Why Do We Care So Much About Privacy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/why-do-we-care-so-much-about-privacy <comment><USER3> We care so much about privacy because prior to WWII millions of Jews who were innocently going about their every day business filled out a census that asked them their religion. Their religion was no more illegal than their existence. A few years later they were being exterminated like vermin in an attempt to eradicate them from Europe based entirely on a checkbox on a form. The home address they freely provided sealing their fate.

 _" I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide. If you're trying to hide, you must be a criminal."_

I pray that nothing you do innocently today becomes public knowledge and retroactively treated as a crime that threatens not only your livelihood, but your very life and the lives of those you hold most dear.

That. _That_ is why privacy should be in _our_ hands. We should be able to choose the information we divulge to the world about ourselves. Not have the world know every last thing about us.

Witch hunts happen. They happen today as often as in the days of the Salem Witch Trials. Black people in the southern States live in an atmosphere of racism, wondering if the cop pulling them over will beat them or kill them... most cops aren't racist. Women everywhere live in an atmosphere of sexism, yet most men aren't sexist misogynists. LGBQT live in an atmosphere of not being accepted and have their lives threatened regularly just because of who they are sexually attracted to. If you don't think you could be on the receiving end of a witch hunt just because your life is "boring", you are as naive as you are ignorant.

Privacy matters. That's why attorney client privilege exists. That's why the 5th Amendment exists. That's why the right to remain silent exists. Just because there is a void in public information about you, doesn't mean it needs to be filled.

<comment><USER4> gun owners are going through this right now. This is why gun owners are so sensitive to any registration. They know that gun registries are a precursor to gun confiscation and prosecution.

Historically speaking governments have always been the worst perpetrators of violence on their own people.

<comment><USER3> I disagree with gun registries being a precursor to confiscation and prosecution. I think the Government in their wisdom is trying to do the right thing. Having weapons registered means that if a crime occurs with a gun, it can be traced to a legal owner and they can be held accountable for the crime. This in turn means that legal gun owners will be more responsible with the storage and use of their weapons which will reduce the amount of crimes perpetrated by "legal" weapons. It will mean that if a weapon is stolen, it will be reported as such because the registered owner doesn't want to be held accountable for a crime with a stolen weapon.

There is much good that can come from registration. It will lead to more responsible gun owners.

However, the argument on the other side of the fence is also true - <USER2> will always be able to get unfettered access to illegal weapons. However, those weapons will have to be smuggled into the country, not stolen from those who purchased them through legal channels.

But just like the Jews, if you've got a gun and owning a gun becomes a crime that the government decide to enforce retroactively, then you have effectively signed your arrest warrant by registering them.

I don't think this is their intention however. Their intention is merely to hold legal gun owners to a standard of care that I believe they _should_ be held and currently aren't. They're saying "if you own a gun, you're going to be expected to care for it responsibly. If you do _not_ care for it responsibly, you are going to be held accountable for the damage it causes."

But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The government has a history of making laws that seem to be well intended that end up being exploited because they're overreaching while saying _" oh, we don't mean that, we'll never enforce it in that way."_

<comment><USER5> >I disagree with gun registries being a precursor to confiscation and prosecution.

So gun owners shouldn't fear gun registries as a precursor to prosecution?

Yet in the very next sentence you advocate for prosecuting gun owners under a strict liability that holds them responsible for anything that happens using their gun.

>But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I'd say you've already gone too far when you criminalize someone getting their property stolen.

<comment><USER3> Why shouldn't you be held under strict liability for anything that happens using your gun? It is a tool for killing. If it is used to kill someone because you didn't store it responsibly, it was stolen and you didn't report it stolen, why exactly shouldn't you be held accountable for your part in that? You were accessory to a crime by your negligence to store your weapon responsibly.

I also didn't say you _shouldn 't fear_ gun registries being a precursor to confiscation. I suggested that the spoken intent is to hold gun owners to a higher standard of care of their weapons. I totally understand that there _may_ be unspoken intent to use it as a precursor to confiscation, and while I don't believe this to be so, you're right to be wary of this. But frankly I think too many gun owners are criminally complacent about ownership and storage of their weapons.

A gun is serious, it should be treated as such. Store it safely and properly, if you don't store it safely and properly and you're caught in that position (i.e. by having it stolen, not reporting it as stolen and used in a crime), then you should be at least be charged for negligence. I don't think there's anything wrong with this - a gun kills. I don't care how you want to spin "guns don't kill people, people kill people," a gun is a weapon that is designed to kill, or at the very least used as a threat to kill. It should _always_ be treated as such.

I don't criminalize people for ownership or having their property stolen. If you can prove it was stored responsibly and your legally approved gun safe was forcefully broken into and your weapon stolen and you reported it as stolen at the time you discovered it, you have absolved yourself of the responsibility of its use in a crime. You have acted responsibly. No charges should be laid against you.

If it was laying around on your night stand and an opportunist kid broke into your house and stole it, loaded and ready to kill, you didn't report it stolen, and it falls into the hands of someone who uses it in a crime, guess what? You're responsible for contributing to that and should be held accountable for your part in that to some appropriate degree. That degree in my mind is at least criminal negligence, in the same way as letting your baby die in the back of a car on a hot day because you forgot about them or getting into a car accident and killing someone because you were texting and not paying attention. What about how bar tenders can be charged for over-serving someone alcohol who then gets into a car and kills someone because they're driving over the legal blood alcohol limit? Your action, or inaction contributed to your weapon being used in a crime. You can argue that if it wasn't your gun, it would've been someone else's all you like. The fact is, it _wasn 't_ someone else's, it was _yours._ If it was someone else's, they would be charged with the same thing you were if they'd acted with the same negligence you did.

If you have a gun, it is your responsibly to store it safely, treat it with the gravity it's warranted. If it is stolen, report it as such. Be a responsible gun owner. If everyone treated their weapons with this amount of care, nobody would be screaming for gun registries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In an article full of legal cases and law, I am a bit surprised to not hear one of the better argument for privacy.

Put me in a legal case where I (and only I) have full access to mobile data and Internet traffic for each of the 12 juries, judge, lawyers, prosecutor and their families and friends. Does the design of the legal system still work when one party can use data together with machine intelligence in order to figure out how to influence and manipulate the participants? I think the answer is a clear No, and I have heard a professor of legal history come to the same conclusion. The legal system as it is currently designed can not operate without privacy, and it is hard to imagine a system that can.

<comment><USER7> That's not too compelling to me. One of the principles of a jury is that it is of your peers, which implies that to some extent you do know them and they know you. A jury of perfect strangers unrelated to you is not constitutional.

<comment><USER8> > jury is that it is of your peers, which implies that to some extent you do > know them and they know you

Does not follow. I'm not aware of any context where that's part of what "peer" means.

> A jury of perfect strangers unrelated to you is not constitutional.

Generally speaking, if you're _not_ a perfect stranger, you're kicked off a jury for conflict of interest.

A "jury of one's peers" means people in the same social class as you, i.e. a jury that is not biased against you. The word "peer" is a hold-over from English society with more pronounced social classes, and is meant strictly as a counterbalance against those social classes.

Note that the Consitution itself doesn't actually contain the word "peer," but rather uses the phrase "impartial jury."

<comment><USER7> If they are in the same social class as you, then you know that about them. Not sure how that refutes my argument.

<comment><USER9> Just to be evenhanded here, I suspect that in most criminal cases the jurors are likely NOT in the same social class as the defendant.

That said, having jurors be people you know seems a little unfair too. So a jury of perfect strangers seems greatly unfair in the postulated context of asymmetric privacy, and a jury of friends seems unfair as it's possible they would let you off regardless of evidence.

Problem is, asymmetric privacy is a reality today. So, yeah, tough problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do the people who want our data care so much about their own personal privacy?

[http://time.com/money/4346766/mark-zuckerberg- houses/](http://time.com/money/4346766/mark-zuckerberg-houses/)

If everyone knew what everyone else was doing, it might change the world in a positive way (Not really sure, but it would be a change, e.g. #metoo, panama papers). Otherwise, it's only a privileged group of people who can maintain their privacy while accessing other's personal information.

And that's a well established power dynamic throughout history.

</comment><comment><USER11> "I'm considerably more pro-privacy than I was a few years ago. A few years ago, my position was closer to "in a well-running society it's probably optimal that everyone sees everything, the value for privacy tech for ordinary people is (i) to let them buy weed, put up beds so people can sleep over in offices, and otherwise circumvent silly regulations, and (ii) to maintain a healthy balance of power, because even if more transparency is good, the government only having the all-seeing eye and everyone else being in the dark would give too much power to the government".

Things that changed my mind, and made me believe that even in a hypothetical perfectly equal and fair society people having some privacy is a good idea include:

\- Reading Robin Hanson and others' literature on signalling, and seeing just how large a portion of our lives it still is. Basically, I see privacy as a way to prevent signalling concerns from encompassing all of our activity, and creating spheres where we are free to optimize for our own happiness and just our own happiness, and not what other people think about us.

