john_b

46 ms·

361.
by john_b 13y ago
> "In a letter to the MIT community announcing the release of the report, Reif wrote, “The review panel’s careful account provides something we have not had until now: an independent description of the actual events at MIT and of M
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by john_b 13y ago
The number of welfare recipients + public sector being approximately equal to the private sector is common in most Western societies? That sounds pretty implausible to me. I think he has some legitimate, objective concerns that you have too
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by john_b 13y ago
Yes, but they won't do it until it hurts their bottom line. If I owned a European cloud business of any kind I would be heavily advertising to the US market right now. When customers start leaving major US internet companies because th
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by john_b 13y ago
Never mind Mint, if your bank accounts are in the US your financial data is already available for inspection by the IRS, DHS, and probably many other three letter agencies. I'd wager that Mint, not being a bank, has far less an obligat
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by john_b 13y ago
Ordinary community workers aren't charged with the responsibility of executing state-sponsored violence against people deemed threatening or unlawful, and are allowed significant legal protection in their duties. Given that context, he
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by john_b 13y ago
In terms of hardware safeguards, is it really an improvement when we have to rely on proprietary hardware safeguards that may have government "special features" silently built in, vs open source software that can be inspected by t
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by john_b 13y ago
I'm not a physicist and the paper is paywalled so I'm speculating, but the speed of light in this crystal is probably much lower than the speed of light in a vacuum, and it's the latter that puts an uppper limit on the rate a
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by john_b 13y ago
These are qualitatively different kinds of relationships. PG functions as an advisor for YC startups, someone who can influence the direction of your life greatly for a period of time. The difference between failure and success of an early
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by john_b 13y ago
Paying months or years of salary to an incompetent employee also penalizes an incompetent employer pretty effectively.
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by john_b 13y ago
I've been considering switching back to Firefox lately and this may be enough to push me over the edge.
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by john_b 13y ago
"non-funny" and "grotesque" are both subjective judgments and are no basis for imprisoning someone. You're suggesting that someone who demonstrated no capability or motive to carry out his "threat" should
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by john_b 13y ago
That's a valid point, and indiscriminately dumping data definitely deserves some punishment (though far less than the Gitmo style treatment he got, if you ask me). However, the most relevant point is that, based on what is being writte
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by john_b 13y ago
Even as an adult, when I'm really focused on something my right leg gets a mind of its own and just starts bouncing up and down rapidly. Maybe there's an evolutionary purpose to it (increasing blood circulation perhaps), but I&#
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by john_b 13y ago
Bradley Manning is rotting away in some military jail and the average American still thinks he's a traitor. If powerful interests want to spin your story a particular way, they will spin your story. Snowden at least has a voice while h
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by john_b 13y ago
Right, because someone who exposes gross abuses of the law has every reason to trust that those he exposed will obey it during his trial.
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by john_b 13y ago
> "I wonder why they didn't think people would become overly apathetic in the meantime." The Founding Fathers were worried about this; they just didn't know of any systematic way to prevent it. I'm not sure the
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by john_b 13y ago
> "The government and the police should be here to protect us." With respect to invasions by foreign powers, yes. But neither the government nor the police can be expected to actively protect individual citizens. Protection
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by john_b 13y ago
This analogy has some flaws. For one, if you write an encrypted letter, the government (at least not to my knowledge) doesn't claim the right to keep it indefinitely just in case you're using it to communicate with your terrorist
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by john_b 13y ago
> "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't PRISM conducted within the bounds of the law?" If Americans had looked at the programs that preceded PRISM and the motivation behind them and instead asked "is this ethica
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by john_b 13y ago
Thankfully, one's legal rights don't depend on how "slimy" you are and abuses of the law remain abuses even when slimy entities are the ones abused.
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by john_b 13y ago
Frequently aerospace companies will have a limited number of licenses for various pieces of software. C++ as a language obviously doesn't have this limitation, but a limited number of licenses for various custom test suites and third p
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by john_b 13y ago
> "It's a sticky subject because nobody -- politician, man on the street, mother of children, or law-abiding citizen -- wants to come right out and say that he or she is advocating for prisoner's rights." True, but
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by john_b 13y ago
Actually, the explanations the article put forward were unrelated to the "male weakness" hypothesis. Riskier lifestyles, tougher treatment of their bodies by men, unspecified effects by testerone, and size differences were all lis
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by john_b 13y ago
At least he and Obama would have something in common then.
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by john_b 13y ago
Someone who can't see the "point" Snowden is trying to make obviously shouldn't offer him advice. But hey, if I got paid to rattle off my opinion on national TV regardless of its merit, I might bloviate too.
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by john_b 13y ago
It's an excerpt, so the style might fit better in the book, where hopefully the reader isn't thrown right into it and bombarded with it constantly. Even as an excerpted article, however, it needed to be edited much more. I skimmed
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by john_b 13y ago
The warning in that link is very interesting. The catch-22 you've described is why it's so important for as little to be classified as possible. When secrets are kept from the people who those secrets are intended to protect, it i
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by john_b 13y ago
A solution would propose a "how to"; I did not. I am merely pointing out a long term historical trend. If a person makes their living based on selling their time and specialized skills in exchange for money (as I currently do), th
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by john_b 13y ago
In many ways I think the industrial revolution has made us forget a very important historical fact. Prior to industrialization, "labor" was often little more than serfdom. "Labor" in the purest sense didn't own anyt
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by john_b 13y ago
> "Unlike its predecessor, Dotcom's new site Mega offers secure encryption, which he says protects each user's identity and data." I haven't kept up with Mega much lately, but does anyone know if the security i

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