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JoeSmithson

6 karma · joined September 1, 2020

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JoeSmithson··on Google: Open Letter to Australians
I also don't understand why it's necessarily bad...?

Countries face internal security threats. For example, in the UK, the 7/7 bombers were British, ditto the Manchester and London Bridge attacks. In fact most terrorists who attack Britain are British. Are MI5 not meant to spy on Brits?

JoeSmithson··on Why did the A-level algorithm say no?
> "Low-performing students at private schools are having their estimated Cs and Ds bumped up to As"

Do you have an example of this happening? It seems basically impossible from my understanding of the process.

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Edit: I think I understand how it can happen. A school with a cohort that is small, but large enough to get the algorithm, and a previously exemplary results, has an unusually bad pupil. I can see this happening in a subject like Further Maths where only good students take it

JoeSmithson··on Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels
It's similar to how Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones aren't cool, but still sell out stadiums.

Facebook (the company) will probably settle into a stable pattern like the BBC's radio lineup, where listeners roll from Radio 1, to Radio 2, to Radio 4 as they age.

JoeSmithson··on Teaching GPT-3 to Identify Nonsense
Wow. What did the training prompts look like?
JoeSmithson··on The anti-privacy EARN IT Act could change the internet as we know it
By this logic, no legislation can ever seek to reduce online child sexual exploitation
JoeSmithson··on The anti-privacy EARN IT Act could change the internet as we know it
What similarities do you see between EARN IT and IPA?
JoeSmithson··on The Navy Says It's Not Recruiting on Twitch. This Handbook Shows It Is
Exactly. Vice are trying to frame this like some massive gotcha, but the Navy lays out their strategy openly;

> “While we do not actively recruit on Twitch or through such streaming platforms, the esports team members are there to answer questions about their experiences in the Navy. If a user specifically asks an esports team member about joining the Navy, that team member will move that conversation to a private message to first find out if the interested user is over 17, and if that user is over 17 then the recruiter will thank them for their interest and refer them to Navy.com where they can talk to a recruiter.”

Vice prepends this quote with "In an email to Motherboard, the Navy insisted it wasn’t using Twitch to recruit." which seems like a bizarre mischaracterisation to me

JoeSmithson··on Swiss police automated crime predictions but has little to show for it
The vast majority of frontline policing is in response to an emergency call, so they have no control over where it is.

HN seems to think police spend their shift waiting for crimes to happen in front of them.

JoeSmithson··on Q2 2020 Update
> "they could be worth trillions"

Trillions? 50x the size of Ford? Bigger than, essentially, the current combined value of every car company in the world at the moment?

How?

JoeSmithson··on First Ever Image of a Multi-Planet System Around a Sun-Like Star Captured by ESO
But could images from several telescopes be combined through a Kalman filter or something to resolve higher details?

I am imagining some kind of internet enabled telescope that knows it's GPS location and orientation, and phones home it's imagery to a central server. If millions of people bought and used a product like that, is it theoretically possible to see the lunar rover?

JoeSmithson··on The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel surveillance tool
> "GCHQ has a program called ROYALCONCIERGE, where they hack the reservation systems of hotels to watch for targets renting rooms"

Your own source makes it clear that this system works/worked by intercepting emails.

> "then GCHQ sends teams ahead of time to [...] assassinate them"

Unless Snowden buried the lede quite spectacularly, I think this is not true.

JoeSmithson··on Essays on programming I think about a lot
The reason UDP is less leaky is not because it meets any guarantee better, but because it guarantees less
JoeSmithson··on The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel surveillance tool
So essentially, no, they do not have "all my emails".

> "Instead, it's still stored on google's servers but they can access your emails via automated requests to google, via search terms or by providing your user handle"

You just said previously the exact opposite! That they can't query Google, but they have the data themselves.

> "Is that a meaningful difference, in terms of privacy?"

Yes, because it means Google are aware of what data they are being requested, and what they are sending in return.

The transparency reports for these companies show that the total number of requests is in the region of 10k/year - a lot in some senses, but nowhere near the level of surveillance many people seem to believe.

JoeSmithson··on The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel surveillance tool
Do you mind explaining precisely what you mean by "NSA has all my emails"?

Suppose I sent an email yesterday from my Gmail to a friend's Gmail, are you saying the text of this email is stored on an NSA machine?

JoeSmithson··on The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel surveillance tool
Your first link doesn't support your quote. The queries are sent to the data holder who send back the data, the agency does not have direct access
JoeSmithson··on Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters in Portland
If they don't have police powers, then yes.
JoeSmithson··on Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters in Portland
It's always possible to impersonate police, I'm not sure what your point is?

Wearing what the officers in the video are wearing - uniform with a prominent POLICE label - is sufficient to be identifying yourself as police, and would be impersonating a police officer if a member of the public did it.

JoeSmithson··on Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters in Portland
It says "POLICE" on their uniforms
JoeSmithson··on Coronavirus: Russian hackers target Covid-19 vaccine research
?

The point of the report is to provide the IOCs for the WellMail malware, which has never been reported before

JoeSmithson··on Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters in Portland
> "What's stopping some jackass in cosplay from pulling the same stunt?"

The ultimate answer to this is; potentially being prosecuted for kidnap and impersonating police.

Most police powers boil down to exclusive legal defences that non-police can't use.

JoeSmithson··on Coronavirus: Russian hackers target Covid-19 vaccine research
Here's the full advisory https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/files/Advisory-APT29-targets-COVID-1...
JoeSmithson··on Orthodox Privilege
> "a woman is someone who thinks they're a woman" which is a clearly nonsensical recursive definition

This is a perfectly meaningful recursive definition.

JoeSmithson··on Orthodox Privilege
Harvard is not the most powerful institution on earth, nor do people from Harvard run all the more powerful institutions, nor, even if that were true would it mean Harvard itself is necessarily powerful.

To pick a random and specific example of an institution I consider more powerful than Harvard, how about... the Spanish Army?

JoeSmithson··on Atlas of Surveillance
Yes that's precisely my point - there would still be parallel construction but there would be nothing illegal
JoeSmithson··on Andean condor can fly for 100 miles without flapping wings
Exactly, it's more like suspending yourself from your armpits
JoeSmithson··on Atlas of Surveillance
No, you don't have an absolute right to know all the details of how an investigation was conducted. You don't necessarily get to see the intelligence that supported a search warrant, for example.
JoeSmithson··on Atlas of Surveillance
Parallel construction is still used in the UK. That's my point - it is used to conceal sources in a wide variety of circumstances, and is orthogonal to any issues regarding illegality of evidence.
JoeSmithson··on Atlas of Surveillance
Yes, but what if the cameras are not illegally placed, but in fact put there with a warrant. Then there is nothing illegal going on at all, but it would still be in LE interest to parallel how they know about the drugs, so that they can continue using the camera and maybe find out where the next shipment is going to be as well.
JoeSmithson··on Atlas of Surveillance
I have read the other replies, that don't appear to have been made by anyone with any experience of parallel construction.
JoeSmithson··on Atlas of Surveillance
No, not necessarily. In the UK, for example, all phone intercept is always inadmissible.

The main incentive for paralleling something is to protect the source, to maintain its effectiveness.

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