hackerjam

Given the recent press of how civil forfeiture laws have been / are being abused by police departments in this country [1], the idea that the Obama Admninistration would try to float such an idea, much less try to get it passed into legislation is mind boggling. Just shows just how out of touch they really are.

1. http://www.cato.org/events/policing-profit-abuse-civil-asset...

the permalink for this article can be found here:

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/11/zero-knowled...

a good reflective "think" piece on how centralized systems are being undermined by innovation. it's amazing just how many potentially disruptive technologies have be introduced or come into mainstream thinking in just the past year alone.

also it is worth checking out the original article first, published a little over a year ago [1].

[1] http://fee.org/freeman/detail/fifty-ways-to-leave-leviathan

awareness is good. but what i want to know is how do we start defending ourselves against excessive, and unjustified, surveillance. what countermeasures are we supposed to take/adopt? or is it too late already? sure hope not.

very useful, even for non-economists.

the use of archetypes in systems thinking is very powerful. they let you quickly recognize the source of a problem. glad to see this field of expertise is migrating to software acquisition.

btw, a visual representation of the diagrams can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_archetype

those of us who are part of the silent majority, witnessing the dismantling of our democratic institutions, all in the name of combatting terrorism, fighting the drug wars, and eradicating the 'isms... are going to have to start getting off our collective a$$es and speak out against these injustices; otherwise we're going to wake up one day and realize there is no one left to speak or act for us. when i read something like the salon article -- and there are too many reports like this, to write them off as aberations -- i am reminded of the niemöller quotation:

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Socialist. . . . Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me." [1]

[1] http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392

sam, what a great put down. in fact, the detail in your line-by-line critique approaches overkill.

even more amusing, depending on your point of view, is how matthew driver makes the anonymity afforded by cash seem like a dirty word (3:29). however. what really me got rolling on the floor with laughter is the fact that driver neglects to mention interest rates, late fees, and remittance costs associated with using mastercard products and services.

in comparison, check out this video link i posted a couple of days ago:

The Future Will Be Decentralized < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705326 >

and which, unfortunately, didn't garner a lot of interest on hn. pity.

you think the snowden revelations can't get any worse... and then you read something like this.

if i was one of the inboxes being monitored, not only would i feel compromised/violated; i would be very pissed off. mad in fact, ready to do battle...

i feel sorry for the "spooks" of the world. their days are numbered. we're coming to getcha.

here, here. if snowden didn't exist, russia and turkey would have found another excuse to repress the internet.

i didn't bother to vote cuz i had no idea -- looking at that little box in the middle of the screen -- cuz i was too distracted by the lousy user interface and the lack of context.

however, i did cut and paste the url to look at your site and to answer your question, it depends. this is a corporate blog. it has to serve some purpose other than a cool place for ios-aficionados to hang out. and you have to consider, do you want genuine feedback from your users; do you want them to engage; and are you prepared to listen to and act on opinions you (as a company) may not share or want to hear. cuz it not, don't go there. you'll be opening up a big can of worms.

very interesting take on creativity.

i hope you consider doing a complete revamp of your site because it sucks...

if you don't click on the main link of a listing, just right, you end up opening the side menu;

in order to post a comment you have to subscribe to twitter... no thanks; if you really want to grow your user community, be more respectful to their needs/wants and idiosyncracies. we're living in a post edward snowden world and some of us just aren't comfortable with chauffeured access anymore, no matter how convenient it is;

you have to wade through a lot of half-baked apps before you get to real products -- so a better way to filter and curate the listings to get bona fide products and services would be helpful;

and get rid of the date-based segments. i have yet to figure out what purpose that serves because it seems like listings are being added after-the-fact. i find that even though i visit the site on a daily basis, the next time i visit, i am constantly having to go back and look at the previous one or two days to see what has been added. whereas if your site was more like hacker news, with lots of churn going on, at least there is no way to really know what you might have missed. so you are less dissatisfied. i know i probably miss some of the best stuff showing up on hacker news but i have no way of knowing, so it feels less burdensome. with the way your site is set up, i always have the perception -- right or wrong -- that i missed something so i need to go back and pick up where i left off.

wow. how disappointing. and her justification is???

don't the powers-that-be realize the unintended conseqences of their actions. that we're in a period of transition (for real) and if elected politicians continue to accommodate corporations that have a vested interest in shackling and turning the "internet" into an appliance, they will expedite the adoption of p2p and decentralized technologies. the very same technologies (think: blockchain) that are predicted to bring about their own demise.

i just read a few of days ago that the g20 has adopted a set of new rules [1] -- that should there be another financial meltdown -- they will take (not borrow) their customers deposits and pension funds to cover their losses.

and if memory serves me correctly, when the cypriot economy tanked [2] and they declared that they were going to seize depositor funds, > $100k , the fall out from that action alone, gave a big impetus for investors to start switching out of fiat currencies and into bitcoin.

our leadership is (or at least, on the surface, appears to be) so out of touch. has it always been this way and little folks, like myself, are just now noticing or are we living at warp speed and there is no room for error, must less, time for reflection.

