I may not use their service and I may absolutely, 100% completely disagree with the way that they hijack privacy to make money, but they are definitely doing interesting CS and engineering.
I really hope not. I am a Nexus 5 user and was disappointed that they are not supporting this in the Beta program. However, I will DEFECT from Google entirely if they do not support the device with the next version of the OS. I mean, it's only two years old. I don't want to be "forced" to upgrade to help them make more money by selling more devices.
I mean, that would put me over the edge: use my privacy to make a profit? fine! Force me to buy new hardware on your schedule to use the new OS? Not fine.:-)
* Rather than unyieldingly "privacy preserving" our idea is to let *you* decide what parts of your web activity you want to share. Many people would like to have a more social experience on the web, for the same reason that people like to go outside, run into friends, and see where crowds are gathering. But we argue that you, rather than the tracking agencies, should be in charge of deciding which parts of your activity should be visible.
I agree that any unyielding stance is no good. Yes, I also agree that letting the user decide is a good thing. However, the problem comes with reasonable defaults. Most users are not savvy enough (myself included) to know what data is being shared by default. For instance, after reading this headline I would have imagined that there would be a significant amount of privacy protection enabled from the start. Making reasonably safe defaults and adding reasonable, clear, concise warnings is really hard but really important.
Finally, THANK YOU for a) making the project source code available and b) responding on/. to engage with potential end users. Good luck on the continued success!
I think that discussing these issues is a very important aspect of technology. Although there are those who have posted comments to this article and argued that sociology of technology and technology should not be confused, I completely disagree. As more and more of society depends on the software and technology that the readers of/. produce, the more and more important it becomes that we discuss these issues.
I was initially proud that/. had decided to post an article about this on its front page. I thought that perhaps the new overlords were going to take this seriously. Instead, they simply wasted an opportunity by posting a childish article summary. What could have been a good chance to promote a discussion was wasted.
I hope that/. will evolve and recognize the importance of these issues and present them in a manner that promotes discussion. I care about discussing these issues openly and factually than I do about what *you* actually decide. As long as we have an open, honest discussion, I think that's what matters. Framing the discussing like/. editors did in this case is absolutely not helpful.
I don't have moderator points, so I'll have to reply: Completely agree. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this type of "news" before. Of course, it has the potential to backfire if they are taking payments to "advertise" conferences. But, like the book reviews that have an affiliate link, I don't think that there's anything wrong with paying the bills.
.. as much as some companies incentive code addition. If a programmer is paid using a metric of LoC then, I think, something is wrong. There is just as much work done in removing code as there is in adding it.
The flipside is important, too, though: Just rewriting good eloquent code with "clever" oneliners is absolutely wrong.
Code that has to be there should be eloquent and well-documented. Code that does not need to be there should be removed.
This is referred to as differential privacy by Cynthia Dwork. She's an expert on the techniques used to perform data mining without personally identifiable information about "other" people in the dataset. Here's a video of a fascinating talk she gave that outlines her work:
Interesting. I never get anywhere near the throttle point so I've never really noticed. I am definitely going to look into this now that you mention it!
... just keeps getting more expensive. In the grand scheme of things, that $5/mo price increase for my age-old unlimited data plan is not a big deal. The problem is that it reminds me just how far we can trust these companies. They expect us to hold up our end of the bargain (2 year contracts, phone leases, etc) but they don't do their part (SLAs, uptime, throughput that matches advertised speeds, etc).
I get the animosity toward Forbes and these type of articles, but why the animosity toward Ethan? That's a serious question.
When I googled I found information that certainly seems to suggest he has a legitimate PhD in a field in something more complicated than I'll ever understand. He also seems to hold (or have held) real teaching positions. Please help me see what I am missing.
I wish that I had moderator points to mod this up. Thank you for this post. I largely agree with you. Like you said, there is a tradeoff, but I'd like to see us to swing back in the other direction (at least a little).
The one benefit of less self-reliance is what we would realize there is really no such thing as self-reliance. We are all helped/hurt by the people around us all the time and in myriad ways. I believe that people who believe they are entirely self-reliant lack the empathy needed to realize that it's not always about the individual desire to succeed that makes a person successful.
Good point -- I was talking about the fact that they take money from the government does not make them "rich". That was the point I was trying to counter from the original author's post.
