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FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

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Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#261

Post by ficklepickle »

warent wrote: post #223
boramalper wrote: post #146

What I find the most fascinating is that a single person, possibly with the help of a few select others, is able to curate, index, host, and serve 85% of scholarly literature[0] which otherwise would be inaccessible to many. 80 million papers are available on Sci-Hub to its half a million daily users.[1] That is around 80 TB of data, and 2 TB of daily outbound traffic.[2] Given the fact that Sci-Hub has achieved all…

I have a NAS which I could probably open up and seed a lot of Scihub content from. But what are the odds that something bad would happen to me, and how bad? Like, a fine? or a raid and jail time?

Rent a seedbox for a few bucks a month

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#262

Post by CRConrad »

arp242 wrote: post #159
crazypython wrote: post #100

Finally, news about a hacker on Hacker News! If you are a hacker, you: - Mistrust authority - Promote decentralization - Share knowledge - Write open-source software - Maintain the infrastructure - Serve humanity - Are curious http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

That "hacker HOWTO" is horrible, and infused with ESR's ridiculous political ideas. I can think for myself; I don't need and certainly don't want a document which tells me what I should be like, especially not one written by some guy who is advocating for the literal execution of politicians by armed citizens.

While I largely agree with you on ESR as of nowadays, in his / its defense:

1) That was written before he got quite as alt-right-radicalised as he is now; and

2) It is not all by himself but mostly crowd-sourced.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#263

Post by smsm42 »

I remember when those broad search powers and gag warrants were fist introduced, we were told it's going to be used against terrorists, and there's no other way - national security requires it.

Obviously, now national security also requires destroying SciHub. That, or we have been lied to - again, and the liars suffered zero consequences - again, so they will keep doing the same - again and again.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#264

Post by CRConrad »

periheli0n wrote: post #138

I don't really get this whole frenzy about copyrighted papers. Why not just ask the authors for a copy? Most will happily share.

Because

A) that in itself shows that the whole rigmarole of ostensibly assigning sole copyright to these "journals" is a ridiculously unnecessary charade, and

B) Where are you going to get their contact information from? There would need to be aome centralised registry to connect scientific subjects to author details, Idunno, like some kind of... "Journal" or something?

C) And if you're already going to such a place anyway, then the actual content of the articles could also be there for everyone to read directly, without having to bother the authors with correspondence.

What you're defending is a humongous stupid Rube Goldberg boondoggle.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#265

Post by breck »

Dah00n wrote: post #233
breck wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey FBI, I've emailed her my support. And I'm a U.S. Citizen. I have great respect for the FBI and law enforcement in general, but on this particular issue you can go fuck yourselves. Going after a woman fighting to ensure all people, rich and poor, have access to the world's scientific information. That is a slap in the face to the American ideals of liberty and the sacrifices that tens of millions of freedom fighti…

(Sorry this sounds harsh but im using your words here.) If you believe America have true "ideals of liberty" and the million of Americans who have died in wars "fought for freedom" I think it is yourself that need to "open your eyes".

I will not argue your point that there have always been many people from American who have not embodied the American ideals. However, there have been plenty that have. And millions more come here from countries all around the world to continue building that great future.

Ideals like:

"all people are created equal"

"government of the people, by the people, for the people"

"Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,"

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#266

Post by randomswede »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #238
danaris wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for "most" professors, since I haven't done any kind of scientific survey. However, I work in academia, and every professor I personally know hates Elsevier, and wants to get away from them in any reasonable way. But when the journals that literally define their field are monopolized by Elsevier, there's only so much they can do for the time being. To avoid them, they'd have to accept their research bei…

Couple funny stories about Elsevier. I published with them, and created an account. They started sending me spam advertising new journals. So I logged in and unsubscribed from all their mailing lists. Reliably, exactly one year after unsubscribing I get spam from them. When I go to unsubscribe I find a new category of mailing list, opted in automatically. One might call it a mistake, but is remarkably suspicious that…

As a possible hypothesis test, next time, could you leave the new opt-in in place for a month before unsubscribing?

If that reliably then has a new list added exactly one year later, it is a strong signal that it indeed based on you unsubscribing. But, if it instead happens at 11 months, it is a string signal that new lists are added at a specific month/day.

I mean, I would not be surprised if it happens one year later, due to Elsevier tracking when you unsubscribed, but this is a testable hypothesis, so testing it would be a Good Thing.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#267

Post by MacsHeadroom »

justinpombrio wrote: post #208
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about. Not only is this correct, but it is the origin of peer review as we know it today. Despite what most academics assume, peer-review itself is a relatively new concept in science. Nearly all of the most incredible scientific discoveries w…

> but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis The "reproducibility crisis" is that we recently realized that ~half of published results in many fields fail to reproduce, presumably because many of them are false. My impression was that this goes back as far as you care to look, and that old results are just as likely to fail to reproduce. So…

It's not that older studies tended to be more accurate. It's that peers worked together in seclusion via lots of back-and-forth letters and collaboration over years, only "publishing" when they and their peer group were sure they had something worth sharing with the wider community.

This is how science was done up until some time in the 1970s. This is how real groundbreaking science is still done. The publishing prestige economy is of little actual value.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#268

Post by GFischer »

agumonkey wrote: post #245
boramalper wrote: post #146

What I find the most fascinating is that a single person, possibly with the help of a few select others, is able to curate, index, host, and serve 85% of scholarly literature[0] which otherwise would be inaccessible to many. 80 million papers are available on Sci-Hub to its half a million daily users.[1] That is around 80 TB of data, and 2 TB of daily outbound traffic.[2] Given the fact that Sci-Hub has achieved all…

It also shed some light on the inefficiency / inefficacy of most production groups .. a few persons with a real motive ended up doing more than many large companies. Nothing new, it's obvious to many how much drag and cruft lies in the majority of businesses in the world.

I work in corporate software development, and the incredible inefficiencies astound me every day.

There's a lot of useless work mandated by law as well... I've spent years of my life developing useless anti-money laundering software because a lawmaker somewhere thought of a convoluted potential possible money laundering insurance fraud scheme (while ignoring the actually used ones).

The insurance company had upwards of TWO THOUSAND developers working... and the software was incredibly bloated and slow crap. It's mind boggling.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#269

Post by breck »

breck wrote: post #265
Dah00n wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Sorry this sounds harsh but im using your words here.) If you believe America have true "ideals of liberty" and the million of Americans who have died in wars "fought for freedom" I think it is yourself that need to "open your eyes".

I will not argue your point that there have always been many people from American who have not embodied the American ideals. However, there have been plenty that have. And millions more come here from countries all around the world to continue building that great future. Ideals like: "all people are created equal" "government of the people, by the people, for the people" "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,…

The bigger point is that there are few countries in the world where I can say "on this particular issue you can go fuck yourselves" to the top law enforcement agency and actually have a % chance of not being shot or put behind bars for it. America ain't perfect, but I've been to about 40 countries and if I had to choose, I'd bet on America 10/10 times.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#270

Post by dang »

janeroe wrote: post #161
BelenusMordred wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not much they can do to her in X I think you really underestimate the power of smear/ blackmail campaigns and how effectively they have worked in the last century for the intelligence services. This has nothing to do with upholding the law.

> you really underestimate the power of smear ... campaigns Not much they can do really. Elbakyan is a Stalinist who thinks the mass killer was a saint sent by God. She discredits herself at interviews and on her personal web-site just fine. None of that matters. People are using sci-hub because it's useful, crazyness of its author is irrelevant.

Your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's against the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which ideology they're battling for or against. We have to, because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to be for.

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in the intended spirit from now on? We'd be grateful.

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