Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 810 posts

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#741

Post by tsunamifury »

quesera wrote: post #625
tsunamifury wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth pointing out one contradiction to someone who passes such vast and foolish judgement.

It really isn't. Obviously, "who becomes a journalist in this age" does not translate to "every person who is alive now who has ever been a journalist". I'm not sure if your error lies in parsing colloquial English, or in basic statistics. Either way, I think you have fully illustrated the commenter's point. Journalists are not reliably selected for, or demonstrative of, comprehension or accuracy.

This is dumb trying to call others dumb. This argument is not just inhumane it’s also wrong. The average of something assumed does not negate a real data point. If you did even bit of data science you’d know that. But just another HNer calling someone dumb while confidently wrong. And ironic calling others dumb because of it. So think on that.

Maybe Christmas just leaves the worst on HN … statistically.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#742

Post by kccqzy »

barrkel wrote: post #477
jwrallie wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned that a long time ago when I was a student and wanted to submit a pdf generated by a trial version of some software as an assignment and was trying to be clever and cover the watermark that said unregistered with a white box. When opening the file in my slow computer, I could see all the rendering of the watermark happening in slow motion until the white box would pop up on top of the text.

When I was a student, and using a shareware or trial version of some software and wanted some printed output from it without a watermark, I printed to postscript (chose a printer that supported postscript and the driver used it instead of rasterized images), but using a file instead of a printer. I could then open up the postscript, delete the commands that rendered the watermark, save it, then I converted it to PDF…

You don't need PostScript for that. The PDF text commands are Tj and TJ, and rarely ' and ". They are easy to delete without going through PostScript. Tj means showing a simple text string. TJ means showing an array of strings possibly with space adjustments. ' means moving to the next line and showing a simple string. " means doing that and setting character spacing.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#743

Post by ArnoVW »

thuridas wrote: post #412
SirHumphrey wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can only imagine what America not fighting an attack on NATO member would have on nuclear proliferation.

Europe is already considering to have a nuclear shield. This is because if Trump

No need to consider. The UK and France have nukes. France even has a two-tier response. Not enough to vitrify Russia or China five times over, but enough to make them reconsider.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#744

Post by wildzzz »

jm4 wrote: post #721
rkagerer wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust a lawyer with a redact tool any more complicated than a marker. I've seen lawyers at major, high-priced law firms make this same mistake. Once it was a huge list of individuals names and bank account balances. Fortunately I was able to intervene just before the uploaded documents were made public. Folks around here blame incompetence, but I say the frequency of this kind of cock-up is crystal clear teleme…

It often comes down to not using the right software and training issues. They have to use Acrobat, which has a redaction tool. This is expensive so some places cheap out on other tools that don’t have a real redaction feature. They highlight with black and think it does the same thing whereas the redaction tool completely removes the content and any associated metadata from the document. This was basically the only r…

If my law firm can't afford the $20/month for a copy of Acrobat Pro, I'd be very concerned what else they are cutting corners on.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#745

Post by salawat »

DANmode wrote: post #117
ourmandave wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition. If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.

> science based policy making One of my favorite trivia questions is: how long has it been since Congress has had staff scientists?

Well, I'd do a guess and say at least since the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment got deep-sixed back in the 95. Either that or they never had them.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#746

Post by exasperaited »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #628
exasperaited wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the layers that were, in fact, just side effects of scanning the (non-authoritative) short form certificate?

Not proven yet.

It wasn't his actual birth certificate! It was the short form!

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#747

Post by 867-5309 »

cmarschner wrote: post #14

Befuddling that this happened again. It’s not the first time - Paul Manafort court filing (U.S., 2019) Manafort’s lawyers filed a PDF where the “redacted” parts were basically black highlighting/boxes over live text. Reporters could recover the hidden text (e.g., via copy/paste). - TSA “Standard Operating Procedures” manual (U.S., 2009) A publicly posted TSA screening document used black rectangles that did not remov…

similar to pressing delete or emptying recycle bin, in that all that happens is the operating system is told that section of the hard drive is now blank, but the underlying files are still there and available to recover

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#748

Post by quesera »

tsunamifury wrote: post #741
quesera wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. Obviously, "who becomes a journalist in this age" does not translate to "every person who is alive now who has ever been a journalist". I'm not sure if your error lies in parsing colloquial English, or in basic statistics. Either way, I think you have fully illustrated the commenter's point. Journalists are not reliably selected for, or demonstrative of, comprehension or accuracy.

This is dumb trying to call others dumb. This argument is not just inhumane it’s also wrong. The average of something assumed does not negate a real data point. If you did even bit of data science you’d know that. But just another HNer calling someone dumb while confidently wrong. And ironic calling others dumb because of it. So think on that. Maybe Christmas just leaves the worst on HN … statistically.

A failure of reading comprehension, or a visceral reaction to a generalized statement that pertains to you personally, does not make one dumb.

Defending your mistakes doesn't either, but I can understand the confusion.

Happy holidays.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#749

Post by alimw »

wisty wrote: post #736
alimw wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops I guess if this is as much sense as you can make then there wasn't much point in my trying to parse your comment in the first place.

I didn't group NATO and the US separately. You thought I did, but I didn't and you just hadn't read properly. I waffled a bit in my reply to not rub it in too hard. And do you want to contribute with something other than nitpick or insult? Do YOU think that an informed and intelligent person can conclude that Trump is secretly a Russian agent, given he was the driving force behind a massive hike in NATO spending (whi…

This is what I read in your comment: that Trump "forced NATO to increase military spending to 5% of GDP". Are you talking about the US there? No, tautologically, you are talking about those parts of NATO that Trump forced to increase military spending to 5% of GDP. So what is controversial about my observation that you used the term NATO to stand for a NATO without the US?

My point was that by doing so you yourself add weight (a very little weight) to the thesis of the grandparent that, at least in people's perceptions, the US has left NATO. It wasn't just a nitpick, but at the same time I did not intend to join this side or that side in some mad argument that is playing out in your mind. I freely admit that at this point I am not reading all your output.

Re: Some Epstein file redactions are being undone

#750

Post by rayiner »

exasperaited wrote: post #652
rayiner wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about paper credentials, I'm talking about accomplishments. 90% of lawyers in DC are liberals. Conservative lawyers can get credit for being "one of the good ones" so long as they don't attack the core tenants of liberal universalism or advance conservative social change in any meaningful way.[1] Obama's DOJ did stuff like go after Catholic nuns to make them offer birth control, to vindicate liberal p…

So you haven't read his Wikipedia page then, and you are too young, I guess, to remember Iran-Contra. You apparently don't even remember how Barr got the job from Trump.

Iran-Contra is a perfect example. How did that advance conservative principles? Whether Nicaragua is communist doesn’t affect anyone in America. Precisely because it has no consequences domestically, you won’t get disinvited from Georgetown parties for trying to overthrow Latin American governments. In fact, there’s an upside for liberals in such policies. The resulting chaos facilitated mass migration and cultural transplantation to the U.S. from places where socialism and communism found fertile soil.
Post reply on HN