pemulis

LinkedIn needs to work on pervasive phishing and identity theft. I recently found out about an account that copied my profile photo, name, and CV information and used that to connect to 500+ people at my company and elsewhere, using my reputation to pitch people on some blockchain diamond Ponzi scheme. The account has been shut down, but I have no idea if the connections have been warned that this was a fake account trying to scam them, who the account had connected to, and if anyone was victimized. Speaking with coworkers, these kinds of scams are common. It doesn't seem like there is even a basic automated check during user signup to see if the account is impersonating someone else who is already in the system.

Here's the study I was thinking about.

"Local newspapers hold their governments accountable. We examine the effect of local newspaper closures on public finance for local governments. Following a newspaper closure, we find municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points in the long run. Identification tests illustrate that these results are not being driven by deteriorating local economic conditions. The loss of monitoring that results from newspaper closures is associated with increased government inefficiencies, including higher likelihoods of costly advance refundings and negotiated issues, and higher government wages, employees, and tax revenues."

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Murphy-...

The first newspapers were expensive niche publications that provided businesspeople, politicians, and other elites with the information they needed. Mass market newspapers (and ultimately the mass market news industry) relied on advertising dollars to subsidize the costs of news production. With advertising dollars moving away from news production, there is no longer enough incentive to produce news for the average person. There has to be some subsidy in place to pay for news that regular people can't pay for. This is particularly bad in local markets, where news deserts are spreading. Without beat reporters, there's no way to know basic facts about what's going on around you.

https://www.cjr.org/local_news/american-news-deserts-donuts-...

Mass market news allowed for the professionalization of journalism, with a set of ethics that demanded (attempts at) objectivity. With mass market news dying, there isn't enough money to support a large professional journalism class. In its absence, we are left with propagandists that publish publicly for free or at discounted rates and consultants that publish objective information privately at high rates that only businesses, politicians, or the wealthy can afford.

BayLeaks partnered with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, before it went under. My co-founder was a long-time San Francisco journalist and I was able to collaborate with her on several stories and get introductions to journalists and editors for stories I was doing independently. But of course, you could always just investigate stuff, find the email of an editor at an outlet that seems to publish that kind of thing, and write an email pitch. If they're interested, you send your story, and they'll tell you how much they would pay to publish with them.

I majored in creative writing, but the MFA career path looked like a pyramid scheme, so I switched to web development. After working in the field for several years, I started running the technical side of a local leaks platform called BayLeaks. (It's defunct now, but was cutting edge at the time, basically the third SecureDrop instance after The New Yorker and Wired.) I got more involved in the research and writing side, since it turned out the big problem in journalism wasn't a lack of technology, it was a lack of time and money to do research.

Eventually, I made the switch to full-time freelance investigative reporting. It was hugely rewarding at a personal level and made a positive impact on people's lives, but it was also a financial catastrophe that I'm still paying for. I could no longer justify as I was approaching my 30s and planning to get married.

I switched back to programming, eventually landed my current full-time job doing blockchain stuff, and really enjoy it. I miss investigative reporting, but still do a bit of research for activist friends in my free time. Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write. Given the dire economics of journalism, making a bunch of tech money to subsidize a publication would be more impactful than slogging away in poverty on my own.

There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency. I think that tax dollars should be set aside to fund journalism, since journalism ultimately saves money for everyone. I don't see any other big solutions that would solve this systemic problem. We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.

I just pinged you on Twitter, @jdshutt. I know a lawyer who specializes in tax law and is very interested in cryptocurrencies. If you want to get in touch with her, you can reach me at john.d.shutt@gmail.com and I'll send her e-mail.

I'm on board with everyone saying that you need to talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later, and should work with someone who knows the area.

Would adding up the number of rape threats directed against his critics count as a measurement?

