carboncopy's comments

Having failed multiple interviews with Google and other companies mentioned in this post, it really drives home the huge difference between Haseeb's work ethic and mine. If I had put forth 10% of the effort he has expended this year to preparing then I'd have aced the interviews. But I didn't. Instead I spend most of my free time doing frivolous things that aren't satisfying.

What percentage of HN posters have applied to Google? And how many received offers? I think it's amazing that he outclasses so many of us after being in our industry for a year. Good for him.

They're both representative forms of government with adversarial systems of law.

Though CaptainZapp's reply was low-signal, snarky, and redundant with her/his down vote, it did inspire me to learn more about German law.

It appears that by statute, German prosecutors have little discretion when it comes to pursuing convictable cases. They may only nonprosecute minor offenses, i.e. those with sentences of less than one year. However, there are exceptions that are applied by prosecutors that could apply to this case. One is the "serves the public interest" exception; another is the "may damage state interests" exception. Either way, the answer isn't cut and dry and contains way more nuance than my original comment and its reply suggest.

[1]. http://law.jrank.org/pages/1855/Prosecution-Comparative-Aspe...

Given that the entities suppressing that freedom are powerful minorities, I think the statement still holds.

"Everyone" is a colloquialism meaning "most reasonable people" in this case.

That is absurd; prosecutions decline to pursue cases all the time.

Look at the enormous change in U.S. police prosecutions in the last couple of years due to public pressure. I seriously doubt the amount of misconduct drastically increased.

I think it's good to discuss HN social norms when it's appropriate. Your comment added to the discussion.

To be fair to Le Roux, he switched to the methamphetamine/cocaine trade after his holdings in Hong Kong were seized. It's possible I misinterpreted the article, but it appeared to me that he was trying to recover his previous wealth. It seems like a psychologically normal thing for a multimillionaire who lost millions (but is still wildly wealthy) to attempt to restore that wealth.

There is logic but is certainly not uniformly applied!

Do towers record past telemetry data? Assuming they do, the granularity of knowing that a particular tower handled a phone ping is comparatively useless. A guessed location (stored on the iPhone) based off of cell tower triangulation and the occasional GPS calculation is far more valuable.

I do agree that we should consider the FBI's statement with skepticism.

That's incredibly expensive to build.

I don't agree with whoever downvoted your post; it contributes to the discussion.

> The NSA itself knows very well that if the gizmos they provide aren't usable

What isn't usable about a desktop computer? According to the article, she just liked using BBs more. Confusingly, the article seems to conflate a few things.

1. She wanted to use her Unclassified//SBU Blackberry in the SCIF. Because of phone exploits that the NSA employs against other heads of state [1], State Department guidelines require her to leave it outside of her office that has classified computers. Obama's special Blackberry might let him talk to DNC leadership and big donors, but I'm guessing he uses a normal phone for that. Why couldn't she use a desktop phone and her unclassified computer to check her email to donors, campaign managers, and DNC leadership? How does a separate email server solve this problem?

2. She felt the need to have a separate email server. What this solves is never mentioned in the article. All State Department employees have access to the Unclassified network. Most have access to State Department provided Blackberries for that network, and also to 2FA token generators to permit them to VPN in. Traveling all over the world doesn't restrict the usage of either of these. Also, DSS sets up a classified network wherever the Sec State stays.

The only plausible reason to set up this outside email server is to evade FOIA and discuss classified topics without the risk of a government employee seeing classified information on an unclassified network. I'm really trying to understand any other reason to do this.

[1] I didn't see a Blackberry exploit in the Snowden leaks, but it's probably safe to assume that the risk is significant. Imagine how valuable it would be to get room audio of political or trade discussions before stepping into a meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State.

If you re-read that portion of the article, the State Department rep used that phrase to paraphrase the NSA's response. That was not the actual response; nobody who wants to keep their job communicates inter-agency like that.

The Secretary of State has a full-featured security detail [1]. While on foreign missions, this includes a motorcade with armored vehicles (flown in by DSS beforehand), surveillance teams, and security augmentees from U.S. Embassies nearby [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_Security_Service

[2] Personal experience (sorry)

Instead of linking, could you just say what you intend to say?

Could you flesh your idea a bit more? I don't relish digging through that meandering blog post from a random author.

No, I read it right. It's American public debt they hold. They don't have 1 trillion dollars in cash sitting in a vault. They are holding U.S. Treasury bonds.

And again, I don't understand why having 1 trillion dollars in a reserve bank is a useful measure of economic power. The Chinese economy has a GDP of $10tn compared with the U.S. economy of $17tn. That is an example of a meaningful metric of power.

^^^ the parent commenter edited his entry after I submitted my original comment, which changes the relevance of my comment.

Those are strange metrics of success you chose: number of cars produced annually, amount of public debt held.

I'd have gone with GDP, military strength, set of advantageous alliances, or some other measure of economic, military, or political power.

Since the prevalent opinion on HN appears to be against contracts of adhesion, a request for sources is an expected request when presenting the minority opinion.

Rejecting the offered source with a "tl;dr" complaint is an invalid distraction from that request.

Not to mention, many topics have not been the subject of peer-reviewed research; if you require peer-reviewed research as a necessary condition on you being persuaded about anything, then you are severely limiting the scope of potential debate.

> We already covered this in the link above: the 5th Amendment covers passcodes, not fingerprints.

No, it is you who is not understanding schrodinger's assertion. The secret knowledge of which finger unlocks it is in itself a passcode and subject to 5th Amendment protection.

The overlap between punch cards and other formats was decades.

"During the 1960s, the punched card was gradually replaced as the primary means for data storage by magnetic tape, as better, more capable computers became available. ... [P]unched cards were still commonly used for data entry and programming until the mid-1980s when the combination of lower cost magnetic disk storage ... made punched cards obsolete ..."[1]

Yes, I listed wikipedia as a primary source, deal with it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

What are these "weird formats" that keep getting referenced here? LZH? ARC? PKZIP? WordPerfect? Filesystems formatted in FAT16? All of these formats are still very much readable.

Some formats that are no longer usable in general, such as punch cards, were obsoleted consciously. And you might struggle to find a LaserDisc reader. Otherwise, we should be fine. Or am I missing something?