Hacker News: kamjam

New comment by kamjam in "Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)"

kamjam — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 01:15:57 +0000

As a user who has just bought their first computer, would you a) like to go to the shop and spend money to buy more software b) try to figure out this thing called FTP, maybe going to the library to read up on it even though you have never heard of it so don't know what you are looking for c) just use this thing called "Internet Explorer" that sounds like what you want to do, is free and already installed on the computer you just turned on for the first time?

New comment by kamjam in "TSA gave my MacBook Pro to another passenger at LAX, and now it's gone"

kamjam — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 21:22:33 +0000

Or, just wrote you name, number and email on some stickers and put them on the bottom of the laptop. It doesn't have to be high tech, and in this story the woman who took the laptop could have got in touch much sooner.

New comment by kamjam in "Theresa May: UK must leave European single market"

kamjam — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 00:25:57 +0000

When the vote is as close add it was, there is no high ground. It's a win/loss by a tiny majority. If remain had won I would like to think that people would have had enough sense to know that almost half the population is disgruntled and done something to make them happier instead of throwing insults everytime "they complained".

I guess no one will truly now know.

New comment by kamjam in "Theresa May: UK must leave European single market"

kamjam — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 14:46:14 +0000

I assume you're talking about the triggering of Article 50 - the decision of the Supreme Court case which we are still waiting for on whether Parliament needs to vote before it can be triggered or the Prime Minister can trigger it using Executive Powers.

So possibly, but there is talk of Teresa May rewording the Bill and forcing it through. Democracy eh!

New comment by kamjam in "Theresa May: UK must leave European single market"

kamjam — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 14:37:54 +0000

Yes, because becoming a tax haven has always done wonders for shifting money from the uber rich to the working class people. /sarc

The UK really needs to sort out it's internal policies and spread the wealth around the country and the not just keep pushing "the London agenda"

New comment by kamjam in "Theresa May: UK must leave European single market"

kamjam — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 14:32:38 +0000

Maybe you've misunderstood how democracy works with a dictatorship. Just because your "side" lost the vote does not mean you cave in and blindly follow down a blind alley.

By your reasoning, the other opposition parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats et al) should just sit idly by and not question or argue against any Tory policies for that term of Government?

I agree with you that the vote has been cast, the UK is leaving the EU. But to state people are not allowed to have a voice on the terms of leaving is naive at best. Had the result of the vote been the other way (48% leave, 52% remain) would be be having a "hard remain" and telling the leavers to shut up?

New comment by kamjam in "GitHub is down"

kamjam — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:34:30 +0000

What happens when something like nuget.org/npm/other equivalents that you have a dependency on from your code/build system go down?

Unless you are self-hosting everything then there is a reliance on 3rd parties. Even when you self-host, you have a dependency on your IT team for maintenance - 100% uptime is impossible for anyone, servers sometimes need to undergo routine maintenance or an upgrade. Yes, I understand the difference being it's on your own timeframe, but often it's just been one of those things.

Even with these small outages, would be interested if anyone is able to keep higher uptime themselves.

New comment by kamjam in "WhatsApp backdoor allows snooping on encrypted messages"

kamjam — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 15:29:19 +0000

> Simple explanation would be that activists use Signal.

But why do activists simply not use WhatsApp, instead of Signal? If both were suppose to be fully encrypted and secure, why not use the tool that is available. I assume the needing encryption is to prevent the government snooping and eavesdropping on your plans rather than "liking the UI/UX of one system over the other"?

Maybe the activists know something we did not, and are right to be paranoid...

New comment by kamjam in "A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief"

kamjam — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 12:53:28 +0000

I've never understood this "UK is creepy cos of all the cameras they have". Yes, there are a lot of them in the built up cities, most are privately owned and a lot are probably directly controlled by the government (and related agencies as well).

The large paranoia towards the UK probably stems from "The UK has more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere else in the world" but no ones knows this to be true for certain[1][2].

It may well be true, but don't think that you're being filmed any less in any other first world country. Also worth noting that most of the statistics are based on "per person". There may well be countries with a much higher population and much higher CTTV camera count.

1. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cctv_cameras_per_capi... 2. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/spy-britain-six-million-cc...

