Censorship in China Allows Govt Criticism but Silences Collective Expression [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11878767/33531/censored.pdf?sequence%3D1 <comment><USER2> This is why the first amendment of the US constitution had the notion freedom of assembly. Collective or mutual knowledge is important for a social body to protect itself from tyranny. Stephen Pinker [1] gave a talk and related this to the story of the emperors new cloths. The gist is that independently, everyone knew that the emperor was naked, but it wasn't until it was publicly exclaimed by a child that the independent knowledge became mutual, thus making it socially OK for the population at large to say what they already knew.

Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes understand this and remove the ability to congregate openly on how the system works. They disappear dissidents and control the media. They essentially gaslight the citizenry in the hopes that independent suffering stays independent and never is discussed openly where it could incite rebellion.

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU)

</comment><comment><USER3> Exactly same thing can be said about US [1]. It really fascinates me how much focus there is on China when exact same things like suppression of political opinion and mass surveilance are happening in the West. I think it would be far more productive to focus on fixing shit here than to obsess about China as if everything was fine in the West. Meanwhile the West is still fueling the genocide in Yemen by the Saudis making it clear that all the outrage about human rights is just cynical posturing.

[1] [https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> For the record, I posted this specifically because I feel that it provides a clearer picture of what censorship in China really is like, as opposed to the cartoonishly evil portrayal that most of Western media paints it in.

Although I don't condone censorship overall, I do find it interesting and identify that governments will always find it necessary to impose some form of societal control.

From this study, it seems to me that the Chinese government chooses to prevent events that may cause conflict and violence. That is almost noble, were it not for the fact that it also helps the government maintain a firm grip of control in all situations. I think there is also something to be said for the Great Firewall and how it manages to keep gigantic companies like Facebook and Google from interfering with foreign countries and how it spurs local companies to come up with similar solutions. The drawbacks are all obvious and I don't think it's necessary to repeat those here.

The way that political dissent is managed in the West is so much more chaotic, and generally more violent. The public is split in two (usually) and played against eachother which often results in violence on the streets. Although being able to protest is at least symbolically a good thing, I often wonder if it isn't mostly just another tool used to create the illusion of freedom. If the public is constantly bombarded with misinformation and fear-mongering tactics it's highly unlikely that any sort of unified protest could convert to real, regime threatening change.

So I agree with you that we should be critical of the West, and honestly this post wasn't a jab at Chinese politics in favour of the West, it was more of a learning experience for myself.

<comment><USER4> >it seems to me that the Chinese government chooses to prevent events that may cause conflict and violence. That is almost noble, were it not for the fact that it also helps the government maintain a firm grip of control in all situations.

Every single state acts this way. Every single effective state system at least. It's called "Monopoly on Violence." It is one of the defining characteristics of "modern" state organizations.

Unsanctioned use of violence directly threats the state's power and will quickly call into question the state's legitimacy if the state can't control coordinated or wanton violence.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence)

<comment><AUTHOR> That may be the official policy, but I think you only have to glance at the US to see that it doesn't always act on this. Of course, at some scale, government would be forced to act, but there is a lot of space in between where allowing violence to play out could even be beneficial to a ruling party.

<comment><USER4> >but there is a lot of space in between where allowing violence to play out could even be beneficial to a ruling party.

That's why I used the word "sanctioned", publicly or privately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The supplementary appendix about predicting important events by observing changes in censorship rate _before the event happens_ is very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> Living in Australia, I've been exposed to both Hong Kong and mainlander Chinese people and I've developed an opinion. Australia really needs to start working harder to understand them than they do to understand us. In light of the recent disturbances in HK I read things like this paper with renewed interest.

The views of the mainlanders on HK are fascinating in how alien they are in contrast to how the Australian press sees the situation. I don't think the media is demonstrating an understanding of the relationship the Chinese middle class have with their government.

<comment><USER7> I live and work in Shenzhen and am doing an MBA in Hong Kong. As one mainlander told me, Hong Kong can protest for democracy as much as they want, but independence from the mainland isn't ok, that's the line that can't be crossed. Of course, the government's long-term stance on democracy in Hong Kong is more complicated and he didn't speak to me on behalf of the government.

Hong Kong is an extremely touchy subject for mainlanders. As told to me by one of my professors, the taking of Hong Kong by the British Empire was taught in mainland Chinese schools as one of the most shameful aspects of Chinese history. Hence, especially now that China has Hong Kong back from the UK, whenever there is any kind of statement that Hong Kong should go back to the UK, or that Trump needs to come help Hong Kong, or that Hong Kong should be independent, it's met with a visceral reaction from mainlanders. That was apparently a time in history when foreigners would have shops or restaurants in Hong Kong and the mainland and have signs that said "No dogs or Chinese." It's extremely easy for mainland people to get extremely emotional about this topic. The fact is that despite Mao's shortfalls, he was the first one in a hundred years to set up a government that didn't get bullied by foreign powers. That period is literally called the hundred years of humiliation in Chinese history. Due to this historical context, now that Hong Kong is part of China again, ANY foreign influence or interference is strictly viewed as unacceptable by mainlanders.

So there's a bit of a powderkeg of non-overlapping priorities between the mainland and Hong Kong lower and middle classes that make for difficult conflict resolution.

I mention specifically lower and middle classes because it does seem to be mostly the lower and middle classes that are unhappy. I guess when you're a billionaire, you can do whatever you want and don't really care what kind of system you live in. But there is very good evidence that Hong Kong's economy and people have been left behind, just as America's "Trump base states" have been left behind. Through many decades, Hong Kong industries have never really evolved. For these last few decades have been centred around real estate and finance, and that's with not much land on which to construct new residences. So prices go up while there are no jobs to pay rent. There are some crazy photo essays on the Internet of Hong Kong people who live in what look smaller than jail cells because rent is so expensive. Meanwhile, Shenzhen totally caught onto the high-tech craze, jobs are everywhere, and everyone's making money. So there's a lot of mainlander consensus that Hong Kong dropped the ball and now Hong Kong is angry without taking responsibility. But there's no Trump to vote for because the mainland government reserves the right to restrict electoral candidates, so now they're protesting instead. And mainlanders look at them and say that no democracy can solve their structural problems, or else it would have been done already. Read an article shared by a Chinese friend that talks about how the Hong Kong government set aside a ton of funding to revitalize Hong Kong with new digital industries, and instead Hong Kong's super rich people funneled that money into their personal real estate projects. They'd say any democratic solution in Hong Kong won't have real teeth because look what happened before.

There are so many complicated factors involved that the two sides aren't really listening to each other. It reminds me of Colin Kaepernick. He's protesting about police brutality against black people, but people are angry at him because they say he's disrespecting the American flag and military. When two sides are not even on the same page, difficult for them to have a conversation.

Unfortunately for Hong Kong lower and middle class people, due to their economic weakness, they don't actually have a lot of leverage in these issues. 2014 Umbrella Movement showed as much. That's why the protestors are more violent than 2014, and that is slowly making them lose the moral high ground. The biggest point in a lot of mainlander eyes was when they beat up a mainland reporter at the Hong Kong airport, thinking him to be a mainland undercover cop. Mainland social media exploded that night, a lot of mainlanders got really mad and the next day was filled with the "What a shame for Hong Kong" meme. It's a bit like Ireland in that the IRA found it really difficult to give up their guns because their guns were their only big leverage in the negotiation with the government. Similarly, Hong Kong doesn't have much else to bargain with right now, so here we are.

Anyone who thinks this issue is black and white has no chance of offering a solution that will actually work. Scared of what could end up happening.

<comment><USER8> The tragic thing is what the protesters seem to want to return to is the by- gone era of the British rule. But that was very much the thing that turned Hong Kong into a place ruled by real estate moguls. The mainland Chinese vision of opening up and fully integrate the area of Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzhen/Canton is something that actually can break the rot and get Hong Kong in on the growth and prosperity that is there right next door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this mean, two people can tell each other the government is shit, but 10 people can't get together and tell their collective opinion even if it was the opposite?

<comment><USER10> More or less that.

My Chinese friends discuss the politics openly, sometimes even on WeChat. As long as you don't do it over group chats or in public no one would bother you.

There was just this funny thing that the famous llama pic was automatically filtered even in 1-1 chats.

<comment><USER11> Why people keep using the system that censors stuff? Why not just completely switch to something else? Or it will become impossible to analyze then cos they won't look "Chinese" then, so maybe they actually in fact do it, just keep posting on WeChat something meaningless to please the Party?

<comment><USER12> Except they can't, things like Instagram and WhatsApp are blocked and taken down from the AppStore. If there's new they would also be taken down.

Any forums or messing app alike must do ISP registration from the government, the cloud provider has to make sure they can take down any website or web service on demand.

Those websites without ISP registration has quite a change being blocked, and cannot use a lot of 3rd party integration like WeChat pay, etc.

<comment><USER11> But i mean, do anyone seriously try to use non-VPNned Internet in China? Without obfuscation? Of course only way to meaningfully use anything would be through an obfuscator. I asked people there (Europeans though, not Chinese) and they all say ToR with obfs4 works just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is from before Xi.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is more accurate about the current state, people can talk about politic in person in normal volume in public like metro or mall, or just through Wechat as long as you don't affect collective.

