etha
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11 years ago
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on: Why I do not want to work at Google (2011)
Hardly. Google could simply ask the children to fax in signed permission statements from their parents, as websites that actually make an effort to support child users do. Neopets had this figured out 15 years ago. Google chooses not to do that despite having the resources, and they are responsible for the consequences of that decision.
etha
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11 years ago
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on: The Secret Life of Passwords
Most people aren't worried about being secure from the CIA, we're worried about being secure from random criminals at the airport or the cafe. If the CIA wants you, they can just kidnap you and lock you away anyway.
etha
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11 years ago
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on: Bill to Restrict N.S.A. Data Collection Blocked in Vote by Senate Republicans
Actually, the lesson is that people don't WANT a "solution".
etha
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11 years ago
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on: Microsoft Azure Outage
etha
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11 years ago
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on: Google’s NSA alliance: Deals between Silicon Valley and the security state
It does happen to be a positive interpretation, but there's no reason to think that's why it was chosen, since it's also the simplest explanation.
etha
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12 years ago
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on: Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden
How to dismantle a tyrannical regime if you have the support of an omnipresent computer system they trust with absolutely everything.
etha
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13 years ago
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on: Ubuntu's Bug #1 is fixed
Do you always follow the suggested resolution 100%?
etha
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13 years ago
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on: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)
What users? If Geocities had users to piss off, they wouldn't have needed to shit it down.
etha
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13 years ago
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on: Https URLs posted in private Skype chats visited by Microsoft
Your government wants them to have that option. Why should MS listen to you and not your government?
etha
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13 years ago
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on: Https URLs posted in private Skype chats visited by Microsoft
There's no "sky" in "skype" but we still call it skype because that's its name.
etha
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13 years ago
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on: Weev placed in solitary confinement for tweeting from prison
Or maybe we should accept that security ultimately doesn't matter.
etha
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13 years ago
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on: Windows NT Kernel Contributor Explains Why Performance is Behind Other OS
But how much of that is due to nearly two decades of experience and how much is due to having kids?
etha
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14 years ago
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on: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
What is wrong with those scenarios? It sounds like you are proposing that instead of using this information, people should ignore it and make bad decisions.
etha
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14 years ago
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on: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
The point is that it's not as private as you think it is.
etha
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14 years ago
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on: Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think
Conquest? Isn't it Pestilence?
etha
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14 years ago
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on: Go Ahead, Sell My Data
No, that's where the metaphor breaks down. I don't think there's a good equivalent of "public" in the facebook tracking situation. Instead, I would say that you are on someone else's virtual property, and that they are perfectly within their rights to watch and record whatever you do there and share that information with whoever they like.
It does happen without the knowledge of many people today, and the surprise when they find out what's really going on has led to a lot of backlash, but the solution to that is to educate people better about technology and what it can do, not to limit technology so that it can only do things the average person can conceive of.
etha
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14 years ago
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on: Go Ahead, Sell My Data
This may not be a realistic expectation now, but I think that as the general population becomes more technologically literate, for the average person, the presence of such a button should indicate "this website has some kind of relationship with facebook/reddit/google - if I care about what data they are sharing, I should probably check their privacy policy." And I think that 99% of people won't care. My admittedly idealistic belief is that the solution to this "controversy" is for everyone to recognize that we shouldn't try to apply pre-internet expectations and beliefs about privacy to the modern world.
etha
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14 years ago
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on: Go Ahead, Sell My Data
Not really, no. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding facebook's tracking system, but I don't think your browser history is being captured here. You are viewing pages that have a facebook widget on them, and if you have a facebook cookie that says "pingswept", this tells facebook that pingswept visited a page with a specific widget on it (and thus, which page). Facebook is not taking anything from you that you are not sending them - the issue is that a website that is not facebook is passing your information on to facebook. Aren't they the ones that deceived you, not facebook?
etha
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14 years ago
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on: Go Ahead, Sell My Data
Why would you be uncomfortable in that case? How do the potential drawbacks of such an oracle existing outweigh the potential positives?
etha
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14 years ago
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on: Go Ahead, Sell My Data
That's not an argument against keeping that history. It could just as well be presented in court as evidence for me, or be presented as evidence against people I don't like. I'm in favor of the legal system having better evidence that they can use to reach more correct verdicts.
