ef4

56 ms·

601.
by ef4 13y ago
Because freedom has a cost, and not all software is equally important.
602.
by ef4 13y ago
> You still need to actually home your servers somewhere, which means a colo or VPS that is subject to the exact same laws. Nobody is going to dispute that a colo box is still vulnerable to targeted surveillance. But targeted surveillanc
603.
by ef4 13y ago
You're posing a false dichotomy. Skill is capital. And its worth relative to other forms of capital (cash, land) continues to rise. Consider what's required to start a new business today. You need less cash than ever before. The
604.
by ef4 13y ago
No, I'm actually ambitious and optimistic about the scope of this. Massive automation absolutely does not imply massive involuntary unemployment. We've actually been through this before. We used to require 90% of the population to
605.
by ef4 13y ago
It's even worse than you think, because several of the things you said in there don't actually make sense. It sounds like you possibly didn't manage to get the message encrypted at all, just signed. And how you exchange pub
606.
by ef4 13y ago
This problem is inherently transient. The worst case is that it takes a full generation for skills and customs to adapt. Skills like "reading" and "writing" were once the province of highly-educated specialists. They bec
607.
by ef4 13y ago
US military recruits are typically exposed to tear gas as part of their training on "NBC" threats (nuclear/biological/chemical). A major point of the exercise is to instill trust in your gas mask and your ability to use
608.
by ef4 13y ago
Asking whether this will hold up in court is asking the wrong question. National Security Letters themselves are highly unlikely to hold up in court. The whole premise rests on people being intimidated into not fighting it.
609.
by ef4 13y ago
It's simple: it's an easy way to belittle him. It's part of the broad character assassination we always see when somebody tries to make waves. How many people now hear of Julian Assange and think "he's kinda creepy
610.
by ef4 13y ago
Both Google and Facebook are in excellent position to actually bring public key crypto to the masses in a usable, it-just-works, kind of way. But of course both have every incentive not to do it.
611.
by ef4 13y ago
> If you are not able to manage your keys, which includes a simple unencrypted key-backup, you are doomed, even with a pretty interface. Too many hackers equate "good user experience" with "pretty interface". It'
612.
by ef4 13y ago
> You could build a fairly universal application for flashing DD-WRT That is definitely not the way to get mass adoption. Way too much friction. It's the difference between installing Ubuntu from DVD and buying an Android device: yo
613.
by ef4 13y ago
You don't need to get the user to open up ports to build a home server appliance that seamlessly works. You just need some people with routable IPs to serve as rendezvous points for the rest. These machines can be totally untrusted.
614.
by ef4 13y ago
The hassle of hosting your own stuff is really not the relevant barrier. That's merely a technical problem, and it could be solved by plucky startups or open source projects (like FreedomBox). The real barrier is social. Nothing you do
615.
by ef4 13y ago
I'm pretty sure the web-based interface is completely optional. When I tried it out a while ago, you started by downloading their client and setting up your master password locally.
616.
by ef4 13y ago
> It also made it much easier for the government to piggyback on that tracking infrastructure we ourselves are building. Not just easier: we made it possible. The government couldn't have created Facebook on their own. But now that
617.
by ef4 13y ago
Yeah, but I think this is a bit worse than that. If a faulty ethernet driver lets you compromise a laptop just by plugging it into a malicious network, that's a legitimate vulnerability, not really a case of "well, they had physical access"
618.
by ef4 13y ago
> And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to > play the game," "that's the system," "deal with it": you're > certainly free to ruin your own life, but leave the poor, > damn kids alone. It's a defense mechan
619.
by ef4 13y ago
> the basic you should memorize, because you will use them over and over again But that's a self-solving problem. Anything you truly use over and over again will become readily memorized. And people are demonstrably good at memorizing
620.
by ef4 13y ago
Oh, I know it's eminently playable, because I played it like a fiddle. I did extremely well, while investing the minimum effort required. My only secret for excelling at school was that my natural interests happened to coincide with the t
621.
by ef4 13y ago
If the world actually followed school-like rules, your analogy would be useful. But it doesn't. The recipe for "winning" the game of school is: - follow directions very carefully - be good at memorizing things - never challenge authority
622.
by ef4 13y ago
Which is why politics is the wrong tool for trying to solve this kind of problem.
623.
by ef4 13y ago
The prevalence of Javascript has nothing to do with the language itself and everything to do with the ecosystem. The web has become our operating system, and Javascript is its language.
624.
by ef4 13y ago
Not in the US. They're very rare in the US, and everywhere with indoor plumbing. People who are deliberately trying to get infected as a treatment for their Crohn's or arthritis have literally resorted to travelling to the third world.
625.
by ef4 13y ago
> Regulations are to prevent cynical, or stupid, people from offering dangerous untested unproven "treatments" at great cost to desperate and ill people. That's the rationale for the regulations, but it's not why we have them. The laws
626.
by ef4 13y ago
Even some worms that are specialized for humans can't complete their entire lifecycle in the gut. The mature worms produce eggs in the gut, but the eggs will only hatch in the soil. The larval stage stays in the ground, and then the young w
627.
by ef4 13y ago
My only pet peeve is with the photographers who still think it makes sense to price by the print. Please just set a price for your services and then give me the files. Printing used to be a value-added activity. It's not anymore, unless you
628.
by ef4 13y ago
Always remember that no amount of specialist skill by itself gets things done. Healthcare, and everything else, depends on the vast capital structure of our global economy. If you sent a great doctor back in time to the 15th century, she co
629.
by ef4 13y ago
If you parse the pronouns carefully, you'll see that both the mother and the partner are female. There are an awful lot of places where they legally cannot become spouses.
630.
by ef4 13y ago
> Humans are part of a universe where time is measured in billions of years and economics is largely irrelevant. Only if you have a narrow understanding of "economics". Economics is the study of scarcity and how to deal with it. For exa

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