\- Having a deeper understanding of the ways that it's possible to make other people's lives suck even as a law-abiding private citizen, and realizing that privacy is an important self-defense tool for those situations.

\- Realizing more deeply that "the people" are not always virtuous, and that social pressure as a mechanism for influencing people's behavior doesn't always lead to results I approve of (see: recent string of internet mobs leading to people getting fired for political views). Realizing how bad mainstream media is even today, which makes me more understanding of people's desire to protect themselves from them.

Mass surveillance is problematic because (i) I don't trust governments and large corporations to have interests that are aligned with us, and (ii) it creates points of centralized data collection that could get hacked, leading to everyone getting that data even if that was never the original intention. That said, in the physical space it's pretty unavoidable, so we should at least work hard to make the internet a more privacy-preserving place."

Vitalik Buterin [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/8m3wj1/rothschild...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/8m3wj1/rothschilds_in_crypto_goodbadneutral/dzmspgv/)

<comment><USER12> The "in a well-running society it's probably optimal that everyone sees everything" view is something practically only held by people who don't deviate in any significant way from societal norms. It's obvious to "deviants" \-- or people sharing minimal insight into the actual breadth of people's behaviours and tastes -- that it's not at all something to strive for.

A society of the "everyone sees everything" kind is a tyranny of the masses not just limited to your usual racism and whatnot, but crushing down on literally _every property of a human being_. Your run-of-the-mill Orwellian nightmare is a fluffy wonderland of individualism in comparison.

<comment><USER13> There's a thread of thought, in amongst radical transparency memes, that bringing these things out into the light will increase acceptance of deviation (... as a good thing).

That may well be wrong, but I don't think it's _obviously_ wrong. FWIW, I think it's probably true that the dynamic will exist, but it probably won't be enough to defang your argument.

<comment><USER14> >that bringing these things out into the light will increase acceptance of deviation

Eh, there is a lot of very complex sociology going on here. Deviation is rather not accepted by humanity, our species is rather homogeneous, and has remained so across long periods of time and cultures.

Deviants that have a significant size will probably survive. It's the very small clusters of new deviations that are apt to be eradicated before they can get a foothold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The kind of absence of privacy between consumers and internet giants is also a massive power imbalance: they know many useful and compromising things about billions of consumers. What do we know about Mark Zuckerberg?

I know that some self-serving bullshit about post-privacy came out of Facebook, but I don't see Zuckerberg or Sandberg leading by example.

<comment><USER16> >What do we know about Mark Zuckerberg?

I always wanted to know with all the data available, was Mark's data as available as everyone else's, or did they protect it?

<comment><USER17> IMO probably they did. It could be done to prevent leak from an fb employee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "People are inconsistent about the kind of exposure they'll tolerate. We don't like to be fingerprinted by government agencies, a practice we associate with mug shots and state surveillance, but we happily hand our thumbprints over to Apple, which does God knows what with them."

Great point. People say they care about privacy but willingly Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube every minor detail about their lives.

Not everyone of course, but a lot. Facebook has what, 2.1 billion users?

There's a vast asymmetry between the privacy people say they want and in reality how quickly they'll give it up in exchange for free services.

But this article is a good legal history of American law.

<comment><USER19> Just talked to God, this is what he said.

Your fingerprint data is encrypted, stored on device, and protected with a key available only to the Secure Enclave. Your fingerprint data is used only by the Secure Enclave to verify that your fingerprint matches the enrolled fingerprint data. It can't be accessed by the OS on your device or by any applications running on it. It's never stored on Apple servers, it's never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else, and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204587](https://support.apple.com/en- us/ht204587)

<comment><USER20> I just took a random survey of 5 people around me. 5 out of 5 didn't know that, and assumed Apple had a copy of their fingerprint.

The point, in case you missed it? The fact that privacy is not actually given up doesn't matter. People are willing to give it up to gain some perceived benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I dont feel that the question was truly answered. WHY do we care? The author writes about human behavior and discusses the 'natural right' of privacy but arent natural rights just customs from previous generations. Observing human behavior might suggest that privacy somehow is a desired trait from natural selection. ie when pooping, animals are more vulnerable (maybe) suggesting that privacy somehow aids in security from preditors. Financial Transactional data privacy allows a competitive advantage on future trades.

Basically id like to hear arguments that get down to the fundamental reasons why humans care about privacy.

<comment><USER22> I have two reasons for wanting privacy. For practical reasons, the less info that is "out there" about me reduces the attack surface for scammers, ID thieves and the like.

But leaving aside crime and misuse concerns a more fundamental reason why I want privacy is simply because that is my personal preference. And that is a preference I shouldn't have to justify to anyone. I suppose if I were pushed to provide some kind of a justification I would say that I get comfort from knowing that I am privy to information that no one else is - it helps to define me as an individual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not a bad article at all. A big chunk of it is a review of "The Known Citizen A History of Privacy in Modern America" by Sarah E. Igo

I like this quote: "This means the freedom to choose what to do with your body, or who can see your personal information, or who can monitor your movements and record your calls—who gets to surveil your life and on what grounds."

(I always like to see just how much garbage uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger block on articles that are privacy focused. This one might be a new record: 51 and 18 respectively)

</comment><comment><USER24> Because of the Stasi in german peoples republic or the Gestapo in the third reich. Two examples which only by coincidence happen to be Germany related, there are certainly many more examples like that.

I did not read the article, I admit, and won't do that as it is deliberately catch to attract click-bait. But is is so utterly bullshit to even phrase it in such a way.

</comment><comment><USER25> Good regulation protects people from themselves. Before the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook fiasco, people would claim why care about privacy I have nothing to hide. Its not about hiding the things you do, its about protecting you from smarter people with ulterior motives that might use your data to straight manipulate you (make you buy something, make you feel something, make you do something, etc). We have to change the dialogue regarding privacy into its for your own benefit not because you're doing illegal activities but because your data is valuable to many outside actors.

</comment><comment><USER26> Throughout my life, I've had people discover facts about me and use them against me.

Personally. "Friends" who used -- and sometimes stole -- secrets to bully me.

Commercially: Insurance companies that used past treatment to discriminate against me. (In combination with the employer-provided insurance model, that marginalizes individual purchasers.)

So, I for one worry about privacy, because I've experienced first hand what its breach has cost me. I imagine I'm hardly alone.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd make the argument that privacy is a neccessary pillar for growth in society. Things like marijuana usage could likely not have become legal had private use not occurred and many people found it to be not harmful. This private space for experimentation and self-evaluation (of products, substances, and norms) isn't given much attention but could adversely change society if it's lost imho.

</comment><comment><USER28> How about: "That's none of your damn business"?

<comment><USER29> Yes, that's the surface response, but what's deeper than that?

Ultimately I think it's a rational fear of being ostracized (or worse) for having believed or done something deemed by the group to be "not OK". The right to privacy shoes us to explore the nature of ourselves without harming others and without putting us in danger of violating social norms.

The counter argument might be that with more visibility and openness, the more tolerant we all might be if each others faults, but unfortunately history does not seem to demonstrate this.

<comment><USER30> Information wants to be free, its make more sense to promote openness and transparency. LGBT is gaining acceptance, one of the reason is I believe its because its more visible.

<comment><USER31> There should still be some way for individuals to have the possibility to experience different facets of themselves. To give a stereotypical example, a middle-aged software programmer might want to experiment with psychedelic substances once in a while without the hassle of having to explain it to people in more mainstream spheres of his life. If every encounter has to be accounted for and recorded, this introduces significant mental strain and ends up impoverishing our lives.

<comment><USER30> So the issue is, in this context, to be able to experiment with psychedelic substances without hassle. Why do I have to explain it to people in the first place? Maybe because lack of information of knowledge about psychedelic substances ? More transparency and openness can help.

Another example, Why I do I feel the need to close the bathroom door when I take a dump ? Because it considered taboo or weird. But if more and more people take a dump with the door open, it will be less weird.

Its a hassle too to have to keep things private.

<comment><USER31> I mean it more in the sense of different social worlds. For instance you might relate differently to your relatives than with your friends. You might act in a certain way with some friends and not with other circles without it being duplicitous, but rather different facets of your identity that could not find an adequate expression if every aspect of your life was socially interlinked with every other.

Even if norms change to be far more permissive, there will still be issues with this. Besides, norms are never that permissive in absolute terms since some form of hierarchy quickly sets itself up in response to changing circumstances. For instance in some past contexts a young man might want to hide his promiscuity and adventurous experiences, whereas in some modern contexts he might want to hide his lack of promiscuity and adventurous (instagrammable?) experiences.

<comment><USER30> Norms always change and I will always have to adapt. In the near future, the advancement of technology make it harder and harder to keep information private. So I better be get used to worlds where every aspect of my life is socially interlinked with every other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would say we don't care enough. There hasn't been any real blow back from the nsa vault leaks.

The government has and still is monitoring all forms of internet communication in the US en masse. Now they want to implement camera surveillance programs that use AI to track movements of people.

