anonymous246

WHOA! And I lose respect for another Internet legend. :(

Interesting. I can't see the upvotes but your comment didn't go gray on my downvote. I guess the YC/Airbnb/"laws don't apply on the Internet" fanboys are out in force just like I expected.

Nice spin: he's been charged for "excessive downloading".

Way to ignore the physical break-in to install a computer directly on a network switch. I, for one, hope that he gets a criminal record at the very least (plea deal). This really puts the crime in a different league.

Unless I have my facts wrong, in which I'm willing to be corrected.

Hmm, so Gmail showing you ads based on the email you're currently reading is unlawful? I think you have a weird (i.e., excessively narrow) definition of "target advertising to inviduals".

I liked fun things like this. Within reason. And this is within reason.

No, imho it's not bias. For wild fish, the US enforces the quantity of fish that can be taken much more effectively, than, say China/Japan.

Second, the regulations/practices on the environmental impact of fish farms on the nearby sea are probably better in the US than elsewhere (many fish farms are in the backwaters of an ocean).

Do you really find it hard to believe that the USA has higher standards of environmental protection than other countries?

Give your taste buds a break. You would rather buy fruit shipped halfway across the world (i.e., fruit designed for survive storage rather than taste good) rather than visit the local farmer's market? WTF.

I make it a point to not buy fruit from Chile, because I am voting with my taste buds that I want good fruit not cheap fruit.

My favorite fruit is the peach, and I wait for summer and farmer's markets so that I can get some ripe fruit (ever noticed how the supermarket peaches are usually unripe and never really ripen? they seem to go directly from unripe to rotten).

Maybe you live in North Dakota or some such remote place and Chilean fruit is all you get.

Anyway, just an excuse for me to sing the praises of California peaches. :)

Holy crap: "routinely have Netflix playing in the background as they sit at home during the day". How wasteful! No wonder ISPs want metered usage etc.

Are you sure there's no "permananent storage"? Who has verified that?

Second thing: there have been numerous instances of TSA workers leering at the scanner screens as people (esp attractive women) walk through. There have definitely been instances of attractive women being "randomly" selected.

If you think petty bureaucrats should have the power to leer at a curve-revealing outline of you and your loved ones in private at their whim, I'm sorry but you're just too complaisant for a strong democracy.

On a related note, how do you feel about airport toilet/shower "security" cameras with a promise that the tapes are deleted every hour? You know, just to prevent people from smoking drugs there. Airport is a public place, so it should be ok to watch you at all times, right?

You're acting wealthy. I hope you are. :)

I think you're missing the conflict between allowing reasonable search and the right against self-incrimination when the thing being searched is an encrypted laptop.

At least agree that there is a conflict here; otherwise you're just being dense.

AFAIK the govt. cannot compel (legally) anybody to reveal the combination to a ticking time-bomb; or the location of a murder weapon etc. How the hell is asking for a passphrase any different? Do you really not understand the nuance here?

The other point is that AFAIK the govt. has never asserted the right to compel a handwritten note to be deciphered. The govt. doesn't assert the right to systematically read people's mail (even postcards); but they do so wrt electronic comms. I think we can safely state that almost all comm. is going to be electronic in the future. That's why this is important. This is yet another example of the govt. trying to trim back rights that the hoi polloi have enjoyed for a couple of centuries.

As to why this is important: you might have read the quote that six lines by any man's hand are enough to hang him.

Sorry, I meandered a little there.

I'm highly unconvinced by your statement that #1 is taking people for a ride. If anything the pushover (#2) is the one doing so: he gets to be people's friend thereby gaining a certain amount of protection from the consequences of his actions.

#1 is probably going to alienate a lot of people and make himself vulnerable to a whisper campaign etc.

Anyway, that's been my experience.

Interesting experiment which suffers from the problem that all psychology experiments have: based upon observations of college students. I've been around the block a few times and I definitely don't now perceive respectful people as weak.

I think he's talking about the repeated rebuffs to the calls for audits of the supposed gold at Fort Knox by people such as Ron Paul (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/31/rep-paul-calls-fo...)

The "conspiracy" theory goes that this gold has either been loaned (that's why Ron Paul phrased his question to also check if they're "obligated") or sold to drive down gold price thereby making dollars are more attractive investment than gold. Hence the call for an audit. The "conspiracy" theory further suggests that all the world's central banks are doing this.

Holy cow. This thing is even better than PwdHash (ability to avoid special chars in particular, and multiple platforms supported, and it's actually being maintained). Thanks!

