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I was expecting SETI to find intelligence on Earth before space. They've been looking at the entropy of bee hives and other disembodied signal-passing collectives for a while now.


They are smart, but can't do miracles.


Security company SpiderOak (not affiliated) seems to be working on a "zero knowledge" end-to-end encrypted hosted Slack competitor. I'm no security expert and I don't know whether these claims actually hold up. You can read more here:

https://spideroak.com/articles/press-release-semaphor-to-giv...

This made me laugh: "Semaphor is not slack about privacy."


I wonder if anyone at Google would resign over something like this, or if everyone has already rationalized it away and now just keep their head down for the next paycheck.

Some people definitely do go in with very strong principles, but those seem to dilute quickly.


I see nothing wrong here. It appears it was an informal request that a private company could have nicely said "no" in response. YouTube is taking down videos all the time due to informal requests that have no authority of law behind them, no one complains that much about those.


Being complicit in state-ordered censorship is different than removing someone's embarrassing video when they ask nicely.

And the fact that it was an informal request, not legal arm-twisting, and that they complied anyway just makes it more evident that there was some form of tit-for-tat expected.


You could be 100% correct in your suggestion there. But nothing can come of it unless you can show the tit-for-tat happened and that it broke the law in some way.


I'm not asking for arrests, I'm asking for resignations or internal protest. This was an blatant ethical violation, even if perhaps not a legal one.


The Secretary of State calls up and asks you to take down a video and that's an "informal request"?


The President of the United States of America can personally call you and request that you take the Trump sign off your lawn. That is an informal request unless he can specify what law he is enforcing that you must be in compliance. You can politely or impolitely respond in any way you wish regardless of the fact of the position the man currently holds.

If there is a threat to you for non-compliance of his request, then he has likely broken the law.


"The President of the United States of America can personally call" I think Barrack Obama can make a personal call but The President of the US can't.

When an email comes from @state.gov with the description of "U.S. Department of State SUBJECT TO AGREEMENT ON SENSITIVE INFORMATION & REDACTIONS." I don't think it can be considered Hillary making a personal request.

Ironically this might have been a very appropriate use of Clinton mail.


It is Monday so my recollection could be incorrect, but last I checked Barrack Obama is indeed the President of the United States of America and he can make a personal call whenever he feels like it. I was referring to the man that currently holds that title, not the office. But, a personal call and an informal request can be two different things completed at the same time.

I didn't claim Hillary made a personal request. I stated that an informal request was made, whether it be from Hillary herself or a staffer on her behalf. It is still an informal request that a private company can politely or impolitely decline.


Yes. Period, paragraph. An important person can make informal requests, too.

A formal request would cite legal authority.

Interesting, btw, that you assume that Clinton did this directly, despite zero evidence. Seems just as possible to me that a staff member would have made the request.


^ this.


Sorry, hadn't seen it. Is it common practice that I should remove mine?


No, users and/or moderators will flag it. Happens all the time.



"(...) including a fork managed by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture."



This is not even about deniable encryption (which is apparently a part of the threat model?): this is a nightstick to beat anybody who's inconvenient in any minor way. "Prove to me that your song collection contains no secret message, else you're guilty." There's no way to do that! For anything I could come up with, the universal response "well maybe it's hidden even better" holds.

In other words, introducing "guilty until proven otherwise" introduces witch-trials pretty much by definition: if she floats, she's a witch (so far, so good; yay it works); if she drowns (or dies in notprisonnosirnotatall after years of not confessing nonexistent secrets), she was innocent. Of course, there is absolutely no way this might be abused, and certainly not for personal vengeance.

Welcome to Salem, MA.


The killer feature in the Thinkpad line for me is the military-grade sturdiness. Does Dell have the same kind of resistance to spills, drops, heat, etc.?


Big fan of what you are doing with Armored Bits! Keep it up :)


Programmer in Campinas, Brazil, on a work pause recovering from RSI-related problems.

As personal research I'm slowly working on a 8-thimble predictive wireless keyboard and coming up with plans for a solar-peltier atmospheric water generator.


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