Where are the protests? Where are our political leaders? Our DAs, Supreme Justice, and what have you. You hear about these leaks almost monthly at this point and there are no repercussions. It will continue business as usual.

</comment><comment><USER33> Do we really care that much about privacy? We really should, but every Facebook scandal that goes seemingly unnoticed by the majority of the general public makes me think otherwise...

</comment><comment><USER34> Not sure how to say this: HN keeps linking to articles that are behind "the first ones free" paywalls. Admittedly, I recently read two articles on New Yorker that were thought provoking, and perhaps that is why people subscribe, but should we not be linking to news that we can get without walls?

<comment><USER35> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER34> I see your point:

" Are paywalls ok?

It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. "

So, I am off topic, and behind a paywall :)

Once again, I need to find a new place to read great news.</comment></comment></comment>


Marmalade: A British Obsession - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2020/07/23/marmalade-a-very-british-obsession/ <comment><USER2> The pith is evil. Oily skin and flesh yes, pips for gelling, but the pith is a nono. Wrong kind of bitter.

Cumquats make my lips burn, something complex in their oils. Candied peel is great, and we hunt pannetone every Christmas for the one which still uses citron peel (oddly an Etrog, but definitely not a Jewish treat) which is increasingly optional. Orange peel doesn't work as well.

I have two Keillors stoneware jars to keep pens in. We used to make jam in them. The China has a ridge below the top for string to tie off a cooking paper lid.

The Oxford brown is overdone. Lime marmelade is too sugary-sweet. Quince jelly and jam is a delight, also odd how it named marmelade but has no quality in common beyond the name and the diabetic coma quantity of sugar.

Lady Marmalade...</comment>


Has Chrome fully taken over yet? - <AUTHOR> https://haschromefullytakenoveryet.com <comment><USER2> I hope not, vive la Firefox!

I am disheartened though that I feel compelled to use Chrome now in some cases because Google's UI's are poorly optimized outside Chrome (looking at your GCloud UI and YouTube) and some companies have made a decision to only support Chrome (looking at you Slack voice chat).

<comment><USER3> > _some companies have made a decision to only support Chrome (looking at you > Slack voice chat)_

Well, there you have it. The beginning of the process that will remind everybody why browser monocultures are horrible things.

<comment><USER4> Sadly using Firefox on Android is an exercise in frustration. There are numerous sites I have to open in Chrome as they are in some way broken in Firefox.

<comment><USER5> I think firefox android user experience can be improved in a lot of cases by simply setting the User Agent to chrome. I have found that this works very well with a lot of sites. For example, doing a google search for any sports league gives you a nice interactive table with matches and standings in chrome, but with firefox the table lacks any interactivity. However, setting the UA to chrome makes the table work very well.

Also, I feel firefox consumes less battery than chrome on Android. I used to use chrome exclusively, and it would always show up as the largest consumer of battery. After switching to firefox battery life has been much better.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if this could be considered anticompetitive (in the legal sense)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chrome is a really nice browser, but we're creating a monopoly for it, not Google, ourselves.

I'm not going to talk about Google being evil or not. But as history has shown, monopolies never result in anything good for the people.

That's why I'm choosing Firefox as my day to day browser, not because it's better or free from a controlling enterprise, but because I want to keep the web as an open and diverse system, and for that, we need different players to play in equal conditions.

It's up to every one of us to achieve this, and to be honest, what are you missing in Firefox that Chrome does? It's quite a nice and decent browser nowadays.

<comment><USER8> Oh. I just think FF is a better browser. Never liked Chrome at all.

<comment><USER9> I tried switching from Chrome (actually I use chromium) to Firefox, but I switched back after one day. I didn't have any problems with any websites in Firefox, but the user interface of Firefox is just lightyears behind Chrome. What really was a deal breaker for me is how Firefox handles tabs, it's just not usable if you open more than 15 tabs in total because you can't move more than one tab at a time.

When I look online for say a RAM upgrade for my computer, I open a few tabs with online shops, then I open a new tab for each product, now there are ~40 tabs open and I want to move half of them to the beginning of the tab bar or to a new window. In chrome I press shift, select multiple tabs and move them, In Firefox I have to drag each tab to it's new position one after another.

In about:config there's a flag to enable tab multiselect, but you still can't move more than one tab at a time.

There's a few more minor issues like this and a 5 year old unfixed bug with tiling window managers in Firefox. With Firefox I just spend more time fighting the browser than browsing the web.

<comment><USER10> I just tried it, and moving multiple selected tabs does work in Firefox 64 (Dev Edition).

<comment><USER9> If that's the case I'll give it a try again, last time I tried Firefox it had version 62, so that must be a recent change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having switched back to Firefox and Duckduckgo very recently, I'm feeling much more optimistic about the future of a free web. Both have been on par with Chrome/Google in terms of speed and performance.

Now just need to break away from gmail and calendar.

<comment><USER12> I especially like how relevant the search results in DuckDuckGo are whenever I query `[search term] !g`

<comment><USER13> Nothing beats searx.me - Google's results are good (but slipping), but when you combine Google, DDG and Bing, it doesn't get any better

<comment><USER14> Never heard of this before but will give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How many countries Chrome is ranked #1 in doesn't matter and is a distraction.

Overall market share is infinitely more important.

E.g. assuming a two-browser world, it would be drastically more of a problem for Chrome to have 99% market penetration in 98 countries and 49% in the other 97 (so ranked #1 in only half, but still a huge problem)... than it is to have 51% market penetration in 192 countries and 49% penetration in a remaining 3 (so ranked #1 in nearly all, but no problem at all).

The real question from a healthy competition standpoint is, what is the _market share_ which we consider to be "fully taken over", where competitors are no longer viable?

<comment><USER16> Yea, this statistic is as bad of a representation of marketshare, as democracies without proportional representation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel like it's scary what we've reached. Giving all our browsing history and activity to a surveillance company.

<comment><USER18> Human beings are pretty good, on the whole, about tradeoffs. For most people, the information they're trading away is only theoretically valuable, but the products they receive in return have very tangible value.

<comment><USER19> I agree - because humans generally seem to be pretty bad at including more than the immediate here and now in their tradeoff calculations.

I'd see this as an argument why stuff like privacy _can 't_ be left to individual choice.

<comment><USER20> So if I didn't voluntarily giving up my privacy for something (an invaluable product to use) you wouldn't let me? Why? It's none of your business what I desire from my personal privacy.

<comment><USER19> Because your personal valuation is likely very off-the-mark because the consequences of that action may lie far into the future or may actually happen to others and not yourself.

Also, if the product is really "invaluable" to you (e.g. you have no choice but to use it) then your choice to give up privacy wouldn't be voluntary either.

(Edit: added first paragraph)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21>
       Has Chrome fully taken over yet?

                   No

       These 3 brave countries still have managed to resist Google's charm

           Cuba
           Liberia
           Eritrea

So, essentially yes.

These countries combined have less than 4 million people with Internet access. Most of them are in Cuba. Eritrea is the country with the lowest number of people with Internet access per resident and a rate of increase that is as low as that of industrial nations with saturated Internet penetration[1].

Digging into this a bit deeper on statcounter[2] there are a few other surprises:

\- Firefox is only number four after Chrome, Safari and UC Browser.

\- Still Chrome is the market leader in China - by far.

\- Germany has been a Chrome holdout for a long time, but not any more, apparently.

[1] [http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by- country/](http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/)

[2] [http://gs.statcounter.com/browhttp://gs.statcounter.com/brow...](http://gs.statcounter.com/browhttp://gs.statcounter.com/browser- market-share/all/germanyser-market-share/all/germany)

<comment><USER22> Sub-100% market share in a populated country still means that a lot of people are using alternatives. That is why it seems absurd to break it down by country in order to declare a "total" victory. I sometimes use Firefox in the US - that fact alone says you cannot say it's "fully taken over" in my country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> No! Im still lovin' Firefox:-)

<comment><USER24> How is their Android app? Been debating trying them out again.

<comment><USER25> I use it and like it, and they'll be rolling out an update somewhat soon with a complete makeover of the rendering engine (switching to GeckoView from whatever they have now), so I'm hopeful that rendering will get faster.

I like it because:

\- syncs with desktop Firefox \- has extensions (I mostly use Bitwarden and an ad blocker) \- interface is nice to use \- available in F-Droid

It's fast enough for me, though I haven't used mobile Chrome for years, so I guess I don't know what I'm missing.

<comment><USER26> The switch to Geckoview is for Firefox Focus, which previously used Blink (the Chrome rendering engine).

Standard Firefox for Android has used Gecko from the start. It is gradually being upgraded using the Quantum improvements, but the rate of change seems slow. I thought that the emphasis on multi-threaded processing in Quantum would be particularly useful for mobile, because the single threaded processing capability of mobile (and particularly non-Apple mobile chips) is very limited, but there don't seem to have been massive improvements.

