy out of discussing ideas. Small talk about one's life or vacation is less interesting/energizing to me. And that's okay. I'm not sure why this had to involve a serm