h0w412d

"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain

Yep. Cory Doctorow has talked about this: how the universe "makes it easy" to secure communications because mathematically, it's really easy to encrypt (verify that a number is prime) and really difficult to decrypt through hacking (factor a huge prime number).

And because of that, outlawing encryption is really outlawing math, which is ridiculous. Math is a universal API everyone has access to simply by existing. You can't outlaw math.

I'd have to disagree. I think the interview process desperately needs an injection of pragmatism. If the actual job never requires Big-O analysis, then asking it during the interview is a waste of time. I've never had to do Big-O analysis in the real world, but I have had to fix N+1's. Ask about that.

I have the same feeling toward them. They're chosen for the same reason new technologies are often chosen: because they're new. The people doing the choosing aren't concerned with effectiveness or improvement, only that they're keeping up with the cool new thing.

Couldn't agree more. The "innovations" SV has brought to the interview process are more to satisfy the need to "disrupt" the traditional way of interviewing, with no thought to whether they're actually improvements. Take-home tests that are 8 hours long, talking to 14 people over 12 hours (actually happened to me), and tricky questions that will never happen in the day-to-day at that company: all useless and/or unfair.

Exactly. And this is why surveillance is so difficult to fight. The actions are far removed from the consequences, and the public just isn't very good at long-term planning. But we can't wait for the negative effects to show, because by then it'll be too late.

I have to say, I hate take home tests. They move all the burden of time commitment onto the candidate. And even if the question says it should take 2-3 hours, there's a game theory situation where you have to assume others are spending more than the recommended time to make their answer more polished, forcing you to spend more than the recommended time.

Finally, companies never pay you back appropriately for your time investment. If you fail the question, they don't give you a detailed report of why you failed. I'll always politely turn down a take home test.

BCrypt has a character limit of 72.

This is a great idea. I wish I had known about it years ago!

Rationally questioning your own views first? Obviously that's a rare quality in the population or we wouldn't be in the messes you outlined above.

"virtually"...being kinda generous, aren't we?

Well that escalated quickly.

"Algorithms are for people who don't know how to buy RAM."

Well, have you ever not thought that after a password leak?

There was an experiment with this called Mincome in Canada. They found that the only two groups of people who worked less were new moms and teenagers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Yep. If the government represented the will of its people, we'd have sensible gun control and readily available contraception. The government hasn't represented us for a long time.

How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?

That's exactly why the users can no longer trust the service or the government to do right by them. Client-side encryption is the only way to be sure your rights aren't being trampled.

Nick Merrill tried to crowdfund an ISP way back that automatically encrypts all traffic, making surveillance impossible. Of course it ended underfunded.

Not enough links.

Just like how it only takes a few GPS coordinates to figure out who you are with a high degree of accuracy. Anonymizing data doesn't mean much in the big data world.

They both work tirelessly, mostly for people who don't even know they exist. Money donated to them is money well spent.

Is a website, is beautiful, is easy to use, has an API. You've hit on the first three, so when the API becomes public, I am so using this.

Are you hosting this yourself? Do you expect $9/year members to adequate cover the costs? I'd totally be willing to pay more if it means I don't have to suffer through another shutdown.

Is there an API?

So your title isn't dependent on your accomplishments or abilities, but only your schooling?

Not to mention the annual 40,000 lives lost and even more injured due to car accidents, and the huge swaths of land that would be freed up when parking lots are no longer necessary.

Not everything is about jobs.

I don't think so. Any password that's listed anywhere (like as an example in a blog post or comic) should be considered worthless. How do you know hackers haven't incorporated that into their dictionary?

A comment that survives the end of the universe? Shit what kind of computer are you using? And more importantly, don't ever let it fall into the hands of a spammer...

Definitely this. The average car sits in the drive way 22 hours a day. It may not seem like it at first, but an all-taxi economy will be much cheaper for the riders (think about paying for 1 millionth the cost of maintaining 1 million cars at once, as opposed to 100% of the cost of maintaining one car).