I think it's a shame they relegated Servo to a research project, integrating Servo into Gecko has been long-winded, and the most important target of porting a parallel/multi-threaded layout engine isn't even being discussed. Frankly, given their $500m budget, their core mission of browser development, and the massive importance of mobile, they probably should have pursued both Gecko and Servo at the same time. Even if Servo only supported flexbox layouts it could be very useful as a wrapper while wider compability was being pursued. The emphasis now is on WebVR, which seems not very relevant to the mass market.

<comment><USER27> The Servo team is very active.

Unfortunately, it's trying to hit a fast-moving target, and that's really hard. Which is the reason for which I believe nobody else is currently pursuing any new web engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> analytics.usa.gov provides Google Analytics-collected stats of all the users who visit U.S. federal websites, including browser and OS info. As of right now, Chrome is at 46.4%.

I couldn't find at the moment a historical dataset > 90 days. The Internet Archive snapshot of the JSON from April 2015 [0] shows Chrome's share at 35.3%.

edit: the 2018 vs 2015 numbers for the other browsers:

\- Safari (iOS and macOS): 28.6% / 19.9%

\- IE (all versions, but not Edge): 10.9% / 28.2%

\- Firefox: 4.7% / 11%

[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20150412223314/https://analytics...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150412223314/https://analytics.usa.gov/data/live/browsers.json)

</comment><comment><USER19> A lot of comments in this thread seem to argue that the share of countries is less important than the overall market share. I think it's not completely unimportant either. Not everyone uses the same corners of the internet. Yes, many things are centralised but there are still a lot of language/country specific sites around, which will adopt to the specific ecosystem in their country. So if Chrome has 99% market share in a certain country, it's likely that local sites will optimize for it and using other browsers will generally be harder in that country.

The other way around, if Chrome is _not_ dominant in a certain country, that might not have effects in other countries where they are.

As an extreme example, suppose China and Russia banned Chrome and mandated the use of special domestic browsers - but Chrome climbed to 99% market share everywhere else. Then the global market share would be far below 90%, nevertheless you wouldn't have an actual choice anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER15> But a count of countries is a pretty arbitrary way to slice market share, and one of the worse ways in my opinion.

If you want to measure the degree of competition in different corners of the internet, then 1) it's still about market share and not about which is top- ranked, and 2) better slices could be market share in desktop vs. mobile, in workplace vs. home, and in something more macro such as "more free" populations (U.S., Europe) vs "less free" populations (China, Russia).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> At least for me, Firefox has taken over again. I am using it on macOS, iOS and of course Linux. The tipping point for me was the new rendering engine, written in Rust, but I really like features like sending tabs to my other machines. On iOS, I prefer the user interface with tabs shown as small icons to the one of Safari.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the amazing things about Chrome which is under rated is the ecosystem in Open Source tooling that it's created.

Specifically V8, Chromium, NodeJS, and Electron.

I've been working in an offline browser and documentation platform named Polar which is based on Electron.

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

Obviously it heavily relies on Electron + Chrome internals but the fact that I can control the full browser is pretty amazing.

This is a hybrid desktop+browser app which allows me to some pretty awesome things.

For example, I can inject myself directly into the networking stack in Electron.

This is how Polar implements offline browsing. It captures the traffic of a web page you're visiting and then keeps it in a cache for your usage forever. No worrying about the site vanishing or your network going offline.

Now I _COULD_ do this with a PWA and service workers, possibly, but I think the main thing I'm worried about is Google's control over the extension install process.

I'm anticipating at some point that they might block service workers that essentially register for * ... that actually DOES make a lot of sense to prevent malware - but then I'm not malware.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone know what the actual metrics being used for this site are? Maybe it was discussed in a previous HN? I don't see in the present environment how Chrome can ever reach the kind of power IE once had given the existence of iOS if nothing else. It's not just about pure marketshare either, it's about value share (which is often the stat that companies actually care about, with marketshare only being an occasionally useful proxy measure). Even if alternate platform users like iOS/Mac/Linux who don't use Chrome were only 10-30% of users say, what percent of _revenue_ do they represent? It's not a uniform distribution amongst the general population.

And while there remain and probably always will be quirks between browsers and standards one implements that others don't yet and so on, I don't think there is anything quite like ActiveX remaining in the modern web.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are those countries fighting back in any real sense, or it's a consequence of limited internet access? In Liberia, you can only get very limited and slow internet costing as much as $6 / hour [1]. And for Cubans, the problem was severe enough to make an offline version of the internet (a periodically updated hard-disk) be of any practical value [2]. The stats are meaningless without total traffic share of these countries.

[1]: [https://www.lonelyplanet.com/liberia/internet- access](https://www.lonelyplanet.com/liberia/internet-access)

[2]: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba- offline-i...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline- internet-weekly-packet-external-hard-drives)

<comment><USER33> _" The stats are meaningless without total traffic share of these countries"_

They do publish the sample sizes per country. I assume the sample size is proportional to traffic share, but it's not stated explicitly. Some of it does look odd...the sample size for Turkey is close to the sample size for the US. [http://gs.statcounter.com/sample- size/StatCounterGlobalStats...](http://gs.statcounter.com/sample- size/StatCounterGlobalStatsSep15_SampleSizeCountryBreakdown.csv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It seems to me that the web has split into two.

Developers that care are using browsers like Firefox and avoiding websites full of cruft (e.g. GDPR/Cookie/Newsletter/Advert/... popups).

The general public is using whatever's preinstalled on their phone to go to whatever websites are advertised to them.

There's some overlap (e.g. obviously these websites exist because there are developers that have no principles and design the GDPR banner stuff), of course.

I don't know how we break that. I'm not sure if we even should - I can tell my friends and family that they should boycott anti-user practices, but they don't care, and that's as far as it goes.

For the general public, computers are toasters. Whatever's marketed most will win. Google has a bigger budget (and greater control over services people use on the web in general) than Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there a browser with something like uBlock Origin/Matrix built into the browser engine? Something like SELinux for the web. The user should have the option to take fine-grained control over the content in their browser on a site-by-site basis.

</comment><comment> gator-io data on share [https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22...](https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222017-11%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222018-10%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D)

<comment><USER36> Am I missing something or is Brave not on this list whatsoever?

<comment><USER33> Brave doesn't have a unique User-Agent.

 _" Removed Brave from the User Agent HTTP header to reduce fingerprinting"_ [https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/blob/master/CHANGELO...](https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#090)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Switch to FF recently was entirely painless - the seem functionally identically for my usage cases. Probably prefer chrome on the whole but ugh fk google and their stance to privacy

<comment><USER38> I switched to Firefox just to have one less Google-y thing in my life, and the FF browser has gotten better and better in recent releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Firefox is going to win again, by the way.

We are the same intransigent nerds that originally moved to FF over IE6 on principle, only this time also with more disposable income (You know, the people you want to show ads to), on top of technical acumen and prescriptive influence.

Chrome is a couple more undeleteable tracking cookies or proprietary languages away from the tipping point.

<comment><USER40> Firefox keeps getting new languages added to it too.

I'm still running Firefox 52 ESR on anything lower powered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you haven't switched to Brave yet from Chrome, you should. Great browser built on open source

<comment><USER42> It's also built on Chrome but BAT will be supported on other browsers soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've been using Vivaldi for a while and find it performs better than Firefox on my Mac, especially since version 2.0. I prefer the Firefox license, but prefer using Vivaldi.

</comment><comment><USER44> WebUsb is pretty cool [https://github.com/WICG/webusb](https://github.com/WICG/webusb)

</comment><comment><USER45> I think it's hilarious that 2 of the 3 countries hailed as bastions of freedom (by this 1 metric) include Cuba and Eritrea.

<comment><USER46> "Hailed as bastions of freedom" in what way? The only descriptor used to describe countries on the list is the satirical use of "brave".

<comment><USER45> By resisting Google, which to me implies that they're instead using Firefox. That may not be true, as they may be stuck on IE or dominated by some other browser. I don't know the numbers...it was just a bad attempt at humor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Fulltime Safari user here :) Only using chrome for development.

I guess even North Korea are active Chrome users? Who would have guessed.

</comment><comment><USER48> We could slow down the inevitable if Microsoft makes it so you can't download Chrome using Edge.

</comment><comment><USER49> Firefox on Desktop, Brave on Android.

<comment><USER50> Isn't brave based on chrome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I use Seamonkey. I wonder if there are people who prefer Seamonkey over Firefox.

<comment><USER52> How is going for you? I've been curious about how often it has trouble rendering a site.

<comment><USER51> It renders most websites I visit (reddit, Facebook etc.) fine enough. It takes a long time to start up, however.

One really bad point about it is that on MacBooks, it seems to use up the battery charge really fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Can someone explain to me what those countries do wrt Chrome?

<comment><USER54> It's just a listing of countries where Chrome is not the most used browser. I'm guessing IE is more popular in those countries, due to old computing equipment being popular.

<comment><AUTHOR> For these three countries it is Firefox with the largest market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The chrome is still bad. and Firefox is still and still bad.</comment>


TSA, American Airlines jointly testing innovative airport security technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.tsa.gov/news/releases/2016/07/05/tsa-american-airlines-jointly-testing-innovative-airport-security <comment><USER2> By accident, I had a pocket knife from Quiet Carry [0] on my keychain the TSA didn't catch it. And I've had other similar incidents in the past. Of course, they always find the innocent, and overly expensive water bottles bought at the airports including unopened ones. The one and only purpose of TSA is to catch terrorist-wannabes and create an expensive false sense of security.

