Hacker News: rbecker

New comment by rbecker in "Kansas welcomed my immigrant parents. Then I built Dropbox"

rbecker — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 16:10:05 +0000

> not a system that works as intended [..] flooding the market with warm bodies to undercut local labor.

Are you sure that's not intended?

"Not enough migrants arriving to keep pay down - [Irish] Central Bank" - https://www.independent.ie/business/jobs/not-enough-migrants...

New comment by rbecker in "A Modest Proposal in the New Age of DMCA Takedown Aggression"

rbecker — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 11:29:15 +0000

Google is using Widevine to control the browser market. Can't make a competitive browser without their permission. That is the purpose of DRM, and it works.

New comment by rbecker in "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)"

rbecker — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:42:33 +0000

Instead, they're chanting "White silence equals violence". I'm sure demonization of a group that's on the way to becoming a minority will work out great.

Even as Trump Cut Immigration, Immigrants Transformed U.S.

rbecker — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:24:16 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/immigration-trump.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25081872

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by rbecker in "Google Widevine Content Decryption Module DMCA"

rbecker — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 07:09:21 +0000

The point isn't to protect content, but to need permission from the DRM makers to make a viable browser (or TV, or music player, or ebook reader, or...) Without their blessing, it won't work with locked content, and your users will go to a competitor favored by the DRM owners.

French museum suspends Genghis exhibition in reaction to Chinese censorship bid

rbecker — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 07:03:07 +0000

Article URL: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20201016-french-museum-suspends-genghis-exhibition-in-reaction-to-chinese-censorship-bid

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25079764

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by rbecker in "Public’s trust in science takes a hit when scientific journals take sides"

rbecker — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:33:07 +0000

Justifiably so. For example, social science research proposals likely to have findings with an unwanted political impact have a 40-50% chance of being granted, compared to 95% for otherwise identical proposals without such impact: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1986-12806-001

And since approval committees are drawn from the same pool as researchers themselves, such politically unfavorable research is less likely to be proposed in the first place, so the 95% -> 50% drop, if anything, underestimates the bias.

In other words, overwhelmingly, they simply won't do research that they think could hurt their politics.

New comment by rbecker in "Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit"

rbecker — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:26:02 +0000

> the most fundamental idea is minimizing the amount of surprises a user faces

I wouldn't call being given the master key to my own computer "surprising".

New comment by rbecker in "macOS unable to open any non-Apple application"

rbecker — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 23:23:31 +0000

Without principles, your freedom will be (is being!) slowly chiseled away, pragmatically accepting each small step. By the time even pragmatism tells you to refuse, it'll be too late.

That's exactly what happened in Hong Kong: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/technology/apple-hong-kon...

But it could never happen here...

(As someone pointed out, this does more than just prevent apps from running - it also leaks which apps you use and how often. Someone could ask Apple exactly when you started Tor browser, for example)

New comment by rbecker in "Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit"

rbecker — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:57:05 +0000

> Freedom and computer security are in fundamental opposition.

Only if you interpret "freedom" as "freedom for apps" instead of "freedom for the user". None of what you said precludes the user (I won't say "owner") being able to override Apple, or take Apple's place in deciding what their device may do.

In your mind, is a platform only "secure" when ultimate control is with the manufacturer, and not the user?

How much more "secure" were Apple's users in Hong Kong, after Apple decided to disable the app they were using to track the police?

New comment by rbecker in "Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit"

rbecker — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:05:15 +0000

> Walled gardens are safer, and usually have some implicit or explicit quality guarantee (like the Nintendo seal of quality).

And consumers who want to limit themselves to the safety of Apple's app store are free to do so. But Apple goes a step beyond this, and prevents consumers who don't want to be locked-in this way, from using "unauthorized" stores or apps.

It's false to claim that the only way to offer safety is to take away user freedom.

New comment by rbecker in "Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters"

rbecker — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 23:35:55 +0000

It must be very convenient to be able to dismiss research done by anyone that might be remotely interested in publishing findings you dislike.

When a left-leaning institution publishes findings that broadly align with the left, do you also dismiss them?

New comment by rbecker in "Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021"

rbecker — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 22:23:28 +0000

> Surprised to see the level of anger here about this.

Anger could be due to:

1) Kill competition by offering product at a loss.

2) Once competition is dead and people are invested in the product and ecosystem, start charging.

New comment by rbecker in "The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low"

rbecker — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 22:20:04 +0000

Even the Brookings link cites a few studies, while the rest of this thread's posts offer nothing but hand-wringing and loaded questions.

And you're right, the links aren't exclusively about marriage. So if "married" was erased from the original claim, you'd agree with it?

New comment by rbecker in "The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low"

rbecker — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 17:28:40 +0000

It seems what you consider odd enough to require a citation depends on your political orientation. Citations for the original claim:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0e3d/640709c889472858054c8f...

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/are-children-raised-with-...

https://www.apa.org/topics/single-parent

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-47057787

New comment by rbecker in "The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low"

rbecker — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 16:32:07 +0000

Dating experience corresponds to less stable marriage: https://img.ifunny.co/images/0b11659d375d3cc296d5683e8e54e28...

New comment by rbecker in "Amazon Charged with Antitrust Violations by European Regulators"

rbecker — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:27:27 +0000

You're not wrong. Both can be (and often are) abuses of market power.

New comment by rbecker in "Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation"

rbecker — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:11:53 +0000

Do you think it's possible to hold an opinion other than "this should be illegal" and "this is OK"?

Do you think even free speech purists can see the danger in allowing too much influence concentrated in too few hands?

New comment by rbecker in "Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation"

rbecker — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 10:51:28 +0000

The citations can only include mistakes, not the enormous (and much more effective) bias in choosing which stories to run and how to frame them. Do you think it's a coincidence you only hear of police killings when the victim is black? Or, in the rare case when covering a white victim, that their race never makes the headline?

New comment by rbecker in "The Denialist Playbook"

rbecker — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:23:20 +0000

But when it's your sacred cows that science is slaying, you're not a "denialist", you're just wisely cautious about misinterpreting narrow studies, that are confounded by environmental and social influences, and in any case were produced by a systemically racist institution with a problematic history of justifying human rights abuses.

Though that never stops you from proclaiming what you'd want the studies to say as undisputed fact. It only becomes "complicated" when the studies say the wrong thing.