dropoutcoder

I find it interesting that the hn world is largely unified in beliefs about the trade-offs of exceptional access that aren’t necessarily true. Perhaps this is a cultural top-down tribal mentality borne of an adversarial arrangement between the billionaire oligarchs behind the startup scene and the government which serves to offer counterbalance against unchecked power.

I personally find it reprehensible that large trillion dollar tech corps wash their hands of responsibility for the safety of citizens by offering strong encryption to the masses.

I’m personally okay with secret police, but such things work better in secret. The calculus has indeed changed. Checks and balances within such secret societies do need to exist. I’m hopeful that tech geniuses will help to solve the problems regarding technical and social trade offs and risks behind exceptional access, instead of conforming to the often strict libertarian mentality of the sv community.

I wonder if @Snowden’s disclosures have largely led criminals away from phone/text (to encrypted apps), and whether the lack of ongoing utility of this surveillance program resulted in part from his disclosures.

I commend researchers in this field. Ransomware has a tangible impact on lives, particularly in cases involving healthcare facilities, for instance. Such criminals deserve harsh response for the chaos they create.

Also, I can’t help but thinking that the global internet that we’ve created is highly irresponsible. That criminals with sufficient skill and means can anonymously pull off these kinds of crimes with little chance for pursuing justice is indication of some fundamental flaw in the internet’s design. While people should have the right to be anonymous, there’s simply too much potential for abuse by such criminals. I wonder if the internet is ripe for disruption via redesign of core protocols. As I recall, this has been discussed on hn previously but I’ve lost track of such research..

The wish breaks the natural order. Some people bounce back and prosper, rise above it. Their genetics are superior. Mine were not. It’s natural that I die now. It’s correct that I didn’t procreate.

And, of course help was offered yet I reject it. I gave up in middle school when it was happening.

My middle school years consisted of being bullied: verbally and physically abused.

I’ve been grinding my teeth since the first physical violence incident at age 11 that involved numerous full blast blows to my head. My response meanwhile was regretful bullying of a few other kids in response. The cap to this was additional physical violence against me before entering high school, in the presence of law enforcement who stood aside and allowed the punishment to be inflicted, likely due to the perception of me having been a scumbag to a popular kid in sixth grade, and/or an old school non-interventionist attitude.

By the end of middle school, the lifetime of suicidal ideation was cemented. The end result was extreme social immaturity entering high school and a downward spiral of an unwanted life drifting towards destitution and homelessness at middle age. My neighborhood peers were religious tribalists who looked down upon me and essentially formed my perceptions of the world as a religious outsider threatened by promises of eternal torture for non compliance. I dream of suicide around the clock and remain afraid of death and have zero desire for anything but preparing for death.

Needless to say, I don’t find this species to be very pleasant or deserving of my time or participation and certainly not of any offspring. This, of course, is sugar coating the reality: I think this species is total rubbish, and regardless of how many nice people exist, there’s been a never ending string of low quality people that I’ve encountered over the past 30 years, myself included. I remain fearful of facing the unknown of death despite decades dreaming of dying. Zero desire for help of any kind; I inherited a fortune and gave it away. I pray for forgiveness and mercy in the afterlife and remain eternally fearful, having been indoctrinated by peers with promises of eternal torture as a consequence for failure to engage in a particular belief system (coupled with the tribal violence by participants of said religion).

Fuck this species. Sorry: the solution is for me to die and wash away my broken brain. Some people simply don’t want to be helped. The natural laws of evolution are met with my lack of procreation and my suicide washes away my broken experience so others can have a better chance. Accordingly I’ve given away my inheritance and gone homeless in preparation. So thankful it’s almost over and infinitely scared nonetheless. At some point soon I’ll simply ask God or the universe to forgive me for failing to be “strong enough” to “overcome” my little not particularly uncommon tragedy. Sorry.

The irony being that the 90’s hip hop sound was largely influenced by MPC60/3000 quantization, amongst other drum machines.

Exception: If I’m researching technical topics I want the fastest computer, browser, and internet possible.

My new startup focuses on human nervous system faraday cages embedded into next generation fashion technology. This tech covers your entire body, keeping you safe from remote scans, and includes realistic facial and body disguises. For your safety, our tech constantly scans your thought patterns and memories and keeps them safe with a static filled triple scrambled encryption method, and encodes them into specially placed augmented cellular technology at undisclosed locations in the body.

For funding, please visit https://CE.YA/

Sorry for delay in responding. The issue is that there’s a huge proliferation of inaccessible comms which creates a growing sea of unchecked globally enabled online activity. This isn’t the same as allowing people to congregate in person and in private. The abstraction of privacy expanding on a virtual global scale presents unique challenges to law enforcement. This is independent from the proliferation of surveillance mechanisms at hand, and isn’t a valid counterbalance.

The tech companies assume power and disclaim responsibility. It is their job to police their pipes, so respectfully and urgently I disagree.

Concerns about historical corruption within three letter agencies is best addressed by working towards technical solutions that enable proper checks and balances amongst involved players: governments, tech oligarchies, and commoners. The current trend is towards a growing sea of entropy without checks and balances, and this is unacceptable to governments motivated to maintain/increase order and reduce suffering. Resistance via deployment of technical libertarian mechanisms at scale isn’t a solid long term solution.

The federal government isn’t aiming to ban math, encryption, pgp, one time pads, steanography, etc. Instead the goal is to prevent the proliferation of unbreakable encryption at scale, as that growing void enables criminal activity at scale, despite the growing surveillance apparatus.

An unfortunate consequence of fame is that celebrities are sometimes forced to take counter surveillance matters into their own hands.

As it’s difficult for a celebrity to accept new people into their inner circle without knowing their motives, pre-emptive measures can be used to vet outsiders. The unfortunate consequence of this is the application of questionable methods by shady security forces. Celebrities don’t have their own Secret Service detail so they end up relying upon their peers to perform investigations of outsiders entering their fold. This can be disastrous all around, particularly when there exists political and cultural disparities amongst involved parties. Speaking from experience.

Seems to be a far cry from explaining the Hard Problem of consciousness.

As for the meat of the text (pardon the pun, I just re-read “they’re made out of meat” yesterday), my amateur understanding is that there may be some degree of quantum effects in the microtubules of the brain, but that decoherence is very localized and limited, thus unlikely to have broader impact on physical systems at large. To this end, it’s unclear how a shared physical reality such as ours would allow for quantum effects from a measurement experiment, through the non quantum systems to the brain. Can someone explain the basis of the hypothesis presented by the paper in simple terms?

As this didn’t seem to be for profit, what are the prospects on obtaining the $260,000 judgment?

Roads can be monitored and policed.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but this is a great idea. Huge tech companies now worth trillions facilitate criminal activity at scale and wash their hands of any responsibility. E2EE at scale is problematic for maintaining sanctity in society, as people are terrible. Giving common folks easily accessible tools to engage in global secure comms has been a recipe for disaster. LE’s job has been made more difficult, and the tech companies should bear responsibility for policing their pipes.

The workaround is to wear a realistic facemask

Ten years ago I thought there would be a cultural shift towards wearable spy technology. Now I wonder if there will be a shift towards developing anonymous masks worn as part of a cultural norm.

How is there an ethical future when we don’t yet understand the hard problem of consciousness? How does one know if their manufactured neural net is self aware?

My experience growing up in America mirrors your description here. I’ve found the average American to be ok with bullying, sabotage, dishonesty, and malice.