The people who work on Tor, IMO, deserve our support. Perhaps if enough people supported them with donations they wouldn't have to turn to the government for funding to cover their basic operations.
I honestly don't care about why *others* are interested in the sport, but, YES, I love NASCAR because of the science. Seriously. The same reason I like F1. I watch and watch and watch just to pick up on the tech, the engineering, aerodynamics. Especially in F1, but across all motorsports, use of supercomputing for CFD is taking the place of the traditional wind tunnel. NASCAR used CFD heavily in developing the Car of Tomorrow (a few years ago) to determine how and where to "box" the angles to reduce speed and to increase safety. As a graduate student in computer science, that type of thing is fascinating.
I don't deny that I also love the idea of speed, the sound of the engines and the deft touch on the wheel. But, Formula E, Formula 1, Indy and, yes, even NASCAR, are incredibly scientific and THAT is why I watch them.
I especially agree with your point in today's world where compilers are able to do a decent job optimizing. When that brevity does not buy you anything more than a few saved keystrokes, I tend to focus on writing the most readable yet not overly verbose code. There are ways to do that in PERL just as there are in Python. Sometimes with languages with more exotic features and "more than one way to do everything" it is tempting to be as clever as possible.
Then I remember: "clever is not a compliment" and I want to be able to, you know, understand my code when I return to it 18 mos later (just like OP said).
I don't know that it is that simplistic (nor do I think that the language you've used is necessarily appropriate),
HOWEVER
you are exactly correct! I mean, there are some grave predictions about the future of VW and they didn't kill anyone. Yes, VW should be punished and what they will get may even be the proper penalization. Relatively speaking, though, they should not be punished more harshly than companies that knowingly allowed dangerous parts to remain in cars even after people were killed.
Slashdot Mirror
Knock knock. Time to get up.
I may not use their service and I may absolutely, 100% completely disagree with the way that they hijack privacy to make money, but they are definitely doing interesting CS and engineering.
I really hope not. I am a Nexus 5 user and was disappointed that they are not supporting this in the Beta program. However, I will DEFECT from Google entirely if they do not support the device with the next version of the OS. I mean, it's only two years old. I don't want to be "forced" to upgrade to help them make more money by selling more devices.
I mean, that would put me over the edge: use my privacy to make a profit? fine! Force me to buy new hardware on your schedule to use the new OS? Not fine. :-)
* Rather than unyieldingly "privacy preserving" our idea is to let *you* decide what parts of your web activity you want to share. Many people would like to have a more social experience on the web, for the same reason that people like to go outside, run into friends, and see where crowds are gathering. But we argue that you, rather than the tracking agencies, should be in charge of deciding which parts of your activity should be visible.
I agree that any unyielding stance is no good. Yes, I also agree that letting the user decide is a good thing. However, the problem comes with reasonable defaults. Most users are not savvy enough (myself included) to know what data is being shared by default. For instance, after reading this headline I would have imagined that there would be a significant amount of privacy protection enabled from the start. Making reasonably safe defaults and adding reasonable, clear, concise warnings is really hard but really important.
Finally, THANK YOU for a) making the project source code available and b) responding on /. to engage with potential end users. Good luck on the continued success!
The government can mandate you buy a product, why not a mandate to open a product.
I assume that you are referring to ACA?
And, even better, it's this type of headline/information that I want /. to publish. This is news for nerds.
It is in the penumbra.
What is shocking is not just that the women were the focal point of this photo essay, but the diversity of the women themselves.
Fascinating. Honestly, fascinating.
I think that discussing these issues is a very important aspect of technology. Although there are those who have posted comments to this article and argued that sociology of technology and technology should not be confused, I completely disagree. As more and more of society depends on the software and technology that the readers of /. produce, the more and more important it becomes that we discuss these issues.
I was initially proud that /. had decided to post an article about this on its front page. I thought that perhaps the new overlords were going to take this seriously. Instead, they simply wasted an opportunity by posting a childish article summary. What could have been a good chance to promote a discussion was wasted.
I hope that /. will evolve and recognize the importance of these issues and present them in a manner that promotes discussion. I care about discussing these issues openly and factually than I do about what *you* actually decide. As long as we have an open, honest discussion, I think that's what matters. Framing the discussing like /. editors did in this case is absolutely not helpful.
