31–40 of 86 posts
I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine. I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.
But we now live in a completely online world, where nearly all communication and files are conveyed and hosted by third parties, and soon it will take several minutes for even a geek to mentally count up the number of internet-connected computers in their house.
I am comforted by the idea that Jack Bauer and Chloe have timely access to information to stop the bad guys, and that US secret agencies have little motivation or bandwidth to use this information for anything but national security threats (and hopefully kidnapping and such). Bad actors in these agencies can obviously do a lot of harm to individuals, but those cases will probably be personal and few, widespread malicious use of this data by agency employees would be easier to uncover.
What I find most troubling is the ease with which the government can view my information and how I've steadily made it easier for them over the past five years by getting that iPhone, using Dropbox and Gmail. But, my life has seemed safe, prosperous and peaceful over that time and these services I use have had a profound impact on the efficiency and convenience with which I perform my daily routine.
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And we can always trust the government, right?
We have voted them up — they are elected representatives. And Life goes by Hope and Positivity!
I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine. I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.
Paying with your credit card? That's being tracked. Your back account transactions are being indexed and collated. They're probably in all of our computers already. I've been operating a windows7 honeypot as my "main" computer for several years, generating what appears to be legit "personal" traffic. You wouldn't believe the shit I've found, and it doesn't appear to be your garden variety cyber criminals or foreign s…
I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine. I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.
Unfortunately such a social network would probably be so dominated by tinfoil-hat crazies that it would be unusable. The thing about social networks is of course that the people you want to socially network with need to be there. On the other hand you would be fully up to date at all times on the evils of vaccines and water fluoridation.
I'm curious if my friends, family, and co-workers that rolled their eyes at me or laughed at me when I explained why I deleted my facebook account years ago even remember the conversation, or what their response was, when they read the latest revelations about the government having access to their databases.
I guess I should be more concerned with gmail...
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Unfortunately such a social network would probably be so dominated by tinfoil-hat crazies that it would be unusable. The thing about social networks is of course that the people you want to socially network with need to be there. On the other hand you would be fully up to date at all times on the evils of vaccines and water fluoridation.
Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
Though I wonder when dissemination of vaccines will be more of a science instead of "We know this strand of virus is going around, everyone come here and get a shot of xyz because it is good for you and will protect you all", especially since overdosage of the massess will eventually lead to resistant strands.
It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party.
Prescient. Will these NSA spy revelations hurt US internet companies? If I am German or Russian or Brazilian... do I really want to go out of my way to feed the U.S. intelligence beast?
I've been following these discussions the past couple of days on HN, and there are a few calm minds who are very knowledgeable of the law, who's comments have been enlightening and reassuring ('rayiner and others). But we now live in a completely online world, where nearly all communication and files are conveyed and hosted by third parties, and soon it will take several minutes for even a geek to mentally count up t…
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Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
You could just agree to disagree with them without expanding such emotional energy. Though I wonder when dissemination of vaccines will be more of a science instead of "We know this strand of virus is going around, everyone come here and get a shot of xyz because it is good for you and will protect you all", especially since overdosage of the massess will eventually lead to resistant strands. It would be really cool…
The point of 23andMe is that they're trying to figure out what all the data means, using the data itself.
You can go get your genome sequenced or a partial sequencing like 23andMe does and get the giant, raw output file.
And sit and stare at it. I know I've played with that data in bio lab before. It's not exactly easy to infer data out of it.
Which is why having a lot of different sets of data, and information about the person the data came from, can help us.
Without a third party aggregating genomic data for study, we're not going to be able to understand the genome, and certainly not going to be able to deliver private, accurate and useful analysis of personal data.