[0]: [https://quietcarry.com/collections/bandit- titanium/products/...](https://quietcarry.com/collections/bandit- titanium/products/bandit-titanium-micro-knife)

</comment><comment><USER3> >Cameras that capture photos of the outside of the bag, which is linked to the X-ray image of the bag's contents.

Curious where all of that data goes. A giant catalog of x-rays of bag contents could be interesting. To get a little bit tin foil hat-ish, it becomes especially interesting if they system provides some way to tie a bag to a person's identity which would seem to be possible given the context.

</comment><comment><USER4> And by innovative we of course mean: intrusive.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize document digests / personal knowledge? - <AUTHOR> There have been a lot of threads regarding personal knowledge repositories[1][2][3] but they ask for something slightly different than what I'm looking for.
==> Do you know a good tool that would support my workflow?
──────────────────────────────────────────
Specifically, here is the main workflow that I'm trying to support:
– Import documents easily (PDF, web pages), bonus point if I can easily reference the source URL.
– Annotate those documents (annotations of highlights like Polar). Write a quick 1-2 line summary about what it deals with (+keywords?).
– Write a digest of the document (several paragraphs). I want to be able to read a document, summarize the most interesting parts and reference the document. Important: inline images in the digest because documents can contain useful illustrations.
– Write a summary about a subject, referencing multiple digests/documents.
– Full search over all my notes/stored documents. Give priority to my notes. (word2vec-style embedding for keywords search would be an amazing addition but I don't count on it).
──────────────────────────────────────────
Tools that I've considered:
– GitHub Gist/Git with markdown files: I use this currently (one Gist for each subject I care about). GitHub search is lackluster, imprecise doc cross-ref.
– Polar: I use this to annotate documents. Doesn't allow me to write digests about the documents I read.
– Zotero: Doesn't support annotations anymore[4].
– Mendeley: Proprietary and encrypted database[5]. I want my knowledge repo to be accessible in 10 years.
– Bookstack: Does it support cross-referencing to documents?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17892731
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332957
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20007108
[4] https://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials/annotation
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461 <comment><USER2> I'm the author of Polar - [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

Some of this functionality will land in the short term. We're working on adding the following:

\- a sidebar for documents with extended metadata (publication year, authors, abstract, etc)

\- The ability for notes directly on the document itself. This would give you your 'overview'. Lots of people want to use it as a summary feature. We might actually add a summary field.

\- links between the documents and directly to annotations.

... in the longer term we're going to add more complicated full-text search of the documents themselves. My background is search so I want to do this right using Elasticsearch as the backend so that we can add more advanced features like clustering, auto-tagging, etc.

Search is probaby 90 days away I hope. The other features are on the short term. I might actually flag the summary feature a bit higher as a a lot of people are asking for it and it's pretty easy to add technically but I need to work on some UI around the summaries.

Maybe a non-perfect UI is good to get us off the ground.

Oh. I'm also working on adding metadata automatically from documents you upload like author, publication year, etc.

We do about 2x releases a month so dev time is iterating really fast!

If you'd like us to go faster buy premium ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am/was faced with similar both in my professional and personal projects. The only tool that I could aggregate everything I need to reference in it's native format was Evernote. While it is not perfect (def. not) it has been able to meet everything I need...the rest was developing a structure to tag, index, and funnel everything to something useful...I'm light years ahead now, but still polishing the terd shall we say....I hope maybe some day there will be a cross between Evernote and the power of Jupiter-like notebooks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you written a blog post about how you handle this by any chance? I would be interested in learning more about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am currently writing an extensive blog post on this topic, still several weeks away from being finished though.

I use several tools, but mainly Notion - [https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/). It can do everything you ask, except its handling of PDF documents is not very sophisticated (e.g. no OCR) and I am not too excited about their web clipper.

Everything else would be a great fit for you. You could create tables with your documents, allowing you to label them, set whatever properties you like and easily cross-reference them within your notes.

<comment><USER5> I tried notion but unfortunately, gave up after 5 mins (Android). Pressing the phone's back button closes the app, and the options to confirm changes ("done" button) are on the top, making me have to reach for the top of the screen all the time... :(

<comment><USER4> I think the app has gotten a lot better recently. I am not so sure what you mean by confirming changes/done button - Usually things are saved directly without confirmation. However, I do agree that Notion is best used with a laptop/desktop. Many of the more sophisticated features are too cumbersome on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion the best way to do it, albeit quite time consuming to setup, is to setup orgmode with extensions such as org-ref, pdf-tools and org-brain. It is a big hassle, however I see it as do-once-in-a-lifetime (and iterate till infinity) kind of setup.

The possibilities are virtually limitless, the only minor (depending on what you want) setback is that the notes are "plaintextish" and separated from pdf (I see that as benefit but YMMV). There are interlinks between the text and org files, but the comments are not "in" the pdfs if that's what you looking for.

I can't provide any links at the moment but you will find many examples looking at the blogs. Be aware org is borg and consumes all information in your life ;). Fortunately it's as local or cloud and as encrypted as you make it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Related: [https://cpbotha.net/2019/09/21/note-taking- strategy-2019/](https://cpbotha.net/2019/09/21/note-taking-strategy-2019/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use [1]([https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink](https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink)) Devonthink does all you need AND is very resourceful.

I do send articles from the Safari to Devonthink, and later, I check the "Inbox" (there are several ways to make automatic rules) Once there, I tag it.

My groups have a smart selection by tags.

And It has an RSS reader and can archive web pages.

Easy, Cloud support, Encryption support, and multi-database.

Disclaimer: I am using it for two years on my desktop and laptop (syncing by iCloud), and I don't earn anything selling it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't support Windows/Linux and here is the response from the support (Jim Neumann, Customer Relations Specialist):

> Sorry, but no. We are Apple only developers. Also the underlying technical > structure of the database should not be messed with. The best bet: Buy a Mac > and DEVONthink 3 Pro. You'll feel better about life. I promise. Haha!

<comment><USER5> Awesome solution, spend a couple thousand dollars and change OS :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is going to sound old school, but I keep things nicely organized with OneNote2016. (A version that still allows you to keep the files on Dropbox, rather than having to deal with the inferior MS cloud.)

What I like is the fact that there is intuitive structure, with (project) notebooks, folders and pages. That makes it easy to add external content and then make notes, although for true annotation, you probably want to manually copy webpages into OneNote, rather than the PDF-style print to OneNote.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started using Joplin recently - [https://joplinapp.org/](https://joplinapp.org/) \- it has a browser plugin. It can store things locally and then you can use the search engine to look up your bookmarks, together with your notes, tags.

</comment><comment><USER10> for Mac i still use Outline (like OneNote) I automatically OCR PDFs and downloaded images to make them searchable.</comment>


C++ vs. Lisp or JRM vs. Ebhakt - <AUTHOR> http://funcall.blogspot.com/2010/05/c-vs-lisp.html

<comment><USER2> Common Lisp doesn't have _that_ much to boast about in terms of its sequential data structures. In many respects the STL is a much better organized library than CL's hodge podge of generic sequence functions. For example, it wouldn't be easy to write std::copy for CL.</comment>


Sitting All Day: Worse For You Than You Might Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/135575490/sitting-all-day-worse-for-you-than-you-might-think <comment><USER2> Am I the only one in hacker news that does not sit down at all at work? We are bipeds designed for standing on our two foot and moving from a while.

I have lifeguards friends that talked to me about the change in the body shape they have seen over the years, especially women as the spend more and more time sit down in front of the computer.

So I decided to change, it took months to get used to it as all musculature had been trained by years to sit down as since school time and on kids-adults are forced to sit down.

I had worked as a teacher for kids and is really really interesting HOW THEY OPPOSE AND RESIST sitting in the same place without moving. One day we had strong hail storm out there and the principal-director forced us to keep kids inside on playtime. Other teachers forced kids to sit on their chairs so they could count and control them easily. The next class I had the kids almost exploding under their desk with painful anxiety. So I let them stand up and move as they wish while I was giving my class!!. It worked wonderfully.

If I sit I use a Bar Stool, but I'm standing up 90% of the time. My computer is in front of my eyes. I love it.

If you try it, CAUTION, it will take time for your musculature to adapt, at least a month.

<comment><USER3> Well, we're really designed to walk/run. Sitting at a bar school or standing still all day comes with its own set of health issues (not saying if they're equal or not, but they're present).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to sound facetious, but aren't we designed to also sit as well as stand/walk/run? That's what the buttocks have evolved for, after all:-

"Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to be taken off the feet while sitting" [1]

Of course, having said that, we probably weren't designed for the amount of sitting a typical officer worker does, and certainly weren't designed for being sedentary.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttocks>

<comment><USER4> Well, not surprising that was down-voted, but seriously - if somebody contends that we're 'not designed for X', yet we have actually evolved to be able to do X, I think it's reasonable to point that out, even if the fact is that we do too _much_ sitting down.