A lot of People in person say bad words all the time. Everyone has their own point of view, far from brain-washed from some media.

There are also politic classes from middle school to college, and requires a high score for Master degree. Everyone hates it, no one really cares about what Marxism is, they just recite everything and play the game, and forget it immediately after the exam - just like how SF engineers play the brain teaser games.

Some media renders China like 1984 where everyone is intensively controlled is far from reality and oversimplify things. It's much easier to judge if it's like 1984.

<comment><USER14> That's correct. It is often misunderstood by Western public.

To complement, for example in WeChat if a lot of criticism or even much worse than criticism can exist in "Moment". But it can make a WeChat Group be banned. Another thing is there's no danger for any individual who express anti government opinion only. Too many people do it all the time. The only chance to cause trouble is when the individual is trying (or perceived by government is trying) to instigate some public demonstration. Otherwise is pretty safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey people, it is from 2012. It's a totally different era.</comment>


Solving the "marketplace" business model - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/marketplace-business-model.html

<comment><USER2> This post should be placed under an entrepreneur's must read list. We're doing a marketplace play with Cloudomatic and it was really re-assuring (and scary) to hear some things we've seen echoed.

a) Building two businesses is really scary.

b) Focus on sellers first is definitely right. You'll never have any buyers if you don't have any sellers. The worst case scenario for a seller if there are no buyers is an increase of zero / a loss of nothing. Things can only go up.

c) Pay per lead works great here. The listing fee up front is hard to do and usually penny wise + pound foolish. We have close to 500 apps. I bet if we tried to charge a small 50 dollar fee to be on cloudomatic we might have gotten it from some devs, but we'd have a lot less apps (maybe 25 total?).

d) Content is really important as a way to gain traffic on the buyer side. It worked well for Mint. I consider Mint to be a marketplace at its core (connect people (buyers) with better finance deals (sellers)).

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article. Wish I read it earlier. I started a company (graduate jobs board) which failed remarkably. I had no idea the extent of difficulties I would face. The hardest thing was getting the "buyers" - i.e. the employers - to advertise. The "sellers" - the graduates & students - was a piece of cake. 1,000 users in a couple of months. But without buyers, the whole thing was for naught. The other thing I noticed in the "marketplace" business model is that the leader is able to reinforce their market position and take the lion's share of the market. It's very difficult you're up against a competitor like that but if you're establishing yourself to be the leader and succeed, it's extremely profitable. The CEO of Australia's leading job site, seek.com.au, commented that unless you have market leadership in "marketplace" business models, it's not worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article. If you are starting a company that is a marketplace, you'd better read this first. Really. I forwarded it to a few people I know who are...

</comment><comment><USER5> All in all a great article, but I'm confused about why the small and quirky argument ("marketplace enormity doesn't increase the pleasure of the buyer") applies to Etsy or Threadless but not to Craiglist or EBay. If I'm in the market for miniature porcelain cows ironically dressed as farmers and find them on EBay, what do I care if EBay has 3 other listings or 3 million?

I understand that at their current level of maturity the value of EBay and/or Craiglist is partially tied to the size of the marketplace and that focused- and-better may be the best or even only way to compete with them but it seems like on that particular point what works for you, the small emerging marketplace could work just as well for them, they just have a higher overhead to meet. It's not enough just to be more focused, you need to be _better_ at your niche.

<comment><USER6> >> "marketplace enormity doesn't increase the pleasure of the buyer"

You're asking why it's a negative for eBay and Craigslist that they aren't small (i.e., that they have a lot of listings), but I think the quote you took from the article is saying the inverse - that it's _not_ necessarily a negative for Etsy and Threadless that they _are_ small. In fact, I think Jason does recognize that being bigger is an advantage:

>> "Clearly the value of a marketplace increases as it grows — both as a business and to the buyers and sellers."

As to your second paragraph, I agree it comes down to you meeting the needs of your niche in some way that is better than the way the big boys are doing it (that is, of course, if you are competing directly with them). There is nothing, in principle, stopping them from replicating whatever you do to create an advantage. And you certainly won't win _just_ because you have a smaller market. But there are a lot of products (like the t-shirts on Threadless) where relative obscurity increases the value of the product. There will always be consumers who shy away from the mainstream offerings, in some cases _because_ the offerings are mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great article. Amazingly, I didn't realize that my startup was a marketplace until reading this.</comment>


Is there a replacement for email? - open-source-ux https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2017/feb/16/is-there-a-replacement-for-email <comment><AUTHOR> > Email's fourth advantage is that it's a store and forward system. People > don't have to be online at the same time to exchange emails, and the emails > can be kept for future reference. They can also be forwarded to other > people, or printed out.

I believe they understand the whole store and forward model wrong.

We call email a store and forward system because every SMTP server (except the final one, which performs only the first 2 steps): 1) receives a message, 2) stores it and 3) then forwards it to another SMTP server. Everything happens absolutely automatically, without any user interaction. No SMTP server has to be online (except for the first one, which receives the message from the user) at the same time for email to work.

The article's author seems to incorrectly believe that "store and forward system" means that mail is stored in users' mailboxes and users can resend (forward) that mail. But in reality, "forward" in "store and forward" has nothing to do with the forwarding most email users deal with on a daily basis. The whole "store and forward" is about actions performed by SMTP servers, not email users.

</comment><comment><USER2> "blockchain-mail": I think that's where some kind of blockchain network would come handy. Store messages encrypted in the blockchain and pay a small amount like buying a postage stamp for sending a message to someone. Could work pretty well in my opinion. Anybody wants to join me to build something like that? Drop me a mail: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> Something like [https://www.bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://www.bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page) ?</comment></comment>


Analysis of New Google Logo Compression - <AUTHOR> https://rawgit.com/DarkLilac/Sxz/master/Polyfill/new_google_logo_demo.html

<comment><USER2> This article smells like unbased dietrology and nothing more.</comment>


Remote education does not require giving up rights to freedom and privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/remote-education-does-not-require-giving-up-rights-to-freedom-and-privacy <comment><USER2> They are requiring all students to show a valid ID and then consent access to browser history, if that wasn't enough they compel students to give a bedroom tour showing their bed and anything demanded by the proctor. This is beyond unacceptable and unfortunately becoming the norm in this day and age.

<comment><USER3> dystopian stuff. Are schools subscribing simply due to lack of alternatives or competition inside this new market?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FSF blog post standing up against proprietary video-conferencing tools and proctoring. Timely!

</comment><comment><USER4> Super relevant!</comment>


Why Aren't Shoes Preventing Running Injuries? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/can-shoes-help-prevent-running-injuries/371517/ <comment><USER2> Most of the distance racers I have known (including myself) will simply keep increasing training intensity and/ or duration until they suffer an injury that interrupts that. Proper equipment, running mechanics, and training practice all help increase one's injury threshold, but the potential for injury never disappears. To race to one's potential generally involves learning how to suppress physical distress signals, and some of these can indicate an incipient injury. It took me a few years to distinguish ordinary racing/training distress from injury-related distress. It's difficult to make an enthusiast back off.

<comment><USER3> Most injuries went away after I started incorporating heavy weights training. Heavy deadlifts and squats specifically but also bench press, overhead press and rows:

1\. they increase strength in the core muscles which makes it easier to keep proper form for longer while running

2\. putting heavy weights on your body strengthens muscles/tendons/joints. My knee injuries disappeared and I no longer roll my ankles etc

<comment><USER4> The downside here is that a back injury while squatting/deadlifting or a shoulder injury while pressing can last the rest of your life. Really important to learn good form and start/progress slowly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't help that most shoes squeeze most people's toes when weight is on the ball of the foot, preventing us from using them for their natural purpose in stabilizing our stride.

Most of us have toes that make the front of the foot square-ish when weight- bearing (stand barefoot with your weight on your toes to see what I mean). Walk barefoot on the beach and pay attention to how all of your toes stabilize your stride, relieving your ankles, knees, and hips of some of that strain.

But most sneakers are tapered or at best rounded, squeezing the 3rd through 5th toes inward and preventing them from extending properly.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I've pretty much exclusively used Altra shoes the last few years and have had much fewer problems. Altra have incredibly wide toe-box! Pair that with some Injinji running socks (seperate toes 'compartments') and I'm in running heaven!

However, please note that everyone's feet are different and don't just buy whatever shoes someone else wears.

<comment><USER7> Just wanted to add to this. Also a huge Altra fan.

The stats is this article are so general they don't make much of a point at all. Most upsettingly for me (a minimalist evangelist) they seem to dismiss barefoot style shoes out of hand.

For me Altra have made the key components of barefoot running accessible: no heel - so I land forefoot, wide toe box - so my toes can splay and some cushioning - making at accessible.

If you are a 50kg elite runner with narrow feet and perfect technique the shoes probably won't make as much difference to injury as your average 80kg runner with dodgy technique (like myself!!). Altra have been a game changer for me.

<comment><USER8> Which Altra would you recommend for minimalist style with no heel? A quick search shows me shows that all seem to have pretty significant heel padding.

<comment><USER9> If I remember correctly, the Vanish series (R and XC) have the least padding, something like 14mm front and rear. It's still more padded than I'd like, coming from some of the Merrells, but I liked the weight and fit enough to switch. I run in the Vanish XCs.

