Hacker News Reader

naaaaakon 'Anti-Facebook' platform Ello attracts thousands

If this ever starts to become a serious competitor, Facebook will just acquire them and all bets are off.

naaaaakon Google, once disdainful of lobbying, now a master of Washington influence

Lobbying is a way to influence government, except only interests with lots of money can do it. The influence is so great, pretty much whoever has the most money has the most say. Sound like bribery? It is, but it was made legal.

Don’t worry - if you don’t have money, you can influence government by voting! But who or what you vote on is dictated by a lobbyist. In other words, they set the table and you get to decide which side you sit on. Don’t like what you see? You can walk out in the rain with the other Americans who don’t bother voting.

Great example: 2008 financial crisis. Ordinary citizens were opposed to giving the banks bailouts, like 99% to 1% in polls. The banks beat the will of the people because they are heavy contributors to both major parties. Don’t worry - most of the important politicians behind that move are still in power, because there are a lot of stupid voters in this country. Good thing we also take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to voting and force the will of the (proven stupid) masses on all individuals.

And that’s why lobbying works and won’t ever change. You want representation in this country? You better have money.

naaaaakon Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

The solution is streaming the data at all times. The idea of a black box is an antiquity - something used as a backup to the stream, perhaps.

Hold on while I go patent the shit out of this (yeah right, fuck the USPTO if they approve something so obvious).

naaaaakon At the RSA Security Conference, Things Get Testy

Around San Francisco this week, some were seen sporting Electronic Frontier Foundation T-shirts featuring a retooled N.S.A. logo with an eagle using its talons to plug into the American telecom network, symbolized by AT&T. Asked about the T-shirts, one AT&T executive, who asked not to be named, said they had a chilling effect.

“There are many of us at AT&T who are disturbed by what we’ve been hearing about the N.S.A.,” this person said. “But when you see that,” he said, pointing to the T-shirts, “a conversation becomes impossible.”

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The conversation became impossible when your company decided to willingly give up everything and anything about its customers for a fee. Were it not for customer apathy, I'd like to think your entire shitty company would have been fucked out of existence by now for what they continue to do. But not really, because your company probably would have just been given a bailout for failing at everything but sucking government dick.

Fuck you nameless executive. I wish I could request anonymity as easily as you can. Your shitty company brought this upon itself and there is nothing to discuss until it stops being the NSA's bitch.

naaaaakon Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

The Dean’s response is such a typical academia response. It showcases the hypocrisy of these institutions and the fiefdom of a bureaucrat.

Too many academic institutions claim they are all about learning and growing and leadership, until you do something they disapprove of in the slightest way, usually because it rocks their boat in the slightest way. We’ve seen how Stalin-esque they act when they don’t get their way, time and time again with varying degrees of force. From the UC Davis pepper spray incident to the MIT Aaron Swartz incident. This might not be on the same level (yet), but it’s the principle. A series of reasonable actions being met with disproportionate bullshit responses.

Teach them a lesson about learning, growing, and leadership. Don’t surrender and don’t give in. Do absolutely everything within the bounds of the law to fuck up their desired outcome on the principle of their actions. That’s what they are trying to do to you and the YBB+ devs. So take away all of their power and continue. Circumvent all of their censorship. You or some scholarship are paying far too much to this institution to have it behave like this.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised someone at Yale noticed and decided to make this an incident. Most universities are usually too distracted by the disproportionate effort they invest in their football or basketball teams over academic programs, or are too busy ensuring book publisher monopolies and price gouging, but those are problems for another day.

naaaaakon Microsoft extends updates for Windows XP security products until July 14, 2015

If I were MS I'd provide no updates to laggards. They either can't upgrade or they won't upgrade, so what's the point? What does another year of virus definitions really get them when the Fisher Price OS can already be exploited in so many other ways?

naaaaakon Californians: Ashamed of Senator Feinstein's lies on surveillance? Join Us

Campaigns won't work, be it email or phone. A lot of Californians (and US citizens in general) have been trained to automatically vote for someone with a D (or R) next to the person's name. They've also been trained to apologize for their politicians, buy into whatever they say, and ignore serious issues. Skepticism and criticism only apply to people from the other side, and even then, it's only the easily marketable rhetoric people will repeat.

In California, Feinstein will be re-elected into her grave because of that D next to her name. She could support almost everything George W Bush stood for, just say otherwise, and that D will keep her in office. Want proof? Look at Obama.

naaaaakon US Coast Guard visits mysterious Google barge

Might as well attach Google boilerplate to the bottom of this "article" and link to http://www.google.com/press/.

Summary: We know nothing and can't say.