Hacker News Reader

zactralon Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

"News" is just a way to constantly bombard you with negative bullshit which will cause all kinds of anxiety and resulting other problems. I stopped watching television about 8-9 years ago. I don't have a TV or a radio anymore. My car's radio antenna is physically disconnected from the receiver. No newspaper, no general news portals, local or international. Haven't missed out on a single important thing. Tremendous improvement in mindset and interests.

zactralon CISPA is back with a new name

The problem is that for people living outside the US, we already have the right side of the infographic. All our data is vacuumed in and used with impunity and nobody gives a damn whether we want it or not. Most of the discussion so far has been about the circumstances and illegality of spying after US citizens. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is left watching like second or third class human beings who can't have _any_ realistic expectations with regard to having privacy of their data used by US companies (which dominate the market due to several reasons)

zactralon Independent Report on E-voting in Estonia

Spreading fear, uncertainty, doubt.

Official response from Estonian National Electoral Committee:

http://www.vvk.ee/valimiste-korraldamine/vvk-uudised/vabarii...

zactralon IT experts urge E-stonia to drop Internet voting

Official response from Estonian National Electoral Committee:

http://www.vvk.ee/valimiste-korraldamine/vvk-uudised/vabarii...

zactralon Air Gaps

It is completely possible that mentioning Windows in the article was meant to be only a smokescreen. I'm sure a person in his position would absolutely not want to publicly declare the exact solution he is using. In reality, it might as well be something completely else, like Slackware or some USB-bootable distro. Yes, this might be security through obscurity but considering that he admitted that he isn't familiar with the inner workings of Truecrypt etc, it is the safest bet. Not disclosing what exactly you are using doesn't allow an adversary with unlimited resources to adapt and optimize to break this specific scheme.

zactralon HyperSphere - continuous surveillance

Balloons like this tend to have high drag. These small propellers seem inadequate for keeping the direction in strong or even medium winds.

zactralon Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

Your tax dollars at work, powered by machine learning(tm)

zactralon The myth of the well-rounded scientist

What a horrible uncommitted scientist Richard Feynman must have been. His hobbies included drumming, safecracking and many more. Also, he was a ladies man.