hackerjam

Given the recent press of how civil forfeiture laws have been / are being abused by police departments in this country [1], the idea that the Obama Admninistration would try to float such an idea, much less try to get it passed into legislation is mind boggling. Just shows just how out of touch they really are.

1. http://www.cato.org/events/policing-profit-abuse-civil-asset...

the permalink for this article can be found here:

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/11/zero-knowled...

a good reflective "think" piece on how centralized systems are being undermined by innovation. it's amazing just how many potentially disruptive technologies have be introduced or come into mainstream thinking in just the past year alone.

also it is worth checking out the original article first, published a little over a year ago [1].

[1] http://fee.org/freeman/detail/fifty-ways-to-leave-leviathan

awareness is good. but what i want to know is how do we start defending ourselves against excessive, and unjustified, surveillance. what countermeasures are we supposed to take/adopt? or is it too late already? sure hope not.

very useful, even for non-economists.

the use of archetypes in systems thinking is very powerful. they let you quickly recognize the source of a problem. glad to see this field of expertise is migrating to software acquisition.

btw, a visual representation of the diagrams can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_archetype

those of us who are part of the silent majority, witnessing the dismantling of our democratic institutions, all in the name of combatting terrorism, fighting the drug wars, and eradicating the 'isms... are going to have to start getting off our collective a$$es and speak out against these injustices; otherwise we're going to wake up one day and realize there is no one left to speak or act for us. when i read something like the salon article -- and there are too many reports like this, to write them off as aberations -- i am reminded of the niemöller quotation:

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Socialist. . . . Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me." [1]

[1] http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392

sam, what a great put down. in fact, the detail in your line-by-line critique approaches overkill.

even more amusing, depending on your point of view, is how matthew driver makes the anonymity afforded by cash seem like a dirty word (3:29). however. what really me got rolling on the floor with laughter is the fact that driver neglects to mention interest rates, late fees, and remittance costs associated with using mastercard products and services.

in comparison, check out this video link i posted a couple of days ago:

The Future Will Be Decentralized < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705326 >

and which, unfortunately, didn't garner a lot of interest on hn. pity.

you think the snowden revelations can't get any worse... and then you read something like this.

if i was one of the inboxes being monitored, not only would i feel compromised/violated; i would be very pissed off. mad in fact, ready to do battle...

i feel sorry for the "spooks" of the world. their days are numbered. we're coming to getcha.

here, here. if snowden didn't exist, russia and turkey would have found another excuse to repress the internet.

i didn't bother to vote cuz i had no idea -- looking at that little box in the middle of the screen -- cuz i was too distracted by the lousy user interface and the lack of context.

however, i did cut and paste the url to look at your site and to answer your question, it depends. this is a corporate blog. it has to serve some purpose other than a cool place for ios-aficionados to hang out. and you have to consider, do you want genuine feedback from your users; do you want them to engage; and are you prepared to listen to and act on opinions you (as a company) may not share or want to hear. cuz it not, don't go there. you'll be opening up a big can of worms.

very interesting take on creativity.

i hope you consider doing a complete revamp of your site because it sucks...

if you don't click on the main link of a listing, just right, you end up opening the side menu;

in order to post a comment you have to subscribe to twitter... no thanks; if you really want to grow your user community, be more respectful to their needs/wants and idiosyncracies. we're living in a post edward snowden world and some of us just aren't comfortable with chauffeured access anymore, no matter how convenient it is;

you have to wade through a lot of half-baked apps before you get to real products -- so a better way to filter and curate the listings to get bona fide products and services would be helpful;

and get rid of the date-based segments. i have yet to figure out what purpose that serves because it seems like listings are being added after-the-fact. i find that even though i visit the site on a daily basis, the next time i visit, i am constantly having to go back and look at the previous one or two days to see what has been added. whereas if your site was more like hacker news, with lots of churn going on, at least there is no way to really know what you might have missed. so you are less dissatisfied. i know i probably miss some of the best stuff showing up on hacker news but i have no way of knowing, so it feels less burdensome. with the way your site is set up, i always have the perception -- right or wrong -- that i missed something so i need to go back and pick up where i left off.

wow. how disappointing. and her justification is???

don't the powers-that-be realize the unintended conseqences of their actions. that we're in a period of transition (for real) and if elected politicians continue to accommodate corporations that have a vested interest in shackling and turning the "internet" into an appliance, they will expedite the adoption of p2p and decentralized technologies. the very same technologies (think: blockchain) that are predicted to bring about their own demise.

i just read a few of days ago that the g20 has adopted a set of new rules [1] -- that should there be another financial meltdown -- they will take (not borrow) their customers deposits and pension funds to cover their losses.

and if memory serves me correctly, when the cypriot economy tanked [2] and they declared that they were going to seize depositor funds, > $100k , the fall out from that action alone, gave a big impetus for investors to start switching out of fiat currencies and into bitcoin.

our leadership is (or at least, on the surface, appears to be) so out of touch. has it always been this way and little folks, like myself, are just now noticing or are we living at warp speed and there is no room for error, must less, time for reflection.

[1] http://ellenbrown.com/2014/12/01/new-rules-cyprus-style-bail...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Cypriot_financi...