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Re:Private Manning’s Humiliation on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:33PM (#2475659)
The President is sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution (by law, and upon accepting office). He can do this through whatever means are available to him, including executive orders, and rallying public support for legislation.

BTW, the title is "inflammatory" because the situation justifies it. It's an inflammatory situation, as it should be!

Find whatever excuse you want though for not approving this. Whatever helps you sleep.

Re:Private Manning’s Humiliation on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:28PM (#2475649)
BTW, HN has already turned into reddit, and the fact that this didn't make it to the front page is further evidence of that.
Re:Private Manning’s Humiliation on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:22PM (#2475628)
Your decision to turn a willful blind eye to this is part of the problem. If you know nothing about how the government works, perhaps you should listen to the law professors linked above.

In an indirect way, you are also helping contribute to Manning's continuing detainment and torture. Sleep with that.

Re:Private Manning’s Humiliation on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:12PM (#2475598)
That this story is being silenced out in so many places... blows my mind. HN should be ashamed to participate in the censorship.

The President of the United States is blatantly violating the Constitution (in one of the worst ways), and nobody cares.

Re:Private Manning’s Humiliation on Friday April 22, 2011 @05:49PM (#2475544)
Why isn't this on the front page given the number of upvotes it's gotten (12 in 32 minutes?).

Yet this is?

  Show HN: New Fwix Local API (from the team at Fwix)
  4 points by goo 56 minutes ago | flag | 1 comment
Re:Dropbox Lack of Security on Tuesday April 19, 2011 @01:44AM (#2461751)
Everything on your website that in any way addresses "Dropbox's security" should make absolutely clear the extent to which users can expect their data to be "secure".

In Dropbox's case, users can expect the following:

  - Data is probably secure from sniffers
That's it.

It matters little whether "Drew has physical access to our storage servers anymore". Your code obviously has easy access to the keys used to encrypt and decrypt the data. This means all of the following scenarios are possible:

  - User's data is obtained via the government (users 
    aren't necessarily even informed about this)
  - User's data is obtained by rouge employee (potentially
    leaking to _anyone_ or _anything_)
  - User's data is obtained by hacker (again, implies ZERO 
    assurance of data security).
So don't flash around "AES this or that" without making it absolutely clear to the average user that what you are doing is the equivalent of storing their data in a shed guarded by a lock that can be accessed by anyone who can find (or demand) the key that you've hidden under a rock somewhere.
Add Dreamhost to this list.
Re:What Location Tracking Looks Like on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @10:50PM (#2385575)
law enforcement would need a warrant to get the information

No, it doesn't.

https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

Re:Poll: Would you switch telecom providers for privacy? on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @10:47PM (#2385571)
OK, but the link seemed to have a happy ending, so I'm not sure if what you're saying is still true:

As a result of a settlement in the case, the FBI lifts the gag on Nick Merrill, the ACLU's client and the first NSL recipient to challenge the records demand.

Re:What Location Tracking Looks Like on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @10:22PM (#2385504)
On this topic, would you switch telecom providers for privacy?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2385463

Poll: Would you switch telecom providers for privacy?

By now it's established fact that your cell-service provider keeps a log of where you are and what you say, 24 hours a day, and this information will probably be retained by the NSA for a long time.Some think we're getting dangerously close to 1984. If, say, Sprint were to start a campaign with slogans like "We don't spy on you", would that entice you to switch to such a provider?Relevant...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
Re:Quick Poll: The fate of Color on Sunday March 27, 2011 @12:29PM (#2375293)
> Is it really HN's place to attempt to influence the fate of Color?

Certainly that is not HN's place or purpose. HN's purpose is to provide high-quality Hacker News. Its readership gets to decide what that is.

(Sidenote: A side effect of that is, yes, a force that can influence the fate of one project or another.)

Re:Quick Poll: The fate of Color on Sunday March 27, 2011 @12:22PM (#2375277)
The Color bashing is amusing, really, but at this point it's quite literally becoming marketing for them (perhaps that was their real genius). The more Yes upvotes it gets to flunk, the less likely that is it seems.

