Hacker News Reader

B0Zon Ask HN: Anxiety is limiting my enjoyment of a wonderful career. Can you relate?

I like this. Sounds like you work with a handful of people with managable egos who don't feel threatened by one anothers' skill / competence. I personally would count myself lucky to have this environment as this is the exception to the rule for most workplaces.

B0Zon A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

Honest question. Don't you think this kind of AI is precisely the AI that Gates, Musk, and Hawking are warning against?

B0Zon Goodbye Heroku

As a seasoned engineer, I could not agree more with the justifications you provide.

As a business owner who's customers are actively engaged with my staff who need servers and resources to be available during the day when, you know, my CUSTOMERS are awake, your recommendation for outage windows would be completely ignored.

You schedule outages around the people who pay the bills, not the people who don't.

B0Zon Drop the ego and prove "I could make that so much better"

didn't take long for someone to miss the point entirely.

B0Zon UX Crash Course: Fundamentals

Just my $0.02, but it seems to me that if the site is akin to a book as you say, wouldn't the behavior you're suggesting doesn't make sense (TOC, chapter, TOC, chapter) work for a technical reference? The successive pages are certainly quite brief but in a way, isn't it a technical reference?

B0Zon Weilos (YC S13) Moves From Fitness Coaching To Weight-Loss Selfies

Any plans for an Android version? Disappointed that I can't check this app out. (Or at least an Android sign up page so I'm not missed when I forget about it in the next 20 minutes.)

B0Zon How I reverse engineered my bank's security token

Article is 404 inside of 5 hours. That's fairly swift. (assuming OP didn't remove it himself)

B0Zon Washing Hands in Hot Water Wastes Energy, Study Says

Maybe. But my hands feel better with hot water.

B0Zon Snowden Disclosures Finally Hit 12 on a Scale of 1 to 10

I have a question from the article that I hope someone here can answer... What's the difference between simple encryption and the "strong" encryption Snowden was insisting on? Truecrypt volumes?

B0Zon The cardinal UX mistake we made, you might be making it too

http://imgur.com/TdrXpxS.png

Funny. I was thinking a non-disappearing modal on a mobile browser would be a fairly cardinal UX mistake. Call me crazy.

B0Zon Students Question the NSA at Recruiting Session [audio]

In a sanitized or controlled scenario, this makes sense. Passion and emotion, however, are impossible to strip from opinions in the context of the Snowden revelations that started all of this. Having the scab ripped off the NSA has altered the perspective of entire generations. Frankly I think the students handled themselves remarkably well.

B0Zon Keith Alexander's Statement to the NSA Workforce

They look like bigger fools now for giving him the Nobel than they did when he hadn't accomplished anything.

B0Zon A public cloud taking a stand against government intrusion

Again, we are not the police and not a court of law. Authorities can and do require access to customer data from time to time in a way justified by local law; we comply with the law in those cases.

Really?! And what are you suggesting your principled stance is going to be when they shove a law in your face that violates and contradicts another law or an edict or the US Constitution you grew up believing was sacrosanct?

The problem is that they make any law they want to make, then keep it secret. Then they enforce the law they just made, forcing you into a position where you either have to give them the middle finger or subject your business to the possibility of being shut down - legally. Should you decide you want to challenge the enforcement of a law you believe is illegal, on behalf of one of your customers, you can't tell the press, you can't have an open proceeding in view of public scrutiny, and you can't inform your customer of the challenge. When the ruling eventually comes down (from a court who's sworn to as much secrecy as the agency you were fighting), you aren't even allowed to share that with anyone either.

I applaud what you probably believe is a line in the sand. But we can't even get to the real debate of privacy until we are allowed to challenge the very instruments that lay claim to authority over us... in public. It's that simple.

B0Zon On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

> The moment any non-US citizen is using a service provided by an US company, he is giving up any right to due process, privacy and data security (as far as this service is concerned). Which is risky and short-sighted to say the least.

I realize this is a crappy response, but the only solution is to not use the services of countries whose laws do not explicitly protect you. As a US citizen, I refuse to use any services that can avoid that are provided by China for this very reason. (aside from the fact that I can't read Chinese.)

