39 karma · joined November 22, 2014
Not all people value the same things. That we can't give up freedom for security is still just an idea. How much of western culture is really better than something else and just not because we're prosperous.
Of course you can, you just need a mindset where you are fighting extremism rather than extremists.
The whole things is just a charade. Not because we suddenly want to stand up for free speech and civil rights. But because we are so terribly afraid of being just as wrong as the extremists. That we would know of, if not instigated, the terrible faith of hundreds of thousands of muslims in the last decade and didn't really do anything about it.
I just think the US government is the best organization in the world in asserting pressure and that Google, even if they really wanted to (which isn't clear), isn't going to end up with an agenda hugely contradictory to the US governments wishes. The US has a long history of using industry for geopolitical goals and the tech industry isn't any different.
If we do end up with a system that is in line with peoples fundamental rights I'll be the first one to commend them for it though.
I'm not even sure current e-mail systems are such a good tool. I would think chat for internal things and some CRM type system (leveraging e-mail) would be better. But yes as you said, easier said than done.
[0] There's probably a better word for this. A basically mean volatile data i.e. e-mail, working documents, logs etc.
There's clearly some good people working at worthwhile things at Google. My concern is that a lot of those things doesn't end up being pushed by Google. Not only because it might hurt themselves, but because of non-obvious outside influence.
We shouldn't forget that many things we accuse the NSA for like lack of accountability, overzealous collection of data, the undermining of privacy etc. are all things we can expect from a corporation.
No he doesn't come from a rich background. That's the point. A lot of people that end of rich come from a background where vanity is very important. They then have to spend a large part of their life trying to achieve that goal. That's why I don't care about "captains of industry". I don't expect any better, they've already "sold their soul".
I don't necessarily dislike people like that, because it can be very hard to opt-out of that life. The classic case is where you father works to much and neglects your mother, which self medicates a bit to much and in turn neglects you. So the only thing you know is trying to be your father to rationalize your sense of abandonment.
When people who doesn't have that background become rich and can do whatever they want, but instead opts-in to those values I think it's sad. Maybe he has personal problems of his own, or he just don't care anymore or whatever, I'm not going to be first in line to celebrate the guy. Because buying the most expensive house in the most vain place in the world is just not something I value.
Minecraft is still pretty cool though.
From the slides:
Page 19: "SSH [...] Potentially recover user names and passwords" Page 36: "SSH - often have router configurations and user credentials [...]"
No it's not. In fact it's pretty much the opposite.
http://www.greatschools.org/improvement/international-compar...