<comment><USER5> While it may in fact be true that we evolved to able to sit, the sentence you quoted is in no way evidence of it. A link to supporting evidence, or even a well reasoned argument, would go along way towards backing up your claim.

<comment><USER4> It was indeed an (uncited) quote from a wikipedia article which is hardly the same as concrete evidence :-)

Regardless, it is certainly the case that we have evolved to be able to sit comfortably and take weight off our legs - that, I think, is indisputable.

I would argue that the buttocks provide a structural base for the weight of the body which would otherwise be transmitted through the upper parts of the legs more so than they are in reality. That is something of a guess, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not going to disagree with the article or dispute that sitting all day is not as healthy as occasionally moving around, but does anyone else feel like this is the latest "health scare" meme? It reminds me of how leg embolisms on long flights were the focus of attention a few years ago. (i.e. completely absent from the news at first, then an overabundance of stories once a single scientific study is published.)

<comment><USER7> It's definitely a real issue. I have been working at a desk since my 20s. Now in my 40s my legs go numb after sitting for a half an hour. The problem goes away when I am on vacation for a few weeks. I bet a lot of health issues would go away if people could spend less time sitting.

<comment><USER8> Same with me. 41 and never had a problem sitting until about a month ago. Left leg goes numb and/or hurts. I do pretty intense strength training at lunch 4 days a week, but it's not enough. I now have to get up and walk more during the day or even alternate between standing at my desk and kneeling.

<comment><USER7> Same here. Left leg goes numb. Daily exercise of around one hour can't compensate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sort of 'science writing' is infuriating:

"Specifically, he found that men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity. And many of these men routinely exercised."

Well, is he controlling for those who exercise or not? If not, then what is the point?

<comment><USER10> As a physician, I find NPR is generally good at addressing issues at a level the average person can understand. No one is claiming the NPR article _is_ the study. They do link to the studies in the text.

As for controlling for exercise: the whole point of the article is that researchers are finding that outcomes are at least reliably associated (with or without causality) with sedentary activity, that is, specifically measuring the amount of not-doing-anything-physical.

The Warren study very specifically looked at driving and watching TV as it relates to cardiovascular disease. In the introduction, they specifically address your contention:

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Sedentary pursuits represent a unique aspect of human behavior and should not be viewed as simply the extreme low end of the physical activity continuum. For example, several studies have demonstrated that excess TV viewing time, independent from overall physical activity levels, is adversely associated with metabolic risk factors (18)

[ed: ref 18 is Hamilton MT, Hamilton DG, Zderic TW. Role of low energy expenditure and sitting in obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Diabetes. 2007;56(11):2655–67.]

</comment><comment></comment><comment>

<comment><USER11> I've written to NPR previously about errors that I've found in their presentation of clinical trials and invariably they respond with, "Well, this is our interpretation." Nevermind that said interpretation would get them laughed off of the wards at any teaching hospital. Not saying that about the current article--merely pointing out that even NPR gets it egregiously wrong sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _[...] he found that men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity_

Wow, there are people who sit only 1.5 hours per day on average? I spend more time sitting on my way to work and back alone.

<comment><USER13> If it's self reported (which seems to be the case from the article, I could imagine that people reporting under 11 hours might be using different criteria for what they really consider sedentary activity compared to those that report over 23 hours a week. I fall closer to the 11 hours a week (standing desk, bike to work, bar height dining table at home) but agree that even with all of that it'd be rare that I'd be sitting for less than 1.5 hours a day (especially factoring in weekends).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think varicose veins are evidence that standing up all day isn't what we were evolved for.

Looking at chimps, gorillas, orang utan seems to conform that. In my limited knowledge, those species spend hours sitting or lying down.

=> I would guess it is not the sitting, but the sitting for long stretches in the same posture that is the problem.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. What research is there on people standing all day getting varicose veins and the negatives of that versus sitting all day and the negatives of that?

<comment><USER16> Plenty of anti-standing information here:

<http://www.hazards.org/standing/index.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe this has no basis in reality, but one reason I stopped cycling as a primary form of cardio ( I run now ) is I just felt wrong moving from sitting at a computer to sitting on a bike.

<comment><USER18> So don't sit on your saddle—take it off. (Bonus reason: saddles {with a nose} also cause erectile dysfunction; I don't have any sources at hand but I'm sure if you search you will find).

<comment><USER19> It appears you're onto something with the erectile dysfunction. Apparently however, it's not that common and you can get seats that minimise the issue.

[http://bicyclehabitat.com/articles/saddle-seats-and- erectile...](http://bicyclehabitat.com/articles/saddle-seats-and-erectile- dysfunction-the-myth-exploded-pg97.htm) [http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/cyclingworkouts/a/BikingI...](http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/cyclingworkouts/a/BikingImpotence.htm) [http://www.webmd.com/erectile- dysfunction/news/20050825/stud...](http://www.webmd.com/erectile- dysfunction/news/20050825/studies-link-bike-seats-erectile-dysfunction)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 The New York Times magazine published a longer article on the same subject a few weeks ago: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1)

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450170>

Between this sitting-is-death and the sugar-is-death, there should be tens of millions of dead office workers who died before 60 in the past few decades.

<comment><USER21> well, heart disease is the number one cause of death.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Related article: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39523298/ns/health-mens_health/>

Previous HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834671>

ps: standing desk :)

<comment><USER23> Also see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1311857>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm only one data point, but I felt significantly better in two or three days after hacking together a sit/stand desk. I can point to specific aches, pains and other minor medical issues that I simply no longer have now that I divide my time between sitting and standing.

<comment><USER25> I'm another data point. Built my own standing desk and bought a drafting chair; I frequently stand most of the day, and it's improved my posture markedly.

I'd gone through a series of various expensive "ergo" chairs, and yet I would get a feeling of suffocation when sitting for too long. Now I can work for extended periods without the need to "get up and walk around."

And when particularly good music comes on the radio, I can dance to it during compiles. Yes, I work in an office where no one can see me. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there data that excludes obese people?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm totally all for having recess, and we need more playgrounds for us older kids. :-D (Imagine the recess scene in the spoof movie Fatal Instinct)

To that - with my hours cutback at work I now have a home office with a standing/sitting desk now, it's great.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love my stand-up desk, which I hacked together from an Ikea Galant: <http://flic.kr/p/9kYneT>

Total cost: around $200.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm lucky, I have a shelf in my office that happens to be perfect standing height for me. I decided to put my laptop on the shelf when I came in this morning, and give it a try.

My office: <http://yfrog.com/h7m5ajhyj>

So far today, I've gotten far more done than a normal Monday morning, and my energy level is way up.

This could be good.

<comment><USER30> I'm two weeks into my standing desk experiment. If you stick with it, you're in for some discomfort. My legs adjusted quickly, the bottoms of my feet are still toughening up.

The problem is my current standing desk only allows standing. I'm 100% committed to standing if I am working. That's fine 95% of the time, but there is that 5% (like after I've worked out for the day or already put in 10+ hours of standing but found I need to get some emergency/last minute stuff done) where I really do not want to stand.

After two weeks I feel like my conclusion is the ideal desk is one that can easily adjust between standing and sitting, but stand most of the time.

<comment><USER31> How about a standing desk with a taller chair for the times when you need to rest your lower half?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Shameless Plug for a piece that I wrote that talks about some of these issues and more importantly, their practical resolution.

'Should I get a Standing Desk?' - [http://www.yewhealth.com/2011/04/03/should- i-get-a-standing-...](http://www.yewhealth.com/2011/04/03/should-i-get-a- standing-desk/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Explanationless science always gets into difficulties.

That said, I suspect that watching TV all day everyday _would_ kill a person, eventually, _because_ thinking without a break depletes the CNS of resources which would otherwise be used to regulate the body.

(Note: TV watching is a kind of externally driven thinking. More draining than thinking about the show would be the guilt thoughts caused by watching TV all day given that our culture believes (a) that watching too much TV is bad, and (b) that productive work is good.)

However, it's misleading to claim that sitting around all day is unhealthy. For instance, you won't get a heart attack if you are a Buddhist Monk sitting in meditation.

Also, _moving around all day_ would kill people, eventually, by similar means and for similar reasons to TV watching. For example:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518>

<comment><USER34> "For instance, you won't get a heart attack if you are a Buddhist Monk sitting in meditation."

There's a claim that I won't buy without some sort of a citation.

<comment><USER35> I googled "died while meditating" and found this dude:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luang_Pho_Daeng>

who not only died while meditating in a lotus position, but supposedly failed to decompose afterwards. (I don't know whether it was a heart attack though...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've started using the Pomadoro technique, 30 mins focused work and 5 mins of "break" (there's more to it, but that's the gist).

I'm going to make a real effort to use those 5 minutes to walk around and do something instead of look at lolcats from now on...

</comment><comment><USER37> Standing all day in a single spot can be pretty tiring too. A footstool can help a little, but it is probably best to have a mix of postures.