I've never seen them in a store to try on though, so you'll have to order them from Altra's site and send back the ones you don't like. I find they run a little small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Running injury rates typically correlate to the risks taken by the runner. Runners are always trying to add more speed training and/or mileage. The more added, the higher risk of injury. It is always a delicate game of deciding how much to push without going too far. A "safer" shoe will simply cause the runner to increase intensity of training or try to ramp up mileage more, negating any safely improvements from the better shoe. In the same way a safer car will cause the driver to speed more or drive more aggressively evening out the risk. See Risk compensation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been minimalist running daily for 5+ years now. I've never been injured that prevented me from running. Only thing that stopped me once was sprained ankle from landing badly on rough track and the flu.

It took about 6 months to adjust my running style to front foot striking. The biggest change was the size of my calf muscles.

If I try to run in padded Nike's I get terrible knee pain.

There have been times when my achilles started burning and I also had some bad plantar fasciiitis, and some intense ball of foot pain too. However I kept running through it and it went away. Switching between front foot striking and mid foot striking helped me push through it. Funny thing is that I used to get bad RSI from using a mouse too. Now switching back and forth between laptop touch pad and mouse have completely resolved the issue. Same with standing/sitting at a desk. The ability to adjust my form to rest some muscles is a common cure for me.

Anecdotally I feel that barefoot had helped me avoid injuries I over the years.

There are so many more small muscles being activated without the cushioning that help you build stability and support. Most people never engage them because they run in padded shoes from a young age. When the padding wears down, which it always does, it places wierd forces on your weak leg muscles leading to injury.

The key is that it takes time to adapt...and sadly I don't think people want to commit to the period of adaptation, and they are quick to look for a scapegoat for any problems they face when trying a new approach.

<comment><USER12> When you say minimalist, do you mean completely barefoot? Or do you use a certain type of shoe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it fascinating that popular knowledge seems to hold that people are not supposed to run. That we need heavily cushioned shoes, joint braces, bizarre stretching routines, and more just to keep us from destroying ourselves.

One of my friends has a shirt that says "Yes, I know you don't even like to drive that far. No, my knees are fine."

I take some issue with the way some of the claims are presented in the Atlantic article, but unfortunately the citations are review papers with many citations that are proving hard to track down. I want to read more before taking any stance.

Also, this probably needs a (2014) in the title.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't seem all that much of a stretch to assume that the repetitive pounding of running results in wear and tear on the body. Your data point of one, who more than likely doesn't have a personal MRI/xray machine for monitoring, notwithstanding.

<comment><USER15> > repetitive pounding of running results in wear and tear on the body

It can result in wear and tear, it can also result in strengthening. The relationship between enhancement and degradation, and associated outcomes, is far from simple.

<comment><USER14> The fact that it isn't simple doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. How much of that strengthening occurs, does it occur in the same areas as the potential damage, and can it outpace the damage and if so, for how many people? The body may be fascinating, but it sin't miraculous.

<comment><USER15> > The fact that it isn't simple doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

Never claimed otherwise.

> The body may be fascinating, but it sin't miraculous.

It's not miraculous, nor is it especially fragile. It's the latter implication I was addressing. "Bad things happen" is only half the story. Alone, it represents and encourages a skewed perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shoes do not allow toes to splay properly. When my children were old enough to wear shoes I noticed both of them had one toe resting on top of another. I assume this is a genetic issue but for a functional solution I put both of them in shoes that allow the toes to splay naturally. I myself am in terrible pain with shoes that have a standard toe box. For my kids we use Softstar and sometimes Vivo Barefoot. For myself I use Xero, Softstar and Fitkicks. The issue has resolved itself with my four year old and is almost gone with my two year old. My kids feet have developed noticeably different from their peers, their toes sit wider apart more similar to those you see of people who were raised in cultures without shoes.

<comment><USER17> I've loved two pairs of Xero shoes to death. I'll check out the other two you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Running is a skill sport. You have to practice, improve and maintain your stride just like a golfer does their swing. In my experience, treating running like a skill sport has gone further than anything else in preventing injury.

<comment><USER19> Eh, running is _partly_ a skill sport. You can have a pretty garbage stride and still run sub-6-minute miles by compensating with good cardiovascular fitness. In fact, most people accidentally improve their stride simply by getting quicker and unconsciously transitioning to a fore/mid-foot strike.

Compared to, say, rock climbing or downhill skiing, running isn't that much of a skill sport.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but show me someone who's sub 5 without exquisite running technique.

Rock climbing and skiing are arguably less of skill sports than something like surfing. There's a continuum, so I guess they're _all_ "partly" skill sports.

It's not intuitive because everybody can "run", but the deeper you get into that world, the more there is to understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guess this is going to be controversial, but shoes are not preventing running injuries because most people ran farther and with worst technique than they should.

Farther because running injuries increase with the distance run, specially when distance is added too fast [1]. This is important, because there are mostly 2 main factors that most people change when running: distance and pace. Pace is more difficult to change so people tend to increase distance, which increases injuries, specially stress-related injuries [2].

And worst technique because people rarely train technique: people go out and run, stepping multiple times in that wrong position that might not hurt immediately but will cause some compensation issues later on. Or the knee to hurt because of overuse [2].

The question that I would ask to people, because I don't fully understand it, is: why is the tendency to increase the distance? Why people have as a goal running a marathon, for example?

In my view, running _faster_ makes sense from the health perspective. Running more distance doesn't. Running intervals makes way more sense that running continuously for X hours. Here I am not trying to be empathetic, but I believe that people should be told that, in some cases, they should not run X distance, that it is bad for them and that running X is not something to be praised or proud. I didn't said it (strongly) in cases where,I should have; too late now after a couple of hip and knee surgeries.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25155475](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25155475) [2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3497945/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3497945/)

<comment><USER22> I like to run long distances because I love being in nature, using my body, listening to books or just enjoying the sights. Running is more fulfilling than hiking for some reason to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have recently bought a book about the Egoscue method of stretching and posture correction. Since I sit at a desk a lot, it has proven very helpful.

However the book covers sports injuries as well; the author claims that correct alignment of the musculoskeletal system is what is needed for all sports, including running.

Book:

[https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/633807-the- egoscue-m...](https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/633807-the-egoscue- method-of-health-through-motion-revolutionary-program-that)

</comment><comment><USER22> I have recently got into running. I had a massive ankle injury (road accident) a decade back, so knew that there would be some imbalances to take care off that would make me more prone to injury. I trawled literature and books, looking for more holistic approaches to running, and found the following books to be quite informative, providing links to scientific literature for most of their points:

* Running Rewired, by Jay Dicharry: [https://www.amazon.com/Running-Rewired-Reinvent-Stability-St...](https://www.amazon.com/Running-Rewired-Reinvent-Stability-Strength/dp/1937715752)

* Anatomy for Runners, by Jay Dicharry: [https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Runners-Unlocking-Potential-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Runners-Unlocking-Potential-Prevention/dp/1620871599)

* Run for your life, by Mark Cucuzzella: [https://www.amazon.com/Run-Your-Life-Without-Well-Being/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Run-Your-Life-Without-Well-Being/dp/1101912383)

* Running Science, by Owen Anderson: [https://www.amazon.com/Running-Science-Sport-Owen-Anderson/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Running-Science-Sport-Owen-Anderson/dp/073607418X)

The podcast "Science of Ultra" is also great and strongly rooted in a scientific approach to claims about running and training.

I started to feel some tightness in my left hip after running longer distances (25+ km), and went to PT. I basically now have a strong program of cross strength training that closely mimics the exercises in the Dicharry books, and I am know using muscles that were neglected before (glutes, mostly). I haven't felt any pain / tightness since.

While I don't have much of a background in sports, I do play bass and piano, and of course sit at a keyboard all day, which are also highly "injurious" activities. If something hurts or feels wrong, it is wrong, and you should address it. This is absolutely true for playing and typing, which should feel effortless at all times. I don't have enough experience with running to know how well that applies, since adaptation and training stimulus doesn't feel the most comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm currently reading Born to Run[0] and they spend a couple of chapters discussing the history of running shoes and how they may be counterproductive. The main point being the Tarahumara (ancient running people) are the best distance runners on earth and they wear homemade sandals.

Looks like this[1] post goes into the debate, as framed by the book, but I'm on mobile and haven't read through it so YMMV.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes- Greates...](https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes- Greatest/dp/0307279189)

[1] [https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/the-barefoot- runn...](https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/the-barefoot-running- debate/)

<comment><USER15> > the Tarahumara (ancient running people) are the best distance runners on > earth

Pretty sure the Kenyans, Ethopians, etc. might have a word or two to say about that.

More importantly, the emphasis in "may be counterproductive" should definitely be on the first word. Actual real-world results haven't matched the theory. Sure, there will always be someone to provide anecdata about how they switched to minimalist running shoes and it was great. The ones who switched to minimalist running shoes and either injured themselves or didn't see any benefit and switched back tend to talk a lot less. _Statistically_ it's a wash, and ends up being pure personal preference. People who run poorly will improve exactly enough to make up for the difference in shoes, and no more.

<comment><USER25> I thought it was documented that Kenyans and Ethiopians benefited from steroids and EPO. It was all over the news the past decade or so.

