Hacker News: gress

New comment by gress in "What is it like to have never felt an emotion?"

gress — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 16:20:57 +0000

Punishment and reward are very limited mechanisms for learning behavior. Mimicry is one of the others and is much more powerful.

New comment by gress in "Obama administration quietly explored ways to bypass smartphone encryption"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 19:42:23 +0000

The headline 'Obama administration quietly rejected ways to bypass smartphone encryption' would be more true and less sensational.

I said nothing about not reporting. It's the distorted headlines laced with innuendo that are damaging.

New comment by gress in "Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf]"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 19:01:29 +0000

Actually we know enough to know that assuming that discrimination and perverse socialization is at least part of the cause is totally rational.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test

New comment by gress in "Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 18:56:36 +0000

If Google thought there was a problem with intrusive ads, they would penalize them.

New comment by gress in "Volkswagen’s Diesel Fraud Makes Critic of Secret Code a Prophet"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 18:55:47 +0000

That was true when the incentive was for vulnerabilities to be disclosed and fixed for the good of all, but sadly today, vulnerabilities are extremely valuable and so the incentive is for them to be sold to the powerful.

New comment by gress in "The Drug-Violence Myth"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 18:53:20 +0000

The police use violence to protect the regular market. One could just as easily say that violence is market related.

New comment by gress in "Volkswagen’s Diesel Fraud Makes Critic of Secret Code a Prophet"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:10:56 +0000

Obscurity is not security. True.

Transparency is not security. Also true.

New comment by gress in "Volkswagen’s Diesel Fraud Makes Critic of Secret Code a Prophet"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:07:12 +0000

Personalization is not a problem. Systematic bias is a severe problem, even if it is not intentional.

The 'one true web' idea is a red herring. We absolutely need to know how google biases the results.

New comment by gress in "Obama administration quietly explored ways to bypass smartphone encryption"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 14:54:22 +0000

Clickbait and sensationalism is a thing in journalism. It is morally wrong because it spreads disinformation and is harmful to both individuals and democracy, but it is legal and profitable, and we haven't done enough to shun it, so it happens.

New comment by gress in "Obama administration quietly explored ways to bypass smartphone encryption"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 14:52:02 +0000

Yes it would. Cybercriminals are even more of a threat than spy agencies to most individuals.

[edit: in case it is unclear, I am saying that cybercrime is as strong reason for individuals to use ubiquitous encryption as government snooping not that it is a justification for government snooping]

New comment by gress in "Why the Rich Are So Much Richer"

gress — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 14:49:00 +0000

Sure, but the stock market is not valuable as a prediction market.

New comment by gress in "Validating Your Version of Xcode"

gress — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:56:46 +0000

The responses on this thread seem to prove that Apple knows what it is doing with its security strategy. The fact that people blindly disable protections and end up causing massive malware outbreaks is exactly the reason they are introducing things like Gatekeeper and Rootless. Arguably, this incident is evidence in favor of them locking down Gatekeeper further.

New comment by gress in "Validating Your Version of Xcode"

gress — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:48:58 +0000

Why would you do that?

New comment by gress in "Validating Your Version of Xcode"

gress — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:47:58 +0000

Why would you do that? It it exposes you to risk, and as has now been proven, if adopted as a general practice it exposes everyone else to risk too.

New comment by gress in "What we break when we fix ad blocking"

gress — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 02:58:45 +0000

So Apple is putting user freedom ahead of advertiser freedom in this case, whereas Google is siding with the advertisers for obvious reasons.

New comment by gress in "The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems"

gress — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 20:28:09 +0000

Perhaps because that's more costly? Sometimes the disallowed frequencies exist within a range of allowed frequencies. A hardware limitation would involve filter stages that would add cost.

New comment by gress in "The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems"

gress — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 20:26:10 +0000

Did you read the article or are you just deciding it's bullshit because of the title?

New comment by gress in "Apple Speeds Up Electric-Car Work"

gress — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 20:20:53 +0000

Do you have any information at all about what they are doing?

New comment by gress in "Apple meets California officials to discuss self-driving car"

gress — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 01:27:18 +0000

How do you suggest dealing with drunk drivers or getaway cars?

New comment by gress in "What we break when we fix ad blocking"

gress — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 16:08:21 +0000

Separating out 'Desktop Chrome' from Android makes this a deliberate Apple's to Oranges comparison. They are both Google products.

You're free to run 'Desktop Chrome' or Firefox on Apple's 'Deskrop' computers. Nothing anticompetitive there.