Will
I don't have moderator points, so I'll have to reply: Completely agree. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this type of "news" before. Of course, it has the potential to backfire if they are taking payments to "advertise" conferences. But, like the book reviews that have an affiliate link, I don't think that there's anything wrong with paying the bills.
Of course I mistyped. My subject line should have been "incentivize".
.. as much as some companies incentive code addition. If a programmer is paid using a metric of LoC then, I think, something is wrong. There is just as much work done in removing code as there is in adding it.
The flipside is important, too, though: Just rewriting good eloquent code with "clever" oneliners is absolutely wrong.
Code that has to be there should be eloquent and well-documented. Code that does not need to be there should be removed.
This is referred to as differential privacy by Cynthia Dwork. She's an expert on the techniques used to perform data mining without personally identifiable information about "other" people in the dataset. Here's a video of a fascinating talk she gave that outlines her work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh2xfgfymHk
Interesting. I never get anywhere near the throttle point so I've never really noticed. I am definitely going to look into this now that you mention it!
fcc: guise...seriously...
It's early but this should go on the list of the best inadvertent typos of 2016.
... just keeps getting more expensive. In the grand scheme of things, that $5/mo price increase for my age-old unlimited data plan is not a big deal. The problem is that it reminds me just how far we can trust these companies. They expect us to hold up our end of the bargain (2 year contracts, phone leases, etc) but they don't do their part (SLAs, uptime, throughput that matches advertised speeds, etc).
I get the animosity toward Forbes and these type of articles, but why the animosity toward Ethan? That's a serious question.
When I googled I found information that certainly seems to suggest he has a legitimate PhD in a field in something more complicated than I'll ever understand. He also seems to hold (or have held) real teaching positions. Please help me see what I am missing.
References:
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/siegel/
http://startswithabang.com/?page_id=4
I wish that I had moderator points to mod this up. Thank you for this post. I largely agree with you. Like you said, there is a tradeoff, but I'd like to see us to swing back in the other direction (at least a little).
The one benefit of less self-reliance is what we would realize there is really no such thing as self-reliance. We are all helped/hurt by the people around us all the time and in myriad ways. I believe that people who believe they are entirely self-reliant lack the empathy needed to realize that it's not always about the individual desire to succeed that makes a person successful.
Also note: she specifically said that they were NOT the lead response team for the Sony attack/breach.
Good point -- I was talking about the fact that they take money from the government does not make them "rich". That was the point I was trying to counter from the original author's post.
And that makes them "rich"?
The people who work on Tor, IMO, deserve our support. Perhaps if enough people supported them with donations they wouldn't have to turn to the government for funding to cover their basic operations.
Well, I'm spending too much time at the computer: I thought that this headline was about GnuTV. I got really excited.
And then I got really mad.
That's a good question :-) Given the trophies that I got as a middle schooler, I'm anything but average :-)
I honestly don't care about why *others* are interested in the sport, but, YES, I love NASCAR because of the science. Seriously. The same reason I like F1. I watch and watch and watch just to pick up on the tech, the engineering, aerodynamics. Especially in F1, but across all motorsports, use of supercomputing for CFD is taking the place of the traditional wind tunnel. NASCAR used CFD heavily in developing the Car of Tomorrow (a few years ago) to determine how and where to "box" the angles to reduce speed and to increase safety. As a graduate student in computer science, that type of thing is fascinating.
I don't deny that I also love the idea of speed, the sound of the engines and the deft touch on the wheel. But, Formula E, Formula 1, Indy and, yes, even NASCAR, are incredibly scientific and THAT is why I watch them.
Will
I especially agree with your point in today's world where compilers are able to do a decent job optimizing. When that brevity does not buy you anything more than a few saved keystrokes, I tend to focus on writing the most readable yet not overly verbose code. There are ways to do that in PERL just as there are in Python. Sometimes with languages with more exotic features and "more than one way to do everything" it is tempting to be as clever as possible.
Then I remember: "clever is not a compliment" and I want to be able to, you know, understand my code when I return to it 18 mos later (just like OP said).
Will
I don't know that it is that simplistic (nor do I think that the language you've used is necessarily appropriate),
HOWEVER
you are exactly correct! I mean, there are some grave predictions about the future of VW and they didn't kill anyone. Yes, VW should be punished and what they will get may even be the proper penalization. Relatively speaking, though, they should not be punished more harshly than companies that knowingly allowed dangerous parts to remain in cars even after people were killed.