<comment><USER15> _Some_ Kenyans and Ethiopians have been caught using those drugs. So have some Americans, some Canadians, some Germans, some Chinese ... you get the idea. It's true of elite athletes in any country and any sport, just about. Generalizing from "some" to "all" for one group while ignoring prevalence of the same problem in other groups is not a good look. No suspicion has fallen on the folks who currently hold world records, won the last several major races, etc.

<comment><USER25> Some Russians too. Maybe all Russians.

Truth be told, I don't know and it matters very little to me. Yet I have read more than one article about Kenyans and hiding in the mountains from testers. Maybe it was propaganda, but I read it.

I have no dog in this fight. I'm sure Kenyans are great runners. Maybe the best.

<comment><USER15> > I have no dog in this fight.

No runner in this race? :D Merry Christmas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Article is from 2014.

FWIW, I've been running near-barefoot for almost a decade without having to take any significant breaks for injury. I'm in NYC, so I run on cement, year- round, usually 20+ miles/week. I'm in my late 40s.

The best lesson of running barefoot is simply listening to your body. My goals are to feel good during the run and then to feel good afterwards. If things start to hurt, rest a few days. Nearly all running-related injuries are overuse injuries.

Mainstream running culture often has terrible advice. Don't try to run through pain. Anti-inflammatories can be helpful after long runs, but please do not take painkillers _before_ a run, pain exists for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER27> Compared to what? Is there a control group we're comparing this claim to?

</comment><comment><USER28> FWIW: I wore out my knees running track at 16. I could not run due to knee pain.

Changing my stride to land and push off the front of my foot allowed me to run again, until other issues sidelined me.

</comment><comment><USER29> Keep changing out shoes - listen to your feet. I've been out for a year due to plantar fasciitis with no sign of letting up.

<comment><USER15> I'll add to that advice. Get insoles with the right amount of arch support, then swap out _either_ the shoes or insoles at the first sign of breakdown. And stretch after workouts. I had a bout of plantar fasciitis a couple of years ago. I tried lots of things, and the magic formula does seem different for everyone, but the combination that got me out of it was SofSole Arch insoles and simple ankle rotations. I've stuck with SofSole for walking, but switched to various stiffer types (e.g. ViveSole, Hyperspace) for running, plus the ankle rotations, and basically wouldn't wear shoes without them at this point.

BTW the ankle rotations can also help with shin splints, which I get more from snowboarding than from running, but maybe someone else will find that useful. Super easy, quick, and worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you go and spectate any marathon or half marathon you will realize that well over half of the participants have no business being there. Yet it is a very popular thing to do and it is a growing sport. I don't think any amount of shoe technology or barefoot running is going to reduce the injuries of people that have poor running technique or some other impairment of their running.

<comment><USER31> What's your definition of "no business being there"?

<comment><USER21> I'm not the OP, but I mostly agree with his comments. I have trained track and field for years, and bad running technique is highly correlated with injuries.

I don't understand this mentality of running longer and longer distances. Most people should not do that; even with proper technique you're repeating over and over the same motion, same impact on the same areas. In most cases, injury is just a matter of time. Stress injuries are extremely frequent [1] and all this is part of this mentality that with suffering I'll accomplish more. And, longer distances usually equate to more injuries [1].

Strength [2] and fast twitch fibers are the first ones to be lost while aging, so it is way more effective to train those and run shorter, more explosive distances. And even more effective learning proper running technique.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465455/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465455/)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3940510/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3940510/)

[3] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15462613/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15462613/)

Edit: added [1]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What specifically are the running skills that many people don't learn? Links?

<comment><USER33> This [0] has a lot of interesting information about form, stride length, etc. I'm not a pro runner anymore, so I can only say the information is interesting.

[0] [https://tim.blog/2017/05/07/ryan- flaherty/](https://tim.blog/2017/05/07/ryan-flaherty/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Because running is inherently incompatible with human physiology.

<comment><USER35> How do you think we hunted prey in the past? I thought human's biggest skill was our endurance running, out-performing almost all other animals?</comment></comment>


Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake Hits Japan - <AUTHOR> http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0007fbh.html

<comment><USER2> For comparison, last year's big earthquake was magnitude 9.0, but I don't know the relative locations...

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh, shit.</comment>


Elderly Bletchley Park volunteer sacked for showing Colossus exhibit to visitors - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/28/bletchley_park_sacks_elderly_volunteers/

<comment><USER2> Saddening story. I had the chance of visiting Bletchley Park and the Museum about a year ago, and the rebuild of the Colossus [1] is definitely a highlight of the exhibit — especially. All the volunteers I met seemed fully dedicated to their educative mission.

There is so much history in that place, and so much energy for hoarding, preserving, and showing those marvels to the public, that I really hope it can remain as welcoming and entertaining as it was when I visited.

[1] [http://www.tnmoc.org/explore/colossus- gallery](http://www.tnmoc.org/explore/colossus-gallery)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have no faith in the Bletchley Park Trust and their grand vision of "a world class museum and heritage site". They simply have to accommodate the volunteers at the The National Museum of Computing. This is the same kind of bantant ignorant british cockups that lead to the death of Alan Turing. A good museum experience is always rooted in the people who are passionate about the exhibition and want to pass on understanding and history about it. Who could possibly be more passionate about the Colossus than the people who restored it? For some added insight in the work a Bletchley Park see this clip from inventions that changed the world by Jeremy Clarksson: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEQeHCrZJm0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEQeHCrZJm0)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really bad. I got a guided tour around the museum by a retired guy who'd used some of the analog machines in rocket/nuclear research. He really brought the story of computation to life - little things like showing you a Cray Supercomputer the size of a fridge, that's now outclassed by your iPhone.

As a simple test, which would have interested Alan Turing more: an old house, or a museum that shows you the nuts and bolts of code + computation so you can do it yourself?</comment>


The Ayn Rand Software Engineering Philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.c2.com/?AynRandDesignPhilosophy <comment><USER2> This seems needlessly divisive and the author's apparent obsession with unhinging Rand makes their point much less clear.

It also shows a very shallow and uninformed understanding of Rand's epistemology. She explored the concept of 'definition' in her epistemology:

> It is important to remember that a definition implies all the > characteristics of the units, since it identifies their essential, not their > exhaustive, characteristics; since it designates existents, not their > isolated aspects; and since it is a condensation of, not a substitute for, a > wider knowledge of the existents involved.

The above demonstrates that Rand was in favor of boiling a concept down to its fundamentals. She was against understanding a concept from the perspective of a non-essential trait, such as the kind of trait one with a big stick up their butt would apply to UI design, as the 'Ayn' character in the submitted webpage does.

<comment><USER3> Call a spade a spade. It's nutty, libertarian, billionaire propaganda.

<comment><USER4> Your comment's not backed up by evidence. I can think of more right-wing (Koch, et al) and left-wing billionaires (Soros, et al) with much more influence than...who exactly?

Also worth noting that libertarian != objectivist. There's many who espouse only one of those. Religious gun-focused libertarians for example.

And nutty propaganda is just mud slinging. How Diogenian of you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Are you sure about that? Do you think Google (substitute your favorite SW > company here) "makes coding decisions based on what's the most likely > staffing"? Or do you think they endeavor to maintain a top-notch staff so > they don't have to make such compromises?

Uh, this is backwards. At Google they won't even let you do substantial work until you've proven that your code can pass a readability review. And you have to do that process for every language you work in. I don't know of any company that takes readability more seriously.

Writing easily-readable, easily-reviewed code is WAY harder than doing "10xer" incomprehensible hackery.

Good design is virtually synonymous with clarity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Different organizations have different approaches. Some try to get "the best deal" on developers, while others will pay a premium for what they consider higher-end developers. Further, non-software companies may view this differently because the hiring managers may not understand software well enough to judge and compare on abilities, and focus on mostly salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author has clearly never read Ayn Rand.

<comment><USER7> The commenter clearly has and hasn't yet recovered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone clarify what is going on in this prose?

<comment><USER8> I would, but I'm still waiting for the pin wheel to stop spinning...

I miss the old C2.

<comment><USER9> what is this site?

it took about 3 minutes to load 10kb of text in times new roman, wtf

<comment><USER10> The spinning pinwheel isn't the joke?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's working for me. Maybe there's a browser-version-specific bug.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Portugal treats addiction as a disease, not a crime - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/opinion/sunday/portugal-drug-decriminalization.html <comment><USER3> I used to live not far away from Casal Ventoso, in the 80's. Anyone crossing that neighborhood in those days would easily see hordes of alienated people, in soiled clothes, gazing idly, sitting in the sidewalk and sometimes even injecting right there. Whenever you saw them running in one direction, you'd know some drug dealer had arrived. There is a cemetery nearby, and so it looked like death ruled the place.

Today it is still a poor neighborhood, but you don't see that kind of thing anymore. Taking the bus there is no longer a gamble. You still see a couple of people looking somewhat emaciated, but nothing like the walking cadavers of 30 years ago.

There were some slums outside Lisbon, like Pedreira dos Húngaros, where the police (other than SWAT teams) simply wouldn't go. It was just too dangerous. One would occasionally hear the blasts of fireworks, telling people drugs had arrived, or gunshots, warning drug dealers an intervention squad was near. This slum no longer exists, and many others are simply gone.

