371–380 of 417 posts
There is nothing to be shocked about. Unless nobody else than intelligence officials are getting access to this, and if the investigations are legit, then what?
News like this are trying to ride the whole Snowden train, but that's not what Snowden what whistle blowing about. Snowden was trying to warn about the abuse of those tools.
Now people moan and yell each time agencies try to do their job.
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> one can suggest a book Yes, one can. My complaint here was that it was not relevant to what was being discussed. It's similar to a discussion on the latest Postgres being hijacked by yet another languages war. > In life, as opposed to pure math, we often need, and do, judgement calls based on incomplete data, calls that don't actually follow with 100% logical certainty, but are nevertheless quite clear from the gen…
> This is irrelevant to the discussion, except as an ad hominem. It is irrelevant to the original theme of the post, but it is quite relevant to the subthread that started with two quotes from and about Rand, and you coming to criticize the poster of the second quote. We're way too into that subthread for it to be irrelevant. > What is the appropriate tone for responding? I believe I was sufficiently polite and civil…
My belonging to the Ayn Rand tribe is irrelevant to the quality of my arguments, in the same way as your distaste for her work does not stop you from seeing the value in the original quote.
> "your tone was bad" "your tone made me think that you are a pro-Rand person (concerned with objectivity, overuse of logical fallacies, defensive of Rand, etc)"
Everything in the brackets strikes me as "bad" except "concerned with objectivity" (shouldn't we all be?) although in that case I think you meant to say Objectivism. If the tone, as opposed to the arguments, implies bad things, then the tone is bad.
This is a bit more complicated if the tone is merely a signal which might indicate belonging to a bad tribe, as opposed to the tone being objectively bad, because then we get on to deciding which tribe is good or bad. Personally, I have no inclination for going down that path for previously mentioned reasons.
I try hard not to judge people based on the signals they emit, except when I do not have the time to form a proper judgement, and I always hear what they have to say, as it is a way to learn something new (sometimes).
I still disagree with your implying that I am merely "laundry listing" big words as opposed to making points using them to rapidly communicate relevant concepts, but at this point I do not think we will reach agreement so I will agree to disagree and move on to the next thread.
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Well, they've already "made an example" of the only company to truly stand in their way. Look at Qwest - you talk to the average citizen and their takeaway was that justice was served | A corrupt CEO ran the company into the ground and went to prison. Hurrah! Don't pay attention to the fact he denied installing what he considered unconstitutional wire taps for the NSA resulting in the government pulling almost a bill…
The media is mostly controlled and distributed by private companies that collude with the government for their own benefit, Google and Yahoo are exactly such companies.
for a site like this I am always amazed at how many people think it is easy to stand up to the full brunt of the government. the US government not only has the capability to do any business and person on US soil what it wants, it has people within it who relish in that power and who won't bat an eye to use it. if there is a legal issue the laws can simply updated "for the people".
this is not to say its any different elsewhere, the government controls the laws, the weapons, and through those can end your ability to do business if not simply through confiscation.
To be frank, the more I hear about those stories, the less I'm shocked. There is nothing to be shocked about. Unless nobody else than intelligence officials are getting access to this, and if the investigations are legit, then what? News like this are trying to ride the whole Snowden train, but that's not what Snowden what whistle blowing about. Snowden was trying to warn about the abuse of those tools. Now people mo…
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Consider setting up your own mail server. Decentralization is the most effective way of fighting this. Rent a cheap, dedicated server (a VPS provides poor privacy protection), encrypt the root partition and install sovereign ( https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign ).
And (sadly) watch as all your outgoing mail is refused from most mail providers.
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> Maximizing shareholder value is like a death grip that squeezes any public corporation into not making financial gambles on ethical grounds. Will this meme never die on HN? There is an obvious counter-example: Apple, a public corporation who publicly fought a similar request. The idea that "maximizing shareholder value" is some sort of inescapable Faustian bargain is just not supported by the facts. People who run…
> > Maximizing shareholder value is like a death grip that squeezes any public corporation into not making financial gambles on ethical grounds. > Will this meme never die on HN? There is an obvious counter-example: Apple, a public corporation who publicly fought a similar request. This is a poor example to use to disprove the claim; Apple used the FBI encounter to prove to customers that they were tough on security,…
Why didn't Yahoo fight their order? Maximizing shareholder value.
Why did Apple fight their order? Maximizing shareholder value.
An explanation that applies to all outcomes does not actually explain anything.
While it is damning that Mayer didn't go to Stamos about this and went straight to the email team, it's hard to say whether she felt it was necessary to tell him, or was even allowed to, since we don't see the court orders and what they entail. It's really easy to be against this and play armchair preacher but this is something she probably had no choice in, in many ways. Also, I'm wondering if this story is bigger b…
> It's not really newsworthy that data from an email provider is sent to NSA under secret court orders and NSA can search the full text of it. It absolutely is newsworthy. We may have suspected it beforehand, we may suspect it happens at other providers, but we have specific proof about Yahoo now. This is new and important and we should be making a fuss. If we play the jaded cynic we are joining the enemies of democr…
It definitely is newsworthy, it's astonishing how people rationalize any amount of spying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, they've already "made an example" of the only company to truly stand in their way. Look at Qwest - you talk to the average citizen and their takeaway was that justice was served | A corrupt CEO ran the company into the ground and went to prison. Hurrah! Don't pay attention to the fact he denied installing what he considered unconstitutional wire taps for the NSA resulting in the government pulling almost a bill…
The Palantir witchhunt against Peter Thiel is another example -- threatening to invalidate government contracts because of some imagined discrimination due to Thiel's political views.
In China and Russia, it is well known that all oligarchs are corrupt. However, not all of them will go to prison -- only those who cross the politicians will ever be tried and convicted.