SEEKING WORK - San Francisco Bay Area or Remote

Hi, HN! I'm a full-stack web developer, looking to take on interesting freelance projects. I enjoy using Ruby, Rails, PostgreSQL, SASS, RSpec, and CoffeeScript/jQuery, but I always try to find the best tools for the job at hand. Recent projects of mine include a GitHub recommendations service and a rewrite of the Open Library gem.

GitHub: https://github.com/pemulis

E-mail: john.d.shutt@gmail.com

The two most obvious culprits would be:

1) People trying to make the price of bitcoins drop, so that they can buy low and sell high. (This possibility is called out in the article.)

2. Criminals trying to extract a ransom from Mt. Gox, which is losing a lot of revenue and trust every minute their site is down.

You also have to think about tracking on the readers' side of things. If you read something on Facebook or Google+, you can count on that being tracked and added to that system's profile of you. If you read something on a blog, and block things like Google Analytics, it's harder to passively track.

The distortion around his contribution to RSS is strongest in mainstream news articles written by people who don't really understand the history. When you read pieces by people in technology, activist, and art circles, especially people who actually knew and worked with him, you find many other projects he created or contributed to. And if you're fully aware of that, I think it's disingenuous to point to what a confused journalist thinks Aaron Swartz did and act like that's the full story.

Which again makes me wonder why the tech world has been a week of adulation of Aaron Swartz, whose two greatest accomplishments (if you follow the lede of every story about him) were that he was pushed on the Reddit founders by PG after his own project failed (then exiting before them), and that he was one of a dozen plus people who authored a revision to a brutishly simplistic RSS 1.0 spec, his single celebrated attribute being his age.

Is that honestly all you took away from the stories about him? The only way I could see someone forming this opinion is if they had read only the lede of a piece about him before closing the tab.

If he was advocate for more open access to government records, why is it surprising that he would be concerned about the Aaron Swartz case? I agree that this letter could be seen as part a larger battle between Republicans and the Obama DoJ, but does that mean that questions about Aaron Swartz' prosecution are only valid if they come from Democrats?

The Internet Archive, probably. They have a long-term view toward preserving Internet content, and the resources to support permanent memorials would be negligible for them. It would be similar to a university library preserving the papers of an important writer. I can't imagine a more appropriate custodian.

But in the case of Darrell Issa, we have a Congressman who,

A) Worked with Aaron Swartz to fight SOPA,

B) Sits on the House Judiciary Committee, and

C) Has a history of hauling the Justice Department before Congress.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Jared Polis are also on the House Judiciary Committee, and could potentially lend bipartisan support to any investigation.

If you want a legislative response, now is the time to write to your representatives. The EFF has an easy tool to send the appropriate people a message:

https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KE...

The prefilled text is about the CFAA, but you can change it to say whatever you want before sending it. Don't feel apathetic, or think that you can't make a difference. One thing Aaron Swartz showed us is that Congress can be made to listen to the public, if we are loud enough.

Here's what I wrote:

Dear Representative Polis,

Two days ago, as I'm sure you are aware, brilliant programmer, writer, and activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide. At the time of his death, he was being threatened with a 35-year federal prison sentence and millions of dollars in fines for allegedly downloading academic articles with the plan to distribute them freely to scholars everywhere.

Even though the alleged victim, JSTOR, did not wish to press any charges, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann pressed forward aggressively, treating Mr. Swartz the same as a bank robber, phishing artist, or hacker of military secrets. Mr. Swartz's family believes that this overzealous and unreasonable prosecution contributed to his suicide.

Rep. Polis, as an Internet entrepreneur and investor, you understand the issues at hand better than most. And as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, you are well positioned to investigate the circumstances of this prosecution, and revisit the decades-old laws that made it possible.

I never knew Aaron Swartz, but like many others, I was a great admirer of his work and felt his loss deeply. I beg you to look into this case.

Thank you,

[my name]

> And it seems like keeping teachers well paid and happy is the best use of the money.