It's nice to see this article in HN, for many reasons.

António Guterres is an engineer, and when he graduated he was the best student of his year. From what I know, he considered a PhD in Physics before taking his chances in politics. Back in those days, his university (Instituto Superior Técnico) didn't have a Physics course, so many of its first faculty members came from IST's Electrical Engineering course or Physics courses from other universities. He lectured Theory of Systems and Telecommunication Signals.

Guterres is an intelligent man, and he would've probably become a great physicist, an excellent teacher, or a renowned engineer. Instead he chose politics, and now he's Secretary-general of the UN. His drug policy from his Prime-minister days saved thousands of lives and definitely changed Portugal for the better. I think that was a really nice hack.

<comment><USER4> As a Portuguese, I have to add:

Guterres is a worldclass facilitator full of good will. That's his edge - <USER2> intelligence - and how he got his position in UN.

In 2001, Guterres was forced to resign from his job as Prime Minister of Portugal. Not the best indicator of great leadership or management skills.

<comment><USER5> From Wikipedia:

> In December 2001, following a disastrous result for the Socialist Party in > the local elections, Guterres resigned, stating, "I am resigning to prevent > the country from falling into a political swamp".

Could you clarify why you believe resignation implies a lack of leadership or management skills?

<comment><USER4> Why do you think the Socialist Party got "a disastrous result in the local elections"? Because their leader showed great managing skills and charisma?

(IMO) his fall, on the eyes of the public opinion at the time, started here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hintze_Ribeiro_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hintze_Ribeiro_disaster)

Few years later, Guterres found the perfect employer for his skills: UN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've often thought that substance access needs to be completely deregulated, for drugs of abuse as well as other medications. This would increase access and competition among providers, and avoid rent-seeking kinds of economic problems in the health care market. It would also lead to better treatment of substance use problems, and kill cartels by decreasing their monopoly on production and distribution.

In doing so, you could move to a kind of competency-based system akin to what happens with people who have dementia or cognitive impairments. Basically, you're legally entitled to buy whatever meds you want, until you're deemed incompetent to make that decision. Processes could be set up whereby mental health professionals (psychiatrists, psychologists), ethicists, and the judicial system could make determinations that an individual is not competent to make decisions about the substance use purchasing due to addiction.

This might sound kind of draconian, but decisions about competency could be make pretty thorough, requiring a petition, stringent evaluation criteria involving panels and a judicial decision. It would also be dramatically less restrictive than the current system, that basically assumes everyone is incompetent to make drug-related decisions based on the specific drug.

It would also emphasize that the lack of competency is a health-related problem, and not a criminal problem.

<comment><USER7> There are loads of problems with that. I agree, in principle, but I'll give you an example of a problem that already is happening.

Not every drug you take is limited to impacting just you. A good example is antibiotics. We are having serious issues with drug-resistant bacteria. Allowing people to just take antibiotics of their own free will is absolutely certain to increase the number of drug-resistant bacteria. This will, with absolute certainty, result in an increase people being killed through no fault of their own.

Could this be prevented? Nope. One might say people could be educated and that they'd make the right choices, but the very idea of that is farcical. The planet is not populated with people who make bright choices and exhibit a propensity for long-term thinking.

I very much believe in allowing autonomy over self, and I've strongly supported these ideals. However, that has to have limits in a functioning society. As much as I'd like to say we should be able to take all the drugs, there is a need to draw some lines. We can move those lines, and I think we should, but eliminating them entirely is absolutely certain to harm innocent people at a level I am unwilling to support.

<comment><USER8> Do you really think, that general populace's misuse of antibiotics could cause the development of resistant bacterial strains en masse?

I might be wrong, and if so, please don't hesitate to provide some factual paper, yet my intuition suggests that in order to obtain solely by selection (under the pressure of a _single_ bioactive substance), a bacterial strain, that is, simultaneously:

\- resistant to the aforementioned substance

\- stable: resistance is not lost after the generation or so, past the moment when exposure is over

\- contagious: strain is resistant to different immune systems (w/o losing its resistance to the substance, of course),

one either needs to perform a directed selection (eg. like that for apple- trees), or to create an environment, where really _huge_ bacterial population could thrive and persist for a long time: like that in hospitals or farms, - where not only frequent turnover of living organisms along with the regular exposure to antibacterial substances do happen, but also some intermediate vessels (medical instruments, ground, water supply, etc.) are available for bacteria to flourish in-between living hosts.

<comment><USER9> > Do you really think, that general populace's misuse of antibiotics could > cause the development of resistant bacterial strains en masse?

Of course not. There's 7 billion people, and just a tiny percentage uses antibiotics.

There's around 60 billion land mammals raised by humans every year, throughout their life most of them use the strongest antibiotics. It speeds up growth, it prevents silly deaths, increases profit.

Diseases, plagues will come from livestock, as they always did, not from humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The [Portuguese] Health Ministry spends less than $10 per citizen per year on its successful drug policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent some $10,000 per household (more than $1 trillion) over the decades on a failed drug policy that results in more than 1,000 deaths each week."

That's a intellectually dishonest and misleading statement: it's comparing Portuguese annual cost per citizen to US cumulative multi-decade cost per household.

<comment><USER11> You're implying that the US has a more effective drug policy than Portugal, which is absolutely ridiculous

<comment><USER12> Not at all. GP is implying that there's some shitty journalism going on.

Your comment bothers me more than it should. Why do people who feel strongly about stuff allow, or even encourage, shitty reporting and intellectual dishonesty as long as it suits the narrative they support?

I mean, you're calling out a commenter for being 100% right, putting words in their mouth and then calling those words ridiculous. What's the point?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Addiction is a chemical dependency. It is neither a disease or a crime, it's usually a symptom of something else.

Substance abuse and addiction tends to originate from either a variety of sociological factors, or treatment (self or prescribed). A very large number of addicts are simply self medicating for one reason or another. Or at least they started off that way.

Even if society determines addiction and substance usage to be criminal, it's a victimless crime and a waste of resources.

<comment><USER14> > it's a victimless crime

Not always, not for the worst drugs out there. Heroin and meth addicts regularly commit violent crimes as a direct result of their addiction. You can say that the actual violence is the crime, but if there is a common root cause for a lot of crimes, doesn't it make sense to criminalize the root cause?

<comment><USER15> Heroin and meth addicts regularly commit violent crimes in order to procure more heroin/meth. The only reason they need to is because prohibition makes those drugs orders of magnitude more expensive than they would otherwise be. The only reason the drug cartels engage in ruthless violence is because they operate outside of the law and thus outside of the government's monopoly on force. Criminalization _is_ the root cause of the crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The headline reads eerie, almost as a quote from some anti-utopian novel. "This weird place treats diabetes as a disease, not a crime!". "That weird country over there treats depression as a disease, not a crime!". I mean, how messed up should we be to not see this as the only way to treat it?

<comment><USER17> The difference is that addicts are _actively malicious_ to their family members and broader society.

Depressed people and diabetics are hurting themselves either through action or inaction, but I've never been threatened by a diabetic or depressive outside a Circle K. I _have_ been threatened by a criddler outside a Circle K. Similarly, few people get all of their stuff stolen out of their house by a diabetic or depressive. They do all the time when their son is addicted to heroin. Depressives don't prostitute their kids to drug dealers for crack, etc.

Drug addiction is one of the few diseases where the patient actively attacks all of the people who are in a position to help him. That generally alienates people who tend to be otherwise generous toward the down-and-out. The laws reflect that, and it takes a superhuman effort of rationality to say, "Yes, addicts do terrible things. Other solutions produce better results than the natural impulse of doing terrible things back to them."

Edit: We see this in the nastier forms of mental illness, too. People are generally compassionate toward those with OCD, eating disorders, and so on. Those with borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder tend to be relegated to "batshit insane" and viewed with utter contempt. Again, the difference is that someone with anorexia nervosa isn't going to pull a Carrie Underwood[1] on your car, but someone with BPD might.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy- mr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8)

<comment><USER16> > I've never been threatened by a diabetic or depressive outside a Circle K

Mentally ill people can be dangerous to the surrounding people, especially if not treated properly. This is known, and it is also known that the way to deal with it is to address the disease, not hurt them and yell at them "snap out of it, you bastard!"

> The laws reflect that, and it takes a superhuman effort of rationality to > say, "Yes, addicts do terrible things. Other solutions produce better > results than the natural impulse of doing terrible things back to them."

Calling this "superhuman" only reveals how low the expectations of "human" are. It is truly sad state of affairs that acting rationally and trying to do something that actually might make dent into a solving the problem instead of instinctively biting back is something that is considered "superhuman". If going a tiny step above animal is "super-human", what is left for "human"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think if you polled American's on whether the legal drinking age should be lowered from 21, most people, if not a significant majority would probably be in favor of it. In fact, a majority have probably violated such a law.

If it turns out true, then it means there's something fundamentally wrong with the legal and voting system where somehow it completely restricts itself from the ability to enact a change in the laws in this area. And if this can't be achieved, there's no hope for any progressive drug use laws.

<comment><USER7> They have done that poll. It's exactly opposite of what you think. They've done this poll lots of times. The results are rather consistent.

