beeneto

Snowden most likely defected to the Chinese government

I keep reading this hypothesis

Am I right in thinking that it still has no evidence to support it whatsoever, excluding the fact that he announced his identity while in a Hong Kong hotel?

I can't link to it now because the site is down, but lingscars has a PDF of 'web design tips' where she explains the design and gives tips on website design. She's obviously got an eccentric public image, and the design tips document is a bit of a joke, but the design here was a deliberate choice to differentiate the site from competitors, make potential customers feel less intimidated and more socially involved. There was even a webcam of the office with a button which apparently played a song in the office when you pressed it.

The business is also doing very well.

> While anybody can built partial web-browsers, they can't build competitive alternatives to those sanctioned by DRM-vendors.

That's true, but it's not connected to the w3c inclusion in the spec.

People hosing DRM encrypted video could stop your third-party browser from consuming their video with or without the w3c spec provision.

The proposal is to have a standard for a way the browser communicates with non-standards compliant DRM encumbered (essentially encrypted) video.

Anyone is still free to write a client which consumes the standards-compliant parts of the page, but will be unable to consume the non-standards compliant DRM encrypted video.

In this way, it is similar to existing non-standards compliant web plugins like flash. For a long time nobody could just sit down and write a client which consumed flash animations (they were bound by the flash license, which prohibited mobile flash runtimes for example).

I don't agree with this inclustion by the w3c myself, but your argument isn't a powerful argument against it. My objections to it revolve around the w3c overstepping their responsibility (why is it THEIR job to cater to one specific plugin family - is it being driven by political pressure), the futility of its inclusion (they expect an open source implementation, which probably isn't possible for this kind of technology), and the self contradictory statements in the original w3c announcement.

PS. Calling an argument bogus and leaving it at that isn't helpful. If you see flaws in an argument you have to identify them point by point.

I don't think so. People posting overly-wordy comments is already a problem here, I assume because it makes the comment seem more "in depth". I think a minimum length would make that problem worse.

The redditification problem comes up every so often, but from what I've read in those threads I think it's being dealt with by other means, i.e. by tweaking the vote weighting.

I don't think it's worth talking on a blog post or in a technical forum just for social reasons (e.g. I don't think reddit's meme or pun threads would be valuable on hn for their social effect), but I agree with you because I don't think a comment has to add to The Sum Total of Human Knowledge™ for it to be valuable. It just needs to be an interesting thought that the readers aren't likely to have had on their own.

Comments sections improve blogs because they are a place where readers can point out errors in the parent article.

Sending an email or tweeting the correction is more difficult than making an anonymous comment, and would then need the author to both concede their mistake and take the time to correct the article. Until they do that, everyone who reads the article risks being misinformed.

I can see an argument that comment areas are less necessary on purely opinion blog posts like this one, but on technical blogs they are much more useful, and even on opinion posts I think giving space for dissent is probably a good general rule to follow. For example James Shakespeare seems to base his opinion on the belief that everyone has the same "blog reading algorithm", which I don't think is the case. If there were a comments section I'd post that suggestion, but because of the increased overhead/social investment needed to send an email or tweet I'm not going to bother, and he will probably never read that dissenting opinion.

I agree with your parent, and think you're trying to read it in an over-specific way, it's like saying "You can't compare writing and programming, because writing doesn't have comments."

The parent was making the point that, like writing, good and bad coding style is entirely subjective - necessarily so because many parts of it are simply conventional.

There are some specific constructions in programming that can be shown to be better than others through complexity theory, but even the guidelines we have for these aren't global optimums.

Don't burst a vein arguing over the definition of a profession.

The litmus test is whether or not an occupation has a policing organisation who dictates who is allowed to practice it. Lawyers, doctors, civil engineers are professions. Homeopathers, developers and ditch diggers are not.

I'll reference wikipedia, but its more of an unwritten rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#Formation_of_a_profe...

It also seems likely that if you're in the kind of fey, excited mood that leads to impulse purchases then you'll be more prone to rage quitting the browser when something annoys you.

Relax, I just thought it was an ironic that some people think "You are enlightened!" is an insult.

There are several definitions for scientism in the article, they are all different, some are conflicting. My comment was about the definition in the quote, I know that science and naturalism are not the same thing.

But in the definition I quoted, Michael Schermer defined scientism in part as embracing reason. There's nothing rational about embracing reason!?

