Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones • Hacker News Board

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#211

Post by spoiledtechie » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #86

tomlongson wrote: post #42

A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS. Maybe it's that he dec…

I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another. A while back he advised some kids in College to never type anything into a computer if they want it to remain private. For him, it probably seems completely reasonable. I doubt he's touched a keyboard sin…

Bull, he was always this way. He lies just like every other politician. Get over your lust for him and see through it.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#212

Post by nitrogen » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

tajen wrote: post #134

theseatoms wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What people say during elections is entirely disposable. This is my hope re Trump.

And Obama is the reason to vote for Trump: Obama is a demonstration that it doesn't matter who people vote for.

The conclusion here doesn't quite follow from the premises :). Obama didn't do what he said does not imply vote for Trump any more than it implies vote for tajen.

Now I'm going to delve into specific politics more than I normally like to do, but I think there are important ideas to consider. Even if a president doesn't do what he/she promised to do, the attitude of a president does have an effect on the country. Judging from the attitude of Trump and the raucousness of some of his rallies, I don't think Trump's attitude and that of his more violent supporters should be spread across the country. That alone is enough reason to vote for someone other than Trump.

It's pretty sad, though, to have several elections in a row where more and more people are voting against a candidate rather than for a candidate. I can only think of one current candidate who I would vote for positively, rather than to just to avoid another candidate who is more negative.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#213

Post by Grishnakh » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:24 AM UTC

thom wrote: post #88

We're going to fight hard so our grandchildren have really secure email in a world where everything they do and every word they say is uploaded to the internet, transcribed and annotated in realtime by swarms of drones controlled by other kids that, only 50 years earlier, would have been at home doxxing people on Twitter. Privacy will die, not because it's undesirable or a bad idea, it'll die like copyright and DRM -…

>Privacy will die, not because it's undesirable or a bad idea, it'll die like copyright and DRM - because it's technically and economically easy to defeat, and people will be motivated to do so. >[Please refute - I genuinely have nightmares about this future]

Um, this is pretty easy to refute: we've been complaining about copyright and DRM for ages now, and not only are they not waning, they're at least as strong now as they've ever been. There's no indication whatsoever that copyright law is going anywhere or being relaxed in any way, in fact it's the opposite. Sure, it's generally easy to copy digital stuff (absent DRM), but that doesn't make it legal, nor has the internet become a free-for-all (quite the opposite in fact; it's more dangerous to commit copyright violations now than ever I think). Same goes for DRM: despite all the complaints, DRM is still present in many places, and you still need to use it for things like watching Netflix. It is possible to defeat it (I'm not going to say technically easy though, because a lot of it is unbroken), but what the DRM-users have proven to us is that it's non-trivial now, and more importantly it only has to be "good enough": as long as it prevents most users from doing something the copyright holder doesn't want, that's all they really care about.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#214

Post by clevernickname » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:25 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #184

pearle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people put too much importance on the role of the president with regards to domestic policy. You can't expect the president to effect change if congress opposes the president 100% of the time. Electing Bernie won't make a huge difference if the republicans still control congress.

I've always wondered what would happen if a President gave a TV-broadcast speech, telling people to write to their congressmen and demand a change of their policy on some issue. Would that be illegal ? Would it be speech? It's not like the President would be telling you who to vote for (though it might be different if the US had referendums, because the President would be telling you what to vote for); the President…

This is exactly what I think Trump has in mind. First time congress doesn't do what he wants, he'll get on TV and list off every single congress critter that is getting in the way of Making America Great Again. They'll quickly fall in line or find themselves replaced in 2 years.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#215

Post by late2part » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

karmelapple wrote: post #186

jacquesm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be an amazing insight into the corrosive influence of Washington on a person's integrity. That's going on the assumption that he had integrity in the first place and I'm no longer immune to considering the possibility that he did not and just played the voters for all it was worth. For instance: someone with integrity would have returned an un-deserved Nobel peace prize.

Really? That seems very disrespectful to the Nobel committee to me.

Good. They awarded the peace prize to a man who doesn't honor peace. Shame on the Nobel committee.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#216

Post by gcb0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:28 AM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #86

tomlongson wrote: post #42

A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS. Maybe it's that he dec…

I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another. A while back he advised some kids in College to never type anything into a computer if they want it to remain private. For him, it probably seems completely reasonable. I doubt he's touched a keyboard sin…

in other words, we are OK with the man elected to represent us for a few years to live like an alien.

there will probably not be a single American that thinks a bomb proof car in a exaggeration.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#217

Post by 0942v8653 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:30 AM UTC

jonesb6 wrote: post #122

teddyh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be an amazing insight into the corrosive influence of Washington on a person's integrity. I always liked Václav Havel’s short speech from 1991 where he coined the phrase “power unto death”: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html

I have hundreds of bookmarks in chrome. I have so many bookmarks that I've essentially stopped making new ones because the back log is simply too large. That speech I bookmarked. Despite the terrible formatting that speech is a work of art applicable to every human being who holds power, whether it's POTUS or the office manager.

> Despite the terrible formatting

    javascript:var sheet = document.createElement('style');sheet.innerHTML = "body{margin: 40px auto;max-width: 650px;line-height: 1.5;font-size: 18px;color: #3a3a3a;padding: 0 10px;}";document.body.appendChild(sheet);

Paste into your URL bar.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#218

Post by rdl » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:31 AM UTC

tomlongson wrote: post #42

A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS. Maybe it's that he dec…

I'm not sure if anyone could really stand up to the rest of Washington for 8 years, without going in as such a zealot in some way that you might not really want them as President.

Ted Cruz/Paul Ryan/Ron Paul might be the closest thing to that. Bernie Sanders, maybe, although I'd have a hard time seeing him maintain an 8 year long fight. Everyone else is basically establishment to some degree (Trump doesn't strike me as ideological as much as opportunist++, although certainly different in style than the others.)

(And maybe you want someone reasonable/rational/etc. but not ideological as President.)

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#219

Post by theseatoms » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:31 AM UTC

keehun wrote: post #177

MicroBerto wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news about Trump is that he's not bought or sold. He is what he is, which from my viewpoint is better than the unknown that we currently have.

Could say the same about Bernie? Or would you disagree?

Personally, I agree. He just has far lower odds in the general election.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#220

Post by wl » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:31 AM UTC

All this talk about "warrant-proof spaces" presumes that they're something new, when in fact they aren't. In the past, conversations in private tended to not be reduced to tangible form and were lost to law enforcement unless they had the foresight and the warrant to bug the location. Now that so many of our communications are mediated by technology, they are by necessity reduced to a tangible form. Secure end-to-end crypto merely takes us back to the status quo antebellum.