Here is one such example:

[http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/24/do-you- want-...](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/24/do-you-want-the- drinking-age-lowered/)

That was just the first result.

Anyhow, we don't always want majority rule. At one time, the majority of people felt it was okay to own people. I suspect you can find areas where the majority of people don't think we should have equal rights for certain classes of people.

<comment><USER19> >Anyhow, we don't always want majority rule.

You do in a democracy.

>At one time, the majority of people felt it was okay to own people.

Until they decided it wasn't ok, and an abolitionist president was elected.

>I suspect you can find areas where the majority of people don't think we should have equal rights for certain classes of people.

Like civil rights for gays. Also solved by voting.

The problem I have with the 21 year old drinking age is it now allows police to jail college kids at will, essentially limiting their life's prospects. Again the punishment is worse than the crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure the graph entitled "A Stark Difference: Drug-Related Deaths" proves any point: Portugal has indeed the best stats and the US the worst, but you cannot conclude that it results from Portugal's vs US's policy on drugs. In fact, France, right below Portugal on the graph, still has quite repressive policies.

<comment><USER21> Tell me about these policies. Why are the French policies repressive

<comment><USER22> Well, they're repressive enough that the French come to NL and Portugal in droves to get their drugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article changed my view on the subject a bit.

Lately, I had been watching various documentaries and YouTube videos about the opioid crisis in the USA and Canada. Often, the public policy seemed absurd to me, as it was just as if the first responder services were offering free customer support for the drug business. They used Naloxone to save the lives of customers who should normally have overdosed, and with no supervision afterwards, those addicts were soon back in the street where they keep buying and consuming.

A drug that is too lethal has very little commercial viability. By decreasing the lethality of drugs, first responders support the drug business, which is absurd.

I started reading this article expecting it to enforce my position, but I had to acknowledge the fact that apparently, this policy did indeed reduce drug usage in that country. That puzzled me a bit as I was struggling to see how making consumption easier could reduce consumption, but then they mentioned how they provide methadone, and that seemed like a sensible explanation. They don't provide customer support by just giving naloxone for instance, as I saw they do in US and Canada, they also provide an opioid substitute, which should hopefully reduce the likelihood of a relapse.

<comment><USER22> Many countries take this approach.

[https://decorrespondent.nl/6562/het-zelden-vertelde- verhaal-...](https://decorrespondent.nl/6562/het-zelden-vertelde-verhaal-over- het-nederlandse-drugsbeleid-dat-wel-slaagde/831216079738-b19faae6)

Amsterdam, 1985, the government supplied methadone using an old city bus they transformed into a drug dispensary, they even supplied clean needles for free.

<comment><USER23> > Amsterdam, 1985, the government supplied methadone using an old city bus > they transformed into a drug dispensary, they even supplied clean needles > for free.

In the documentary I was mentioning (sorry, can't find a link or remember the title), I saw something like that in Canada (IIRC). It was a room with needles, with a nurse or something to supervise and monitor injections. And of course there were doses of Narcan in case an OD happens.

But no methadone whatsoever was offered. Or if there was, it wasn't mentioned. So basically the government was paying to provide an infrastructure for drug consumption. In other words : customer support. It's as if they were working for drug dealers. To me that's outrageous.

<comment><USER22> > So basically the government was paying to provide an infrastructure for drug > consumption.

So what?

> customer support. It's as if they were working for drug dealers. To me > that's outrageous.

What's outrageous is that you'd rather see those people die. That's the alternative. To get them off the streets, registered and out of the risk of getting hepatitis or HIV is the beginning of giving them a chance to clean up. The government even competed with the drug dealers: they gave out free heroin to those that were already addicted.

And it's not as if any of this isn't a selfish thing by society, the cost of an addict over the longer term is far higher than the cost of helping them, so it is actually better for everybody.

I really don't understand these extremist viewpoints when it comes to healthcare.

<comment><USER23> > What's outrageous is that you'd rather see those people die. That's the > alternative.

You're not supposed to save lives at any cost. Not if that means you'd associate with or reward crime. That's why you don't submit to blackmail, for instance. In the same way when someone is selling drugs illegally, you're supposed to put him in jail, not help him with his business.

<comment><USER22> > You're not supposed to save lives at any cost.

The cost is quite manageable.

> Not if that means you'd associate with or reward crime.

They don't.

> That's why you don't submit to blackmail, for instance.

What does that have to do with any of this?

> In the same way when someone is selling drugs illegally, you're supposed to > put him in jail, not help him with his business.

I'm sure you will feel right at home in AG Sessions office or with the Philippine leader. Me, I'm _much_ more comfortable starting from root cause analysis rather than to just hunt symptoms, I think hunting symptoms is a waste of time, effort and resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great to see this in the NYT.

Drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal issue.

<comment><USER25> Addiction is a health issue. Experimenting prior to addiction is clearly not.

<comment><USER26> This thread is full of smartasses 'well actualy'-ing irrelevant picky distinctions of no particular substance. I'm not going to go at all of them, but lucky you!

Medical problems associated with drugs go way beyond just addiction. Kids can die on their first use of a drug, even on a dose that would normally be forced be harmless, due to other factors such as dehydration, alcohol consumption or overheating. Even without becoming addicted, drugs can have other harmful medical effects. The sheer scale of the simpleminded ignorance of this comment is staggering.

<comment><USER27> 10s of thousands of people go to the hospital every year for Tylenol overdoses and hundreds die. That doesn't mean any use of Tylenol is abuse.

<comment><USER26> Of course not. Lots of controlled substances have legitimate medical uses. I don't get your point.

<comment><USER28> Life is dangerous, and it is more valuable to work to educate people on the danger around them than to try banning it by rewriting reality to treat dangers like they don't exist by outlawing them.

It is _why_ kids think "that cannot happen to me". Because its criminal. Because its the plight of the "other". Because its told like a monster in a fable rather than a fact of life and an emergent property of our society and biology.

<comment><USER26> I agree I'm pro-decriminalisation of drug use and for regulated legal distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Having lost several friends to the opioid epidemic, I wrote an article about it on decriminalization. I wish we would help addicts instead of treating them like criminals.

The war on drugs has failed. We must not be a part of the suncost fallacy, but just embrace another way.

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/drug-user- decrimi...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/drug-user- decriminalization/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Are we really, seriously, debating the success of a proven successful program?

</comment><comment><USER31> The real interesting thing is not whether opiod addiction is a disease or not- it clearly is - but why the behavior-controll-fraction trys so violently to clamp down on drug-behaviour with the law.

It just doesn't sound rational. And its not. Many oxy-addicts of today, where former - "The police should get them" conservatives. So what compels a human being to want the state to go after his fellow being, which irony- might be his/her future self.

My guess, at the motivation is a mixture of envy (on a perceived decadent lifestyle) without hard work, a fear for ones offspring and finally grievances caused by known addicts (small time theft and crockery).

As long as these emotions are not respected, taken care off and defused, as long as this is the case, the disease that is drugs can not be handled.

</comment><comment><USER32> An acquaintance of mine runs a rehab center for addicts. I really like his view on addiction. It's that addicts often had traumatic experiences, eg during childhood, and that drug abuse is a way of "self medication" to cope with them.

<comment><USER22> I've known quite a few addicts (> 10, this is a direct consequence of living in Amsterdam and the attraction the city has on drug users and the fact that pushers would hand drugs to school children when I was in high school, though fortunately it seems - to me at least - as if the Heroin epidemic is past its peak). Not a single one of them would fit that category. Most of them were perfectly ordinary people before sliding into addiction. It was a series of smaller steps or thrill seeking behavior in all of those cases. Some of the addicts were actually amongst the smartest people I knew before they got addicted. I'm sure there are those who use drugs as an escape route from some miserable experience early on in life but I've yet to meet them.

The life expectancy of addicts is such that I only know of two people that managed to effectively beat their addiction, both are family members and even though they got out of it they never fully recovered from their encounter with hard drugs. Ugly stuff.

<comment><USER33> Have you heard of Rat Park?

[https://imgur.com/gallery/pI8Nm](https://imgur.com/gallery/pI8Nm)

TL;DR rats trapped in cages will self-administer drugs, often to the point of death. Rats which explore freely have a much lower (order of magnitude) rate of addiction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wonder what Ayn Rand would have to say on the subject. That will tell us where our country is headed. She was also a user of amphetamines, btw.

<comment><USER22> Ayn Rand had lots to say on many subjects but hardly any of it was useful or constructive. Though that doesn't stop a whole pile of people from worshiping her every word because it plays into their own wishes for how they'd like the world to work.

<comment><USER33> I haven't read much Ayn Rand but what I've read so far seems pretty straightforward. I'm curious to learn more, could you tell me about some of the problems you've found with her ideas?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I kinda dislike calling addiction a disease. You can't just decide to stop having cancer unlike addiction. Even tho addiction is all about a person's brain chemistry being completely out of whack, alcoholics and other addicts will often have a so called "moment of clarity". No such "moment of clarity" exist for other diseases.

<comment><USER36> That "moment of clarity" is literally just accepting that you are an alcoholic. Like, that's all it is.