</comment><comment><USER38> >Those who were sitting more were substantially more likely to die

That has to be the stupidest quote I've ever read. Are you telling me that if I sit less often, I'll be less likely to die?

</comment><comment><USER39> Is that third cartoon doing a boogy?

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't see any evidence that this is causation and not just correlation. I'd believe that people who sit more are at higher risk for heart attack. But I'd also argue that those people are more likely to get less exercise.

<comment><USER41> But didn't these studies control for exercise?

 _But now, researchers are beginning to suspect that even if you engage in regular exercise daily, it may not be enough to counteract the effects of too much sitting during the rest of the day._

<comment><USER42> That is not what the researchers suspect. The article misquotes the study. You only have to go as far as the abstract to find: "Regardless of the amount of sedentary activity reported by these men, being older, having normal weight, being normotensive, and being physically active were associated with a reduced risk of CVD death."</comment></comment></comment>


CollegeHumor shuts down - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/09/collegehumor-shuts-down/ <comment><USER2> CollegeHumor did not shut down, from the article itself:

"In words that I'm sure are as surreal to read as they are to type, I will soon become the new majority owner of CH Media," said Reich, a longtime executive at CollegeHumor. "Of course, I can't keep it going like you're used to. While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose."

Dropout, its streaming service, will continue for at least the next six months while it churns out content already slated for release, Reich said. The future of CollegeHumor itself, and other humor sites run by the company, are less certain.

"In these six months, I hope to be able to save Dropout, CollegeHumor, Drawfee, Dorkly, and many of our shows," Reich said. "Some will need to take on bold new creative directions in order to survive."

The CH Media staff contracted from more than 100 to between five and 10 employees, according to Bloomberg News.

<comment><USER3> I don't follow. How is that not "shutting down"? It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses.

Maybe this is a Ship of Theseus kind of thing. They get rid of almost all employees, empty the pipeline, and then retool. What's left of College Humor?

<comment><USER4> > It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to > minimize losses.

Is it really life support? Or simply, what is always should have been?

Do you really need 100 staffs for College Humor? For the production side, sure you may need quite a bit of staff for each individual production, but once a production is done, you no longer need them, but you still have to pay them. How long you'll have to pay them will be mostly based on luck (what are the odds that you can always produce something that require each individual staff qualification...).

It makes much more sense to have a minimal team, and then hire on a contractual basis based on the production needs.

<comment><USER5> I'd be surprised if many of these "employees" weren't actually contractors or part-time roles as is typical of institutions which lean heavily on college- attending employees who need to work around their class schedule or are purely entry level on their way to a more traditional career.

<comment><USER6> Nothing about College Humor or "professional video we company" is particularly reliant on college student labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers.

This isn't the first time Facebook killed culture, and it won't be the last.

We really need to de-platform or find a way Facebook can't steal value.

<comment><USER8> Platform giveth, platform taketh away. There used to be a time where you actually had to go to collegehumor.com to watch the videos. Once everyone turned into sharecroppers on FB, Youtube or whatever, this was the risk they took.

<comment><USER9> IF Facebook didn't fake their numbers, then I would be inclined to agree.

<comment><USER10> Does it really matter? Why switch just for view numbers without a revenue model?

<comment><USER11> View numbers _were_ the revenue model. Eyeballs make money for advertisers. The more eyeballs, the more money.

<comment><USER10> If they were selling ads themselves that might make sense. But since they were planning to rely on the platform for ad revenue, I'd think they'd want to know others revenue experiences first.

Ad revenue and eyeballs don't correlate well across different platforms, as some are better at selling ads than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> CollegeHumor had same damn well written, well produced comedic satire. I hope all of their material is archived.

One thing to watch out for is if this posted under their Geuite account to YouTube, when the gsuite bill isn't paid, all the YouTube videos will get deleted, leaving a cultural hole.

Of all the Google crimes, this one is accidental but the most damaging to society.

<comment><USER13> > the most damaging to society

While I agree that content archival is important, I would strongly argue that lost content is not on the same level as for example anti-competitive practices, even in terms of cultural impact.

<comment><USER14> Especially not CollegeHumor content, most of which was scattershot hope- something-goes-viral bro humor.

<comment><USER15> I disagree strongly.

Maybe some of their skits had bro humor but it always seemed like either generic humor or geek centric than anything.

<comment><USER16> What is bro humor? Just see random memes on initial google search.

<comment><USER6> "bro" means "anything I don't like, that leans male."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a misleading title based on even the article. CH still has an owner (Sam Reich) and still has content that they are still airing (D20 with the McElroy family among other things) through Dropout. Basically they went to being an externally funded company to turning into a startup that has to bootstrap, but still has an entire video subscription streaming infrastructure built out with Dropout and some content to stay afloat.

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://outline.com/eBzkmT](https://outline.com/eBzkmT)

</comment><comment><USER19> Title isn't completely accurate - WP article says that the site was sold to Sam Reich, one of their execs, and some servicess will continue for a while as he works on retooling the site.

</comment><comment><USER20> Presumably Sam now owns the rights to all the content. He could shop it around to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I'll bet one of them would pick it up and maybe even give him a budget to hire some of the writers back and make new content again.

<comment><USER21> Putting it all behind yet another walled garden? Before you know it, 90% of the internet will be gated behind paywalls or signups.

<comment><USER20> Seems like a better business model than ads. And Netflix is worldwide. So really it's a question of do you want to pay for the content with money or with your personal data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> CH used to run a facebook competitor called "Campus Hook". I met who would later become my wife there in the early 2000s. Online dating was yet to become mainstream, so we made up a story about how we met lest we look like weirdos. Now that app dating is a thing, we can just tell the story as it happened.

Thanks, CH!

<comment><USER23> That's amazing! We started Campus Hook in 2002 (I think) but the timing was bad for a few reasons: 1\. A few years early in terms of college student adoption of internet 2\. A few years later in terms of founders' ages (we were seniors and didn't really care about campus dating anymore)

So happy to hear you met on there, and, apparently, are still married! Perhaps it wasn't a failure after all :)

<comment><USER22> > apparently, are still married!

10 years now, and 2 kids! Thanks so much for building it, in our eyes it wasn't a failure at all :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember when CH was just a site where people uploaded funny pics, and once in a while they had a well-written article. How far they came - sad to see them shut down.

<comment><USER25> Yes, was one of the sites I bookmarked back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The did a great parody of many startup pitches that I've heard over the years. Hopefully they can save it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4)

</comment><comment><USER27> Sad to see CH fall like Cracked did. Facebook single handedly killed both these very entertaining companies.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wasn't Vimeo a byproduct of CollegeHumor or am I mixing up my 2000-2005 internet history?

<comment><USER29> Jake Lodwick co-created Vimeo while working as the inital web developer for CollegeHumor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "You have to learn how to stay in a good mood as you overthrow the sour, puckered hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality." \- Rob Brezsny

</comment><comment><USER31> The situation is already so heavy that one tiny thing can cause a snowball effect. We all know it. Now one knows when but it is happening

</comment><comment><USER32> Unrelated... but on the Washington Post I clicked through to the page that sells subscriptions, only to find that they hijack you back button and do not allow you to go back in your browser history.

What a joke. Makes me want to never visit their site again. That is unacceptable.

<comment><USER33> The bigger joke is a web page can hijack your browser.

<comment><USER34> This joke must be too highbrow because no one seems to get it.

[https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020](https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020)

<comment><USER35> "Web coffee protocol" \-- I'll admit, this one surprised me.

<comment><USER32> LOL you got me :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The speed these behemoths fall is incredible, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER37> NOT ace.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can not read the source article.

But I guess its costs were too high such that if it just distributed it all via YouTube it couldn't make any money?

<comment><USER39> They are also blaming it on Facebook:

> "In order to beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so > [CollegeHumor] pivoted to FB," former CollegeHumor writer Adam Conover > presciently tweeted last October. "So did Funny or Die, many others. The > result: A once-thriving online comedy industry was decimated."

<comment><USER40> I don't understand this. Did they abandon Youtube for Facebook? They could have easily managed their followers in Facebook while continuing to upload to Youtube as usual.

<comment><USER41> A large problem is content stealers. They'll post the entire video without attribution. Also Facebook for a very long time didn't do anything to prevent content stealing even with takedown notices there were too many. FB didn't have an automated system.

College humour was basically forced to put their entire video just to retain views.

<comment><USER42> Not sure why I was flagged, @fatjewish was popular on twitter/ig/etc. and was nearly given a comedy central show until comedians complained that he stole jokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> PC comedy isn't funny. Who knew?

<comment><USER44> THAT'S what you gleamed from this article?

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Why does the article start with a false premise that "internet used to be fun" and "bygone era". Come on, if you don't want to follow Twitter drama just go to some other place. Ugh.

<comment><USER7> It's not a false premise for many of us.

I miss the indie internet, before big corps and big tech started taking over.

