adrtessier's comments

Given Drupal's highly-modular architecture, React and a manager like Redux makes the most sense IMO.

Building the Drupal module frontend as React Components seems like it would be easy to add on as a toggleable layer. You push state into the global Drupal root and mimic the module tree in the state store, and then reduce based upon a dispatch from individual modules somewhere in the document tree.

It's a very clean fit into Drupal's legacy architecture and easy for a Drupal developer to wrap their head around, as it's all one-way.

I don't think that is his point; that's not what Harley does, at all.

H-D markets themselves as a "lifestyle brand". You don't just buy a motorcycle and you're done. You are aggressively marketed toward for a bunch of different pieces of clothing, spare parts, co-branded partnerships with automobile companies, et cetera, ad nauseum. You are effectively buying into a subculture.

Furthermore, Harley-Davidson has been known to use almost identical sales tactics. IIRC and I can't find it now, but sometime last year a sales guidelines book was leaked that actually did things like put attractive models at gas stations to tell the prospective buyer "nice bike" or the like on their test rides.

> You had the education and the know-how to be able to learn to defend yourself from ads, and out of some sense of modesty, you're going to keep it to yourself?

I'm unsure how it is that you draw this as the conclusion. What am I keeping to myself? The OP's argument is about banning specific types of games because some people can't control themselves.

I believe there is a strong difference between asking the government to ban an action versus sharing information on the risks of an action. I've generally nothing against the government issuing required warnings on vices, assuming the information is scientifically accurate (e.g. the warnings on tobacco boxes, etc.)

I don't believe that the original author is making the argument that "marketers sometimes do shady things with data." From its title and lede to the end, I read it as "some of these games are manipulative and use manipulative tactics and mechanics to suck money out of people, sometimes to their own demise. The government needs to regulate this industry to protect people from themselves and ban these mechanics." This is roughly as simple to regulate and ban as it is to ban any other type of mechanic. It is what leads to weird laws such as some of California's casinos having weird bingo-based slot machines, or pachinko machines in Japan needing you to trade a pseudocurrency for goods.

The point I'm trying to make is that it is impractical, costly, probably impossible and dangerous to attempt to limit the mechanics the OP is really pissed off about in a way that does not also impinge upon the freedom of the majority in order to protect those with poor impulse control.

I am capable of going to a casino and walking out of there without losing my shirt. I am equally as capable of going to have a few drinks at a bar without becoming an alcoholic, or to have sex with somebody and not turn into a raging sex addict. Should my ability to go to casinos, drink, or sleep with people be regulated too, just because some people's lives are ruined by these things?

You can project this argument into a thousand different things just because people like them. For example, I spend an absolute eternity on the Internet. The vast majority of my life is spent reading, writing code, or doing other coder-type things. Because of this, I have also had to eat the opportunity cost involved; I have missed out on some social gatherings, I have lost friends and also lost any and all experience I would get otherwise. It's safe to say, by some general decree, that I'm addicted to what I do. I'd argue I'm passionate. Should my work and passions be regulated because there is an opportunity cost to me doing so? Should I not be allowed to have the Internet at all because someone else has racked up inordinate amounts of debt at World of Warcraft?

I don't believe it is the fault of the mechanic that these people have poor impulse control, for some reason or another, and I also don't believe it's fair to limit the existence of these types of games because some people are incapable of walking away from them. If we should do anything regulatory down this path, it is building in proper harm reduction systems for these things versus taking a puritanical "ban it" approach to them.

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically."

I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, which was released, oh, 58 years ago. People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare".

Marketing and advertising might seem to be refined in this dopamine-heavy, short-attention-span social gaming age, but this shit has been around as long as humanity itself has existed. Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. It's a slippery slope that would take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry, an industry which is pretty much necessary for the vast majority of the citizenry to even know what is out there to purchase.

Furthermore, how would one even decide where the line between manipulative consumption and social signaling is? Some people want to own all the capital ships; they have some social hierarchy in some subculture standing upon it. Should I regulate that, too, and force them to have the same consumption values and preferences that I do? Should we take this a step further and ban all vices? Let's see how fast American society would fall apart if we banned alcohol again.

FWIW, I hate consumerism and advertising. I block ads everywhere, I hate big branded items, I don't know the last time I bought something from an ad. Just because I feel this way, I don't go around trying to violently force that opinion upon others by begging the state to do it for me.

On one hand, I am happy that Telegram exists; its founding story, homebrew crypto, cute marketing and "not-American" position has made it a shit magnet for a lot of people that don't know what makes things secure, and are convinced by some Zuck-esque figure's charisma that he knows what's going on encryption-wise. It makes it a lightning rod for this type of press, attracts the idiotic bits of Daesh, and keeps this press-fueled, IC-backed anti-crypto heat off of other systems that actually work to keep people secure.