Normies love to pontificate about the causes of and solutions to addiction, but I never get more than a paragraph in before I find a vacuous statement that highlights how completely the speaker misses the point. It's fucking exhausting.

<comment><USER35> >That "moment of clarity" is literally just accepting that you are an alcoholic. Like, that's all it is.

and what is one of the results of that "moment of clarity? They stop drinking.

<comment><USER22> You wish. Plenty of them are fully cognizant they are addicts and _still_ can't stop.

That's the whole idea of being addicted. It is a dependency at a physical level outside of any of your abilities to reason. Only very strong people make it out and almost always with assistance from the outside.

<comment><USER35> Plenty of them is not ALL of them. The fact that any of them do is my point. Not a single person with cancer or aids can just decide to not have their disease.

<comment><USER19> >Not a single person with cancer or aids can just decide to not have their disease.

Neither can addicts the vast majority of addicts, that's the point.

<comment><USER35> Why bring up what the majority of addicts doing? The very fact ANY of them can just decide to stop is my point. Its pretty simple.

<comment><USER19> They can't decide to stop any more than you can decide to stop breathing or eating. They can certainly say they will stop and they can certainly try, but actually stopping on a permanent bases seems elusive.

I would say most addicts don't want to be addicts at some point, yet they are still addicts.

I'm addicted to nicotine since I was 12 and I don't want to be, yet I am. I've quit a few times for a few months, but always get triggered back into starting up again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Make drugs legal. Impose a 15% tax on each sale with all money devoted to rehabbing addicts. Problem solved.

<comment><USER7> Complex problems don't usually have solutions that fit comfortably on bumper stickers.

<comment><USER14> Although I agree with your assessment, you could have tried to actually point out some problem in the parent's "solution".

I can think of one: you would still have to incentivize people to go the legal way and pay 15% more. Which could be another intractable problem.

<comment><USER38> > you would still have to incentivize people to go the legal way and pay 15% > more

It seems to work just fine for tobacco and alcohol - a black market certainly exists for these drugs, but it's tiny in comparison with legal sales.

On top of this, the increase in safety - getting a pure product that is what it claims to be - would likely be a no-brainer for most users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How does it treat the international drug dealing cartels (root cause of the disease)?

<comment><USER40> The root cause of the disease is that people like drugs. The cartels are a symptom of the larger problem, not the other way around.

<comment><USER39> If you eliminate the cartels, would people continue to use/like drugs? Would they look for other forms of addiction?

<comment><USER41> People like drugs because they like getting high, not because they like cartels or doing illegal business or being rebellious.

<comment><USER42> People like drugs because they allow an escape from their normal lives, which they don't like. Boredom, depression, etc. Read about the rat park experiment, rats like being high too if their lives suck.

<comment><USER43> The principal author of the Rat Park paper, Bruce Alexander, has a web site on addiction: [http://www.brucekalexander.com](http://www.brucekalexander.com)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's enterprise products covertly gather personal data on users - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2018/11/15/report-microsofts-enterprise-products-covertly-gather-personal-data-on-users/ <comment><USER3> The base version of Windows 10, their flagship product (if not in terms of revenue, then mindshare) is stuffed full of adverts and defaults on about 6+ options related to telemetry the last time I installed a VM.

I think it would benefit large companies like Microsoft to realise that this sort of behaviour has knock-on effects. Every MS product is tainted by this because it ultimately has effects on trust.

If it's not making them, or can't be linked to, significant amounts of revenue, it would surely be beneficial in terms of customer numbers to stop doing this. Why?

I don't understand, or believe, that they're making significant amounts from this. It feels like bean-counter style decision making that doesn't take in to account the wider picture.

Anyone from MS willing to chime in?

<comment><USER4> I'm not supporting the Windows-10 style telemetry (I have it turned off) but I don't think this is about money.

Let's take a hypothetical example of where you assign a given user a random ID, based on something (machine ID). You then track what this user is doing, in general, in the operating system.

You can find data points such as what % of users discover/use X feature, how many pin applications to the taskbar, use X app with Y app, have night mode enabled, etc.

This allows you to expend resources where they are actually needed, to improve the features that the majority of people would find benefit in.

And at the end of the day, none of the above features require knowing anything about WHO that person is. Sure, they can be classified into groups based on how they use the software, such as "business user", "power user", or "gamer" ... but not "John Doe at 123 Main Street, Hollywood, California".

This is likely all for product improvement and not for $$$. Why do they subject end-users and not opt-in testers for this? To get real world data at scale.

<comment><USER5> To expand on that last bit -

The reason they might want to just collect all data without asking is that there's a chance that making it opt-in could cause bigger bias problems in the data you collect. For example, what if "power users" are significantly more or less likely to opt-in? You could end up with a very distorted view of what features are most popular, or are giving people the most trouble.

Not saying that this concern is well-founded (I really don't know), or that this choice makes sense from a business perspective (I'm skeptical). _Definitely_ not saying that this is the ethical choice to make (it isn't). Just trying to shed light on a possible thought process.

<comment><USER5> It's also worth mentioning that Microsoft is, to the best of my knowledge, relatively scrupulous about keeping their telemetry data anonymous. Meaning that they're still being _way_ less sketchy about this stuff than your average e-tailer, or mass market retailers like Wal-Mart and Target.

<comment><USER6> Except they are taking things like file names, e-mail headers, recipients, and even in some cases they are taking documents. The recent recommendation from them was as follows:

From - [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/16/microsoft_gdpr/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/16/microsoft_gdpr/)

"...[Microsoft] also recommends simply not using the web-only version of Office 365, or SharePoint Oneline. And it recommends periodically deleting the Active Directory accounts of VIP users and creating new accounts for them so that the diagnostic data associated with those accounts is eventually deleted."

Seriously, we should be deleting and recreating accounts in our own fucking domain to keep the data anonymous? Why is that on us?

They have you AD account info, and diagnostic data directly tied to it. There's no anonymization going on here at all. They're gathering it recklessly.

Also from that link:

"Much of what Microsoft collects is diagnostics, the researchers found, and it has seemingly tried to make the system GDPR compliant by storing Office documents on servers based in the EU. But it also collected other data that contained private information and some of that data still ended up on US servers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not commenting on the article itself, but the chosen title which is clickbait to me.

The assessment is about Office ProPlus (actually called Office 365 ProPlus - <USER2> don't know why it's called "Office ProPlus Enterprise" in the article/assessment which doesn't exist as a product). The assessment also complains about Office collecting data so I wouldn't say it is fair to say that "Microsoft's enterprise products covertly gather personal data on users" (which really includes _a lot_ more products than just Office). The blog posts title is actually "Impact assessment shows privacy risks Microsoft Office ProPlus Enterprise" which is more specific than "enterprise products".

<comment><USER8> I don't see "Office ProPlus Enterprise" in the article.

>I wouldn't say it is fair to say that "Microsoft's enterprise products

It also includes sharepoint and onedrive which are used in enterprises in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe governments should start looking at open source alternatives rather than being more and more vendor locked by US companies. It would take time to switch and won't be that easy but it's certainly doable, as the French Gendarmerie shown when they've switched everything to Linux.

<comment><USER10> Maybe the open source alternatives are often not usable for any one of a million reasons that are easily dismissed by free software advocates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This displeased me recently with Office on the Mac. To even set the level of data to "basic", I had to fiddle with plists, and it's not even possible to switch it off completely. Luckily just finishing our migration to Libreoffice and ODF.

<comment><USER10> Get ready for a world of pain if you interact with anyone using MS office. "LibreOffice" (FFFUCK I hate that name) will gleefuly just strip anything it doesn't understand in the documents it opens. It doesn't just ignore formulae that an MS Office user carefully wrote, it straight up deletes that stuff. Without notice.

OpenOffice is cancer to MS Office users.

<comment><USER12> MS Office supports the open document format these days. LibreOffice does its best on the monstrosity that is docx if you ask it to, but you're better off using open formats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Advice to corporate users (quote from the article)

> Periodically delete the Active Directory account of some VIP users, and > create new accounts for them, to ensure that Microsoft deletes the > historical diagnostic data

The fact that this is necessary is beyond retarded. Imagine you're a big corporate, paying money for a software product, and you have to jump through silly hoops to protect your privacy. I'd have a good laugh watching MS account execs explain this to me...

</comment><comment><USER14> Among the recommendations is to not use SharePoint, and to not use oneDrive? Wow, those are kind of important products for many enterprises. I see the recommendations around these two as quite damning.

<comment><USER15> The title is missleading. The report is about Office 365 and for the Dutch Government. Since they are a government they probably have stronger legal requirements than your standard small business owner around the corner. So they probably can't use the SaaS Sharepoint offering by Microsoft to store their data.

I have worked for companies and with goverment contracts in the past and you had to use special hardware provided by the goverment to work on those projects. So it doesn't surprise me at all they they themselfes can't use SaaS offerings.

