Hacker News: mcantelon

New comment by mcantelon in "EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware"

mcantelon — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 01:48:03 +0000

>Imo, the bigger question is why Hungary, Poland, Spain, Greece, and Cyprus (all countries part of the recent EU Spyware Scandal) [1] continue to allow their Interior Ministries to attack the phones of both domestic and foreign opponents, and are abusing "Spyware for political gain" [2].

It's also a national security issue given that Israel may be piggybacking on the spying.

New comment by mcantelon in "Web3.0 Must Be Destroyed"

mcantelon — Tue, 10 May 2022 19:04:39 +0000

>web3 is a culmination of late capitalist grift, ironic meming, libertarianism and mansplaining, all resting on bad tech that is damaging the planet ... Proof of Stake is an alternative to validating transactions that doesn’t involve setting fire to the earth

The very first sentence of this piece is dishonest: blanketly condemning "all" related tech as environmentally devastating. Later on in the piece it's admitted that innovations like Proof of Stake solve the problem of needless energy consumption.

>To actually use this stuff is quite difficult, even the most simple thing, like buying something.

Yeah, scanning a QR code with your phone - as one needs to do to buy something online with a mobile wallet - is super hard. ;)

This article seems to be a cavalcade of shallow and dishonest criticism.

New comment by mcantelon in "U.S. insurrectionists received $500k in bitcoins from French donor"

mcantelon — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 04:46:46 +0000

There's lot of edgy people on Twitter... lots of folks with hammers and sickles, ironic or otherwise, in their handles, despite the many documented atrocities committed by communist states.

New comment by mcantelon in "Why T.S. Eliot still matters"

mcantelon — Sat, 30 May 2020 20:05:36 +0000

Law of the jungle's where it's at.

New comment by mcantelon in "Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system"

mcantelon — Tue, 05 May 2020 04:51:38 +0000

Institutions earned their current distrust.

New comment by mcantelon in "Popcorn Time repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown"

mcantelon — Tue, 05 May 2020 03:03:02 +0000

>If the code were an ATM pin code cracker, would that be any different?

No. Lots of pen testing stuff exists in the open source realm. A society that allows exploits to be "free speech" is anti-fragile.

New comment by mcantelon in "Bye, Amazon"

mcantelon — Mon, 04 May 2020 19:26:15 +0000

Reports of shitty working conditions aren't exactly a new thing in Amazon warehouses.

New comment by mcantelon in "Coronavirus and the blindness of authoritarianism"

mcantelon — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 19:17:19 +0000

>I got no doubt at this stage that the US will be hit the hardest from all the developed countries.

It's the biggest and most diverse so that's wouldn't be surprising, yes.

New comment by mcantelon in "Coronavirus and the blindness of authoritarianism"

mcantelon — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 19:11:41 +0000

It's not "hypocritical" to address the fact that authoritarianism is a failure multiplier unless one is an advocate of authoritarianism.

New comment by mcantelon in "Kickstarter employees vote to unionize"

mcantelon — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 00:31:32 +0000

>The Nazis won a plurality of the popular vote, so it’s not exactly a great distinguishing factor for Trump.

The distinguishing factor is that Trump's admin doesn't actually resemble a Nazi regime.

New comment by mcantelon in "Kickstarter employees vote to unionize"

mcantelon — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 22:18:20 +0000

Perhaps mainstream conservatives would be cooler with this type of violent agitprop-masquerading-as-satire if it they weren't often called Nazis and physically attacked.

New comment by mcantelon in "Kickstarter employees vote to unionize"

mcantelon — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 22:13:23 +0000

>Yes it's accurate, though the "Always Punch Nazis" controversy was just the tip of the iceberg

Wow pretty crazy that a company would expect employees to consistently enforce a reasonable part of the company's T.O.S.

Many tech workers have no idea how unbelievably spoiled they are.

New comment by mcantelon in "Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 20:44:53 +0000

Given historical experimentation by the military and intelligence agencies it seems pretty likely that this sort of research is happening.

New comment by mcantelon in "Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 20:38:24 +0000

>who clearly have not investigated any of the most obvious follow-up questions, such as “what is the probability of this occurring naturally?”

If it's true then the cause is an entirely different question.

New comment by mcantelon in "Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 20:25:38 +0000

The Twitter user seems legit. The Internet in general is full of BS yet we don't guilt-by-association the entire Internet.

New comment by mcantelon in "Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 19:30:41 +0000

Corporate media has done a lot to promote polarization (and even violence). Social media is making corporate media redundant to some degree, but those who run social media are also influenced by the same forces influencing corporate media. And, of course, "woke" ideology hasn't helped given it's similar in some ways to Maoism.

Until the cold war between globalism and nationalism finds some resolution this atmosphere will likely persist.

New comment by mcantelon in "Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 19:28:16 +0000

The severity has grown but the scale of the toxicity's grown in the "human flesh search engine" era.

New comment by mcantelon in "More Than 750M Worldwide Would Migrate If They Could"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 18:54:33 +0000

Lots of people would move into other people's nicer homes if they could too, but the owners of the homes might take issue with that. Nations are a form of collective property.

New comment by mcantelon in "More Than 750M Worldwide Would Migrate If They Could"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 18:53:46 +0000

What some call "American cultural imperialism" is what he/she is likely talking about.

New comment by mcantelon in "More Than 750M Worldwide Would Migrate If They Could"

mcantelon — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 18:51:23 +0000

Animals protect their territory. Fierce tribalism has long existed. I find the idea that people could just live anywhere, back in the day, to be hard to believe. In some places? Sure. In "the entire world"? Not so much. Spain was invaded by the Moors, back in the day, because someone opened the gates, from the inside, for them for example.