Yeah, nobody can prevent a leaked password from being used to the site from which it was leaked.

This extension is helpful because people reuse passwords: a leaked password cannot be used to causes damage on other sites.

Obviously, I agree that sites shouldn't store passwords in plaintext, but good luck enforcing that.

Obligatory post I make on these stories: Use PwdHash for Firefox and Chrome. It's very low overhead and provides and extra layer of protection from lazy programmers.

Yes, I was aware of that quote. Baio's article is (intentionally?) vague on when he offered to license the art. Once you cross a certain threshold, emotions take over and the artist might have just felt violated and decided to "take his ball and go home". If he offered to license after a few months of saying "fuck you" (from the artist's perspective), it is easy to imagine a post-fact justification like the above to deny a license.

Even if Baio's first respnse itself offered to license, at the very least the "happier arrangement" would have been that $32.5k would have still been in Baio's pocket. In the absence of information about when Baio offered to license, I'd remain unconvinced that no licensing deal would have been possible.

I, for one, was glad to see an Internet celebrity whacked by an individual artist. As somebody else pointed out, the $32.5k he got probably went straight to the artist's lawyers. It was pretty telling that Baio licensed the music but not the cover art. The blog article never explains why his chiptune versions of the music don't count as fair use. And he admits he didn't accept the copyright infringement claim immediately but stalled for seven months.

I am almost certain a different, happier arrangement could have been worked out if he'd agreed to license the artwork right at the beginning.

So your point being that to the service the same population it costs more if the population is concentrated in a smaller area like in a city, rather than dispersed in suburbs? I hope I am reading you correctly.

I'd submit that the experience with broadband/cell phone costs+coverage in the US vs. other countries shows that it's cheaper to provide services if population density is higher.

Which of these "costs" do not exist in suburbs? (except subway, the analog of which is highways to the suburbs). All of those are present in suburbs too.

Sorry about the wrong info.

AFAIK, no. Anybody can pay LinkedIn to see any profile's extended data. They have rate limits and things like that to maximize revenue and prevent abuse.

This startup somehow convinced LinkedIn to let its users get at a subset of this data without a separate charge for it users.

My cynical take on the law: the purpose of the law is to settle disputes nonviolently, not necessarily justly.

The only consolation is things would be even more expensive if it was a "Gangs of New York"-style world today.

Off topic/meta: In the days when comment scores used to be shown, I could do the HN-equivalent of saying "hear, hear!" [or as the Internet says it: "here, here" :)] by upvoting a "thank you" note like the above. Now, if I really want to let you know that I too liked your comment, I have to post a "me too!" comment like this one. Anyway, thanks. TIL about "return oriented programming".

See my previous point. Patent cases pay for themselves too. But the federal govt. is so strapped for money that it takes money from these depts. And Congress is notorious for passing unfunded mandates. Unless you address specifics like this, I'm afraid what you are saying is just wishful thinking.

Although I disagree with you, I applaud you for your eloquence.

AFAIK, immigrants (whether legal or illegal) are in a gray area wrt constitutional protections. For example, on entry all aliens (including perm. residents) are fingerprinted whereas citizens are not. The lowly officer examining your papers can decide to not admit an alien into the country if you mouth off, and he's pretty much the final authority.

I seriously doubt any of things you describe are "problematic" from a constitutional point of view. It seems well-settled that aliens need not be treated the same as citizens.

There's a finite amount of bandwidth any society can spend on immigration, not an infinite amount (and hint: it's negligible).

At the moment, so-called liberals whatever reason are more concerned about ILLEGAL immigrants than legal immigrants.

Do you know how many legal immigrants' green cards got delayed the last time there was an amnesty program for illegals? Do you think the US govt. will hire more immigration dept. workers if illegals start getting legalized. They don't even hire people in the patent office! Every legal immigrant in the green card queue hopes that an amnesty program won't get passed until he/she gets the green card.

IMHO, there are practical reasons why gdilla is concerned about illegals getting preferential treatment.

The "anyone can make it" part is true: lots of LEGAL immigrants and their children have done far better than their peers in their home countries (facetious example: Obama, but there are many many unknown people like that).

For all it faults, America remains the most meritocratic country in the world. Discouraging ILLEGAL immigration should not lower America's standing in that respect.

1) Was the US a welfare state when that poem was written? From seeing "Gangs of New York", I think not. :)

2) You do realize that Asians were excluded from immigrating to the US until very recently, right? http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/immigration_c...