> You have so called "social sciences", but they are pretty much useless otherwise there would be someone paying them a lots of money to figure out what will happen next for example in the Middle East.

It doesn't follow from "nobody pays social scientists" that "social science is useless", if it were true there could be many reasons why nobody paid for research in the social sciences.

But in fact someone is paying them a lot of money for them to figure out what will happen next for example in the middle east, e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Social_Policy_and...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_and_economic...

> Sciences are very limited once you get a human being with free will into the equation. And then you multiple that by culture than by genes then by experiences and then by 6 billion.

Free will, if it exists, isn't the problem that the scientific method has when dealing with people. Any system as complex as a person has too many variables to be able to control in an experiment.

"Michael Shermer ... defines scientism as a worldview that encompasses natural explanations, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason."

I'd consider widespread adoption of that worldview to be the sign of a culturally advanced civilisation, and it's opposite to be the sign of a backwards one.

I think evolution is the right word. When I was little I often played a game where I would imagine I'd found a genie who would grant me three wishes, and I'd try to think of what to wish for. Most often, two of those wishes would be to be able to talk to my friends with telepathy, and for a book that would answer any question I wrote in it.

Here I have a machine that grants two of my wishes, I use it very often, and using it is very compelling. I dont think its ridiculous to say that when you carry such a powerful and easy to use machine, you start to think of it as being part of yourself, and "why can't you keep it in your pocket" becomes as strange and unanswerable a question as "why can't you keep your hands in your pocket", or "why can't you keep your eyes closed".

You can argue this is an unhealthy trend in culture, and an unhealthy propensity for people who live in an increasingly technological world, but it's unfair - I think so - to judge/condemn/pity people who have the addiction.

I theorise that the post gave the hackers of the community an opportunity to vent their latent dislike of superficial or even detrimental UI changes. Note though that the 'vitriol' was mostly sarcasm and scoffing. If we use 1 torvalds as a unit of hacker irascibility, then the comments never rose above about 300-400 millitorvalds.

Since I can't believe that someone linked a Daily Mail article on HN for the content, I assume this was posted as an example of how incompetent reporting can lead to the spread of ignorance?

It is quite an interesting example of that.

People are mentioning Fluid and Prism, but nobody is mentioning HTML Applications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application.

It still works on Windows, just rename a .html file .hta. You get the appearance of a real application and special privileges through windows scripting.

On an unrelated note I like that application development is moving in the direction of using web technologies for offline software, but I don't like the fragmentation I'm seeing with the Windows Metro apps, Chrome apps, Firefox OS apps, Phonegap apps all using different manifests/APIs.

It would make more sense for developers and consumers if some of the people working on these were to work together and come up with a standard.

Ah okay, so when he says "I would consider proposing some clarifications to ACTA" he's just blowing smoke - talking about making cosmetic statements about ACTA which would encourage parliament to ratify it, but wouldn't actually fix the abuse cases that come from the vague wording?

He didn't say he'd ignore court rulings. He told the trade committee (which isn't a court AFAIK) that advising against ACTA wouldn't stop the European court of justice from investigating its legality.

Since I know techdirt always reports aggressively in favour of internet freedom I read the direct quotes first and the techdirt commentary afterwards. From just the quotes, Karel De Gucht doesn't seem to be saying anything underhanded, just that if parliament doesn't ratify ACTA it will be modified (presumably toned down?) and resubmitted.

I don't think techdirt's message "The european government is a corrupt puppet!" is supported by the evidence in this article. Personally the fact that every committe which has reviewed ACTA has advised against it gives me hope.

I'm starting to wonder if the patronage model would work for modern music.

A band could record a few songs as a sample of their work, maybe sell them on bandcamp or distribute under the donate model, then have a kickstarter for their next album.

If enough people like their music and want to hear more of it, or if a few people _really_ like their music then the band will be paid and they will make their new album.

If they don't gather enough fans then they are either unpopular or can't gather the exposure, both of which would also be problems under any other model, but this time are discovered before any money is spent/lent up front.

I have never considered your point of view and I am curious about it. Can you explain why you think his ideology is poisonous? Also how can it be possible that he's hurting the free software movement, when I thought he CREATED the free software movement.

Please read this http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Whether or not a pacemaker is running free open source software is independant of whether or not a person can flash their own version of the software to it.

If it were open source you, or anyone who was fitted with the pacemaker could look at the rules that control it.

Making _anything_ visible and open to criticism instantly makes its creators more accountable and adds pressure for them to try and be responsible.