On the other hand, some others inevitably become collateral damage, using Telegram's (entirely) insecure defaults and thinking they have "secret" messages, or worse yet, enabling MTProto and believing they are safe in high-risk environments. Given this latest PR stunt, though, I think the benefits of Telegram's existence seem to outweigh its costs.

Avast is not the only antivirus program that does that these days; ESET does it, and Symantec's Norton products do as well IIRC. As everything moves toward TLS, this is pretty much a required step on the client for "Internet Security", and the average person doesn't know or doesn't care.

Largely, you probably should not either if you are trusting the AV client with the rest of your computer. Yes, it can be fucked up and break TLS, but there are a thousand other ways a privileged executable like an AV program could fuck up a lot more of your system. For example, a bunch of CVEs were found in Kaspersky's product by Tavis Ormandy in September, and it appears that a few found in Avast have been made public within the past few days. [1]

[1] https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/de...

Well, it's good to know that I basically got it right. I don't work in incident response, so I had to make an educated guess at what signatures I'd assume IR people would use to respectably say "this is a nation-state."

> I work with one of the people interviewed in the article, we've been having some fun on Slack with it

Ooh boy. I don't think there's much you can do about something like this other than laugh it off, and also maybe recognize that hey, you're probably doing something of influence. (And probably make lots of jokes about APTs.)

Attribution is generally hard in these types of things, and some guy with IR experience can probably explain more than I can.

However, some of these attack groups follow specific patterns, use specific IP addresses, domains, emails, etc. because there is no real consequence to them doing so. Kaspersky, Mandiant et al [1] often have great writeups on these types of things that are often posted to their own blogs and to netsec-related mailing lists that show some of these common attack patterns.

On top of this, Twitter could have been tipped off by law enforcement or intelligence.

[1] http://www.mandiant.com/apt1

Yeah, somebody had fun with that article. It's one of my favorites on Wikipedia.

It seems that working publicly on information privacy tools (and especially the Tor Project) increasingly makes you a target for nation-state-level adversaries. I'm very curious who the actor was, and what they expected to gain of value from Twitter accounts.

I find it extremely unlikely for this attack to have been perpetrated by the United States; after all, Twitter is an American company and a three-letter could just NSL them for the data they wanted on these "activists".

If there is one place in the American government where "checks and balances" have become a farce, it is in the sheer amount of things the executive branch can get away with by EO. I will be very interested to see what, if any, effect they can have on actual gun control with an Executive Order, and just how fast the Judicial Branch strikes this down.

It is far easier for us to vilify guns and maintain the status quo versus recognize and fix what is actually causing all of this violence: the quickly widening cultural polarity between Americans. An actually united populace and culture does not often shoot itself to death. There's too much money to be made by making people pick sides instead of join on a common one, and until that changes, I don't think America will ever solve its violence problem.

I think there is a distinction to be made between surveillance and data, and I do not necessarily think you need to go full cypherpunk to make a meaningful difference. The cat is well out of the bag on data collection and analytics and it will be that way forever.

However, people working within institutions that contain sensitive data can help affect positive change from the inside as well as the outside. Be a voice for the security of user data within your organization, and do what you can to meaningfully contribute to methods that increase user anonymity and business models that do not require being excessively intrusive into the personal details of others. There is something you can do everywhere, and it is far better to have people privacy-minded even inside of the classical "surveillance" companies than having these companies run recklessly without a voice for the user. In fact, it may even have more impact than yet another frontend for yet another OTR implementation.

I'm very curious as to what the reaction was of the first pilot that was shot at. My guess is he was probably be thinking more "Wow, what an asshole," than he would be thinking that the aggressor's action makes sense in the context of war.

Have you continued the things that have worked? I have never been to Switzerland and know little about its medical care, but I can't imagine there is not someone there that can help you with this given how advanced the society is.

> It's shocking to me how inconsiderate the Japanese are of suicide and grieving.

Eh, I think it's a different perspective. Simplifying things greatly, Japanese society is a collective one, and one could argue that suicide is a selfish decision that damages the collective by removing any possible utility you may be giving it for the sake of yourself. As even small transgressions of this nature are frowned upon in Japanese culture, it's not surprising to me that the bigger transgressions have these reactions.

Is it even possible for an expat to become a Shinto priest?

It's extra funny when you read this sentence, understand how business goes on in China, and then read Li Gong try to backpedal from the fact that everybody knows what is really going on here, saying "We carefully chose to incorporate in Hong Kong instead of the US, or mainland China for that matter, because we foresee geopolitical factors that may impact our global business down the line."

Yep, sure. I'll choose to follow the money over the rhetoric.

It might be best, then, to speak to a psychiatrist versus a therapist, if therapy is not working well for you, especially with an ADD diagnosis.

It sounds like you may be best off seeing a psychotherapist that may be able to help you better understand and control your novelty-seeking. Your pattern sounds self-destructive and it is obviously causing you distress.

Also: have you considered contract or consulting work? If you have the freedom to travel around for work, it can be more dynamic and rewarding than your current pattern.