United States Sentencing Commission website hacked • Hacker News Board

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#151

Post by erichocean » Sun, Jan 27, 2013, 5:49 AM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #147

chipsy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't very rational, when it comes down to it, because rational people have trouble making decisions. Political issues are hard to visualize or experiment with - they seem to be distant from daily life - so most people, in a "natural" state, will lack strong opinions on any given issue. Thus, "coaching" comes into play - people rely on things they've been told to guide them, whether or not it was correct informat…

>We aren't very rational, when it comes down to it, because rational people have trouble making decisions. Do you have a source or something for this? (I want to know more.)

He's probably referring to situations where a person loses their ability to access their intuition in making decisions, even very simple ones like what to eat for lunch.

The result is gridlock in the brain. The patient cannot, literally, decide if next Wednesday at 3pm is an okay time to have their next appointment with a therapist.

The takeaway is that conscious "rationality" alone in humans is clearly insufficient for them to make most decisions. Instead, they act, for the most part, on intuition and feelings, guided (we hope) by rational feedback to the correct for the deficiencies in those two "dominant" modes of thinking and decision making.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#152

Post by tlear » Sun, Jan 27, 2013, 7:07 AM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #118

tokenadult wrote: post #70

[Shakes his head in disgust.] Hackers, it's time for me to hack the discussion. You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom. This is the wimpy way to protest whatever it is you are protesting. Unlike most people who post here, I have actually lived under a dictatorial regime that ruled a territory that later had a peaceful transition to democracy and legally protected civil rights. Anonymo…

Referring to the Russian revolutionary period of 1905-1917, it becomes clear that provocation inspires hardline response on both sides. Each time one side does something aggressive to the other side, it is used as justification for the next, even more aggressive, counteraction. It is a pendulum that does not naturally dampen except without some kind of definite change. So I expect see another Operation Sundevil begin…

Many would argue that in Russia tsars secret police did not not go nearly far enough. Except for those actually killed people they treated revolutionaries trying to overthrow the regime very mildly. There is really no reason why people like Lenin, Stalin and most of the bolsheviks should have survived. In Putin's russia they would all be rotting in prison LONG ago, with big chunk being dead from accidents.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#153

Post by KMag » Sun, Jan 27, 2013, 10:11 AM UTC

rebrane wrote: post #116

I don't want any reforms that come from blackmail and extortion. Any good that they would do would be wiped out once the really powerful extortionists show up. By all means, though, let's see what's in those files.

I don't think they actually expect (or fully want, for that matter) their demands to be met before they release the decryption keys. They want to be seen as confident enough to present a deal, but their ultimate power trip fantasy is to see powerful people forced to resign from office, and then for the reforms to happen after the destruction has happened.

Also, would it have killed them to provide sha-3, or at least sha-1 or md5 sums? People are speculating here (and presumably elsewhere) that some of the uploads were corrupted.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#154

Post by KMag » Sun, Jan 27, 2013, 10:23 AM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #8

Only tangentially on topic (but more interesting that the actual content of the video I think), but I suspect no warhead reentry shield would actually be shaped as pointy as that. Although you would think a more aerodynamic shape would reduce the drag and therefore heat of reentry, the reality is not quite so simple. In fact, the opposite is actually true. As you make the reentry shield blunter (increasing the drag c…

It's important to note that the purpose of a heat shield on a warhead is significantly different from that of a manned vehicle or scientific probe. For the latter, the goal is to safely and efficiently transfer as much kinetic energy as possible (subject to acceleration limits) to the atmosphere so that parachutes will survive being deployed. For a warhead, (disregarding burrowing nukes), they don't care how much kinetic energy is expended since they don't want the warhead touching down. In fact, they would prefer to minimize the amount of time that reentry takes, and so want to minimize the amount of kinetic energy lost to heating the atmosphere. For burrowing nukes, they want the nukes traveling as fast as possible, as long as the impact won't break the nuke, which is somewhere in between the airburst and manned vehicle design cases.