<comment> Digital-Citizen Perhaps but I think that point misses the underlying issue at hand -- with proprietary software users don't get any real control over the software. Even the corporate-friendly computer press reported plenty of stories about Microsoft's software which bear this out:

Microsoft repeatedly switches a flag which urges Windows users to "upgrade" to Windows 10 when users had said no. [http://www.computerworld.com/article/3012278/microsoft- windo...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/3012278/microsoft- windows/microsoft-sets-stage-for-massive-windows-10-upgrade-strategy.html)

Microsoft forces some Windows systems to switch to Windows 10 by silently downloading Windows 10 [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/11/microsoft...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/11/microsoft- downloading-windows-1)

This forced "upgrade" had adverse effects on some users with poor connectivity. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/windows_10_upgrade_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/windows_10_upgrade_satellite_link/)

Once the switch to Windows 10 was accepted there was no way out [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/01/windows_10_nagware_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/01/windows_10_nagware_no_way_out/)

Windows 10 is quite nasty for many reasons all of which boil down to being nonfree, proprietary software. For example, it by default sent core dumps to Microsoft or whatever organization Microsoft chooses. [http://betanews.com/2016/11/24/microsoft-shares- windows-10-t...](http://betanews.com/2016/11/24/microsoft-shares- windows-10-telemetry-data-with-third-parties)

Windows 10 ignores users' so-called "security" settings putting a fine point on how insecure they are. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-b...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft- blatantly-disregards-user-choice-and-privacy-deep-dive) and [https://archive.fo/2ey80](https://archive.fo/2ey80)

[https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware- microsoft.html](https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html) is filled with more references to still more stories of how Windows runs against user's security interests and control over their own computer.

So when the Privacy Company "recommends admins of the enterprise version of Office ProPlus in the Netherlands (although many of them should also be applicable to other countries) [...] Apply the new zero-exhaust settings" there is no reason to believe that one gains privacy from Microsoft in so doing. Ultimately one's control over proprietary software only goes so far as the proprietor will allow. This remains true notwithstanding user's requirements or willingness to investigate and implement whatever the computer owner wants changed.

Microsoft is merely illustrating the inherent and unjust control over one's computer proprietary software has. It is this power that is at the heart of what's so wrong with these recommendations, nothing to do with a relatively minor quibble over whether one set of users has different requirements for privacy or security than other users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full report [PDF]: [https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/document...](https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/documenten/rapporten/2018/11/07/data- protection-impact-assessment-op-microsoft- office/DPIA+Microsoft+Office+2016+and+365+-+20191105.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> Seriously, could Microsoft work any harder to drive me away?

People are going to look at their bottom line and decide this money-grabbing maximal-ism just makes them greedy, unconscionable bastards.

Of course, that's never stopped their juggernaut, before.

For my part, watching this behavior, I'm all the more convinced that de facto UEFI control and the like need to be ripped away from them. They will exploit anything. The problem is, who can and will serve as a neutral steward -- of implementations and not just theory and maybe design?

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who installed a bunch of Ubiqiti equipment at a large church, I can see that once we have 1000 phones in the building, there's a non-trivial baseline of network activity that I attribute to Facebook, et. al., phoning home. In my company of 46K employees, it can't be a non-zero cost to have this telemetry activity leaching on our WAN connections, many of which are struggling to keep up with demand already.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it possible to firewall Microsoft products using only the things that the average person has access to? (A telecom-supplied router and a Windows computer.)

<comment><USER3> I don't believe it's possible to firewall Microsoft products in the general case of a power user that has access to an edge router.

You'd have to do something insane like IP whitelisting only for services you care about, hope that none of them use MS services like Azure, disable Windows Update entirely, etc.

It might be possible in the abstract sense of "right now nothing is getting out" but they have root on your box, it's closed source proprietary software, and you've basically broken the OS with this firewalling anyway.

You need to be able to trust them.

<comment><USER15> You can Firewall Windows services. There is a inbuilt firewall and there may be default rules but you can customize it the way you want. It would be a pretty big security flaw if they let their services bypass the firewall. They may be profit oriented but not stupid.

<comment><USER19> As discussed in the other thread, Windows firewall is garbage for this particular type of problem:

1/ it's not novice friendly (your best suggestion thus far required users to input dozens off lines of code into cmd.exe)

2/ it's defaults still allow Windows telemetry to get through (which was the exact thing the GP was trying to protect against)

3/ it's a pain in the arse to keep updated compared to any of the other suggestions made in this thread.

If the only option was Windows firewall or nothing, then I'd suggest people go with a PiHole since it takes an equal amount of technical know how to get the initial set up done. But at least once PiHole is set up, it's self managing (unlike Windows firewall) and will have much saner defaults too.

Thankfully though, there are other software firewalls for Windows that address the limitations I've described above. I've named one, another poster has listed a few others. If the option is software firewall or nothing, then I'd strongly recommend that user go with a third party one instead of relying solely on Windows firewall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are many regulations that affect data, like HIPPA and ITAR.

How can Windows be used in such an environment if the data collection can't be stopped?

<comment><USER21> If the data collection is "anom-user-123456789 launched the built in email- client 20 times and sent 30 mails", I suspect that's not exactly HIPPA or ITAR-regulated data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There was another case recently with Indian enterprise customers which had me worrying. [https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3065535/microsoft-...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3065535/microsoft- shared-indian-bank-data-with-us-intelligence-without-warning-customers)

At my work we are considering moving to the cloud with exchange and other services. I will make sure these articles will certainly be topic at next meeting

</comment><comment><USER23> The article didn't necessarily clarify what type of data was being reported back, which I think is key. It mentions diagnostic data (I'm assuming crash logs and such), but it says "personal data" without specifying.

I think that would be a very helpful bit to surface before a solid judgement call can be made. Anyone with more info?

</comment><comment><USER24> > Microsoft collects and stores personal data about the behavior of individual > users

I feel like this sentence is phrased maliciously. The adjective "personal" is applied to the more generic term data, rather than the more specific term behavior.

By placing the adjective on data, it encourages the reader to imagine the worst possible scenario. By simply moving the adjective you can more accurately describe what Microsoft is doing and avoid allowing the reader's imagination to run wild.

> Microsoft collects and stores data about the personal behavior of individual > users

You could also remove the adjective entirely because the term individual has the same implication. This makes it sound even more innocuous.

> Microsoft collects and stores data about the behavior of individual users

<comment><USER25> Personally, I don't find any of your revised phrases to be less disconcerting at a gut level. "Personal data", "personal behavior", etc is all the same to me.

<comment><USER24> Personal data could be anything like your SSN, CC# or other secrets.

Personal behavior is a more specific classification like "user scratches his butt every morning" or "user picks nose".

In the context of Office Applications it's going to be even more specific things like "user always tries to click on URLs in emails before CTRL+clicking them."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe Microsoft will be the first company that has to pay 4% of their global revenue to the EU under GDPR. Microsoft will have a hard time arguing against a government report

<comment><USER27> It's too bad Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook won't ever stand firm together and tell the EU regulators to get bent and go home.

<comment><USER28> Interesting that you think mere tech companies are more powerful than a government union.

<comment><USER27> I don't think that we are that far away from that being a reality. Particularly one as shaky and with teeth as small as the EU possesses.

The kind of cash that Silicon Valley corps can throw around could be a serious shot in the arm for Eurosceptic political parties hoping to weaken or separate from the union.

<comment><USER29> The EU has more power than individual European countries at least. This is basically the most important reason we still need the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> any word on VSCode? should I be worried and switch back to Atom

<comment><USER31> Serious question: Why do you care Microsoft (or any company for that matter) collects your code editor telemetry?

Addendum: Check our Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Facebook ad targeting if you _really_ want to see "violation of privacy". In reality, companies want to know how users use their products to make them better.

<comment><USER32> > Why do you care Microsoft collects your code editor telemetry?

How about, "Because it's none of their fucking business."

Microsoft has clearly gone all-in on the SV surveillance-capitalism model of doing business, and _this_ is exactly what motivated their acquisition of GitHub imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Of course, they do. Microsoft never fails to jump on other companies' bandwagons, and in this case they are imitating Google and Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER34> I definitely think this should be opt-in but I also think that it's silly to focus on just this scenario. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Google Docs and every other web based business tool use similar telemetry data to guide their UX and product investments as well as to preemptively address bugs.

<comment><USER35> Don't ALL web/internet based products have to collect some base level telemetry to simply function?

<comment><USER21> > Don't ALL web/internet based products have to collect some base level > telemetry to simply function?

No. Not at all. There's no technical reason which drives such a demand. A big, fat no.

But it can help making the company hosting the site money. By selling your data to others. And that's another question entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This should be switched to the original source: [https://www.privacycompany.eu/en/impact-assessment-shows- pri...](https://www.privacycompany.eu/en/impact-assessment-shows-privacy- risks-microsoft-office-proplus-enterprise/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Instead of useless things like GDPR we need laws that prohibit forced telemetry in software. Instead of just a 20mil+ fine, we need a fine plus jail time for the people involved. This is malicious software. This is a person spying on you, stalking, industrial espionage, etc all in one. But of course, making a very simple and clear law would actually make life difficult for bug business. They would be forced to stop bad practices for real. Also goverments love the idea of having access to that sweet, juicy, "encrypted" data if needed.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure that a blanket ban on automatic opt-in to telemetry is the right call. Most consumers don't have the requisite knowledge to make an informed decision when to opt-in.

I would like to see laws requiring transparency in telemetry, though. Require all telemetry to be in plain text, and auditable by 3rd-party software (say, by antivirus/privacy software).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> AFAIK SQM dates back to Office 2003.</comment>