Is there any evidence that this is the best way to improve schools? Honestly curious.

I was confused by the extended metaphor, too, until I saw the notice at the bottom that the author is writing a book about how to think like Sherlock Holmes. It's useful when reading this kind of essay to find out what the author is selling, although it usually isn't this obvious.

> The current trend is for computing power to get smaller and cheaper, rather than getting more computing power.

I think it's a mistake to compare specific devices from different eras, like a 2007 desktop and a 2012 desktop. In order to find total computing power, you need to add your phone, tablet, desktop, laptop, and cloud services together. When you do that, you see that we all have far more computing power than we did in the past, but we've chosen to spread that power over a variety of different devices.

Twitter is great for five things: Links to long reads, breaking news, short-form comedy, status updates, and contacting interesting strangers. Most people start using Twitter for just one of those five things and discover the other ones later. For me, the first thing was breaking news. I started following individuals on the ground in the early days of the Arab Spring, and Twitter blew all of the traditional news sources out of the water.

> The company appears to present itself as a DMCA remover on the website yesitis.org but lists no address. Considering the many mistakes made by the firm, one has to wonder whether their “under penalty of perjury” statement that they represent the copyright holders above is accurate.

I think this has to be a prank. The website was generated with a GoDaddy website builder, filled with laughable plagiarized boilerplate, and doesn't include any information that would identify a particular company. All of the photos are stock photos. They include 'Adoption' and 'Personal Injury' under their list of services. I think someone is seeing if they can get Google to take down obviously legitimate websites when an obviously illegitimate source asks them to.

They haven't won many heads-up elections, but they have won a few.[1] They're also pulling significant percentages in Germany, and close to a full percent in a few other countries. They're active in 40 at the moment. They're hardly a major party, but doing pretty well for one that's only six years old.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party#National_Pirate_Pa...

> I don't promote or demote filesharing per se: it's just the cutting edge where the future trends will show years before they land elsewhere and that's what it makes it so interesting.

One interesting thing I've noticed that the people behind the best filesharing networks tend to have tremendous success with their later projects.

Napster is the obvious one. After Napster went down, Shawn Fanning co-founded Rupture and Path, and Sean Parker went on to become the first president of Facebook, key investor in Spotify, and managing partner at the Founders Fund.

Kazaa is another great example. After their legal walloping, the founders and development team behind Kazaa regrouped to form Skype.

And then there's The Pirate Bay, which is still rolling merrily along, court rulings notwithstanding. Its team hasn't created any billion-dollar companies yet (we'll see what happens with Flattr), but they created a political party that's won elections in multiple countries, as well as the webhosting company PRQ, which was Wikileaks' home in its early days.

I don't think all of these later successes are a coincidence. Filesharing involves hard technical problems, hard logistical problems, and intense competition. If you were an investor, a blind strategy of giving money to the best pirates you can find seems like it might be surprisingly sound.

I thought it was fine storytelling, for what it was. I don't think I would want the whole front page full of stories like this, but I found it oddly refreshing to read a story on Hacker News that wasn't trying to teach or promote anything.

Lyft, Sidecar, Ridejoy, Tickengo, Reward Ride, Avego, Carpooling.com, RelayRides, and a bunch of other ones.

That depends on what he used the e-mail address for. If it was strictly for romantic liaisons, it's no big deal. But if he used it for any other purpose (talking with his lawyer, chatting with senators, etc.), it would be a hell of a platform for social engineering attacks. In that scenario, the information in Petraeus' personal inbox is beside the point[1]; you can use the trusted address to get your hooks into something more interesting.

[1] Ignoring the blackmail value of the affair.

All good points. I want to make note of two other cases that seem relevant, both related to Youtube. In 2010, a judge in the US threw out Viacom's lawsuit against Youtube/Google, ruling that they were protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act when users posted copyrighted material[1]. In Lenz vs. Universal Music Corp.[2], a judge ruled that rightsholders have to consider if a piece of content is protected by fair use before filing DMCA takedown notices.