But... it's really, really important you understand something else here... The rights and protections you are correctly suggesting are NOT granted to you because of the limited scope and application of our Constitution, are the exact same rights and protections of mine, as a US citizen, that are currently being violated. Were I a citizen of another country, I would be just as, if not more, incensed about what has been claimed about the privacy rights of my data recently. But imagine what it's like to have grown up in a country where the guarantee of these rights is so ingrained in our minds that they are barely (almost NEVER) questioned, to find out that they are being violated at will and without the legal right to challenge or even the right to know what those violations are.

I can not even begin to articulate to you the degree of uncontainable rage I and many, many people I know have regarding what is going on right now. I can't recall a single time in my entire life, which is not an insignificant number, that I have been more angry or concerned about anything. NOT F!*&%$ ONCE!

B0Zon On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

I hear the point. Seriously I do. But the Constitution the US is bound by is not an agreement between the US government and citizens of the world. It's an agreement between the US government and the citizens for whom it claims jurisdiction. It's scope and application is not only limited, but intentionally and wisely limited. Were it not, we would be imperial Britain and we all know how that worked out.

B0Zon U.S. charges Edward Snowden with espionage

Does anyone else smell "Friday Night News Dump"?

B0Zon On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

> I don't understand how this argument that the constitution of a country (which represents its highest thoughts and ideals) can be applied selectively (i.e., only to citizens). If the thoughts contained therein regarding the rights of human beings are indeed 'True', then surely they should apply to all human beings?

You'll get little argument from most 'Mericans for your statement that these rights are human rights. The argument you will get is the rationality of transference. The difference between the OP and any American is citizenship and history.

US citizens of today are beneficiary to a Constitution that was crafted and bled for, over 200 years ago, with nasty war for our independence and claim to self governance. I didn't fight this battle. My father didn't fight this battle. Neither did his father. But one of the dumb-luck results of not only being born in the US to American citizens, are the benefits bestowed upon me by the war that was fought for the benefit of future generations (i.e. ME).

Now... this is going to sound really pointed and "f* y", but there's no other way to say it. Those 200+ year old men and women didn't fight this war for people in other countries, they did it for their own sons, daughters, and many generations that would come.

I agree! Those rights that were fought for should be universal human rights for every single person on the planet. But that's why you have to fight whatever government collects your taxes for those very rights on your own.

Respectfully.

B0Zon Show HN: Responding to NSA spying with a simple consumer VPN service

This exchange may provide some insight... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914546

B0Zon Show HN: Responding to NSA spying with a simple consumer VPN service

One of the items I'm going to be most interested in from your service (when the time comes for you guys to start working on it) will be the TOS and/or practices you put in place.

I've been a ViprVPN customer before. I had a question or perhaps it was an issue I called them about and the person I was communicating with told me what VPN server I last connected to and when I connected. Sure, to do any kind of troubleshooting, this would have been necessary and important information. But I was concerned enough about the unsolicited disclosure that I cancelled the service immediately.

DuckDuckGo can claim a reasonably high interest in protecting my privacy because they simply do not collect data that the big search engine does. Collecting and storing this data would make them a target for undisclosed, unchallengeable, and unwarranted surveillance. This has enormous appeal to me.

Having said that, have you guys discussed (loosely) what data you will be collecting?

B0Zon Show HN: Responding to NSA spying with a simple consumer VPN service

There are 3 platforms I care about, Windows, Android, and Linux.

For the last 2 weeks I've been taking actions that attempt to pull-back my public footprint and re-exert control over my privacy (admittedly illusory) to a point where I feel more comfortable. One of the biggest "oh crap" moments was when I realized my phone is powered by software derived from a Google product.

Windows desktop should be straight forward enough to connect.

Personal Linux server farm with services that are open to the general Internet, but for outbound traffic not related to something I serve, my servers are at the mercy of the security of the feed I have.

As far as how close it has to be to an exit, I'm completely indifferent. There are trade-offs that I'm willing to accept (in some cases, extreme) as I record over 20 years of habitual internet behavior.

B0Zon Show HN: Responding to NSA spying with a simple consumer VPN service

Without having visited your URL, or read your TOS, or evaluated your service for ease of use / viability, I will tell you right now that I would gladly pay a cost equivalent to what I pay monthly for broadband for a VPN service that's reliable and can protect 100% of my Internet traffic in transit. (Exit point, destination points are a whole 'nother animal.)

