bhitov's comments

> Read the Abelson report (which has been discussed ad nauseam in past HN threads). MIT did not want Swartz prosecuted, and told the prosecutor that.

from the Abelson report (pg 53, https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.p...):

"With regard to substance, MIT would make no statements, whether in support or in opposition, about the government’s decision to prosecute Aaron Swartz"

Am I missing something? Been a while since I read the report in full.

"While MIT did not conform precisely to this rule, in this sense of similar responses MIT—broadly speaking—did not side with the prosecution, nor did it side with the defense. In consequence of the differences in the powers, timing, and goals of the two parties in the case, neutrality in responses was not consistent with neutrality in outcomes, and MIT was not neutral in outcomes."

I agree that MIT was not trying to make an example out of him. But it wasn't that "they didn't push back harder on the prosecutor", it was that they didn't push back at all. The Ableson report correctly criticizes MIT for this.

Other way around. 10% profit 5% withdrawal.

I read the entirety of his AmA and did not once see him "advocate for slavery". Could you directly link to where he does and quote him?

for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...

The complaint is available here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/285422882/Amazon-Complaint

> Third, we have already accepted that our design is vulnerable to end-to-end timing attacks https://blog.torproject.org/blog/one-cell-enough

They are not talking about the same kind of timing attacks. Deanonymization attacks require vastly less latency consistency.

> This is the wrong funding model.

It's only the wrong funding model if there is a superior alternative. It's a non-ideal funding model, but as is the main point of the article, they are and have been actively looking for alternative sources of funding without success. I hope your gripe is not directed at OpenSSL but at those who could be supporting it financially.

They absolutely do not use the same language. Where did you see that?

>Notice that it didn't say, "Academics disregard the chemical balance explanation because it lacks evidentiary support."

A lack of explicit critique in a rephrasing on wikipedia should not be used as evidence.

The cited article for that sentence (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/516262) is from 2005 and includes the following:

> Numerous studies to identify reproducible changes in neurotransmitter levels in the cerebrospinal fluid of clinically depressed patients, or to induce or correct depression by manipulating brain serotonin levels, were inconclusive and fraught with methodological limitations.

> Gordon McCarter, PhD, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the College of Pharmacy of Touro University in Vallejo, California, agreed that the evidence for an "imbalance" in neurotransmitters causing depression is "circumstantial" and "more and more tenuous." He noted the dearth of studies showing any measurable difference in serotonin or norepinephrine between depressed patients and controls

> "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not list serotonin as a cause of any mental disorder; it is simply one neurotransmitter that continues to be investigated. And the prescribing information for the SSRIs does not claim that their mechanism of action is to correct a chemical imbalance, although this is exactly what the advertisements claim."

> "We suspect that many consumers believe the serotonin theory to be more scientifically based than it is, and that they might have chosen an alternative approach to their distress if they were fully informed.

I didn't say it wasn't an oversimplification, I said oversimplification isn't the problem. You seemed to misunderstand the complaint of the first post you replied to.

I assume when you say SSRE you are talking about tianeptine? Its affinity for SERT is low and its primary target is believed to be elsewhere.

The problem wasn't that 'medications help to balance out those chemicals' is an oversimplification, it's that the theory doesn't have a lot of support. The evidence for the monoamine hypothesis is far from conclusive. I agree with the parent that 'chemical imbalance' is a PR line if stated as a medical truth. (I am only commenting on the class of medications mentioned in the article)

> That Mozilla is and remains a place where any employee can express their views on political issues, even if they know they're contrary to the CEO's. And that destroys any argument for Eich's role as CEO creating a conflict with Mozilla's ability to welcome LGBTQ employees and community members.

Not that I necessarily think having Eich as CEO would make Mozilla unable to welcome LGBTQ employees, but this argument is absurd. It is not at all difficult to imagine a rule set that permits free speech while still discriminating against LGBTQ employees in some other way.

Agreed. It would be entirely uncharacteristic of the supreme court to make such a broad ruling.

Much appreciated =). I looked for references after reading the parent discussions and xnyhps's blog post but was unsuccessful.

> The current state of the art puts the precomputation step at complexity L_n(1/3, 1.923)§, and additional individual discrete logs at L_n(1/3, 1.232).

Could you cite that? Not skeptical, just interested.

> So I'll start by playing Devil's Advocate very briefly. It's interesting how facts can be shaped with different language ("his only brush with the law"): it appears the restraining order from two years prior related to similar threats to those alleged in the Facebook comments (although in a remarkably different context).

IANAL but I'm reasonably confident that a restraining order he received as a minor would not be admissible as evidence in this case, and thus should be irrelevant to the prosecution.

The javascript miner was not deployed anywhere. At no point was anyone in New Jersey knowingly or unknowningly served Tidbit's bitcoin mining code.

I saw two policies cited on her talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ADMINACCT

As explained by the director of the Media Lab:

"Apparently a grand jury is meeting to render an indictment on Wednesday and there is really only one more day to provide any input into the process. Since it is a criminal case and the prosecutor needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was unauthorized, I think MIT is in the position to “cast doubt” if it desires."

> straw man argument

In what way is it a straw man argument?

> copying software is not zero sum.

This doesn't seem to contradict the parent post, nor affect its argument.

>they're literally paying people to like their product

I don't think this statement is reasonable. Are you suggesting that they gave the 100k reward out because they wanted the recipient to like their product?

>Now they're throwing money at him. How is that in any way a good thing?

I think bug bounty programs have a track record of efficacy. Do you disagree?