Viewing profile — CONTRARlAN

If only there were some way for you to upvote his comment. It's official: HN is now Reddit. Oh, it's done a year or two of grad school, but it's still Reddit.

> Consider in the 1800s it wasn't uncommon for a publisher to be paid for a product & make it seem like they were simply endorsing something they truly liked. Since you work in adv…

Focusing on societal efficiency at the expense of other things seems like a good short-term solution, but a lousy long-term one.

Sorry, I was just talking about Stratfor. > Of course it was also revealed that The Interview was a propaganda product aimed at destabilizing North Korea (in anticipation of the up…

> A pretty nasty no-win situation. It's a pretty easy win-win situation–offer both, inform users appropriately. And then provide a third set: a list of the sanitized files not pres…

Asia's a continent. The character of Jian Yang is a very specific subset of Chinese nationals, namely those who come to work in a very specific industry in a very small part of Nor…

Your syllogism aside, not all cultural satire is racist, even when people want it to be.

So, just how specific does cultural satire have to get before you won't declare it racism? I ask, because "Chinese" includes about 56 recognized ethnic groups in mainland China. I …

Are you offended by the definition of Jian Yang, or the actual character in the show? That's like being offended by Wikipedia's entry on the KKK because it accurately describes the…

> I don't know, but it's a fascinating experiment, anyone who is not paying for it should be in favor of this experiment -- unless you just hate poor people. What a bizarre stateme…

Apparently on HN we can now be condescending, insulting, narrow-minded, and straw-man those with whom we disagree with, so long as we're aligned with conventional wisdom.

> If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years. Leaving aside the truth of their claims at the time…

As an aside, it's been my experience that titles are often written not by the person who wrote the article, but by someone who is tasked with writing titles that are intended to at…

I agree with you that they're a private company so they can do what they want with their business–I actually think private entities don't have enough rights on that front in many r…

That it's easy to do is all the more reason to try to establish controls to prevent abuse. It's trivially easy to sell customer data for profit at the expense of their privacy. It'…

Thanks. Looking forward to reading the reply.

And the Arab Spring was supposed to result in a great liberalization of MENA countries. I don't know whether it's optimism or naiveté–or likely some mixture of the two–but the west…

Please ask him more here, so we can all benefit from the discussion.

Guessing you're talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_con...

I think that's one valid way of looking at it, and many technically-inclined people would be inclined to agree, I'd imagine. But another way of looking at it, and one I suspect mos…

> Did I slight your favorite conspiracy/paranoia/gun rights site? Again, helpful. I have no particular interest in any sites you'd consider one of the above, but nice rhetoric. I w…

Which is only as secure as the door frame it goes into, which usually means: pretty insecure. Still, I agree with the premise that it's about assumptions, and if people can be made…

It's being talked about like this is a new finding, but it's been discussed on various fora for the better part of a decade. For example: http://forums.radioreference.com/547816-po…

It's way more complicated than that: http://flighttraining.aopa.org/magazine/1998/November/199811...