B0Zon The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

This is frustrating and it's a false choice. "The Internet" is otherwise known as the people who were most likely to purchase an XBox 1 before hearing about the draconian DRM policies. If the XBox 360 were a horrible product, MS would have heard very very little from "The Internet".

Who they heard from was a fan base who very much still enjoy their XBox 360s and were truly looking forward to an improved product with some sick innovations that only companies like Microsoft can deliver. They heard from this collection of people because in addition to the excellent innovations, they tacked on completely unreasonable restrictions that make the product all but completely useless if you CHOSE not to connect it to the network or have the spying eye watching your every move, and then twisted themselves into a pretzel trying to either make these sound like a feature instead of handcuffs or failing to explain that you could turn off the advanced features of the Kinect.

In response to hearing from "The Internet", instead of actually listening to what was being said and making some reasonable changes to the restrictions, they stopped dead in their tracks, turned 180 degrees, then killed many of the innovations that could have been modified while still providing consumers with an actual choice.

I'm sooooo tired of being told I'm too stupid to understand something. By my government, and by big companies who once commanded my respect.

B0Zon Michael Hastings, 'Rolling Stone' Contributor, Dead at 33

Love her or hate her, Rachael Maddow said of Hastings tonight (paraphrased from memory) "There are a lot of journalists who hope to be or claim to be fearless in their reporting. Michael Hastings was fearless. Most people got the impression after talking to him briefly that he wasn't like everyone else -- you were NOT going to be able to ignore him."

He was an infrequent guest on Up with Chris Hayes. I remember fast forwarding through most guests verbal essays to listen to his.

He'll be sorely missed... in an era when we need people like him the most.

B0Zon [dead]

I'm trying hard to be rational here and not jump to conclusions.

B0Zon Facebook Releases Data, Including All National Security Requests

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/15/4432368/google-opts-out-of...

Apparently, it was an agreement based on negotiating between the companies in question and the US Government. It makes me sick to my stomach that in spite of the relative uselessness of the exact count of requests, that the Government is just as interested in presenting a positive spin as they are claiming that the acknowledging the mere existence of the requests presents a risk to national security.

B0Zon Facebook Releases Data, Including All National Security Requests

> "We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive"

God Damnit! When did we start using the total number of violations of the fourth amendment as the yardstick by which we measure it's importance or relevance to a reasonable expectation of privacy? "Hey, hey, hey... we ONLY violated 'x' number of people's rights. Not the 'x' times 'y' you are accusing us of doing, therefore..."

Putting that aside for just a moment, their response lumps in and equivocates the well-intentioned, and IMHO well-justified, search for a missing child with fourth amendment violations of millions of American's under the guise of national security and terrorism.

They still don't get it. The government still doesn't get it. Feigning outrage is not a good transparency policy.

I've never once considered myself a Libertarian. It's never so much as crossed my mind. I'm not even an excitable or rash person. But the recent exposure of the breadth and scope of the shielded activities of the NSA has caused me to give a long, hard, well-reasoned review of how I vote.

B0Zon Facebook Releases Data, Including All National Security Requests

Goddamned that's a brilliant take I hadn't considered. Well said.

B0Zon Tor and HTTPS

Maybe I'm misinformed, but I thought the big problem has less to do with data in transit than it does with the destinations (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc) working hand-in-hand with the NSA? What am I missing?

B0Zon I'm a loser and I want to change that - now

>> Somehow, I did get back into it a few years later, but I never really became proficient at it. Again, I was good at learning the basics, reading code, messing around with code snippets on the command line. But I never built anything of value.

> Stop reading code. Stop messing around. Find something that needs to be built (preferably by someone other than yourself). Then build it. Trust yourself and trust the process of building. You will learn what you need when you need it. I promise.

>> I don't have too much time left. My 20ies are gone.

> Bullshit. I didn't do my first startup until I was 32. Stop thinking like that. If you're a programmer, your prime is still 20 years ahead of you. (Believe me, I know.)

The single biggest thing I got out of this. Thanks for your $0.02 edw519.

B0Zon U.S. student debt: $966B as of Q4, 2012

The problem with your solution is that the majority of student loans are government insured Stafford loans and a "defaulted" loan is still paid back to the lender for full principle by the American taxpayer. Support for this solution would be miniscule.

In an aside, loans made to college kids to get a quality education is not a ridiculous loan on ridiculous terms to people who can't afford them.