[1] http://ellenbrown.com/2014/12/01/new-rules-cyprus-style-bail...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Cypriot_financi...

thanks for revisiting the posting rules. it's been awhile since i read them and i neglected (my bad) to reread them when i finally got up the nerve to start posting. i will definitely keep this mind when i submit something in future. however, most of the time, i do submit non-mainstream stories instead of the "duhhh" everybody w/ half a brain should know or have this figured out already... unless of course, the news item-in-question pertains to emergent technologies, like the blockchain or AI and the like.

however, let me ask you this: do you think hn has reached the point where it is practically impossible to consume all of the content that is posted each day? and the fact that titles+urls i submit -- don't get upvoted or flagged -- is not due to an overzealous gatekeeper but because they fall through the cracks. no one sees them. and perhaps it is time that yc updated their submission form so that the content can be more nuanced (classified) and say, if i, for example, want to look at breaking news in an emergent field like cryptocurrencies i click on that page, the way that i can look at the jobs or show sections.

or if that is not feasible, do you think the hn community will continue to fracture with new hn clones being set up -- like coinspotting, cryptoanalys.is, data tau, growth hackers, inbound, python hacker news, etc. -- to provide for and appeal to a more specialized userbase.

learning a language is all about repetition. and listening to podcasts and watching youtube videos -- here i'm thinking of lectures, online classes, and tutorials -- over and over again, will help you pick up new (technical) vocabulary + you have the added bonus of learning, apart from the language, some new concepts and/or modes of thinking.

yes we do.

but like most people who are enraged by the lack of accountability at the top, i feel powerless to do anything about it. except maybe bitch about it on sites like hn, but what good does that do... other than to get you flagged as a rabble rouser or banished from sight/site.

i looked at the map but before i start agreeing and critiquing, what are we supposed to be doing here. sure i understand the endpoint, but it feels out of context. i'm not sure how to use or follow it? can you give us a walk though?

thanks for sharing. one of the most comprehensive + nicely organized lists of crowdfunding sites i have come across.

just for the record, i have been subbed to hacker news for awhile -- just checked, i formally joined 168 days ago -- but i had been reading hacker news for a year or more before i guilted myself into joining and that was just so i could respond to something i had read.

only recently have i stepped up to the plate and started posting links to articles i come across in my daily news dredge and if and when appropriate, made comments on news items that piqued my interest.

but it is in search of your kind of posts that i come to a news aggregation site like hn because i do want to see what the comments are -- they act like a reality check -- so please, don't despair. i am sure there are a lot of people like me who check the "new" section and are able to discover what you have posted before it gets locked. and now you have me thinking that probably most of the stuff i post, get nixed too. cuz only once did i notice something i posted show up in the first 5 pages, but it like #60 and it only got that far because the article was being trashed.

so you go me wondering if i should just go back to being a free-rider. posting and commenting on hn takes a lot of time and effort, probably better spent elsewhere.

additional background on the bill, and it's sponsors, can be found here:

http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-introd...

http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-p...

maybe not directly, but indirectly???

besides, what's more human that a desire for, and expectation of, privacy in non-public settings.

this is a no brainer: HACKER NEWS.

i don't mean any disrespect to pg, but commentary provided by the hn community is a reality check bar none.

right on the nail. i consider myself part of the silent majority and would prefer to keep my head in the sand and ignore what is going on around me. just doing my thing.

but can i afford to?

but the day is coming, sooner than most of us (in what used to be the middle class) would like, when we are going to have to take stand and start clawing back rights, privileges, and injustices that were hard-fought by previous generations.

witness the demonstrations going on in fergusson and most recently, nyc. these flashpoints are just the beginning.

bingo. we need more articles like this, that get under the hood, and expose the sloppy and cavalier ways that (irresponsible) companies are handling user data, thereby putting them, their employees, and customers at even greater risk.

i hope everyone who "likes" this, makes a point of sending a copy of schneier's article to their fb friends.

awareness is achieved, one set of eyeballs at a time.

yes, most definitely, you have to provide an incentive, best described as a quid pro quo: what's in it for me.

you scratch my back and i'll scratch your's.

if you are planning to build an app on the back of your users -- stacks and/or sharing economy type exploitation -- forget it. in a post edward snowden world, that gig is up.

as for assuring 100% anonymity, when you get that figured out, please report back to hn, we'll all be dying to know how you figured that one out.

however, if you decide to go this route and not purchase your data like everyone else these days, you will need to be upfront as to why you need personal info, how (what purpose) you're going to use it, and last but not least, how your respondants are going to personally benefit by giving up said data.

my sentiments exactly. however there is a legacy app that's been floating around for a few years... some use it, most don't. it's called a business plan.

here. here. this guys walks the talk. his ability to document the process is very helpful to people who want to get involved and support open source projects but are technically challenged and don't know where to start or how to use the tools, like google, to self-diagnose when something doesn't work right.

i know cuz i have read a lot of what has been written about that project. the medium blog post, for instance, is a keeper.

if you are looking for an exemplar of what a good open source project looks like, start with that, but there are other fantastic open source communities you can use as an example. one that comes to mind off the top of my head -- joomla. but there are many, many more. take projects that are posted on github - which by the way has done a fantastic job of building community in the oss ecosytem -- plus the projects_qua_repositories posted in this space are goldmines of sharing and giving back.

like i said, the best oss projects are fully documented and provide lots of walk-throughs, tutorials and problem-solving fora to provide (non-judgemental) helping hands to n00bs and get them started. you couldn't ask for more.

the doj report can be found here:

http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-release...

wonderful news... a move like this will speed up the adoption of encryption and virtual currencies.

don't the bankers realize that by acting in their own-self interest they have sealed their fate. the use of the blockchain and cryptocontracts will only hasten their demise... not that they will be missed.

> 54k times. at issue is whether cox is liable or not. this is a case worth watching. what obligations do isp's have to police their own networks.

the outcome, for the safe harbor provisions of the dmca in particular, and copyright in general, is bound to be precedent setting.

the complaint can be found here:

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/BMGvCo...