New comment by kamjam in "We turned $140k on Kickstarter into $40k debt and broke even"

kamjam — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 22:26:12 +0000

What about selling them very very cheaply as an Amazon Add-on item?

New comment by kamjam in "Fidel Castro has died"

kamjam — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 23:54:09 +0000

It's also worth bearing in mind that America, the godfather of capitalism, have just had their crazy election. People were saying they as a nation had been left behind due to globalization. Isn't the capitalist market supposed to self regulate and spread the wealth? If US citizens are feeling left behind, how exactly are other nations supposed to feel when western nations "come to liberate them and give them democracy"?

New comment by kamjam in "Fidel Castro has died"

kamjam — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 23:39:33 +0000

"There's a principle of ideology that we must never look at our own crimes. We should on the other hand exult in the crimes of others and in our own nobility in opposing them."

I believe the quote is from Noam Chomsky but couldn't find any references. Some interesting debate in this thread, but as you and the OP say, there is no black and white, good vs evil, just many shades in between with many actors playing many roles simultaneously. Fidel Castro was certainly no saint and at times was the devil, but there were also those other times inbetween.

New comment by kamjam in "Fidel Castro has died"

kamjam — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 17:34:08 +0000

That's the same for any country, not just Cuba. The wealth distribution of the US or any other western society is not evenly distributed and the pay gap is growing even more rapidly.

New comment by kamjam in "Site requests bank logins for online purchases"

kamjam — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 16:30:55 +0000

Did not know the limit had been increased, and agree about checkout staff having no clue when the pin does not work (happens a fair amount with foreign cards).

I've seen a lot of people in the US not sign their card and instead write "ask for ID", which seems like a much smarter move!

New comment by kamjam in "Site requests bank logins for online purchases"

kamjam — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 10:36:29 +0000

In the UK at least, all our payments in store above £20 require a PIN to be used (payments below £20 you can use the fairly recently introduced touch pay which just requires you to touch the card to the payment machine).

If you are purchasing online, all my credit and debit card payments require me to enter 3 random characters from my (previously set up) password.

Not sure what the system is like elsewhere in Europe/worldwide.

New comment by kamjam in "Code I’m Still Ashamed Of"

kamjam — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:01:47 +0000

The article also mentioned nothing about the drug being sold on the website either. I presume they must have had to go to a doctor to get a prescription which they would then take to a pharmacy to get the drug... so going to the doctor and saying "I took this questionnaire and it said I have X. I need drug Y" means there are problems elsewhere in the system.

New comment by kamjam in "Code I’m Still Ashamed Of"

kamjam — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:58:47 +0000

I agree with you totally. I'm sure the author feels some responsibility for having some played some part of this, but it's the pharma company that should be ashamed.

With regards to advertising, I'm from the UK so we don't get much medical advertising, but in the US it is crazy. Half the adverts in commercial breaks seem to be for medicines with half a dozen potential side effects.

> Then, if a visitor could prove they had a prescription, they were given access to a patient portal with more specific info about the drug.

I assume that it was just further information about the drug. In the UK only a doctor can prescribe controlled medicines. I assume it's the same in Canada... if so it's for the doctor, who has had years of training in this field, to prescribe the correct drug. Yes, some drugs cause side effects for some people, and medicines need to be adjusted/changed as a result. We don't know how many people died as a result of the medicine, but that's what government regulation should deal with not allowing untested drugs to be sold.

> We’re approaching a time where software will drive the vehicle that transports your family to soccer practice. There are already AI programs that help doctors diagnose disease. It’s not hard to imagine them recommending prescription drugs soon, too.

For me this was the most (and only) important paragraph of the post.

The target=“_blank” vulnerability by example

kamjam — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 08:49:04 +0000

Article URL: https://dev.to/ben/the-targetblank-vulnerability-by-example

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365025

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

Android malware has infected 85M devices and makes creators $300,000 month

kamjam — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 15:23:48 +0000

Article URL: http://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infected-85-million-devices-and-makes-its-creators-300000-a-month/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12037037

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by kamjam in "My open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (2013)"

kamjam — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 13:34:32 +0000

Maybe buy a height-adjustable standing desk. I used one of these for about 10 months working on a project in Denmark where the motorised versions seemed very common. Gives a break from sitting down all and useful for huddling a couple of colleagues around.

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/campaigns/home-office/standing-des...