181–190 of 211 posts
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They don't run ads to generate revenue. Most content sites do.
There are ads on HN (the "xyz is hiring", and I suspect a non-zero number of articles posted/promoted to the front page are paid ads made to look like content.
If it ever starts to not benefit ycombinator, then the aite goes away.
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>The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds. Tools to block tracking have gotten better. Spyware is more difficult to spread, etc. I'm not convinced it's going the wrong direction "at increasing speeds". Do you have any empirical evidence of this or is it just based on perception? >IOW, from a techie to another: cry me a river. Don't do this. " Ple…
>> The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds. > Tools to block tracking have gotten better. Spyware is more difficult to spread, etc. I'm not convinced it's going the wrong direction "at increasing speeds". Do you have any empirical evidence of this or is it just based on perception? To make an analogy, what you're saying is similar to saying "I'm…
That analogy only makes sense if the bullet-proof vest prevents violent crime entirely. Someone shooting you when you wear a bullet proof vest is still a violent crime so I'm not sure what point you are getting at.
>Better tools to block tracking is part of a trend going in the wrong direction: an arms race between trackers and anti-tracking blockers. If things were going in the right direction, we wouldn't need better blockers, since the tracking companies would have taken the hint, and either become opt in or respect simple measures like DNT headers.
Solutions that depend on the goodwill of participants don't work on the Internet. The only people they impact are the ones that want to play by the rules.
You know it's illegal to take people's money out of banks, yet for some reason banks still use encryption. Don't you wonder why?
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I disagree with the GDPR "success story" part of your comment. So far it's backfired entirely. The goal was to provide users with more control, and (from the standpoint of such a user) to reduce relentless personal data harvesting. That hasn't happened. What's happened is more annoying "we use cookies and track you"-banners all over the internet. As a user who doesn't use cookies, these damned things won't even go aw…
Yea, I agree. AFAIK GDPR does explicitly legislate against all that - dialogues should be "opt-in" and should include a simple "no" option, and that sites shouldn't "ban" you for not clicking "yes". But unless EU actually starts delivering some hefty fines, the law is just a dead tree.
Basically a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between cookies and local storage on the part of the web developers of many sites; i.e. cookies are sent with every request, whereas localstorage isn't and these sites should be storing the option to not use cookies in the localstorage instead of cookies, and I think I'm repeating myself because I haven't had my coffee after taking a nap, but that's neither here nor there or anywhere.
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They should, in theory, fine websites that do install cookies before you give consent, or refuse to give sevice that doesn’t strictly require cookies (e.g. an article).
If the cookie only stores the preference to not show the dialog box. That should be GDPR compliant.
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It isn't about assuming that the worst will always happen, it is just NOT assuming that the worst WON'T happen. How is that a bad thing to do? Pretending that the worst result couldn't happen is just delusional - it is like people who don't wear seat belts or helmets, or don't buy insurance. Just because something is unlikely doesn't mean you should ignore the risk, especially when the consequences of the unlikely ev…
> it is just NOT assuming that the worst WON'T happen. But it won't. You attempt to comply with the rules, show good faith and you won't be in danger. It's not a real risk.
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Personally I think the crazy notion is that governments have rights. They are an embodiment of power. They need and have limits not rights. If the people stop the government from having an army - circumstances of the practicality of doing so aside its rights haven't been violated. It doesn't have any and the notion they do is absurd. Even the transience property of personhood for corporations (regardless of one's opi…
Assuming a well-functioning democracy, they have whatever rights The populace wants them to have, including deciding what types of speech are acceptable.
So... mob rule. That seems like a very stable and restrained society. I can't think of any obvious problem with that, or any time in, say, German history (to name a particularly egregious example) where mob rule run amok destroyed most of the Continent. Or Russian history. Or Cambodian history. Or Chinese history. Or...
The only currently reliable way to defuse mob rule is to decentralize. This is done by passing laws that say that society can't stop its individual members from doing certain things. And while this does lead to a very polluted commons (and sometimes isn't sufficient on its own to prevent the mob from taking over), it also leads to an exceptionally stable society simply because the "we should gang up and hurt/ban the people we hate" reflex is impotent outside of one's chosen groups and the hands-off attitude becomes ingrained in the people after a while.
The right to be wrong is important, because once the mob decides that your life itself is wrong (or rather, the closer the local Overton Window is to that idea- the more entitled a society is to restrict its members, the closer it is to this by definition) you're in trouble as soon as the mob hits a rough spot. It might advance faster at times, but it's just too unstable.
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The freedom to conduct business is one of the core freedoms that Americans value. When Americans talk about freedom, they are including the freedom to form a business and create whatever business arrangements you want. To American values, restrictions on how you do business are as infringing as restrictions on individual rights.
This is an excellent point. Along that same line of thinking, I think another historical American value/attitude is that a business is a person. More precisely, businesses only exist because individual people decide to take risks with their lives in the pursuit of whatever values they hold . Since they hold the risk privately, they get to hold the rewards privately. That many people who take such risks value financia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...
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I disagree with the GDPR "success story" part of your comment. So far it's backfired entirely. The goal was to provide users with more control, and (from the standpoint of such a user) to reduce relentless personal data harvesting. That hasn't happened. What's happened is more annoying "we use cookies and track you"-banners all over the internet. As a user who doesn't use cookies, these damned things won't even go aw…
Yea, I agree. AFAIK GDPR does explicitly legislate against all that - dialogues should be "opt-in" and should include a simple "no" option, and that sites shouldn't "ban" you for not clicking "yes". But unless EU actually starts delivering some hefty fines, the law is just a dead tree.
And it's their computer that allows the usage of cookies and localstorage. All modern web browsers has an option to disable them. It's technically stupid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea, I agree. AFAIK GDPR does explicitly legislate against all that - dialogues should be "opt-in" and should include a simple "no" option, and that sites shouldn't "ban" you for not clicking "yes". But unless EU actually starts delivering some hefty fines, the law is just a dead tree.
But if the site relies on cookies and localStorage and cannot work without it, "no" option is equivalent of "ban". And it's their computer that allows the usage of cookies and localstorage. All modern web browsers has an option to disable them. It's technically stupid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is just NOT assuming that the worst WON'T happen. But it won't. You attempt to comply with the rules, show good faith and you won't be in danger. It's not a real risk.
You have no way of knowing if it is a real risk or not. The law is the law; all it takes is a shift in power, with a group coming into power that wants to make an example of your company, and suddenly the risk is very real.
So the moment some group "wants to make an example of your company", not that I have ever heard of anyone being made an example of that's remotely akin to US punitive damages awards or 999 year Texas jail sentences, you appeal to the national or EU court. The judge will be delighted to rule the regulator's (or government) actions illegal or disproportionate. It may well also trigger a judicial review.
For an alternative outcome you would require a change in representation at the EU from 27 nations, and repeal of one of the founding principles. Not as unthinkable as the US repealing the constitution, but not very far off.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#European...