If this app is really so outrageously bad, then it seems odd to devote several of the top stories on HN to it; perhaps leave that to Reddit. ;)

Re:AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA on Monday March 21, 2011 @12:58AM (#2348542)
I'm not sure why people are upvoting your comment.

Actually, I do know why. It's a depressing disenchantment with government.

They don't understand that government is not going anywhere, and that government can be as good as it can be bad.

The quote zmblum posted is brilliant, and it is an example of what Good Government is capable of. It is not just for your 5th grade civics class. It's for RIGHT NOW. Read the quote, understand and respect it and its authors, and take action. The government is not just them, it's also you, and sitting on the sidelines being cynical is supporting them.

From his site FAQ:

Q: Why doesn't the EFF fund this?

A: Ask them. They have offered to provide some legal help though, which is much appreciated.

Btw, I should add an anecdotal example of what's possible.

Near the start of the uprising, parts of the protest pamphlet were leaked online (http://j.mp/hZf7uY) before the protest was set to take place. The pamphlet explicitly requested secrecy so that the details of the protest would not get into the hands of the government.

I was lying in bed in San Francisco, watching as news of this broke out on my iPhone twitter stream. Many people, myself included, were able to convince the author of the piece to delete his tweet with the link to the post, and while the post itself wasn't taken down, I wasn't able to find it from the publication's front page, and the post itself was edited to include a link to a video submitted by a twitter user of a man being shot and killed by the Egyptian police.

And that's just a small incident I happened to stumble across. I think that illustrates how profoundly the world has changed, where individuals, anywhere on the planet, can influence people and events in ways that can have significant consequences. All that, through a few tweets.

I think the events in Tunisia and Egypt show just how wrong that perspective is. Twitter and social media in general are in their infancy and yet already are having such a massive impact on social change around the world.

The ability to communicate thoughts, events, instantaneously, as they happen, and from the people actively involved in those events around the world, is unprecedented in human history.

The revolution has been tweeted. It does not depend solely on twitter and the like, but these are not tools to be underestimated.

Just compare the quality of the content you're getting by following people actively engaged in the revolution on twitter, with what you see on CNN. This is revolutionary.

Re:Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers. on Sunday January 30, 2011 @01:31PM (#2158692)
If this actually passes, any sentiments I had about moving to Canada would evaporate. Good job guys, you're keeping the techies out.
Re:Rare pictures of North Korea on Saturday January 29, 2011 @12:33AM (#2154758)
That is not my meaning. A pure anarchy where anyone can do what they want to you goes directly against the examples I gave and the Harm Principle (see response to apl).
Re:Rare pictures of North Korea on Friday January 28, 2011 @05:52PM (#2153843)
I don't understand your reply. I agree with Mill, and I gave examples that illustrate the Harm Principle.
Re:Rare pictures of North Korea on Friday January 28, 2011 @03:59PM (#2153494)
I wish people would stop using that term, "free country". I don't know of very many "free countries". If you live in the United States, you live in a free-er country than North Korea, and indeed, that's something to be grateful for, but you do not live in a truly free country.

In a truly free country, you would, for example, have the freedom to eat whatever you want (so long as it doesn't impinge on other people's freedoms). You would be able to have sex with whoever you wanted (so long as both parties are 'mature enough' to agree). This too, is not the case in the states. You would be able to marry whoever you wanted. You would be able to do to your body whatever you wanted. In a truly free country, you would have the freedom to do things that in today's non-free country we consider taboo, punishable offenses. Etc.

Re:HN, I just built this 2D game designer. What do you think? on Thursday January 27, 2011 @01:18AM (#2146829)
This is really cool, but I wish it didn't depend on AIR... Any plans for a native OS X app?

http://al3x.net/2011/01/15/user-hostile-platforms.html

Re:The End Of Facebook and Free Software's Quiet Revolution on Tuesday January 25, 2011 @06:00PM (#2141318)

  SQLSTATE[08004] [1040] Too many connections
The 'revolution' is off to a great start...
Re:Real-Life Massive Multi-Player Spy Game on Tuesday January 25, 2011 @12:56PM (#2140063)
Nice! Crowdsourcing national intelligence, now there's a way to reduce the deficit. ;)

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