Let's say an annotation platform allowed users to post snippets of material as freely as Youtube, along with annotations and commentary. And let's use A Perfect Day for Bananafish again as the source of these snippets of text. Imagine the following sequence.

Alice posts the first paragraph of the story, along with extensive notes. Bob posts the second paragraph of the story, along with extensive notes. Carol adds an annotation to the first paragraph with a link to the second paragraph. Dave, Eve, and a few dozen other people jump in the mix, and pretty soon you have the entirety of A Perfect Day for Bananafish on the annotation site, and it's incredibly easy to read the paragraphs in full and in their original order. Maybe the annotation site even has an algorithm that detects related pieces of content, and creates the links automatically. (This is certainly the case for Youtube.)

Where should the takedown notice be directed? Each person in the chain only posted a small part of the work, and each post includes annotations and commentary that would seem to grant it fair use protections. Taken as a whole, though, the entire work has been recreated in full. Can the rightsholder demand that the website remove links users make between posts? If so, under what section of the DMCA? And what happens if the links are made algorithmically?

Does a rightsholder have to issue takedown notices for each piece of the chain individually? If the people who made the posts file appeals, does the rightsholder have to take each and every one of them to court in separate cases? And if they do, would they get demolished by counterclaims?

This isn't an idle question, when you think about the annotations for The Great Gatsby[3] that the founders of Rap Genius have been mentioning in their recent interviews. It seems like this sort of scenario is inevitable, and I don't know if copyright holders have any way of actually dealing with it.

[1] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h_AfErLSM...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp.

[3] http://rapgenius.com/search?q=the+great+gatsby

Edit: It's important to keep in mind that, in this scenario, all of the potentially infringing content is being posted by people with no commercial motive, which makes it different from the Shepard Fairey case. The annotation site itself is making money, but is protected by the DMCA under current understanding of the law.

Edit x2: I love how deeply annotated this discussion of annotations is. Quick, someone link to this thread from Rap Genius and close the loop!

That's a great point about the Harry Potter Lexicon case. One thing that's interesting about that ruling is how narrow it was, and the implication that if the Lexicon contained more extensive commentary it would be legal.

Here's a question[1]. Let's say you took a work that was not in the public domain but has been the subject of extensive academic study, like A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Every line of that short story has been quoted in an academic paper at this point, and each quote was fair use. What would happen if you compiled all of those papers in a single website? That website would contain the full text of A Perfect Day for Bananafish, but in a fragmented form. Would it still be fair use?

Now let's say you pieced the quotes together like a jigsaw puzzle, and included the extensive commentary in flyover annotations. Is it still fair use? Probably not, would be my guess.

What if only half of the quotes were pieced together, and the rest was summarized? What if the annotations of the summaries included quotes that fill in the rest of the story? Where exactly is the line drawn?

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, I promise. I just find it interesting. It's like we're facing the metaphysics of copyright, sort of a Borges As IP Lawyer thing.

[1] Posed as a thought experiment, because I have no idea what the answer is.

One of the biggest questions will be how transformative annotations are, and whether that will give adequate protection if users upload large chunks of copyrighted text. Google's use of thumbnails in image search wound up being covered by fair use[1] for this reason, and a judge recently ruled that book scanning was covered by fair use[2], as well. From the article:

> "The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to copyrighted material," wrote Judge Baer. "The search capabilities of the HDL have already given rise to new methods of academic inquiry such as text mining."

This might set precedent for a showdown over annotations that quote extensively from the source text, since online annotation systems also "[give] rise to new methods of academic inquiry."

The main point here is that laws about fair use are pretty vague, and new technologies always shake things up. We don't know what is legal and what isn't until it's put before a judge. In the case of Google's book scanning, the court case took seven years, which shows just how tricky this area of law can be.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/google-v-perfect-...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-rules-book-...