I miss IRC and forums and personal websites. I miss the time when Digg was new and hadn't taken over, and memes weren't the most upvoted content. When websites weren't all Javascript and Google wasn't Yahoo.

MySpace and LiveJournal and Xanga were never as sterile as Facebook and Instagram.

The internet that appealed to the Technorati got put on dopamine-fueled monetization rails and turned into a bulk commodity that maximizes engagement over the population.

<comment><USER45> When I was growing up, I played on MUD games, which were text-based massively multiplayer games 100% free to play, with no ads or any other kind of monetization, with full staffs of admins, programmers (!!), level designers, and moderators, all 100% volunteers.

Reading that now, it sounds like I'm describing some kind of crazy sci-fi utopia that couldn't even get published because it's too unbelievable.

<comment><USER46> Realms Of Despair ([http://www.smaug.org/](http://www.smaug.org/)) is still running - last major update 2002, last update at all 2010 :P

`nc realmsofdespair.com 4000`

A CLI interface with no readline support; an MMO where you need to manually save your game to avoid losing progress whenever the network glitches for a second; very nostalgic :D

<comment><USER45> Ah, that's one of the main MUDs I played. I even built an area there. I did tons of runs there (even participated in successful runs on Hastur and Divine Retribution) until I got balzhur'd for cheating :P (I was just a high school kid back then).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When Jake and Amir was canceled I was quite disappointed, When they made an awful soulless return in the form of an anti-trump video, my fury was immense. they held out for quite a while making original content and as of recently once in a blue moon they made something interesting but the company became very corporate, and their main product was incompatible with that, compatibility is a feat I think only Adult Swim can manage today...

<comment><USER48> Really? You're just butthurt over the Trump Jake and Amir video? It wasn't even that bit of a deal. It was also mocking people in general as much as Trump.</comment></comment>


Futurist Mobile Interaction Design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2012/5/3/futurist-mobile-interaction-design.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome. Content serving is what most apps are about. Microsoft's Metro design philosophy is right on that topic.</comment>


Facebook remote salary adjustment happened - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/1c52a7a2-aa65-11ea-abfc-5d8dc4dd86f9 <comment><AUTHOR> The article doesn't cite numbers which FB has kept out of the press.

Friends tell me it's 5-15% of base salary for individuals that leave the Bay Area, based on level and destination location.</comment>


Usenet Tradecraft: Survival in an Extremely Adversarial Environment (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/12/01/yardbirds-effective-usenet-tradecraft/ <comment><USER2> > Real security must start with the content itself, and then use encryption as > an additional layer.

Extrapolating from this to other reasons you might operate in an adversarial environment, for instance political dissidence, this conclusion has a rather chilling effect. The content of the communication itself must be severely limited in how it can assist coordination of outside efforts in order to maintain the anonymity of the members. Or in the inverse, if the member's have strong identities (via PGP WoT, et al) then the /only/ barrier protecting them from their adversary is the control of the keys themselves.

Not that this is any great revelation, per se. But it means that in the cases where you're using encryption as the basis for communicating with a group in secret, that you still must experience a chilling effect on the content of your messages. In other words, encryption alone is not sufficient to achieve the same result as "freedom of speech" at a social level.

<comment><USER3> > In other words, encryption alone is not sufficient to achieve the same > result as "freedom of speech" at a social level.

It's tempting to think you can solve political problems with technology, but ultimately you have to fight those battles the old fashioned way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I'm getting from this is that if you use Tor and never reveal personal information you get 90% of the benefits.

The encryption was just a way to prevent non-members from obtaining the benefits of membership. The relocation and rekeying was just a way to punish non-compliant members by excluding them, turning them back into non-members.

<comment><USER5> Excellent summarization!

I'm going to use this explanation when I have discussions with less technically minded people on this issue.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. That's one of the best compliments I can get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a feeling the people who are very serious about OpSec never use the net.

<comment><USER7> The "OP" in OPSEC means operational. The field is entirely about securing operations. Not performing an operation at all may be inherently secure (as relates to the operation) but is entirely orthogonal to the field of OPSEC.

<comment><USER8> I think he means using thumb drives and burkas instead of the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Finally, to demonstrate both their deep involvement in the activity and to prove they are not an undercover cop, they must pass a timed written test on the minutiae of various child abuse victims and media."

This part seems strange to me. Police officers working in...this area, look at a lot of the relevant material and are probably intimately familiar with the details of famous cases. If anybody can be expected to pass such a test, it's a cop.

<comment><USER10> This is the hubris of "NOBUS"[1].

Believing that "NObody But US" has secret knowledge tends to create a false- confidence trap. It doesn't matter if your are a small criminal organization or a large and well-funded government agency; assuming your adversary is ignorant or stupid is terrible security.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS)

<comment><USER11> It's still better than letting anyone with just basic knowledge in. I mean, if a cop can learn to pass those tests, surely a committed pedophile can, with the twist that the pedophile would not find the whole process disgusting.

In a way, the test could be taken to be a deterrent to police forces, who presumably will be challenged by the prospect of having to learn the minutiae involved in child abuse.

<comment><USER12> If you can't beat em, make them more like you, right?

<comment><USER13> I'll take "effects of terrorism in the united states since 1990" for $400, Alex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://dee.su/uploads/baal](https://dee.su/uploads/baal)

Related reading, touches upon the same case.

<comment><USER15> That was very interesting.

How did you find it by the way?

<comment><USER16> It's linked in the article

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know this might sound political, but I'm still curious if there are enough laws and regulation surrounding digital security.

I guess companies are catching up and implementing good enough measures to protect their users, but sometimes I wonder if there are enough incentives so that companies can really start to invest in security, especially when you hear about big credit card leaks.

Of course governments might not be really be able to make the difference between actual security, privacy and consumer rights, but I'm just talking about auditing big companies where the money stakes are high and where damage can happen easily. I mean there already a lot of security measures in the real world, and it doesn't seem there are enough efforts being made in the digital world.

Meanwhile you can of course argue that letting systems being insecure can become an asset if your "computer agency" can benefit from it.

<comment><USER18> _enough laws and regulation surrounding digital security._

Many people, _particularly_ those who follow the grugq, regard those who pass and enforce laws and regulation to be the #1 adversary in their threat model.

the grugq's writing is heavily influenced by real world tradecraft specifically because his audience's adversary uses it somewhat effectively against other nation states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's actually a good write-up. Many of the rules are the kind of basic OPSEC from the Cold War days that apply online. The Tor, Usenet, and key management angles could be improved on. Tor is prone to many attacks so best combined with other things like using physically, different connection and/or regular proxies. Potential Usenet replacements come out of cloud and free hosting services. There's group communication schemes in academia to semi-automate that which could probably be bolted onto PGP. You'd bolt them onto PGP so it looks like regular PGP traffic and avoids you being extra, singled out.

So, these basic rules might be combined with a few, other techniques to be strengthened.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to see somebody express this in front of lawmakers: > The encryption was not a factor in their successful evasion. Rather, it was the content of the messages, controlled and dictated by the security rules, which protected their secrets.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure that's possible given concealment was essential. Just as it is offline. The argument for lawmakers is that neutral, legitimate technology always gets abused by a tiny minority for criminal purposes. Yet, we don't ban or sabotage that technology. One can illustrate the many, good things encryption protects, the few bad things it conceals, alternative methods of concealment crooks might switch to, and prior failures of escrow. Then, it's an argument whether lawmakers want to destroy or put at risk all the good things done by innocent people to temporarily stop some crooks. I argue that's a bad tradeoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What was gained by regular nickname changes?

<comment><USER12> It could help further obfuscate the usage patterns of the underlying actors. If you change the parameters, the party doing search and correlations needs to take that into account and expend more effort. Basically, you want to make them work harder to ascertain any bit of information

<comment><USER22> I think I'd better describe it as helping in the case of identifying information being correlated over time.

Even if you've got good OpSec, you may reveal things about yourself accidentally over time, and with a long-lived nickname, this could potentially narrow down your identity. Things like colloquialisms/references that are culturally specific/indicative, or reference to things that indicate things about yourself by association.

This could potentially be counteracted by analysing usage patterns/language patterns to try and associate a set of nicknames as 'the same person', but it's probably hard-ish to do if communication is terse + sparse.

<comment><USER13> This. You leak little personal details about who you are. Word usage analysis could be used to track a member across multiple usernames but frequent username changes is just part of defense in depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Groups with effective opsec don't get blog posts written about their opsec.

Additionally, opsec doesn't scale well beyond Dunbar's number. Once you have too many members for everyone to have a general familiarity with who's who "quality control" becomes a much harder problem.

<comment><USER23> Except it appears this group had effective-enough opsec, and it's likely at least some of them are still operating(if not the group itself). Grugq is widely respected in this field and there's a lot to learn here.</comment></comment>


Developers should think like end users – the one I often missed too - <AUTHOR> https://kevinhq.com/why-developers-should-think-like-end-users/ <comment><USER2> Observe your users actually using the software. Don't interfere while they stumble on parts of it. Slickify it and polish it. If the user no longer stumbles the changes are an improvement.</comment>